The Nineteenth-Century German Psychological Landscape
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Date
2025
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Publisher
Springer Nature Switzerland AG
Abstract
The introduction critiques the presentist interpretation of psychology’s history, arguing that it oversimplifies the field’s evolution by viewing past theories through a contemporary lens. It emphasizes that early twentieth-century experimental psychology was not the sole or final form of the discipline. The historical narrative should include diverse approaches from the nineteenth century, reflecting a richer and more complex picture of psychological thought. The present book aims to broaden this historical account, integrating various intellectual movements like German Idealism and Romanticism that greatly influenced the development of psychology. After an outline presentation of the main intellectual movements in Germany at the beginning of the nineteenth century (Aufklärung, idealism, romanticism and Naturphilosophie), we present the chapters of this first volume of Forgotten Streams arranged in three categories: empirical, romantic, and idealist psychologies.
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Keywords
History of psychology, German idealism, Romanticism, Vitalism, Hermeneutics, Cultural psychology, Völkerpsychologie, Naturphilosophie