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The late eighteenth century was a remarkable period for psychology (Vidal, 2000, 2011; Schwarz and Pfister, 2016). This was especially true for the Prince-Bishopric of Münster, Germany, where a new era dawned with an extensive political, economic, and educational reform (Esser, 1842; Brühl, 1905) which would ultimately lead to the establishment of psychology as an independent discipline at the newly founded University of Münster. But were these developments groundbreaking enough to advocate for pre-dating the beginnings of scientific psychology?1 In the years 1762–1780, the newly appointed minister Franz Friedrich von Fürstenberg set out to modernize the state’s agriculture, public budget, police, military, jurisdiction, and education (Esser, 1842). The educational part of these reforms included a seminal commitment to psychology, with Fürstenberg declaring psychology as a “core science” to be taught at every school within the territory (von Fürstenberg, 1776). Soon after, Fürstenberg was granted the right to establish a university in the city of Münster (Pieper, 1902). Following traditional procedures, the foundation of the university was authorized by Pope Clement XIV., and later ratified by Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II. The university itself was inaugurated in 1780 and comprised of four canonical faculties: Philosophy, providing general education for all students, and the three applied faculties of Jurisdiction, Medicine, and Theology. The first professor to teach philosophy inMünster, Aloys Havichorst (1737–1783), implemented lessons on psychology as part of his classes on metaphysics, thus following common scientific taxonomies of that time (Meier, 1757). This state of affairs changed, however, when his successor Ferdinand Ueberwasser (1752–1812) was appointed professor of philosophy in 1783 (Schwarz and Pfister, 2016; cf. also Carus, 1808; Bödeker, 2003). In contrast to typical views of his contemporaries, Ueberwasser did not subsume psychology under the field of metaphysics, but rather followed Fürstenberg’s plea for conceptualizing psychology as a science of its own. Accordingly, he changed the denomination of his professorship into Professor of Empirical Psychology and Logic (Ger.: “Professor für empirische Psychologie und Logik;” later also: Psychology and Metaphysics; Schwarz and Pfister, 2016). Finally, in 1787 he published a remarkable textbook entitled “Instructions for the regular study of empirical psychology for candidates of philosophy at the University of Münster” (Ger.: “Anweisungen zum regelmäßigen Studium der Empirischen Psychologie für die Candidaten der Philosophie zu Münster”). In his textbook, Ueberwasser outlined the methodological foundations of scientific psychology, followed by a broad overview of relevant psychological phenomena ranging from perception and memory to motivation, emotion, and volition (Ueberwasser, 1787; see also Schwarz and Pfister, 2016, for details on Ueberwasser’s psychology). At 1787, scientific psychology thus seems to have made a first appearance as an independent discipline: It was officially represented by a state-funded professorship, the university had integrated psychological courses in its curriculum, and an early manifesto outlined structure and scope of the discipline.

Should We Pre-date the Beginning of Scientific Psychology to 1787?