Wundt's Contribution to Psychology

Wundt began his work with psychology looking into the unconscious mind but later turned more to the study of the conscious mind. He wanted to understand the complex idea that was the mind and more so the simple ideas like the parts that make up the brain. This idea leads to a more structured view of the mind and organizing the way that the mind works. Wundt created two types of experiences to help explain the way that the conscious mind is working.

His two experiences were mediate and immediate thoughts. Mediate experiences were the information given to use without the knowledge (Schultz & Schultz, 2016, pg.69). Immediate experiences were the specific experiences that were being processed by the mind, diving deeper into the knowledge that is being presented to a person (Schultz & Schultz, 2016, pg. 70). Wundt created these ideas of experiences to show that the mind is working in a way that it is collecting all the information and putting each part together to form the full picture.

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For example, a mediate experience would be seeing a dog walking, and the immediate experience is the interpretation of the dog seeing it is fluffy or the color of the fur. These experiences brought together built into the conscious mind and helped to supports Wundt's research into the components of the brain.

The elements of the mind were a key area of research for Wundt and his need to create an understanding of the mind. With his use of mediate and immediate experiences the interpretation of information became more orderly and, in some ways, showing the complexities of the brain. From these experiences, Wundt found that immediate experiences were forming the elements of the mind. Leading into Wundt's work of different methods of his creation.

Wundt developed a method to help with his study of the conscious mind. In this method, Wundt wanted to study the mind more inwardly. The method was named introspection or internal perception meaning "the process of observing the operations of one's mind intending to discovering the laws that govern the mind" (The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, 2017, para.1). In this process, Wundt would have observers not register anything else that was occurring or any elements that played into an object, but go off what they were seeing or experiencing. With the strict rules and conditions that are placed on the observers, Wundt wanted to create a way to recreate observations that have come from the introspective view similar to that of the external perception. Introspection or internal perspective was looking more into a person's consciousness whereas the external perception is focusing more outside the person (Schultz & Schultz, 2016, pg. 70). With all the different ideas that were created by Wundt, there is a greater ability to see his influence in psychology and the way that the methods he used combined not only previous ideas but also brought new ideas to the surface. The zeitgeist of the time allowed Wundt to be able to proceed with his research and push psychology into an era of enlightenment.

Sources

1. Schultz, D.P., & Schultz, S.E. (2016). A History of Modern Psychology. (11th ed.). Boston, MA; Cengage Learning.
2. Britannica, T. E. (2017). Introspection. Retrieved February 1, 2019, from https://www.britannica.com/topic/introspection