Feng Te's physiological psychology refers to a kind of psychology studied by physiological methods. He believes that psychology studies people's direct experience, which is different from all sciences that study indirect experience, so it is necessary to find a special experimental method that can measure direct experience. This experimental method is the introspective experimental method adopted by the first psychology laboratory he founded. Before him, because it was difficult to distinguish psychological experiments from physiological experiments, purely introspective philosophical psychology still had certain advantages. Feng Te's introspective report following the experimental procedure made the purely introspective philosophical psychology history. On the other hand, because the research object of introspection experiment is psychological activity characterized by direct experience, Feng Te strictly distinguishes experimental psychology from physiological psychology experiment. Although Feng Te's introspective experimental method still has many insurmountable defects, which caused many criticisms from later experimenters, most psychologists acknowledged his historical contribution as the first experimental psychologist. 1856 Feng Te graduated from the medical department of Heidelberg University. He became hermann von helmholtz's assistant. During this period, he opened the first course of teaching psychology in science. In this course, he used experimental methods in natural science to study psychology. His lecture was edited into Essays on Human and Animal Psychology. 1864 promoted to assistant professor.
1874 published Principles of Physiological Psychology. In this book, he invented a systematic psychology to study human senses: feeling, experience, will, perception and inspiration. In his later years (1900- 19 19), he published 10 volume of National Psychology, which is also an outstanding contribution in the development history of modern psychology.
Feng Te's Psychological System
Feng Te's psychological system is content psychology. In Tieqiner's words, it is constructivism psychology. The main contents of his psychological system are:
1, the science of studying direct experience. Feng Te thinks that the research object of science is experience, and the research object of physics and psychology is experience. The only difference is direct and indirect.
2. The theory of mind-body parallelism. On the issue of mind and body, Feng Te is a theorist with mind and body in parallel. He believes that human psychology is not the result of the physiological process of the human brain, but an independent process in parallel with the latter. In this way, although he confined psychology to psychology, he distinguished psychological process from physiological process in a certain sense, and strengthened the research on the laws of psychological phenomena, thus insisting on the independent existence of psychology.
3. Elemental analysis and creative synthesis. In Feng Te's view, psychology can and must be analyzed. Its final and indecomposable components are called psychological elements (feelings, feelings). The task of psychology is to analyze psychological elements and determine the principles and laws that constitute compound concepts.
4. Experimental introspection. Psychological experience depends more on the experience of the experiencer, so to study it, we have to rely on "introspection", that is, "self-observation" originally referred to in German. Introspection plays an important role in Feng Te's psychological system, so some people call Feng Te's psychology introspective psychology.
5. Three degrees of affection. According to Feng Te, emotion is a psychological process, a psychological factor and a psychological experience accompanied by feelings. It has three dimensions: fast and unhappy, excited and calm, nervous and relaxed.
6. Will psychology. Feng Te believes that will is a complex process and attaches importance to the role of emotion in the formation of will. His psychology of will carried out the theory of will and emotion. He also believes that will can be divided into simple and complex.
7. Individual psychology and national psychology. Feng Te's psychological structure includes two aspects: first, individual psychology, which is the process of personal consciousness, is experimental psychology, which is studied through experimental introspection observation; Second, it is manifested in national psychology, that is, social psychology, taking the complex spiritual process of human life as the research object and using the method of national psychology to study. In fact, Feng Te spent about 40 years constructing his personal psychology and made some necessary preparations for his national psychology. When he was nearly 70 years old, he spent nearly 20 years specializing in ethnic psychology. Feng Te doesn't think that psychology is just a natural science that can take experiments as the only method.
Feng Te's Contributions and Limitations
Contribution: Feng Te's historic achievements in his life are inseparable from the independence of psychology, the establishment of experimental psychology and the establishment of an international psychological professional team.
Limitations: The chaotic idealistic viewpoint caused many contradictions in his psychological system, and his psychological works could not get rid of the shackles of idealistic metaphysics.
Research work of Leipzig psychological laboratory
1. Research on sensory perception: including research on sensory physiology and psychophysics, accounting for more than half of the whole experimental research. Mainly the study of vision, hearing, touch and time perception, as well as the famous taste study.
2. The experimental study of reaction time accounts for about one sixth of the whole experimental study. The determination of reaction speed and psychological time was studied by mathematical method.
3. Research on attention includes compound experiment, attention range and attention change.
4. Study on feelings.
5. Lenovo's analysis and research.