Psychology in America

The results of German investigations in sensory physiology and their significance for the philosophy of mind did not go unnoticed by Americans in the period after the Civil War. William James, abroad for his health and to further his medical studies, wrote to a friend: “It seems to me that perhaps the time has come for psychology to begin to be a science—some measurements have already been made in the region lying between the physical changes in the nerves and the appearance of consciousness at (in the shape of sense perceptions) and more may come of it. Helmholtz and a man named
Wundt at Heidelberg are working at it” (James, 1920). In antebellum America, the dominant philosophical tradition was derived from England and Scotland, as exemplified in John Locke’s Essay on Human Understanding and the texts of the scottish commonsense realists, Thomas Reid, Dugald Stewart, and Thomas Brown (Evans, 1984, Fay, 1939; Fuchs, 2000a, Roback, 1952) with only modest representation of German (Hickok, 1854; Rauch, 1840) and French (Cousine, 1864) philosophy. British philosophy was empirical, gathering information about mind and mental processes from introspective observation, observation of the behavior of others, and observations of individuals recorded in medical treatises, court proceedings, literature, and poetry. The data were classified under general faculties or categories of mind, such as the intellect and the sensibilities (cognitive and conative, emotional, or motivational states) and the many possible subdivisions, such as memory and reasoning, instincts, and desires (Fuchs, 2000a, 2000b). Results from the investigations in psychophysics, sensory physiology, and the early experiments in psychology were incorporated into later textbooks of intellectual and mental philosophy (e.g., Porter, 1868; McCosh, 1886, 1887). Adding the empirical data to the theological concerns for “soul” did not change the traditional philosophical position of these texts. Even a textbook by G. T. Ladd (1842–1921) that represented the new psychology did not escape fully the theological concerns of the “old psychology” (Ladd, 1888; Evans, 1984; E. Mills, 1969). Americans traveled abroad for advanced education at British and continental universities after the Civil War; painters, writers, and scientists went in large numbers. With the postwar establishment of the new land-grant universities,
professional opportunities arose for faculty members, especially in the sciences, for education not yet available in the United States. With the zeal of converts and crusaders, the first generation of North American psychologists returned from their study abroad to stimulate the development of graduate education within established American colleges and universities and the newer land-grant universities (Kohler,
1990). They wrote textbooks to incorporate the results of the continental laboratories, developed courses for undergraduate and graduate students, created laboratories for teaching and research, and founded journals for the publication of
research from the newly established laboratories. The laboratories came to be the locus of education in psychology in universities and colleges (Calkins, 1910; Sanford, 1910) and came to symbolize psychology as science, while psychology,lodged within departments of philosophy, became the introductory course required for further study in philosophy (Fuchs, 2000b).