I'm trying to understand why Wilhelm Wundt is considered the "father" of psychology. I'm confused because it seems like other people before him did important things in psychology too. Like for instance Fechner who seemed to do alot of important experimental work in psychology. Why isn't he the father of psychology? or Helmholtz even. What specifically did Wundt do different from them?

-- Jack Miller (schvester_1@hotmail.com), April 19, 2003

Answers

What Wundt did that was different was to found the apparatus of a new discipline -- the first textbook, journal, department, and lab specifically dedicated to psychology (rather than to, say, physiology, psychophysics, or the like). He then started generating new PhDs in the new discipline, and these people founded new labs and departments dedicated to it in new places. People such as Fechner and Helmholtz certainly did important psychological work, but they did not found and nurture the new discipline of "experimental psychology."

Having said all that, this "father" business is just a metaphor and shouldn't be taken too, too seriously. Boring felt the need to name someone, and so he named his own supervisor's (Titchener) supervisor. If someone else had been writing the first major history of the discipline, they might have picked, say, William James as "the father".

-- Christopher Green (christo@yorku.ca), April 19, 2003.