William Stern: Biography Of This German Psychologist And Philosopher

In 1912, William Lewis Stern coined the concept of “IQ” for the first time in history. It was truly a very innovative idea that revolutionized the educational landscape of the time, as it allowed classifications to be established among students; in theory, to individualize your learning methods according to your abilities.

Stern’s theory was already criticized at the time by psychologists such as Dr. Howard Gardner (1943), who maintained that this classification criterion was terribly exclusive and, furthermore, inaccurate, since there were many more “intelligences” in addition to the one he calculated. Stern’s formula. Even so, William Stern’s system has gone down in history as the first method capable of accounting for a person’s intellectual capacity.

In this article we bring you a biography of William Lewis Stern one of the most interesting figures in the history of psychology.

Brief biography of William Lewis Stern, inventor of the IQ

In the autobiography that William Stern published in 1927, he commented on the three cities that had in some way marked his existence. The first, of course, was Berlin, where he was born, where he began his training and completed his doctorate in Psychology (1893). It is at this university where he meets Herman Ebbinghaus (1850-1909), one of the first psychologists to study memory, creator of the famous “forgetting curve.”

The second city was Breslau, at whose university he taught between 1897 and 1916. And the third, Hamburg, where he directed the psychological institute until Hitler came to power in 1933.

Stern’s intellectual activity was not limited only to the field of psychology. Very interested in philosophical thought and existential questions, he also obtained a doctorate in Philosophy at the University of Durham For Stern, psychology and philosophy were two sciences that, although they had to be developed separately, constantly nourished each other and were part of the same “battle.”

A Jew in Nazi Germany

William Stern was born on April 29, 1871 in Berlin, just as the fearsome Franco-Prussian War ended, which had confronted the powerful Prussia with the second French empire of Napoleon III. Not only that; That same year, 1871, in January, Berlin had been established as the capital of the new unified Germany. Stern was already born in another era, the prelude to a global conflict that would shake the world.

Prussia had become the hegemonic state of that new country, and its chancellor, the famous Otto von Bismarck, the new strong leader that the nationalists would adore in the future and who would play such a great role in the European arms war of that end. of century. In reality, tragedy had unfolded, and the events until Hitler came to power in 1933 would be just several episodes of the same drama. A drama that the Stern family did not know, could not intuit, the role it would have in their lives.

And William Lewis Stern belonged to a family of German Jews, whose intellectual excellence was not taken into account when the Nazi party accessed the levers of power. Then, similar to what happened to many other Jewish intellectuals, William Stern had to flee his beloved country. He moved first to the Netherlands, but eventually sought refuge, like many of his compatriots, in the United States

He settled there that same year, 1933, as a professor at Duke University, in North Carolina. He would never return to his native country. He died in 1938, leaving behind an impressive intellectual baggage.

Personalistic psychology and the creation of the IQ

William Stern was specifically interested in personalistic psychology, which emphasized the variations of each individual and, furthermore, presumed that these variations were measurable. These variants were the creators of the individual personality, that is, they interacted in the individual to form what is known as the “I.”

Based on these ideas, Stern was convinced that there should be a measurement system for the intellectual capacity of each individual This possibility of measurement would facilitate a correct assimilation of the studies, since each child would be assigned to the educational system that corresponds to their IQ. Thus, in 1912, Stern coined the term intellectual quotient (IQ) to refer to each person’s individual variant of intelligence.

According to Stern, the IQ gradually increases in parallel with the child’s physical development, and its peak is in adolescence, a stage of hyperactivity and high cognitive motivation. From then on, the IQ enters a phase of stagnation, only to begin to decline in middle age.

Based on all this, The theory that Stern proposed to calculate individual IQ was the division of “cognitive age” between the biological age of the individual. Cognitive age was established through standardized psychological tests. Later, in 1916, another psychologist, Lewis Terman (1877-1956), would add one more step to the formula: he proposed multiplying the result of Stern’s division by 100, with the aim of eliminating unnecessary decimals.

Although both Stern and Terman are the ones who are always cited when talking about IQ, it is important to highlight that, before them, there were other psychologists who tried to establish a method of measuring the individual variant of the quotient. For example, the Frenchmen Alfred Binet, psychologist, and Théodore Simon, psychiatrist, who, as early as 1905, published The metric scale of intelligence, where, for the first time in history, a series of tests with increasing difficulty appear. As a curious fact, we will comment that some of the tests included in the book were “distinguishing the morning from the afternoon” or “showing the nose, mouth and eye.”

A prolific author and researcher

Although many of William Stern’s contributions are a bit obsolete today (we have already commented in the introduction how Howard Gardner criticizes his intelligence quotient for considering it too simplistic) the importance that Stern has for modern psychology is undeniable.

He was the author of numerous books, most of them pioneers in their field, such as those dedicated to differential psychology, intelligence tests and even forensic psychology Stern is also known for his research on child psychology, a field in which he was one of the first to dedicate himself, at a time when this type of psychology was not very developed. His work on the behavior and psyche of children was carried out side by side with his wife, Clara Joseephy Stern, as the couple kept a meticulous diary of the behavior of their three children, from infancy to adulthood. adult.

Stern had met Clara during a bike ride. At first, the young woman’s parents opposed the courtship, since, after the death of William’s father, the Stern family lived in a rather precarious situation. In fact, young William had had to give private classes to pay for his studies and take care of his mother, who died of illness in 1896.

Adversities were no obstacle for this genius, who dedicated his entire life to the study of psychology and philosophy. History will remember him as the man who created the IC, but there are many other equally interesting works by Stern that are worth discovering.