Do Half of America's Psychologists Descend from WUNDT?

A Case Study at One Large University

This year in the newspaper of the American Psychological Association there has been an amusing continuing argument about the priority for founding the first psychological laboratory. The September/October issue of the paper even features a cartoon of WILHELM WUNDT and WILLIAM JAMES fighting a duel with pistols, presumably about who started the first laboratory. One of JAMES's living students, EDMUND JACOBSON1; says in the same issue that JAMES never considered himself a laboratory psychologist at all; surely JAMES would not have had anything to do with such a duel, and I suspect that WUNDT also had better things to do than to concern himself with such matters. Still, it may be good fun to play priority games, if we learn something from our play, and do not take it too seriously.

The debate heated up in the year normally taken as the founding year for WUNDT's laboratory, not for JAMES’s; that should be enough to tell us that everyone really knows that WUNDT was the primary founder. Dr. WOLFGANG BRINGMANN in his letter2 published at the same time wisely pointed out that WUNDT helped to spread psychology throughout the world, and we are celebrating THAT, really, not just the fact that someone had some equipment sitting in a room.
We must conclude that this little debate can be described just as WUNDT described JAMES McKEEN CATTELL's research interests almost 100 years ago; that is, the debate is also "ganz amerikanisch". Psychologists in Russia, or Japan, or even England would hardly connect WILLIAM JAMES with the founding of psychology. Thus I am not pursuing the WUNDT vs. JAMES argument at all, for it is too easily settled to be of much interest. What I am interested in is one aspect of the contributions made by the two men - WUNDT in particular - to American psychology. It is easy to suppose that JAMES, the American, might have the greater influence on students in the United States. JAMES was not a laboratory man, but he was, I believe, a great and benign force in American psychology.
My interest in the contributions of WUNDT through his students to psychology in the United States derives from the interest of my own students. Several years ago one of them, MARY MEINERS, was taking my course in the history of psychology. She happened to read an article by WEIGEL und GOTTFURCHT3, published in the "American Psychologist". The authors had traced the academic genealogies of all the faculty members at Colorado State University, and MARY thought it would be more interesting to trace genealogies than to do the things I had them doing. I, of course, disagreed. MARY, in a way that seems to be increasingly typical of American students, persisted and insisted, and I finally agreed to let her, and anyone else who wanted to, trace an academic genealogy.
WEIGEL and GOTTFURCHT had apparently taken their idea for a genealogical study from the 1948 article, "Masters and pupils among the American psychologists," by E. G. and M. D. BORING4. The BORINGs had contacted the pupils and their masters directly, relying on second-hand sources only when the respondent was dead, or did not respond for other reasons. Their direct contacts made it possible for the BORINGs to ask who had been the dominant influence on the individual during the formative, pre-doctoral, years. Since we were working forty years later, more of the people that we would like to have contacted - including E. G. BORING - were dead, and we felt that we would do better if we traced our genealogies through each person's dissertation adviser, rather than trying to find dominant influences which would sometimes be impossible to find. Anyway, there is no reason to think that tracing dissertation advisers is any less valid in evaluating the relative influences of various pioneers, like WUNDT, or JAMES, or STUMPF. Certainly dissertation advisers will be listed somewhere, and "dominant influences" may not be a matter of record. So my students and I set out to trace down all of the genealogies of the fifty-five faculty members who were then at San Diego State University, tracing lines based on dissertation advisers rather than dominant influences.

We were quickly amazed at some of the results; for example, our shortest genealogy consisted of only two steps! Dr. JEROME SATTLER at our university received his degree from Professor HEIDER at the University of Kansas, and HEIDER got his degree from MEINONG at Graz! Both MEINONG and HEIDER were rather old when they helped their students with dissertations, but SATTLER is only in his forties. These short genealogies were rarities, and the average genealogy was five or six steps long; thus the students have had to check on several hundred connections. Ironically, it is usually the recent connections that are the most difficult to trace, for they depend upon personal contacts with people who are highly mobile and quite unwilling to answer questionnaires. I am sorry to say that one of our genealogies is still not quite right, because one student traced a "dominant influence" rather than a dissertation adviser, and I have not yet corrected that inconsistency; however, so far as I know, that is the only remaining error, and all the genealogies have been checked by a second "generation" of students.
WUNDT alone was the "grandfather" for about half of our faculty members, 27 out of 55. JAMES, ERDMANN, STUMPF, URBAN, and all others together accounted for about the same number as WUNDT! What makes this particularly surprising is that, in the United States, San Diego is as far from Leipzig as one can go! Thus WUNDT's influence is strong across half the continent of Europe, and across the Atlantic Ocean, and across all of the continental United States.
By now WUNDT's influence is in some cases remote in academic generations as well as in geography. For example, our young physiological psychologist Dr. ROD PLOTNIK, connects to WUNDT through the following chain: ROD PLOTNIK, FREDERICK KING, CLIFFORD MORGAN, K. U. SMITH, LEONARD CARMICHAEL, WALTER DEARBORN, JAMES McKEEN CATTELL, and finally WILHELM WUNDT. That is a total of eight generations of psychologists, and the meaning of "physiological psychology" to ROD PLOTNIK differs a great deal from its meaning for WUNDT. Dr. PLOTNIK's particular interest is in the relationship between neurotransmitters and dominance behavior in animals - WUNDT probably would not have thought that this five times great grandson of his was studying psychology at all as he understood it.

Nevertheless, there seems to be a still discernible, if not necessarily statistically demonstrable, influence of the remote ancestors. On our faculty, one example is that by far the greater number of our social psychologists descends from STUMPF rather than WUNDT, although STUMPF has far fewer total descendants. WUNDT's progeny, although they may have strayed as far as clinical psychology, have a greater tendency to be experimental and physiological psychologists. So, to repeat, it appears that half of America's academic psychologists do descend from WUNDT, if you base your guess on our faculty at San Diego State University.
We have reached roughly the same conclusion in some examinations of the genealogies of selected groups of eminent psychologists. We counted the connections between pupils and masters in the BORING and BORING study, and found that 67 of the 156 connections we identified in their study led back to WUNDT; this is 42,9 %, or somewhat less than half. Note that there were more connections than psychologists, since the BORINGs allowed for 0, 1, 2, or 3 "dominant influences” to be identified - the sort of complication we avoided by counting dissertation advisers rather than dominant influences. A slightly different way of counting, awarding partial credit for partial influence, gave very similar results, with 43,7 % of the credit going to WUNDT.

We also traced some of the famous psychologists listed by ZUSNE5. His list was based on an earlier list compiled by E. G. BORING and R. I. WATSON6, and rated by a panel of judges that included BORING and WATSON. ZUSNE's list overlapped the earlier list, but not completely. We have so far traced 97 American psychologists from this list, and 52 trace back to WUNDT. We have not yet traced another 17 psychologists, but it is doubtful if their inclusion will change the percentages much.

As one last check, I telephoned the psychology department at Colorado State University. WEIGEL and GOTTFURCHT are no longer there, but their genealogy is there, and one of the secretaries very kindly examined it for me. She reported that 20 of their faculty members descended from WUNDT, or nearly 2/3 of their current sample of 31! If the difference between the older, more eminent psychologists and those at Colorado State can be taken as a trend, then it would appear that WUNDTian influence is the wave of the future in American psychology!
Speaking broadly, it seems that whether one looks at a specific university, or whether one samples eminent psychologists generally, one will conclude that about half of them derive from WUNDT. It was, for me, amazing to find that one man from a distant country could so dominate the psychological scene many generations later in the United States.

I now turn away completely from any comparisons between WUNDT and anyone else, and take instead as my theme some words of WILLIAM JAMES. In a letter to G. STANLEY HALL7, JAMES gently chided HALL for claiming too much credit, saying "In this world we all owe to each other." It is interesting to see how right JAMES was in saying this; and if WUNDT and JAMES, CATTELL, TITCHENER, HALL and many others had not owed each other so much, American psychology would not have developed as it did.

Several people contributed to the transmission of WUNDT's ideas to America. JAMES himself demonstrated why we all owe each other in this world when he brought WUNDT's student, HUGO MÜNSTERBERG, to Harvard to take over the experimental laboratory. That was not the act of a man who was concerned with rivalry; it was the act of a man with JAMES's generous nature, a man who wished to advance psychology and who thought that someone else was a better experimentalist than he.

The importance of hiring MÜNSTERBERG can be illustrated by examining the San Diego State University genealogy, where we can see six WUNDT-MÜNSTERBERG descendants, along with two descendants of WUNDT via TITCHENER. JAMES also sent another difficult and egotistical American, G. STANLEY HALL, to study with WUNDT. That does not show up on genealogies, for HALL had already taken his doctoral degree from JAMES before he was sent to study with WUNDT. But it once again shows that JAMES held WUNDT in high esteem, and helped to make American psychology the international endeavor that it was in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This continued later with the coming of people like WERTHEIMER, KOEHLER, KOFFKA, GOLDSTEIN, and LEWIN as they fled HITLER’S regime; and JOSEF BROZEK, who is here with us today, virtually built his early career around fleeing different regimes!

But here we are concerned with the students of WUNDT in America; so let us take a closer look at the most productive of all WUNDT's students in America, as judged from our San Diego State University faculty, JAMES McKEEN CATTELL. Ten of our members descend from the WUNDT - CATTELL link.
CATTELL and WUNDT were quite different, both as people and as psychologists, and it is much to WUNDT's credit that he tolerated his American student's peculiarities. CATTELL found less tolerance back home; he had a stormy academic career, and was finally fired in 1917 for a variety of reasons, some of them related to his outspoken manner and abrasive personality; the reason given was treason.8  CATTELL had on the occasion of his firing merely written a letter to a congressman supporting a bill that would relieve American soldiers from fighting abroad against their wills. CATTELL also opposed both war in general and what he saw as German militarism. Still, he served on the Psychology Committee of the National Research Council, which was supposed to be helping with the war effort. So it is not clear just how much CATTELL's experience in WUNDT's laboratory moved him toward pacifism, or how much it affected his dismissal from Columbia University. CATTELL was a peculiar mixture of left and right politically, for he at the same time had socialist leanings and believed in the benefits of a program of eugenics.

WUNDT seems to have been as tolerant of CATTELL's peculiar politics as he was of his, to WUNDT, peculiar psychology. CATTELL tells the following story in his 1921 memorial to WUNDT9:
"WUNDT was somewhat disturbed that I became acquainted at Leipzig with WILHELM LIEBKNECHT, the leader of German socialism, but with characteristic consideration he wrote to me some years later that I should be interested to hear that in the gymnasium his son MAX and LIEBKNECHT's son KARL were inseparable friends. MAX WUNDT has become professor of classical archaeology; KARL LIEBKNECHT, almost alone in the Reichstag, opposed war in 1914, as his father did in 1870; then at the hour of mingled defeat and victory he laid his life on the altar of the God whom he served."
These words are for me both a touching memorial and a sample of the complex social and historical relationship which touch all of our personal and professional lives. CATTELL was obviously aware of his own place in the historical stream, and this WUNDT Symposium serves to remind us that we too have a place in that stream. CATTELL gave up his academic career because he did not believe that men should be forced to fight in wars that they did not believe in, and the state of the present-day world does not guarantee that some day some of us might not suffer a similar, or even a worse, fate.

Next, I want to repeat a well-known incident which was based on the personal regard between CATTELL and WUNDT, not upon political decisions over which they had little control. The outcome was, naturally, much happier. You all probably remember that CATTELL gave WUNDT an American typewriter at a time when they were rare in Germany. AVENARIUS supposedly said that it was an evil gift, for with it WUNDT could write twice as many books as would otherwise have been possible. But we can guess that AVENARIUS was simply making a little joke about the amazingly productive WUNDT, who no doubt greatly appreciated CATTELL's gift, particularly because his eyesight was poor.

All of these historical events, whether pleasant or tragic, important or trivial, should not blind us to the possible historical interest of what we are now ourselves doing. With luck, there will be a Bicentennial after another hundred years and (unfortunately!) others will have to take our places at the next celebration here. Since I cannot be there, I am going to allow myself the luxury of a few early personal comments on this historic occasion.

First, I would like to report that CATTELL's gift of typewriter has been repaid by the current director here, Professor Dr. MANFRED VORWERG, who has given me his shoes. He mailed them to me a few days after my wife had incautiously remarked about how attractive they were, and said that no such shoes were made in the United States. I wear them today as a symbol of our friendship, even though they don't go very well with my suit. This gives Professor VORWERG and me some chance to be mentioned in the history books of the future by some historian who is looking for a human interest story to relieve the boredom of reporting on this Centennial Celebration to future students. Further, to try to enhance our chances a little more, I have brought for Professor VORWERG a product of advanced technology, like CATTELL's typewriter; but this time it is a Japanese music-playing clock-calendar-calculator, imported to America and brought by me to Leipzig. WUNDT would be amused by this little international technological marvel, which so contrasts with the "brass instruments" of his time; further, he might enjoy the fact that it was made in a country where he had great influence, Japan, and where his own personal library now resides in a place of great honor, at Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan.

Not only has Professor VORWERG returned CATTELL's gift of a typewriter; he has also returned CATTELL's visit to Leipzig twice over, first by coming to the United States on a research exchange in 1978, and then by coming to give a keynote address to the 1979 Western Psychological Association. For that I again on this occasion offer him many thanks. WUNDT never made such a visit, with his dislike to travel, despite repeated invitations by CATTELL. Traveling was evidently the one thing that WUNDT refused to do in the cause of international friendship!

Professor VORWERG, however, is continuing his own internationalization program by hosting the International Congress of Psychology here in Leipzig next year. I hope that many of us can further these profitable exchanges between East and West by attending, and thereby playing a role in keeping psychology the free and international science that WUNDT made it.

I will close now with a quotation from WUNDT himself, one that I think indicates that he would have been delighted with this international conference in his honor, and all the other steps which help to further cooperation in his beloved science. WUNDT wrote:
"The ideal which is at present proposed for the distant future involves, not the extension of any single State into a world State, but rather the dissolution of existing States and the establishment of a society of universal peace among nations, such as would render entirely superfluous any instruments of power on the part of the State itself.10"

My answer to the question "Do half of America's psychologists descend from WUNDT?" is "Yes, approximately, and we ought to be very grateful for that."

References
1. JACOBSON, E.: I was there. Letters, American Psychological Association Monitor, September/October 1979, p. 13
2. BRINGMANN, W.: Wundt's lab: "humble ... but functioning." Letters, American Psychological Association Monitor, September/October 1979, p. 13
3. WEIGEL, R. G. & GOTTFURCHT, J. W.: Faculty genealogies: A stimulus for student involvement in history and systems. American Psychologist, 1972, 27, 981-983
4. BORING, M. D. & BORING, E. G.: Masters and pupils among the American psychologists. American Journal of Psychology, 1948, 61, 527-534
5. ZUSNE, L.: Names in the history of psychology: A biographical sourcebook. New York: Wiley. 1975
6. ANNIN, E. L., BORING, E. G. & WATSON, R. I.: Important psychologists,
1600-1967. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 1968, 4, 303-315
7. LIPPMANN, G.: True to James. Letters, American Psychological Association Monitor, September/October 1979, p. 13
8. GRUBER, C. S.: Academic freedom at Columbia University, 1917-1918. The case of James McKeen Cattell. American Association of University Professors' Bulletin, 1972, 58, 297-305
9. CATTELL, J. M.: In memory of Wilhelm Wundt. Psychological Review, 1921, 28, 155-159
10. WUNDT, W.: Elements of folk psychology. New York: Macmillan, 1916 (Trans. by E. L. SCHAUB of W. WUNDT, Elemente der Völkerpsychologie. Leipzig: Alfred Kroener Verlag, 1912)