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| CONSCIOUSNESS LOST! The first - and often the last - approach to self-understanding by the lay-person is introspection. It was the first approach used by the psychologist too. Wilhelm Wundt, who founded the first psychological laboratory at Leipzig here in Germany in 1879, was an introspectionist. His laboratory was the "in" place at the end of the last century. Students converged from around the world to sit at Wundt's feet and diverged again to spread the gospel. What was the gospel? Psychology is the study of experience. How is experience studied? By submitting oneself to a particular stimulus and observing one's experience. What is the aim of this study? To analyse experience into its constituent elements: sensations, feelings, images. Thus, for example, if I were to say to you Add --- two and three, you would probably respond five. What was your experience during the pause between add and two and three? If I had said multiply rather than add, you would have immediately responded with another answer. Something must have happened in your brain, then, between add and two and three, which set you to say five. If you observed images during this pause, you are a Titchenerian; if you did not observe images, then you are a Kulpian. Edward Titchener and Oscar Kulpe were two students of Wundt, who got into a debate after Titchener went to Cornell University and Kulpe went to Wurzburg University. Kulpe claimed that it was possible to have thoughts without images. Titchener disagreed. There are images, said Titchener. There are no images, said Kulpe. There are so. There are not. There are so. There are not. There was no way to resolve this transatlantic debate. Titchener was the world's foremost authority on the experience of Titchener and Kulpe was the world's foremost authority on the experience of Kulpe. |
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