CHAPTER XIV
NEW PATHS IN PSYCHOLOGY
In common with other sciences, psychology had to go through its scholastic-philosophic stage, and to some extent this has lasted on into the present time. This philosophic psychology has incurred our condemnation in that it decides ex cathedra what is the nature of the soul, and whence and how it derives its attributes. The spirit of modern scientific investigation has summarily disposed of all these phantasies and in their place has established an exact empiric method. We owe to this our present-day experimental psychology or “psychophysiology,” as the French call it. This new direction originated with Fechner, that Janus-minded spirit, who in his remarkable Psychophysik (1860) embarked on the mighty enterprise of introducing the physical standpoint into the conception of psychical phenomena. The whole idea of this work—and not least its astonishing mistakes—proved most fruitful in results. For Wundt, Fechner’s young contemporary, carried on his work, and it is Wundt’s great erudition, enormous power of work and genius for elaborating methods of experimental research, which have given to modern psychology its prevailing direction.
Until quite recently experimental psychology remained essentially academic. The first notable attempt to utilise some few at any rate of its innumerable experimental methods in the service of practical psychology came from the psychiatrists of the former Heidelberg school (Kraepelin, Aschaffenburg, etc.); it is quite intelligible that the psychotherapists should be the first to feel the urgent need for more exact knowledge of psychic processes.
