Review - A History of Modern Experimental Psychology
From James and Wundt to Cognitive Science
by George Mandler
MIT Press, 2007
Review by Gustav Jahoda, Ph.D.
Jul 31st 2007 (Volume 11, Issue 31)

This is a splendid book by an author who has himself made an outstanding contribution to cognitive psychology. As indicated by the sub-title, it does not pretend to cover all forms of experimental psychology.  For instance developmental psychology, which has become highly experimental, is not even mentioned. Unlike some other histories, Mandler's is sensitive to the socio-cultural context of theories which receives a great deal of attention.

The early part of the work, from Aristotle to the end of the 19^th century, is the weakest.  This is not merely because the account is inevitably sketchy, but because some of it is flawed. As regards the 18^th and beginnings of the 19^th century, the British associationists feature, but the part played by French writers (e.g. Condillac, La Mettrie, Cabanis) is omitted; Brentano, listed as an 18^th-century figure, was not born until 1838. While Wundt's experimental psychology and his conflict with the Wurzburg school are lucidly expounded, the account of Wundt's position regarding Völkerpsychologie is misleading. Wundt had clearly separated it from ethnopsychology, and Wundt's Elemente is not a 'quasi-summary of the Völkerpsychologie' as frequently supposed. Wundt never managed to really clarify the relationship between his two psychologies. William James' thought is well portrayed, though the assertion that William James 'did not consider the human mind as it was molded by society' is questionable. James wrote extensively about the 'social self' and regarded 'imitation' as the mediating mechanism between the individual and society.

When it comes to the 20^th century such imperfections are left behind and the touch becomes sure. It is shown how behaviorism, claimed by Watson to have been an entirely original American phenomenon, was in fact preceded by developments in Europe. The immense popularity of behaviorism in America, and its eventual bankruptcy owing to the inability of the S-R formula to deal with more complex human behavior, are documented in detail. Meanwhile in Germany and Austria theories focusing precisely on complex processes like thinking, memory, and perception were elaborated during the inter-war years, notably by Otto Selz and the group of Gestalt theorists. It is one of the unusual merits of this work that Mandler discusses the way in which the rise of Nazism was accompanied by the systematic dismantling of this once flourishing German psychology, and its reduction to a technology serving the military machine.  The exodus of brilliant men served to fertilize American psychology, and in this connection Mandler, interestingly, devotes a good deal of space to the beginnings of experimental social psychology.

From then onwards the post-war origins of cognitivism are documented and, as is rare in American texts, due credit is given to its British pioneers and Piaget. The critical transformation took place during the 1950s, when fresh approaches to memory, language and problem-solving emerged. One significant trend was a concern with organization and structure of mental processes and once again 'meaning', that had been ignored by behaviorists, came to the fore. Two topics involving aspects of memory are used to illustrate the manner in which the cognitive revolution has changed the ways of viewing long-standing issues. The final chapters offer a retrospect and a discussion of future prospects, with a brief sally against postmodernism and a warning against the ready acceptance of biological explanations.   Postmodernism is of course a soft target, and while the point about easy evolutionary interpretations is well taken, other critiques of cognitivism from within the community of scientific psychologists are not considered.

Generally, the book is much more readable than most texts of its kind, moving smoothly between past and present so as to bring out underlying continuities. In sum, the story of how a central strand of thinking about mind progressed from early speculations to the cutting edge of cognitive science is told in a masterly fashion.

© 2007 Gustav Jahoda

Gustav Jahoda, Ph.D. is Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. His main fields of interest are cross-cultural and social psychology, especially the development of social cognition. He is the author of  A History of Social Psychology (Cambridge University Press).