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A tale of two psychologies: The Høffding–Lehmann controversy and the establishment of experimental psychology at the University of Copenhagen
Author(s) -
Pind Jörgen L.
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
journal of the history of the behavioral sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.216
H-Index - 26
eISSN - 1520-6696
pISSN - 0022-5061
DOI - 10.1002/jhbs.20348
Subject(s) - positivism , experimental psychology , history of psychology , psychology , epistemology , psychoanalysis , philosophy , cognition , psychiatry
Alfred Lehmann (1858–1921) was the pioneer of experimental psychology in Denmark. He established a laboratory of psychophysics in Copenhagen in 1886 after spending a winter in Wundt's laboratory. Philosophical psychology had been taught for the better part of the nineteenth century at the University of Copenhagen and had enjoyed a positivistic turn with the philosophers Harald Høffding (1843–1931) and Kristian Kroman (1846–1925). Shortly after establishing his laboratory, Lehmann criticized Høffding's theory of “unmediated recognition,” which led to a sharp dispute between them on the nature of recognition. It has been claimed that this was a direct cause of Lehmann's slow advance at the University of Copenhagen. Archival sources show that Høffding, though having a very different conception of psychology from Lehmann, was on most occasions supportive of Lehmann and thus played an important role in establishing experimental psychology at the University of Copenhagen. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.