Wundt’s logic: Old resource for new ideas

Abstract

Despite recent scholarship reappraising the complexity of Wilhelm Wundt’s complete works on psychology, contemporary psychology tends to overlook the fundamental epistemological and methodological principles outlined in his less popular writings on logic when engaging in methodological discussions. This article addresses this by situating Wundt’s logic volumes in his oeuvre and demonstrating the continued relevance of his methodological insights for contemporary psychology. Analysing Wundt’s Logic of Psychology, we develop three theses: (a) a multimethodological model is necessary to understand the interaction between individual psychology and völkerpsychologie, (b) Wundt’s völker-psychological analysis highlights the significance of cultural (document) data for psychology, and (c) the comparison between the theories of language of Wundt and Bühler clarifies that Wundt’s approach lacks a concept of dialogicality. We argue that only by understanding how cultural products serve a function in the individual history of micro-interactions can a meaningful connection between the individual and collective emerge.

Challenges to the myth of experimental psychology’s birth and its association with W. Wundt

Historians in the field of psychology have uncovered a myth, namely that Wilhelm M. Wundt’s primary contribution to psychology’s discipline formation was to establish scientific psychology as an experimental science (e.g. Blumenthal, 2001; Danziger, 1983, 1990, 2001a, 2001b; Jüttemann, 2006; Kusch, 1999; more recently, de Freitas Araujo, 2016; Fahrenberg, 2020; Jovanović, 2021). Despite historical analyses in contemporary psychological historiography reaching a consensus that Wilhelm Wundt’s work was largely misunderstood (e.g., by Titchener or Boring), there is some truth to the myth that his founding of the first experimental psychological laboratory in Leipzig in 1879 was the starting point for the birth of scientific psychology ¹ : even though Wilhelm Wundt was not the first to apply experiments to psychological research questions, he was the first to institutionally establish and publish a programme of experimental psychology. Thus, Wilhelm Wundt emerged as a pivotal figure during the period of psychology’s formation as an academic discipline in the rapidly expanding German-speaking world of psychology in the 19th century. It can be stated that his impact on the subsequent development of academic psychology was primarily influenced by how his work was received by others (!) rather than by his direct voice. In our article, we aim to align with the prevailing consensus among historians of psychology regarding Wilhelm Wundt’s oeuvre and expand the scope of our recognition of his complete works beyond his experimental or individual psychology. This is because a significant portion of his later epistemological and methodological writings have yet to be fully translated into English. Even though historians of psychology have conducted critical evaluations and reappraisals of Wilhelm Wundt’s complete works, including detailed historical analyses by scholars such as Jüttemann (2006) and compilations of Wundt’s oeuvre, his individual psychology and establishment of the experimental psychological laboratory continue to be the focus of attention. This is not surprising as the methodology of Wundt’s project of völkerpsychologie, which complements his individual psychology, exhibits a substantial scope and has not been translated into English systematically. Although a comprehensive English edition of Wundt’s complete works was published by Fahrenberg (2020), we observe that the methodology of völkerpsychologie remains significantly absent in current discussions within psychology regarding methodological and epistemological issues. When discussed, it is often portrayed as a historical source rather than a theoretical one that can inform “modern” and “new” thinking. Therefore, this article will analyse parts of Wundt’s volumes of Logik: Eine Untersuchung der Prinzipien der Erkenntnis und der Methoden wissenschaftlicher Forschung (“Logic: An Investigation Into the Principles of Knowledge and the Methods of Scientific Research”; Wundt, 1908b, 1919, 1920). ² In particular, we will focus on Wundt’s writings of the “logic of psychology” and thus on Wundt’s positioning of psychology in the humanities and his comments on the methodology of völkerpsychologie, which we aim at presenting as an “old” resource for “new” thought.

To make this argument, we will first address factors that may explain Wundt’s incomplete reception (in particular, the poor reception of the Logic volumes; Wundt, 1908b, 1919, 1920), then situate the Logic volumes in Wundt’s work, and from these Logic volumes we will subsequently show what can still provide impulses for new considerations in the methodological orientation of psychology today.

Situating Wundt’s (in)complete reception in academia

As Jovanović (2021, pp. 33–34) has recently pointed out, sociocultural factors such as the making of “modernity” and its narrative had a strong influence on what knowledge psychology had to provide in Wundt’s time and correspondingly also on what parts of psychology could become successfully presented to a broader audience. The fact that Wundt’s second programme—that of the völkerpsychologie—in favour of a natural–scientific, experimental individual psychology was misrepresented may, against this backdrop, also be due to the fact that in the course of modernity, a scientific agenda became more important and with it, “one oriented toward the universal instead of the particular, toward the general instead of the local, toward the timeless instead of timely” (Jovanović, 2021, p. 34). Danziger also discussed a factor that contributed to Wundt’s rejection as early as 1979, and that is positivism since the agenda of many of Wundt’s contemporary recipients (Titchener, Boring) is a positivist one: the works in which Wundt spoke about the fundamental framework of science in general and psychological science, in particular, could not receive attention because they were classified as a “non-positivist philosophy of science” (Danziger, 1979, p. 206). In this way, something crucial happens: because this positivist rejection fails to receive precisely that part of Wundt that deals with the theoretical underpinnings of scientific research—with logic in general, with methodology in general, with the logic of the exact sciences (such as physics, biology, chemistry), but also specifically with the logic and methodology of psychology—the fact that psychological knowledge production is dependent on underlying philosophical positions has been lost. The philosophical foundation is no longer an object of negotiation (of negotiation between different positions) but something that is taken for granted and becomes so self-evident that it can no longer be directly represented.

The three volumes of Logic—A contextualisation

On the one hand, the three volumes of Logic (Wundt, 1908b, 1919, 1920) contain an epistemological analysis of empirical science (Vol. I: Allgemeine Logik und Erkenntnistheorie, Wundt, 1919). On the other hand, a methodology—that is, a methodological discussion for exact sciences, first in general, then specifically for mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology (Vol. II: Logik der exakten Wissenschaften, Wundt, 1920). The third volume, Logic of the humanities (Logik der Geisteswissenschaften, Wundt, 1908b), addresses nonexperimental branches of the humanities, in which a particular chapter appears as “Logic of Psychology.” These volumes are comprehensive: together, they comprise 2017 pages in the versions available to us (Wundt, 1908b, 1919, 1920), each comprising approximately 700 pages alone. Moreover, they exist in various editions, that is, Wundt revised these volumes repeatedly. Therefore, they have developed: from originally only two volumes to three in the end. Due to the scope and complex development of the volumes, it is no wonder that this comprehensive work has not been as widely discussed as other parts of Wundt’s work, significantly less in the English-speaking world (since it has not yet been translated systematically). Moreover, it is a problem: the size of the work and its extensive history of creation, the many different editions of the volumes paint an ambivalent picture that is complex to comprehend, even in German. Therefore, we now contextualise how the volumes fit into Wundt’s oeuvre.

Wundt started to publish volumes on logic in 1880—only one year after the foundation of the experimental–psychological laboratory in Leipzig—when he published the first volume of Logic (Wundt, 1880) in which he addressed the investigation of the principles of knowledge and the methods of scientific research (substantively covered by Danziger, 1980), which he expanded in the following years with a second and third volume and, above all, extensively revised volumes I and II. In the second edition of Volume II (Wundt, 1895), Wundt (1921) explicitly discusses the “logic of the humanities (Geisteswissenschaften)” in the field of methodology, arguing that psychology was the basis of the humanities and necessary supplementary empirical science to the natural sciences (pp. 18–19). At the same time, he conceptualised psychological research between the interaction of analytic and synthetic attitudes of investigation, highlighting that:

Only in this consecutive procedure, psychological analysis bears its fruit. It avoids the error of transforming the products of abstraction into real processes by applying this procedure [psychological analysis] to all the products of the abstracting dissection and by the subsequent synthesis removing the initial separation again. (Wundt, 1908b, p. 60)

Against this backdrop, he implemented this interaction of analysis and synthesis by suggesting that psychology should be built on two branches: individual psychology (individualpsychologie, ³ a term Wundt uses, for instance, in his Logic Vol. III, 1908b, pp. 165–225) and völkerpsychologie, and for both he suggested different approaches of methodology.

While individual psychology has “primarily sought to develop experimental methods which are intended to bring about a similar exact analysis of psychic processes which only takes account of the changed point of view” (Wundt, 1896/1922, p. 10), völkerpsychologie is based on the circumstance that:

the psychological analysis of the most general mental products, such as language, mythological ideas, the norms of custom, falls to psychology partly as a necessary extension of its field to the processes of the collective mental life, partly as an aid to the understanding of the more complex psychic processes in general. (Wundt, 1896/1922, p. 10)

If one still thinks that these are ideas of the “ageing” Wundt, his autobiography teaches the opposite:

When, also around 1860, I considered adding a kind of superstructure to experimental psychology, which, in accordance with its original intention and the means at its disposal, had to limit itself to the facts of the individual life of the soul [Seelenleben], a superstructure which, starting from these facts as indispensable foundations, would have to set itself the task of studying the phenomena of human social life, especially in its beginnings, this task soon seemed to me to be the higher and, in truth, the actual final task of psychology. Nevertheless, I had no intention of moving into this field at this stage. Instead, for the time being, I intended to address psychology at most in its usual scope and even in this only in the areas of sensation and sensory perception that are close to the physiologist. (Wundt, 1921, pp. 201–202)

In 1860, Wundt was 28 years old and had not yet founded the experimental psychological laboratory in Leipzig. Jüttemann (2006) also points out that in his professional life, this order—from the individual life of the soul to more complex mental phenomena of the social life—seems logical for Wundt: he habilitated within the field of physiology and thus was able to apply his expertise in this area first. However, it is also no wonder that it was in 1860 when he “considered adding a kind of superstructure” since Lazarus and Steinthal were publishing the Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachkunde (Journal of Völkerpsychologie and Linguistics) at that time (Jüttemann, 2006, p. 14). Both have significantly influenced his own—later published—concept of völkerpsychologie. In 1862, Wundt mentions this briefly in his Beiträge zur Theorie der Sinneswahrnehmung (Contributions to the Theory of Sensory Perception), where he writes about the “methods of psychology” (pp. XI–XXXII) and notes that “furthermore, a rich field is open in Völkerpsychologie, for which great preliminary work already exists in linguistics, cultural history and history of custom, but which has hardly been utilised for psychology yet” (p. XV). Thus, his complete project of psychology, specifically in the context of his writing on epistemology, philosophy of science, and methodology in volumes I to III of Logic (Wundt, 1908b, 1919, 1920) that he started relatively simultaneously with the founding of the laboratory (Wundt, 1880), suggests a basic idea of an integrative research programme for psychology allowing for two programmes and their respective concrete methodological approaches to not only coexist but be recognised as a “logic of psychology.” Psychology today could profit from such a perspective since Green (2015), for instance, currently states that psychology “does not have the intellectual coherence to be brought together by any set of principles that would enable its phenomena to be captured and explained as rigorous products of those principles” (p. 207) since it could release psychology from the pressure to unify the plurality of psychology/ies into one rigorous programme.

Wundt’s relation to methodological questions in contemporary psychology

However, the fact that contemporary psychology could benefit from Wundt’s perspective does not mean that it is not currently successful as an academic discipline. On the contrary, since psychology has established itself as an individual science, it has gained recognition precisely because it provided biological–experimental perspectives on mental events, which is currently particularly evident in the prestige of neuroscientific research in psychology (even if this success story of neuroscientific psychology towards the natural–scientific ideal of psychology has been, and still is, at the expense of the recognition of humanistic approaches that could focus on the complexity of psychological phenomena as dynamic, evolving phenomena, see, for instance, Valsiner, 2017). With this focus of the discipline, certain aspects of its methodological and epistemological orientation have become “the” unquestioned standard. Two such standards are that psychology (a) is positioned mainly as a natural science and (b) is accompanied by the fact that psychological attributes can be objectified, made measurable, using quantification. This circumstance worried Michell when he began his methodological investigation into whether it is acceptable to research psychological attributes as quantitative attributes (e.g., Michell, 1999, 2000, 2004, 2011). He proposed a crucial thesis for the current standing of psychology as an academic discipline at the beginning of the 2000s by challenging the gold standard of quantitative measurement. However, of course, in Wundt’s time, the quantification using “measurement” had a completely different meaning from the forms of measurement Michell criticises. As described in Rodax and Benetka (2021) in more detail, Wundt measured a test subject’s reaction time to a stimulus to objectify self-observation. That means he did not assume a latent construct—as is typical for current measurement via psychological tests—but used measurement of a physical attribute (namely the reaction time) to standardise the psychological research situation. We refer to Michell’s criticism on today’s practice of measurement at this point to emphasise that, even though differently used, today’s psychology still struggles with the concept of measurement to (a) show that this topic still has relevance today and (b) assess where Wundt’s “old” approach might offer a new resource for finding new solutions.

In his criticism of today’s measurement, Michell shows that it is an open question whether psychological attributes were quantitative at all. In his texts, he points out problems of using scale levels as a basis of measurement in psychological research (e.g., Michell, 1999, pp. 16–21). He defines measurement as establishing a relationship between a quantity of a quantitative attribute and a unit (Michell, 1999, p. 14). This is possible for the measurement of actual quantitative structures, such as the length of a straight line or the weight of a body. One such problem is the fact that the attribute to be measured has no distinct unit. According to Michell (1999), psychology has now departed from the definition of measurement presented above and argued that measurement is “the assignment of numerals to objects, or events according to rules” (p. 16). He elaborates that there is a logical discrepancy. It is no longer a question of determining a ratio (I measure the weight of my car, it is 1,400 kg). However, because the assignment follows rules, it is a question of constructing numerical values. It can therefore no longer be a question of making a predication of a numerical ratio, but it is a question of discovering numerical ratios through measurement. Michell (e.g., Michell, 2000, pp. 651–659) shows that this is considered a proper procedure if one departs from a Pythagorean view of the world, which he elaborates as an essential historical reference for the current quantification as described above. In fact, from the Pythagorean point of view, the world was made up of quantitative, countable structures that find expression in their natural ratios to each other. From this, psychometrics starts from the fact that the distances/gradations between the characteristic attributes are consistent (otherwise, it would be an ordinal scale level). From this follows that in psychological testing, such as in testing the degree of depressiveness, test scores would suggest that mild depression is comparably milder than medium depression and this, in the same sense, is comparably milder than severe depression. This excludes that mild depression might be a phenomenon per se that is closer or more distant to medium depression than medium depression is to severe depression. This is where Michell’s thesis becomes particularly tangible: he detects the basic assumption of the equidistance between characteristic attributes of psychological phenomena on which psychological measurement bases—inter alia because of the historical development he sketches—as an unquestioned standard. Therefore, he asks whether we can assume that this is the case, that psychological attributes are quantitative in nature—or in other words: can psychological attributes be conceived as quantitative attributes?

Even though Wundt used measurement very differently, he shared one basic attitude with Michell: he constantly questioned how and when “measurement” as a method was to be employed in psychology. First, Wundt suggested that measurement was a method of the exact (natural) sciences, especially under the experiment’s application. In psychology, the experiment was, according to Wundt, only applicable to distinct, simple, and quantifiable mental phenomena. Second, the investigation of these could be made “exact” when the psychologist would not rely on “selbstbeobachtung” (introspection) alone, if—and only if—one would standardise the psychological process under scrutiny by assessing the reaction time of the research participant that could be measured by the Hipp’s chronoscope under controlled conditions (Wundt, 1888a).

Wundt–A qualitative researcher?

Wundt was strict about the epistemological conditions of the application of measurement within the experiment in psychology, which showed in the fact that he had debates with his contemporaries on the question of which method should be used to investigate more complex psychological research objects such as thought, for which he proposed precisely nonexperimental logic. However, that does not mean that Wundt alternatively suggested qualitative methods per se to psychology. Today’s field of qualitative research in psychology is currently growing (though by no means mainstream) and composed of a diverse set of methods, spanning from field observation, interviewing techniques, and analysis of art over to the application of psychoanalytical analyses and many more (which, for instance, becomes apparent in the newly differentiated Mey & Mruck, 2020 compilation). On the broader research landscape, interview procedures (see, e.g., Brinkmann & Kvale, 2015) are in active use and currently one of the most frequently applied and published means of qualitative research in psychology, especially when looking at which studies are published in more mainstream journals.

Wundt, however, would have been vehemently opposed to such thinking about methods as separated from their theoretical and philosophical contexts. This will become even more understandable if we now look at the concrete arguments Wundt (1908b, 1919, 1920) proposes in his Logic volumes and relate them to psychology.

Wundt’s logic as a point of contact to current versions of cultural psychology

The following remarks refer to the volumes on Logic (Wundt, 1908b, 1919, 1920), but primarily only to volumes II (1920) and III (1908b) and will mainly focus on Wundt’s writing on the methodology of völkerpsychologie, as this seems to offer further insight into researching nonquantitative attributes. Our article refers to the fourth edition of volumes I and II and, unfortunately, only to the third edition of Volume III. Wundt revised his works several times, as pointed out at the beginning of this article, and to a relatively great extent, as de Freitas Araujo (2016, p. 18) has shown. In this article, we refer to the next-to-last and last editions, since we are not concerned with a historical reconstruction of the development of his thought but rather with a theoretical analysis of the version of his concept of psychology and specifically völkerpsychologie. Therefore, we are not aiming at a historical tracing of the development of Wundt’s argument. However, we argue that the content we quote (our reference to Wundt) contributes to rethinking psychology today, that is, what interests us about Wundt is our psychology today.

We will not translate Völkerpsychologie into English since the German terminus “Volk” and its plural “Völker” implies a diverse conglomerate of different dimensions, including cultural, political, and social ones. Due to this specific meaning and complexity, the translation “folk psychology” would, in our view, bias what Wundt meant with it. Additionally, the German concept of the “Volk” has, in the further course of German history, especially in the context of National Socialism, been associated with ideas of the “race” ideology (see, e.g., Sünker, 2006). Notably, the interpretation that Wundt explicitly did not discuss differences between “races” in his völkerpsychologie can already be found in Boas’ (1938) book The Mind of Primitive Man (p. 33). That Wundt was not concerned with “racial” differences is also evident at the conceptual level, since Wundt’s völkerpsychologie first and foremost targeted the “universal” (“das Allgemeingültige,” see also Benetka, 2002, p. 96), for instance, the “phenomena of language, which in itself can only be understood as a creation of the collective mind [Erzeugnisse des Gesamtgeistes], but at the same time [shed] light on the psychological laws of individual thought” (Wundt, 1888b, pp. 21, 23). This is also why many—including Fahrenberg (2020)—speak of cultural psychology when analysing Wundt’s völkerpsychologie with reference to current concepts in psychology. We will not speak of cultural psychology in this article, however, because we do not aim to discuss völkerpsychologie’s links to current projects of cultural psychology (e.g., Kölbl & Sieben, 2018; Slunecko, 2020; Straub & Chakkarath, 2010; Valsiner, 2012b, 2014; von Fircks, 2022, Wolfradt et al., 2022), but will revisit Wundt’s methodology in the context of völkerpsychologie as closely as possible to his original thinking. We argue that it is likely that the same happens as in Wundt’s time: the naming of the project will predict whether the concept can become more visible or not. The more ambivalent the use—for example, by subsuming it under the heterogenous umbrella of “cultural psychology”—the more likely it is that misunderstandings will again come up.

Additionally, we suggest drawing on Wundt’s (1908b, 1919, 1920) Logic because, as Fahrenberg (2016, p. 2) also notes, it is precisely not in the extensive völker-psychological investigations (a total of 10 volumes; Wundt, 1900–1920) themselves that the epistemological, methodological indications are found, but in the Logic volumes. However, it is essential to note that our article cannot offer a complete reappraisal of Wundt’s Logic volumes. The diversity of the work (in volumes and (!) editions), which in addition to the explanations on the methodology of psychology (Vol. III), also include explanations on mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology (Vol. II), but also historical sciences, social sciences, and philosophy (Vol. III), and logical thinking in general (Vol. I), need in-depth explorations that are beyond the scope of one single article. We are primarily concerned with reconsidering the epistemologically grounded methodology of psychology, specifically, since an overview of the relevant contents of the work about psychology will allow us to analyse its relevance for current methodological problems in psychology.

Wundt’s logic and its function for positioning psychology

To explore Wundt’s (1908b, 1919, 1920) Logic in terms of his proposal on the fundamental methodology of psychology, we primarily address volumes II Logik der exakten Wissenschaften (Logic of the Exact Sciences, 1920) and III Logik der Geisteswissenschaften (Logic of the Humanities, 1908b), focusing on the first section, Allgemeine Methodenlehre of Vol. II (General Methodology, Wundt, 1920, pp. 1–40) and specifically on the first section, Die allgemeinen Grundlagen der Geisteswissenschaften (The General Foundations of the Humanities, Wundt, 1908b, pp. 1–302), of Vol. III, in which Wundt positioned psychology as part of the Humanities. That is a necessary correction to be made right at the start of our considerations, and this also underlines the argument, which has already been identified as a myth in the sources mentioned at the beginning of this article, that Wundt did not assume that psychology was a natural science: in his time, Wundt placed psychology in the field of the humanities. For instance, he introduces the third volume of his Logic, stating that psychology “must appear to us as the natural foundation of the humanities” (Wundt, 1908b, p. 1).

Wundt’s concept of psychology goes hand in hand with understanding that for Wundt, psychology’s task was not only to analyse—that means dissecting psychological objects into their simpler constituting elements—but also to synthesise these findings again. He legitimises this, for instance, in the context of volume III (Chapter II: “Prinzipien und Methoden der Geisteswissenschaften” [“Principles and Methods of the Humanities”], Wundt, 1908b, pp. 26–145) in which he presents the methods of analysis and synthesis within the theoretical basis of Allgemeine Methodenlehre (“general methodology,” Wundt, 1920, pp. 1–40). He presents the two as distinct methods of scientific work, but in a separate chapter explicitly elaborates on the “mutual relations of the research methods,” stating that synthesis can only exist if the analysis has already taken place (Wundt, 1920, p. 39). Thus, he already connects these methodological specifications to integrate them by a (psychological in nature!) systematic processing of their relations. It now becomes clear how complex Wundt’s explanations are since they not only address the philosophy of science, epistemology, and methodology for the sciences recognised at the time in general and for psychology in particular, but they also theorise psychological processes, which are needed in order to be able to apply research methods, in the same breath. Wundt acknowledges that analysis and synthesis are equally based on psychological processes, which Wundt primarily seeks to theorise. In other words, this is an example of how Wundt’s work can be read in two ways: on the one hand, in a theoretical conception of epistemological foundations and methods of sciences and humanities, and on the other hand in a psychological analysis of theoretical conceptions that he aims at putting forward. His epistemological and methodological elaborations are thus already psychologically funded.

He also applies this general scientific approach to psychology, seeing both analytical and synthetic tasks in investigating psychological questions. For völkerpsychologie, in particular, the process of understanding is also central: he writes that “the main task of the sciences (Wissenschaften), whose objects are mental processes and mental products . . . is to teach us to u n d e r s t a n d [v e r s t e h e n] these objects” (Wundt, 1908b, p. 78). Wundt aims to distinguish explaining in the sense of natural sciences (Wundt, 1908b, pp. 82–83) from understanding in the sense of the humanities. According to his argument, interpretation in the humanities is closely linked to a combination of understanding and explaining. Interpretation as a method of understanding in the humanities uses both processes in intimate connection:

The task of a logic of interpretation is therefore, first to demonstrate the specific combination of elementary logical operations which this method involves and then to determine the specific preconditions under which the application of the laws of thought [Denkgesetze] stands in this case, and of which it may be expected that they will be essentially different from those in the field of natural cognition [Naturerkennen], because of the deviating requirements alone which the purpose of u n d e r s t a n d i n g adds to the more general of explanation. (Wundt, 1908b, p. 83)

This is precisely why Wundt was aware that the scientist’s reasoning rests on normative dimensions that must be investigated and made visible.

Thesis I: A multimethodological model is necessary to understand the interaction between individual psychology and völkerpsychologie

This also proves that his methodological considerations necessarily envisaged a pluralism of methods. The “Logic of Psychology” (Wundt, 1908b, pp. 145–302) encompasses precisely two ways of psychology: individual psychology, which places experimentation at the centre as the primary method, and völkerpsychologie, for which he proposes other methods (see below) and both are preceded by the distinction of explaining and understanding mentioned above. His main argument of the two ways of psychology proposes that individual psychology primarily focuses on dissecting phenomena into their simple constituent elements (experimental approach) and that there must be a second programme combining these into explaining concepts or working out their more complex interactions. We locate the innovative potential of Wundt’s “Logic of Psychology” for contemporary psychologies in the fact that Wundt’s proposal for a twofold structure of psychology—individual psychology (drawing mainly on self-observation within the exact experiment) and völkerpsychologie (employing the comparative method and the historical method)—provides a basis for establishing a multimethodological model. His programme does not position the exact experiment by measurement as a via regia to the research of all psychological research objects. On the contrary, it provides arguments against the widespread use of experiments (Holzkamp, 1980). It seems almost obvious as a solution to the current problems of academic psychology that Wundt already predicted at the beginning of psychology’s development as a discipline what individual psychology needs—namely a second, expanding historic–developmental perspective in the sense that the question is pursued as to which supra-individual (this includes at least social, cultural, historical, and political) structures psychological objects rest on. This does not mean that individual psychology per se is undervalued, nor does it mean that one programme is more important than the other. In their interactions—their reciprocal references—Wundt emphasises the equal value of both approaches: “Thus only together, Individual Psychology and Völkerpsychologie form the whole of psychology” (Wundt, 1908b, p. 227). With this stance on the importance of the interactions of individual psychology and völkerpsychologie, Wundt’s concept also anticipates something that is currently the subject of much discussion, namely that the objects of völkerpsychologie are objects sui generis, even if they are simultaneously produced in and by the individual:

However, it is no less to be assumed that the conditions of mental interaction produce new and peculiar expressions of the universal psychic forces, which cannot be predicted from mere knowledge of the properties of the individual consciousness, while they nevertheless help to complete our insight into the connection of the individual life of the soul. (Wundt, 1908b, p. 227)

It is remarkable how up-to-date this description is when one looks at current debates in critical social psychology (see, e.g., the edited volume by Gough, 2017). It is still one of the most challenging questions to answer, how to make this complex interplay of the individual and the sociocultural sphere methodologically accessible.

Not least for this reason, it is worth looking again at Wundt. Therefore, we will not reduce his work to völkerpsychologie or individual psychology. However, we will mainly expand on his remarks on the methodology of völkerpsychologie as (a) it is less well-known today and (b) in some völker-psychological explanations, we also receive an impression of how he establishes the interactions and offers an integrating analysis.

Thesis II: Wundt’s völker-psychological analysis highlights the significance of cultural (document) data for psychology

To understand the methodology völkerpsychologie, it first must be understood that Wundt (1920) describes general methods of science (induction and deduction, analysis and synthesis, abstraction, and determination) in his Logic Vol. II—not psychology specific, but in the context of a “general methodology.”

Looking at Wundt’s remarks on the logic of psychology, völkerpsychologie is distinguished from individual psychology by a process perspective, meaning that it is no longer “objects” that are of interest but the historical development of how universal psychological products come about. Wundt’s (1888b) aim is thus to work out developmental laws (Entwicklungsgesetze, p. 14), to be able to trace supra-individual psychological products—language, myth, and custom—back to their origins and to work out what is universally valid about them. For this purpose, he occasionally uses the term “typical,” but we would be careful with its use. We would not draw direct links here to the contemporary form of typification (Typenbildung) in qualitative social research, as these (a) are primarily based on constructivist models (Wundt himself was advocating a form of realism, see, for instance, Wundt, 1919, pp. 85–89) and (b) Wundt also did not propose a specific method for type formation.

It derives directly from this focus on the development of collective mental products (Geisteserzeugnisse) that the methods are the comparative and historical–psychological methods (Wundt, 1908b, pp. 234–242). According to Wundt, the former is needed because it is no longer just a matter of assessing singular events (e.g., by the experiment) but about a generic comparison that is to be worked out based on the latter (Wundt, 1908b, p. 240). Generic is a comparison when the analysis focuses on objects “which, according to their psychological character, are somehow related to each other, without, however, being able to prove direct genetic relationships that find expression in a historical context” (Wundt, 1908b, pp. 240–241). More specifically, Wundt (1908b) also proposes to subordinate methods to the comparative one, namely interpretation (pp. 78–109) and criticism (pp. 109–124). According to Wundt, this is not only a matter of subsumption (i.e., a subordination of facts to what is already known as understood) but also of analogy, which, in addition, is supposed to bring new knowledge to all that cannot be classified in already existing knowledge. This is only possible on the basis of collecting facts—that is, on the basis of an inductive method, which is, however, intertwined with a deduction due to the psychological analysis, since it has a “concluding part,” “in which a deductive procedure is applied on the basis of the explanation of the facts undertaken on the basis of the psychological analysis” (Wundt, 1908b, p. 96). Criticism is based on interpretation and is first and foremost a deductive procedure (even though it uses induction to some extent) since it seeks “to test the relationships established by interpretation for their validity and value, and finally to confirm the judgement thus obtained by carrying out comparative observations partly on the object studied itself, partly on others similar to it” (Wundt, 1908b, p. 117). As mentioned above, it is essential to note that Wundt emphasised the importance of understanding for interpretation. Criticism as a method is needed in order to recognise the normative dimension in human reasoning.

As the second primary method, the psychological–historical method is a kind of discovery procedure that aims at identifying regularities of development, which then contribute to deriving laws. For the application of this method, it needs two underlying psychological processes, namely apperception and psychological causality. Apperception means focusing the direction of attention and linking different mental processes with each other so that a “mental content is brought to a clear understanding” (Wundt, 1896/1922, p. 252). Psychological causality means the ability to recognise connections between psychological actions. The concept of psychological causality is explained concisely by Fahrenberg (2020, p. 56) and Wundt’s concept of apperception by Danziger (2001b).

After analysing his methodical approach in the 10 volumes of Völkerpsychologie (Wundt, 1900–1920), Meischner-Metge (2006), for instance, proposes the practical observation that Wundt’s method resembles “the procedure of document and work analysis” (Dokumenten und Werkanalyse, p. 142). Moreover, she suggests that Wundt takes the data of his investigation “from the manifold reports in newspapers and journals as well as from information provided by helpful pen pals” and, in addition, also draws from findings in “linguistics, historiography, ethnology and anthropology” (p. 138). We argue, though, that today’s document analysis in the historical sciences has little to do with Wundt’s approach. Wundt is not only concerned with a collection of facts. As we have already pointed out above, the analysis is also concerned with an explicitly psychological attitude to trace data historically and reconstruct a notion of development from it.

However, the fact that Wundt referred a great deal to existing—we could say cultural—data is also shown by the “Wundt Collection,” which comprised a large number of books and other written texts that he owned. This is located in the Main Library of Tohoku University of Sendai, Japan (Takasuna, 2001, p. 251). Even if we do not entirely agree with Meischner-Metge (2006) that Wundt’s völker-psychological methodology can be compared with today’s document analysis, the reference to the use of document data and the explicit psychological analysis of it offers a central proposal for interpreting Wundt’s actual methodical (aside from his methodological) approach, because it makes two aspects explicit: first, it becomes clear that Wundt’s qualitative approach does not mean research dominated by the specific production of data via interview, group discussion, or other qualitative conversations, as is the case in much of today’s context. On the contrary, Wundt repeatedly spoke out against what he called an Ausfragemethode (“interrogation method,” Wundt, 1907, 1908a). Second, this shows us the importance of document data and, in that sense, “objective” data for psychological analysis. For Wundt, data are already present in the natural activity of communities; they are “real” products produced by collective activity. They are therefore also objects of other humanities—of sociology, anthropology, history, and so forth—but, and this is central, psychology can offer a psychological analysis of what Benetka (2002, p. 95) calls Gewordenheit (“the process of how things become”), universal laws of psychological development. It is no wonder, then, that there is little talk of concrete data production in Wundt’s methodology since he seems to find the data naturally. Therefore, this also seems relevant in today’s methodological discourse on psychology: when Michell (2011, p. 242) suggests that Wundt is already proposing qualitative analyses in psychology, he is doing so in a particular way, and it is his data production in particular that psychology will need to scrutinise more closely. Due to the different styles of qualitative methodology today, we currently refrain from subsuming Wundt’s methods in it. Qualitative methodologies are often based on a constructivist paradigm, widely using interview approaches, which is far from what Wundt suggested.

Thesis III: The comparison between the theories of language of Wundt and Bühler clarifies that Wundt’s approach lacks a concept of dialogicality

Although much of what Wundt (1900–1920) analysed in the 10 volumes of Völkerpsychologie has been revised or is now considered outdated, primarily his studies on language have proven valuable and still come up for discussion in historical analyses of central theories (e.g., Knobloch, 1984). Wundt’s studies of language are also specifically interesting against the backdrop of this article because they show an implementation of how he relates findings of individual psychology with those of völkerpsychologie. For example, Meischner-Metge (2006, p. 139) highlights that Wundt used experimental findings (e.g., those on word association) to understand data he analysed for his völker-psychological investigation of word formation.

A contemporary to evaluate Wundt’s language studies and who positioned his own theory development in distinction to Wundt’s was Karl Bühler, who published his Theory of Language in 1934. At this time, Bühler was no longer in Würzburg, where he had previously conducted research on the object of thought (e.g., Ziche, 1999) under the direction of Oswald Külpe within the framework of the Würzburg School, nor where he had subsequently been a lecturer, namely in Bonn and Munich and then held his first chair at Technical University Dresden, but in Vienna, where he was appointed full professor at the University of Vienna in 1922 (Friedrich & Slunecko, 2021, p. 3). What Bühler (2010) criticised about Wundt is his abstractness: first, Wundt’s analyses are largely “pure linguistics” and in part “totally philological” (p. 32). Bühler appreciates the parts he considers well elaborated (e.g., those on gestural communication) but uses them to distinguish himself from it, to go beyond it. Bühler’s (1934) Theory of Language, of which at least the Organon Model is now well known in the English-speaking world (although Bühler’s Theory of Language cannot be reduced to this, as it has more breadth than that; see Eschbach, 2011). The model shows the difference between Bühler’s and Wundt’s stances on analysis quite clearly: while Wundt, in his linguistic analysis, compares the grammatical use of cases within different languages or examines syntax linguistically, this remains disconnected from concrete structures of communicative (inter)action in everyday life. That is, even though Wundt’s analyses take into account the development of language and, by reconstructing its historical development, his focus of analysis remains at the abstract level, he historically examines the formal linguistics of language and not that of speech practice. In contrast, Bühler’s (1934/2011) Organon Model (pp. 30–39), for example, emphasises something dialogical. He states, “language is an organum for the one to inform the other of something about the things” (p. 30). He differentiates this by developing a model that does not mechanistically mediate between sender and receiver within a communication exchange but by relating three processes involved in meaning-making: expression, appeal, and representation. Expression is that which originates from the sender, the appeal is that which involves the receiver, and representation is the reference to “objects and states of affairs” (p. 35). At their centre is not a “variable” that is the simple sum of reciprocal relations but a complex “sign” that is multifunctional and open to the outside. The meanings suggested by the sender and responded to by the receiver do not entirely fit one another. Here the dialogicality and proximity to everyday practice in Bühler’s thinking become particularly clear: a second person is already involved in “my” speaking. Therefore, Bühler departs from a social situation and not abstractly from formal grammar rules or syntax structure. Even in the examples he gives to explain his thesis, everyday social situations are often the means of choice or concise comparisons to the animal kingdom, where social communication proceeds in such a unique way.

We argue that one can see in the contrast of the two theories of language that Wundt, on the one hand, strives for an analysis of cultural products—within the framework of his völkerpsychologie—but that in the interconnection of the two branches (individual psychology and völkerpsychologie), an approach of concrete sociality is missing. What ultimately remains abstract in Wundt is the everyday, which also has a history. With Wundt, the universal mental products (allgemeingültige geistige Erzeugnisse) have a history. However, ultimately, so do the individual ones (Benetka, 2002, p. 100). An approach that implies not only language but also the social moment of communication, for example, through an approach of dialogicality, will also allow for a historicisation.

Overall, in this contrast, we see that Wundt’s völker-psychological approach is a historical one only in parts of his work as it seems to remain asocial in acknowledging the history of everydayness. The phenomena covered in völkerpsychologie were cultural artefacts, not the processes by which persons created and maintained these for specific social life purposes. As a consequence, Wundt’s language theory remains abstract and static. This comes to the fore particularly well when viewing it in contrast with Bühler’s arguments about language. However, to use Bühler’s (1933) words: “It is instructive to use failed attempts at large systems to show what ultimately caused them to fail, and there is much to be learned from Wundt’s attempt in particular” (p. 11, our translation). Wundt’s success was in discovering the very beginnings of higher mental processes—feeling and thinking—under abbreviated time conditions. However, his failure was to show how the integration of these elementary units into functioning wholes (Ganzheiten) happens in creative synthesis (schöpferische Synthese, see Volkelt, 1924) by the active human mind in the middle of social uncertainties.

Conclusion—Or: What is missing in Wundt’s methodological pluralism for a genuine integration

As a concluding remark, we argue that—along our theses developed in this article—it is, above all, the reference to cultural (document) data and the psychological–historical perspective that, together with Bühler’s critique, are of value today. Going back to Wundt’s (1908b, 1919, 1920) thinking in his Logic of Psychology gives us a refreshing look at psychology today. It is not only about continuously producing data in psychological science (interviews, questionnaires) but also about thinking of the individual from the collective, in naturally happening social creations—children’s drawings, articles, books, scientific theses, and so forth—that are supra-individual psychological products. These would not exist unless the processes of living within society trigger their creation. Their analysis can be particularly important for us precisely because Michell’s question (see earlier section of this article: Wundt’s relation to methodological questions in contemporary psychology) of whether our analyses represent psychological attributes in their actual form no longer arises. As cultural documents of the world, they are necessarily also psychological. We do not have to construct them first; they are primordial. They emerge in various interaction contexts—ranging from mundane everyday activities to extreme efforts to accomplish something no other human being has managed to accomplish.

We can learn from Bühler’s objection to Wundt’s studies that the analysis need not remain abstract by only granting the collective products a history of development. Only when understanding that and how cultural products begin to have a function for the individual can a history of micro-interactions emerge that can be a meaningful interconnection of the individual with the collective and vice versa. Above all, it is the establishment of reciprocal relations that is relevant, since we have learned from Wundt that it is precisely this that psychology can achieve using its intermediate position between the disciplines and in the co-ordination of simple and complex psychological processes that feed into one another.