Story of Psychology - Morton Hunt [82]
Wundt’s parents then sent him to the Lyceum in Heidelberg. There, among students whom he found more congenial, he gained control over his daydreaming and progressed through the school years, though he never became more than an average student. When he graduated, he had no idea what he wanted to do, but since his father had died and his mother had only a meager pension, he had to prepare for a profession in which he could earn a decent living. He chose medicine and enrolled at the University of Tübingen; out of his mother’s sight, he played and idled a year away, learning almost nothing.
But when he came home at the end of the year and realized that there was barely enough money to get him through the next three years, he underwent an astonishing change. He started medical training over again in the fall at the University of Heidelberg, threw himself into his studies with such dedication and zeal that he completed his training in three years, and ranked first in the medical state board examinations in 1855.
Along the way, however, he had discovered that clinical practice did not appeal to him but that he was fascinated by the science courses in the curriculum. After receiving his M.D. summa cum laude in 1855, he spent a semester at the University of Berlin under Johannes Müller and Emil Du Bois-Reymond, and in 1857 was appointed lecturer in physiology at Heidelberg. The following year, when the illustrious Hermann Helmholtz went there to establish a physiology institute, Wundt applied for the job of his laboratory assistant and got it. His work for Helmholtz further focused his interest on physiological psychology.
Still in his mid-twenties and still single, Wundt had become a thorough workaholic. In addition to his laboratory duties, he lectured, wrote textbooks to augment his income, carried on his own research on sense perception, and began drafting a major book on that subject, the Contributions, published in 1862. In it, Wundt, at only thirty, threw down the gauntlet to senior philosophers and mechanist physiologists by asserting that psychology could be a science only if it was based on experimental findings, and that the mind could indeed be experimentally investigated.
In 1864, Wundt was promoted to associate professor and resigned as Helmholtz’s assistant to concentrate on his own interests. No longer having access to Helmholtz’s laboratory, he created one at home, where he collected and fabricated the necessary apparatus and conducted his own psychological experiments. He continued to teach experimental physiology, but his courses came to contain more and more psychological material. Not until his late thirties did he stray from his work long enough to court a young woman and become engaged to her, although for financial reasons they had to postpone their marriage.
Helmholtz left Heidelberg in 1871. Wundt seemed the logical successor to his chair, but while the university assigned him to many of Helmholtz’s duties, it appointed him only Professor Extraordinarius at a quarter of Helmholtz’s pay. The promotion enabled Wundt and his fiancée to marry, but he now worked longer and harder than ever on his book, Principles of Physiological Psychology, hoping that it would enable him to escape from Heidelberg.
It did. In Part One—it appeared in two parts, in 1873 and 1874— Wundt immodestly wrote, “The work I here present to the public