The origins of the new psychology in the United States.

Abstract

In 1877, only about three Americans knew anything of the new psychology then emerging in central Europe. But only 40 years later, this new psychology and its practitioners played a major role in the U.S. effort during the Great War. This article traces the origins and early evolution of this new science in the United States. It opens with a review of the American social, cultural and intellectual setting ca. 1880. It thus addresses such forces: as demographic, industrial, and religious change; the declining status of the long-influential Scottish Common-Sense Realist philosophy; the continuing impact of Baconian thought, of phrenology, and of spiritualism; the growing influence of Comtean and evolutionary ideas; and the rise of American universities. It then contrasts aspects of this American milieu with those of Germany that initially promoted the new science and, as a further comparison, it briefly sketches the contemporaneous status of psychology in Britain. Returning to the U.S., this article next outlines the state of American psychology ca. 1895, and argues that many of its characteristics derived from those of the earlier American setting. This article closes by taking psychology as an exemplar of contrasting American and German academic concerns throughout the 19th century and, finally, with a "speculative conclusion" about the overall development of American psychology.