Edward B. Titchener - Life and Legacy

Life and Legacy

Titchener was a charismatic and forceful speaker. However, although his idea of structuralism thrived while he was alive and championing for it, structuralism did not live on after his death. Some modern reflections on Titchener consider the narrow scope of his psychology and the strict, limited methodology he deemed acceptable as a prominent explanation for the fall of Titchener's structuralism after his death. So much of it was wrapped up in Titchener's precise, careful dictations that without him, the field floundered. Structuralism, along with Wundt’s voluntarism, were both effectively challenged and improved upon, though they did influence many schools of psychology today.

Titchener is also remembered for coining the English word "empathy" in 1909 as a translation of the German word "Einfühlungsvermögen", a new phenomenon explored at the end of 19th century mainly by Theodor Lipps. "Einfühlungsvermögen" was later re-translated as "Empathie", and is still in use that way in German.

Titchener's impact on the history of psychology, as it is taught in classrooms, was partially the work of his student Edwin Boring. Boring's experimental work was largely unremarkable, but his book History of Experimental Psychology was widely influential, as, consequentially, were his portrayals of various psychologists, including his own mentor Edward Titchener. The length at which Boring detailed Titchener's contributions—contemporary Hugo Münsterberg received roughly a tenth as much of Boring's attention—raise questions today as to whether or not the influence credited to Titchener on the history of psychology is inflated as a result.

Professor Titchener received honorary degrees from Harvard, Clark, and Wisconsin. He became a charter member of the American Psychological Association, translated Külpe's Outlines of Psychology and other works, became the American editor of Mind in 1894, and associate editor of the American Journal of Psychology in 1895, and wrote several books. In 1904, he founded the group "The Experimentalists," which continues today as the "Society of Experimental Psychologists". Titchener's brain was contributed to the Wilder Brain Collection at Cornell.

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