Otto Selz

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Otto Selz (born February 14, 1881 in Munich ; died August 27, 1943 in Auschwitz concentration camp ) was a German philosopher and psychologist .

Life

Selz grew up as the child of the banker Sigmund Selz and his wife Laura Selz (née Wassermann) in Munich. He was first taught at home, attended the St. Peter School in Rosental from 1887, then the Ludwigsgymnasium (Munich) . From 1899 to 1907 Selz studied law, as well as psychology and philosophy in Berlin and Munich a. a. with Carl Stumpf and Franz Brentano . He received his doctorate in psychology in 1909 with Theodor Lipps in Munich and completed his habilitation in 1912 in Bonn with Oswald Külpe . From 1912 to 1921, interrupted by military service, he was a private lecturer in philosophy and psychology at the University of Bonn , where he received an extraordinary professorship in legal philosophy in 1921 . In 1923 he became a professor for philosophy, psychology and education at the Mannheim University of Commerce . From 1929 to 1930 he was the rector of the university. Due to his Jewish origin, Selz was given early retirement on April 4, 1933 with the law to restore the civil service . In 1938 he was deported to the Dachau concentration camp for five weeks and then emigrated to Amsterdam in 1939 , where he continued to research and teach. He was committed to a pedagogy based on psychology. In 1940, Selz actively sought to leave the United States. He was supported in this u. a. from Max Wertheimer, who was already living in New York . Due to his advanced age and the long interruption of his professional career, however, he lacked the relevant references that could have given him the prospect of a permanent academic position or scholarship and thus a visa. After the occupation of the Netherlands by the National Socialists, Selz was arrested in 1943 and taken to the Westerbork transit camp . From there he was deported on a transport train to the Auschwitz concentration camp on August 24, 1943 , where he was murdered on August 27, 1943.

Thought psychology

Selz became known in particular through research in the field of thought psychology . His works are related to the Würzburg School . He developed methods for analyzing thought processes and tried to integrate the different cognitive performance - from reproductive to productive thought processes - in one theory.

The Würzburgers had refuted associationism , but without being able to set up a theory. Selz developed a complete, non-associationist theory of thought that focused on schemes of knowledge and problem-solving . Selz saw thinking as a continuum of reproductive and productive intellectual operations, knowledge as a more or less complete structure (“knowledge complex”). He understood the problem as an incomplete knowledge structure, the blanks of which are supplemented by determined means abstraction. Together with his conception of the overall task as a schematic anticipation of a goal awareness, he anticipates the concept of the problem area, the goal-means analysis and the basic structure of production systems.

His work was initially barely received, but is now considered to be an important forerunner of cognitive science .

In addition to theoretical work, he was also interested in questions of applied psychology. In Mannheim he dealt with the problems of training in school and work and the selection of courses.

He tried to write a 'synthetic holistic psychology' that sought to radically differentiate itself from the Second Leipzig School around Felix Krueger and the Berlin School of Gestalt Psychology . (References to Alexius Meinong and Edmund Husserl )

Selz was editor of the archive for all psychology .

The cultural and music psychologist Julius Bahle is a student of Selz.

Reception and appreciation

After his writings were initially forgotten, from the 1970s onwards, his writings were examined, recognized and published. 1970 he was awarded the German Society of Psychology , the Wilhelm Wundt medal .

In a dissertation from 1970, Seebohm analyzes the significance of Selz's theoretical concept for the present. He not only emphasizes the further development of the Würzburg School by Selz, but also its importance for a holistic psychological understanding. In place of the associative connection of thought contents , Selz put the connection through striving for complex completion, instead of dealing with thought contents that of thought processes . For Selz, the controlling power of the thought process is the schematic anticipation in the consciousness of purpose, which sets a strictly determined thought process in motion, in which the preceding determines the following. Selz saw this as a prerequisite for both reproductive and productive thinking. He saw these thought processes united in the person as the synthetically constructed whole. In this way, behavior is also controlled holistically for him. Part of his approach can be found in later concepts, such as schematic theory, learning hierarchy models and models for artificial intelligence .

On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of his death, the Otto Selz Institute for Applied Psychology at the University of Mannheim (OSI), with the support of the University Library Mannheim, published parts of the estate as digital copies . The University of Mannheim has been awarding the Otto Selz Prize for the best psychological thesis every year since 2004, and since 2006 also for the best psychological dissertation.

In 1996, the city of Mannheim named a street at the Palace University after him. On June 27, 2011, a stumbling block was laid at his last place of residence and work in N 2, 4 in Mannheim .

Works

  • 1909 Inaugural dissertation: The psychological epistemology and the problem of transcendence . Special print from the "Archive for the whole of psychology", Vol. 16, H. 1/2, S. 1–110 ( Internet Archive )
  • 1913 About the laws of the orderly course of thought. An experimental study. Speemann, Stuttgart ( digitized version )
  • 1919 with W. Benary , A. Kronfeld and E. Stern : Investigations into the psychological suitability for flight service. Writings on the psychology of professional aptitude and economic life, ed. by Otto Lipmann and William Stern . Issue 8. Barth, Leipzig
  • 1922 On the psychology of productive thinking and error . Cohen, Bonn ( digitized version )
  • 1924 The laws of productive and reproductive mental activity . Cohen, Bonn
  • 1991 Build-up of perception and thought process. Selected Writings. ed. v. A [ndré]. Métraux and T [heo]. Hermann. Huber, Bern ISBN 3456819412

literature

  • Herbert Beckmann (2001). Selz in Amsterdam. The thought psychologist Otto Selz (1881–1943) in exile in the Netherlands , In Psychologie und Geschichte 9 (pp. 3–27).
  • NH Frijda & AD De Groot (Eds.) (1981). Otto Selz: His Contribution to Psychology . The Hague: Mouton Publishers.
  • Herrmann, T. (1999). Otto Selz and the Würzburg School . In W. Jahnke & W. Schneider (Ed.), Hundred Years Institute for Psychology and Würzburg School of Thinking Psychology (pp. 159–167). Göttingen: Hogrefe.
  • Utz Maas : Persecution and emigration of German-speaking linguists 1933-1945. Entry on Otto Selz (accessed: April 15, 2018)
  • Alexandre Métraux (1999): Otto Selz. In: Illustrated History of Psychology. Edited by Helmut E. Lück and Rudolf Miller. Psychologie Verlags Union, Weinheim. 2nd corr. Edition ISBN 3-621-27460-1
  • Walter Tetzlaff: 2000 short biographies of important German Jews of the 20th century. Askania, Lindhorst 1982, ISBN 3-921730-10-4 .
  • Selz, Otto. In: Karl Otto Watzinger : History of the Jews in Mannheim 1650-1945. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1984, pp. 1133-1135. ISBN 3-17-008696-0 .
  • Alexandre Métraux:  Selz, Otto. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 24, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-428-11205-0 , p. 234 f. ( Digitized version ).

Web links

Wikisource: Otto Selz  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Otto Selz's biography at the Mannheim University Library. Retrieved January 21, 2017
  2. ^ Herbert Beckmann: Selz in Amsterdam. The thought psychologist Otto Selz (1881-1943) in exile in the Netherlands
  3. ↑ Alma Kreuter: German-speaking neurologists and psychiatrists: A biographical-bibliographical lexicon from the forerunners to the middle of the 20th century. 3 volumes. KG Saur, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-598-11196-7 , p. 1343
  4. ^ Hans Bernhard Seebohm: Otto Selz. A contribution to the history of psychology . Dissertation at the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Heidelberg, 1970
  5. ↑ Otto Selz Prize of the University of Mannheim . Retrieved January 21, 2017
  6. ↑ MARCHIVUM: Mannheimer street names, Otto Selz Street. Retrieved September 30, 2018 .
  7. ↑ Stumbling block against oblivion . In: Forum: das Magazin der Universität Mannheim , 2011, p. 48. Retrieved on November 19, 2017. 
  8. ↑ Laying stumbling blocks. Otto Selz Institute, accessed on November 19, 2017 .
personal data
SURNAME Selz, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German philosopher, psychologist and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH February 14, 1881
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH August 27, 1943
Place of death Auschwitz concentration camp