Together with his mentor, the famous Wilhelm Wundt, Edward Titchener was the founder of structuralist psychology a psychological trend of a theoretical and methodological nature that focused on the analysis of mental processes through introspection and that emerged during the first years of the 20th century.
Although this school of thought was defeated by the functionalism of William James, which gave way to behaviorism, and by other psychological orientations that opposed the proposals of Wundt and Titchener (such as the German Gestalt), it had a key influence on the development of scientific psychology, even if this happened mostly by reaction.
When he began studying at university, the British Edward Bradford Titchener (1867-1927) focused on classical literature; However, he became increasingly interested in biology. In particular, he drew his attention to the book “Principles of Physiological Psychology” by Wilhelm Wundt, who founded the first psychological laboratory and is considered the father of scientific psychology.
After translating the German psychophysiologist’s work into English, Titchener moved to Leipzig to study with his idol; It was the year 1890. Mentored by Wundt, Titchener published his doctoral thesis in which he analyzed binocular or stereoscopic vision (the phenomenon by which images captured by both eyes are processed jointly).
In 1892 Titchener returned to the United Kingdom for a few months; He later moved to Ithaca, a city in the state of New York, to work as a professor of psychology and philosophy at Cornell University. There he founded his own psychology laboratory, in addition to disseminating and developing Wundt’s ideas until giving way to structuralist psychology.
Titchener not only dedicated himself to teaching, although this was his main profession; He also published several books focusing on psychological theory and methodology among which stands out experimental psychology (1901-1905), and was the editor of scientific journals as important as the American Journal of Psychology.
Structuralist psychology
The structuralist school had a relevant role in psychology at the beginning of the 20th century. Titchener, Wundt and the rest of the theorists of this orientation had the objective of analyze the mind from the basic elements that make it up, and how these come together to form complex processes. To do this, they relied above all on the introspective method.
There is debate as to whether the founding of structuralist psychology should be attributed to Wundt or Titchener. Yes ok The central ideas of this psychological orientation come from Wundt it was Titchener who systematized, extended and popularized his proposals in the United States, which at that time was becoming the world core of psychology.
Structuralist psychology proposes that we can understand the structure of mental processes through the definition and categorization of the elements that make up the psyche, particularly the mental contents and the processes by which they take place.
Titchener stated that consciousness (or mind) is made up of three types of phenomenon: sensations, affects and images. When several of the same class join together, complex processes appear. Sensations would be the elements that make up perceptions, while affects would give rise to emotions and ideas to thoughts.
Titchener’s structuralist psychology was based on the use of the introspective method, by which a trained subject plays the role of observer and describer of their own psychological processes. To provoke them, different types of stimuli were used, which varied depending on the task to be performed and the type of mental content studied.
The introspective method had already been used by Wundt; However, Titchener applied it in a much more rigorous way. In particular, this author rejected the study of unconscious processes, which includes constructs such as “instinct.” Thus, his study techniques focused on the description of conscious psychological experience.
According to Titchener, it is possible to obtain reliable information about the nature of the mind through introspection and self-knowledge. In fact, for this author this is the only method that allows you to analyze mental processes reliably since he stated that psychology must necessarily be a discipline based on introspection.
The legacy of structuralism
In general, it is considered that structuralist psychology disappeared with Titchener: the psychological schools that opposed this author’s approaches won the ideological battle in the scientific community. However, like Wundt, Titchener played a key role in the development of experimental and scientific psychology.
William James’s functionalism arose as a reaction to Titchener’s structuralism. This orientation focused on the relevance of aspects forgotten by structuralist psychology such as empirical methods, statistical comparison or systematic experimentation, and was the fundamental antecedent of Watson’s behaviorism.
Today, the type of psychology that Titchener advocated is still alive in a different form in cognitive psychology, which also focuses on the description of mental processes and phenomena, in many subjective cases. Furthermore, the usefulness of the introspective method has been valued by a large number of psychologists in recent decades.
A curious fact regarding Titchener is the fact that It was this author who coined the Anglo-Saxon term “empathy.” (empathy). The word comes from the classical Greek “empatheia”, which means “passion or physical affection”; It was adapted into German (“Einfühlung”) by Hermann Lotze and Robert Vischer and finally Titchener himself translated it into English.
