Lectures on Psychology of Humans and Animals

Author: (German) Wundt / Ye Haosheng et al
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-12-01
Features: Psychology has a history of over two thousand years, but scientific psychology only began in the late 19th century, with Wundt as its founder. In his work Lectures on Human and Animal Psychology, Wundt synthesized the achievements of physiological physics and, under the influence of biological evolution, creatively and systematically proposed issues concerning the object, methods, content, and system of scientific psychology. He believed:
1. The object of scientific psychology is consciousness, which is a process that can be distinguished into ideas, emotions, and wills, now termed cognition, affect, and conation in modern psychology.
2. The method of scientific psychology is the experimental method of natural science. It transformed the traditional introspective method into experimental introspection and then applied psychophysics to measure sensations, as sensations are the foundation of all physical phenomena.
3. The content of scientific psychology primarily focuses on the concept of consciousness, psychophysical theories of sensation, theories of visual perception, emotions and wills and their relationship with ideas, and comparative psychology.
4. The system of scientific psychology consists of two major components: experimental psychology and ethnopsychology. The former studies simple psychological processes of individuals, such as perception, memory, etc.; the latter studies complex psychological processes of groups, such as thinking and imagination, and is closely linked to human culture, thus having different developmental stages.