Ethnic Psychology

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In the 19th and early 20th centuries, peoples psychology was the science of the “ spirit and soul” in the life of peoples , of “people's spirit ” and “ people's soul ”.

Today's social sciences no longer assume that “peoples” can have a uniform mental life. With the issues of this area deal today from different perspectives and with a significantly different understanding of the social , the anthropology (Ethnology), the history of science , the cultural anthropology , the cultural psychology , the social psychology and the sociology of culture .

history

The term ethnic psychology was coined around 1800 by Wilhelm von Humboldt , who assumed that thinking was based on language and that different "world views" could be found in every people. Herder , Hegel and Herbart are also among the precursors in the history of ideas . The empirical folk psychology was founded in the middle of the 19th century by the Herbart-oriented psychologist Moritz Lazarus (1851) and the linguist Heymann Steinthal as editor of the new journal for ethnic psychology and linguistics in 1860. Fundamental to their conception was the assumption that was consistent and historical developed values ​​(“Volksgeist”). Mention should also be made of Theodor Waitz , who from 1859 published a number of works on the anthropology of primitive peoples , including the peoples of the South Seas . Through field research in different ethnic groups a foundation was created, Lazarus and Steinthal was missing in this way.

Wilhelm Wundt dealt critically with the - in his opinion - still disordered intentions of Lazarus and Steinthal, narrowed down the questions in his essay On Goals and Ways of Ethnic Psychology (1888) and gave them a psychologically structured structure. The ten-volume folk psychology. An examination of the developmental laws of language , myth and custom (1900–1920) also encompasses the fields of art , society , law , culture and history , and it is a monument to cultural psychology at the beginning of the 20th century . The cultural psychological knowledge of the time is summarized and theoretically structured. The intellectual-cultural process is analyzed according to a system of psychological and epistemological principles. Wundt highlights around 20 fundamental motives of cultural development. Examples are: life care and division of labor, care for boys and community, self-education motive, production and imitation motive, inspiration and magical motif, rescue and redemption motive, play instinct and decorative motif, and values ​​such as freedom and justice.

effect

The reception of Wundt's work was not only impaired by its unusual scope and the level of psychological and methodological demands, but also by the unfortunate choice of the title “Völkerpsychologie”. Wundt hardly dealt with the topics of ethnology ( ethnology ), but followed his central idea of developing a psychological development theory of the mind on the broadest possible empirical basis and also examining the cultural development of ethics . This led to misunderstandings and superficial evaluations in the specialist literature instead of appreciating the original theoretical and methodological foundations. It was disadvantageous that not the main work, but only the elements of national psychology , i.e. a simplified excerpt, was translated into English, so that Anglo-American psychologists hardly found access.

Important early theoreticians of sociology dealt with the psychology of nations, among others Max Weber , Émile Durkheim and Georg Simmel , whose academic teacher was Moritz Lazarus. In the literature, several scientists are named who were in Leipzig with Wundt or who reveal his influence: the philosopher George Herbert Mead , the anthropologist Franz Boas , the historian Karl Lamprecht , the psychologist Lev Semjonowitsch Wygotski , the neurologist Wladimir Michailowitsch Bechterew , the social anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski , the ethnologist Edward Sapir , the sociologist William Isaac Thomas , the linguist Benjamin Whorf .

However, Wundt's comprehensive system of cultural psychology (“Völkerpsychologie”) was not continued constructively by any of these authors, not even by Wundt's doctoral student Willy Hellpach . Ethnic psychology is sometimes viewed as one of the forerunners of social psychology , although the research on ethnic psychology dealt predominantly with the evidence of earlier cultures and was only gradually given a broader basis through field research , particularly in cultural anthropology .

literature

  • Christa M. Schneider (Ed.): Wilhelm Wundts Völkerpsychologie. Origin and development of a forgotten subject area relevant to the history of science. Bouvier, Bonn 1990, ISBN 3-416-02232-7 (with all of Wilhelm Wundt's publications, publications by other authors on the subject of ethnic psychology up to 1871, after 1871 and after 1900).
  • Christa M. Schneider (Ed.): Wilhelm Wundt - Völkerpsychologie. A reader. V&R unipress, Göttingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-89971-500-2 .
  • Georg Eckardt (Ed.): Völkerpsychologie. Attempt to rediscover. Beltz, Weinheim 1997, ISBN 3-621-27359-X (with contributions from the 19th century by Moritz Lazarus, Heymann Steinthal and Wilhelm Wundt).
  • Jochen Fahrenberg: Wilhelm Wundts Kulturpsychologie (Völkerpsychologie): A psychological development theory of the mind. PsyDok document server for psychology. (hdl.handle.net, PDF file, 652 KB)
  • Willy Hellpach: Introduction to Ethnic Psychology. 3. Edition. Enke, Stuttgart 1954.
  • Uwe Laucken: Social Psychology. History, mainstreams, tendencies. Oldenbourg, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-8142-0619-3 .
  • Moritz Lazarus: About the concept and possibilities of a people psychology. 1851. In: Klaus Christian Köhnke (Ed.): Moritz Lazarus. Basics of ethnic psychology and cultural studies . Meiner, Hamburg 2003, ISBN 3-621-27359-X , pp. 112-126.
  • Klaus Stierstorfer, Laurent Volkmann (ed.): Interdisciplinary cultural studies . Narr, Tübingen 2005, ISBN 3-8233-6124-4 .
  • Gisela Trommsdorff, Hans-Joachim Kornadt: Theories and methods of comparative cultural psychology. Encyclopedia of Psychology. Comparative cultural psychology. Volume 1: Comparative Cultural Psychology. and Volume 2: Experiencing and acting in a cultural context. Hogrefe, Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-8017-1502-1 .
  • Wilhelm Wundt: About goals and ways of national psychology. In: Philosophical Studies. Volume 4, 1888, pp. 1-27.
  • Wilhelm Wundt: Völkerpsychologie. An investigation into the laws of development of language, myth and custom. 10 volumes. Engelmann, Leipzig 1900–1920.
  • Wilhelm Wundt: Elements of the people psychology. Basic lines of a psychological development history of mankind. Kröner, Leipzig 1912.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See u. a. Anna-Maria Post, magazine instead of chair. The "Journal for Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft" , in: Basic research for a left-wing practice in literary studies , issue 1: The scientific journal and its value , Berlin 2014, pp. 42–63.
  2. ↑ Georg Eckardt (Ed.): Völkerpsychologie. Attempt to rediscover. Psychologische VerlagsUnion, Weinheim 1997, pp. 105–111.
  3. ↑ Uwe Laucken: social psychology. History, mainstreams, tendencies. Oldenbourg, Munich 1998, pp. 88-89.