Völkerpsychologie

Wundt is widely known for his work with experimental psychology. Up until this time in history, psychology was almost exclusively using psychological experiments as a source of gathering information. Wundt believed that the very structure of psychological experiments leaves them severely lacking in their ability to investigate internal mental processes, such as consciousness and language. In an effort to build a method of psychological study which would allow for investigation of these processes, Wundt argued that science needed a deeper means of accessing the inner minds of its subjects. He cultivated a new branch of psychology known as Völkerpsychologie, which was distinct in its use of historical and comparative methods, rather than simply laboratory experimentation.

As Wundt believed that experiments can only access the outcomes of processes rather than the processes themselves, he argued that deeply ingrained mental processes should instead be accessed via other methods which can study the process itself. Wundt argued that Völkerpsychologie was particularly useful for the study of mental processes such as language - something which Wundt found particularly tricky. He believed that language was distinct among the collective human processes and, since it seemed to be crucial to the entire upper mental functions, those functions were concluded as exempt to experimental research.

Völkerpsychologie comes from the German culture. To this day, there is no clear English word that is similar to it. The derivative Volk, a German word, refers to “people, nation, tribe, or race”. Wundt simply wanted to create a new way to complete research without the use of experiments. This led him to discovering a new type of psychology which dealt with the communal and cultural products of human nature, which includes religions, languages, and mythologies.

Creation of Völkerpsychologie

Wundt was very interested in the human nature of language. He wanted to know how apperception and thinking were related to language. Völkerpsychologie was a great way to study and research this, which is what he did. Before Wundt, there were many other theorists that associated thought with language. Many argued that silent thinking was a form of talking with oneself. Wundt did not agree with this idea. He came up with several situations in which a person's thoughts do not fully do justice to what they are actually thinking. When having conversations, people may tend to say "That's not what I had meant to say" or may wonder why they said something, when they realize that they are saying something which might not accurately depict what they are thinking internally. People will do this all the time, and this was a topic that Wundt used Völkerpsychologie to study. When someone disagrees with a statement that someone has made in conversation, we may find ourselves interrupting with a "What? Wait a minute, you are incorrect!" long before we can describe the actual point of disagreement. We tend to say things before our mind understands exactly why we say them. These examples are the exact reasons that Wundt used to promote his new branch of psychology, and why he thought that words and thoughts are different things.

To further explain his ideas on the new branch of psychology, Wundt wrote a book in which he titled Völkerpsychologie. This piece of work is ten volumes in total and went into much detail of the subject from Wundt's perspective. At one point in the document, he makes the comparison of Völkerpsychologie and experimental psychology to psychology and physiology. Each is an alternative perspective to one another, and each complements one another in various ways. Neither is dispensable, in Wundt's eyes. It is also noted that Wundt knew that Völkerpsychologie was essential for the completion of psychology in his earlier writings, but he did not fully commit to the explanation of it until his older age. He also went on to discuss how experimental psychology focused on the physical (outer) body experiences, but did not do a very good job at explaining the psychic (inner) phenomena that would take place as well. This is another reason he went on to create Völkerpsychologie.

Völkerpsychologie follows in the tradition of Lazarus and Steinthal by keeping the notion that specific social types of cognition, emotion, and behavior are based in social groups, sometimes known as communities. Wundt based his differentiation between social/folk psychology and individual psychology on the difference between social psychological states and processes of the individual. Because of this dependence on the community, in particular the social community, this whole area of psychological investigation is designated "social psychology" and distinguished from individual, or as it may be called because of its predominating method, experimental psychology."

Wundt became interested in Völkerpsychologie very early in his career. He became so interested in the topic that he offered a course on social psychology at Heidelberg University in 1859. In his first book, Beiträge zur Theorie der Sinneswahrnehmung (Natural History of Man), which he wrote when he was at Heidelberg, Wundt talked about the programs involving experimental psychology and Völkerpsychologie. In the second volume, Vorlesungen über die Menschen-und Thierseele (Lectures on the Human and Animal Mind), which Wundt wrote 16 years prior to when he started the experimental psychology program at Leipzig. He devoted many pages to the explanation and development of Völkerpsychologie. This shows his growing interest in and seriousness for implementing this form of psychology into mainstream psychology. The immediate topics in Völkerpsychologie are language, myth, and custom. For Wundt, the whole reason for the comparative and historical study of these mental topics was to provide an objective point of view for making inferences about the psychological processes involved when they are produced. However, Wundt was not interested in studying these topics just because they are interesting topics, as other professionals might. An example of this: "The origin and development of these products depend in every case on general psychical conditions which may be inferred from their objective attributes. Psychological analysis can, consequently, explain the psychical processes operative in their formation and development." Wundt naturally thought that experimental methods were wrong for the study of whole languages, myths, and customs, because they cannot be used properly in a scientific manner by introspection itself. Although the "supraindividual" (which means above or beyond the individual in groups) nature of whole languages, myths, and customs comes before their experimental investigation.