Geneva School (Psychology)

In psychology, the Geneva School means the direction that emerged in Geneva at the beginning of the 20th century around the Jean-Jacques Rousseau Institute with the outstanding psychologists Théodore Flournoy , Édouard Claparède and above all Jean Piaget , as well as his successor Bärbel Inhelder and her work on developmental psychology , Intelligence and Perception from 1921, and Genetic Epistemology from 1950 have found broad recognition. In 1955, Piaget founded the Center international d'Épistémologie génétique in Geneva in order to further research the influence of the environment on cognitive faculties.

At Piaget, the active role of the child in their cognitive development is central. With the growth of action skills, the cognitive skills also expand. Childlike thinking is an active construction, not a mere reflection of the world. Historically, there is a proximity here to the idealism of consciousness in Immanuel Kant , but constructivism has continued this in the present .

The Geneva School stands contrary to behaviorism , in many ways it is related to the psychology of the Soviet Russian Lev Wygotsky ( Thinking and Spoken , 1934), emphasizing the importance of active exchange with the environment, in Piaget biological, in Vygotsky social. Urie Bronfenbrenner admits that his ecological developmental psychology rests on the shoulders of the Geneva School and the Vygotsky.

literature

• Georg Eckardt: Core Problems in the History of Psychology , VS Verlag, Wiesbaden 2010, pp. 246–249 google online