Abstract
One of the aims of Culture & Psychology has always been to synthesize past ideas in order to enhance the tools we use to look at the phenomena we want to understand. In order to do so, we also need to understand the approaches our intellectual forefathers applied. The present article brings to light a ‘forgotten’ approach to studying people bound by common language, myth and customs. Völkerpsychologie is the historical predecessor to cultural psychology; however, readers not familiar with the history of psychology may not know what this ‘forgotten’ discipline attempted to achieve. The article focuses on Völkerpsychologie as its founders, Lazarus and Steinthal, conceived of it (including the often overlooked continuation of their journal after 1890), as well as Wilhelm Wundt’s considerable contributions to the discipline. Possible new directions for this approach are suggested in order to make it more suitable for 21st-century cultural psychology.
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