Wilhelm Wundt - Pioneer in psychology and outsider?

Wilhelm Wundt gilt allgemein als Pionier der experimentellen Psychologie und genoss am Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts hohes fachliches Ansehen. Nach der Jahrhundertwende nahm sein Einfluss schnell ab. Da es auf die möglichen Gründe bisher wenig Hin-weise gibt, wurde eine Rezeptionsanalyse unternommen. Wie wurde Wundts Werk zitiert und rezipiert? Zur Vorbereitung der Rezeptionsanalyse wurden die wichtigsten Leitgedanken in Wundts psychologischem und philosophischen Werk thesenartig zusammengestellt und kommentiert. Die Rezeptionsanalyse stützt sich hauptsächlich auf die Inhaltsanalyse der zeitgenössischen Rezensionen und Kontroversen sowie der damaligen und heutigen Lehrbücher der Allgemeinen Psychologie, Geschichte und Wissenschaftstheorie der Psychologie, zusammengenommen etwa 200 Titel seit der ersten Rezension im Jahr 1858.

Wilhelm Wundt is generally considered to be a pioneer of experimental psychology. At the end of the Nine-teenth Century his academic reputation was at a high, but his influence declined sharply in the years that followed. There is only scant evidence as to why this declining happened. To throw some light on this, an impact and citation analysis was conducted. How was Wundt�s work actually cited and received? This analy-sis was prepared by compiling and commenting on the principle ideas of Wundt�s psychological and philo-sophical work. The reception analysis was based mainly on a content analysis of about 200 references: (1) contemporary reviews and controversies from the years 1858 to the present, and (2) contemporary and mod-ern textbooks of General Psychology and of the History and Philosophy of the Science of Psychology from the years 1883 to the present. It is a matter of speculation whether Wundt�s demanding methodology (multi-method approach), his call to limit psychology to processes of consciousness, his �psychology without a soul�, and his disregard for analogous metaphysical definitions effectively ensured a poor reception of his psychology. On the other hand, Wundt did oppose the division of psychology from philosophy. He suspected that psychologists would introduce their own metaphysical beliefs into their empirical research and would be reluctant to subject these assumptions to open philosophical-epistemological critique.