Psychological Research (2007) 71: 618–625 DOI 10.1007/s00426-006-0051-9

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Jüri Allik

History of experimental psychology from an Estonian perspective

Received: 2 February 2005 / Accepted: 29 November 2005 / Published online: 26 April 2006© Springer-Verlag 2006

Abstract A short review of the development of experi-mental psychology from an Estonian perspective is pre-sented. The Wrst rector after the reopening of theUniversity of Dorpat (Tartu) in 1802, Georg FriedrichParrot (1767–1852) was interested in optical phenomenawhich he attempted to explain by introducing the con-cept of unconscious inferences, anticipating a similartheory proposed by Herman von Helmholtz 20 yearslater. One of the next rectors, Alfred Wilhelm Volkmann(1800–1878) was regarded by Edwin Boring as one ofthe founding fathers of the experimental psychology.Georg Wilhelm Struve (1793–1864) played an essentialpart in solving the problem of personal equations.Arthur Joachim von Oettingen (1836–1920) developed atheory of music harmony, which stimulated his studentWilhelm Friedrich Ostwald (1853–1932) to study colourharmony. Emil Kraepelin (1856–1926), the founder ofmodern psychiatry, is by far the most important experi-mental psychologist who has worked in Estonia. Hissuccessor Wladimir von Tchisch (1855–1922), anotherstudent of Wilhelm Wundt, continued Kraepelin’s workin experimental psychology. The lives of WolfgangKöhler (1887–1967), who was born in Reval (Tallinn),and Oswald Külpe (1862–1915), who graduated fromthe University of Dorpat, extended the link between thehistory of experimental psychology and Estonia. KarlGustav Girgensohn (1875–1925), the founder of theDorpat School of the psychology of religion, stretchedthe use of experimental methods to the study of reli-gious experience.

Introduction

Perhaps it was not pure chance that an event like theGerman–Estonian symposium on experimental psychol-ogy was possible at all, and that it took place on one ofthe most idyllic places in Estonia, the island of Hiiumaa.My goal in this article is to demonstrate that many schol-ars who were born, lived or worked in Estonia took anactive part in the birth of experimental psychology in thenineteenth century and in its later development. From ahistorical point of view, Estonia’s geographical locationis far from fortunate. The fact that such a small nationwith an obscure non-European language survived afterall appears almost as a demographic accident. From anintellectual viewpoint, however, the location of Estoniamay even have had some advantages. Its marginal posi-tion set Estonia into a situation where the dialoguebetween diVerent languages and viewpoints was not onlyan expression of intellectual sophistication but also amatter of survival. The history of experimental psychol-ogy clearly demonstrates that the remote corner as towhich Estonia had to be seen constituted an inseparablepart of the German speaking academic world. Hermannvon Helmholtz in his inaugural lecture as Rector of theUniversity of Berlin talked about the academic freedomof German universities and stressed that one manifesta-tion of it was a complete freedom of movement for thestudents between all universities of the German tongue,from Dorpat to Zurich, Vienna, and Graz (Helmholtz,1896, p. 201).

Georg Friedrich Parrot and the theory of unconscious inferences

Although the University of Tartu was founded in 1632by the decree of the Swedish King Gustavus II Adol-phus, it ceased to exist in 1710 after the Swedish defeat atPoltava when two Baltic provinces, Livland and Estland(Drechsler & Kattel, 2000), were incorporated into

J. Allik Department of Psychology, The Estonian Centre of Behavioural and Health Sciences, University of Tartu, Tiigi 78, Tartu, 50410, EstoniaE-mail: juri.allik@ut.eeTel.: +372-7-375905Fax: +372-7-375900

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Russian empire. The University of Tartu again, thenknown as Dorpat, was reopened by a decree of AlexanderI, issued April 12, 1801, and Georg Friedrich Parrot(1767–1852) became the Wrst rector of the Imperial Uni-versity of Dorpat, being elected by the University Coun-cil consisting of all chaired professors.

Although Parrot’s brilliant administrative skills out-weighed his achievements in physics, he was an advancedtheoretical physicist. During his lifetime, the line betweenphysics and psychology was very thin. In the second vol-ume of his textbook of theoretical physics he described,within the framework of optical phenomena, problems,which without a doubt belong to the category of humanperception (Parrot, 1811). For example, one of hisfavourite subjects was a mechanism by which the dis-tance of objects could be estimated. Parrot also discusseda method by which the duration of visual impression canbe measured. The method by itself was not new and wasearlier known to Ibn al-Hayatam (Alhazen) andLeonardo da Vinci (Wade, 1998, p. 195). If one rotates arod glowing at one end with suYcient speed, the per-ceived trace of light seemed to form an uninterrupted cir-cle. Because the glowing tip of the rod cannot be in allplaces simultaneously, it must mean that the duration ofsensory impression lasts until the rod makes the full turn.Thus, Parrot concluded, it is possible to determine theduration of sensory impressions. According to Parrot’sobservations, the duration of sensory impression isabout a quarter of the second in the dark and about 1/6th of the second in the light (Parrot, 1820), which is oneof the Wrst indications that the perceptual latencydepends on overall illumination. This last value is veryclose to a Wgure reported by the Chevalier Patrice d‘Arcy(1725–1775), who did similar experiments in 1765(Ramul, 1963; Wade, 1998, p. 196). Both values corre-spond closely to those obtained later with much moresophisticated experimental devices.

In September 1839, Parrot published a short noteabout a peculiar visual phenomenon he had observed ina fast-moving train commuting between Pavlovsk andSt. Petersburg, namely the relative diminishing of the sizeof external objects, situated at a relatively small distancefrom the train window (Parrot, 1839). As Parrotobserved, this apparent reduction of the size of objectsdepended upon the speed of their movement. When thespeed of the train attained its ordinary maximum, ward-houses and men, situated close to the train, seemed tohave only half of their regular size, and one might havethe impression, as Parrot put it Wguratively, of beingtransported through a land of dwarfs. As the speed of thetrain lowered, the men and buildings grew in size, andwhen the speed was 10 or 15 ft per second, the objectsappeared approximately in their ordinary size. It seemsthat Parrot’s observations were never conWrmed by otherresearchers, but the explanation he gave to the strangeperceptual phenomenon contained a profound insight(Allik & Konstabel, 2005).

Parrot began his explanation with reference to thesize constancy mechanism: although the size of the

retinal image is known to decrease proportionally to theviewing distance, the perceived size remains unaltered.One of the mechanisms by which the distance can bemeasured is to count the objects between the object andthe eye. It seems that for Parrot it was self-evident thatthe perceived size was a result of syllogistic reasoning:from the recorded retinal size and distance (minor pre-mise) and the inverse proportion rule of retinal projec-tion (major premise), an inference about the size can bemade. This decision is made very rapidly and subjec-tively; we consider the time necessary for these opera-tions to be inWnitely short, so we are not even aware oftheir very existence. According to Parrot, the soul doesnot have the time to judge the distance and visual anglewith the required accuracy. Due to the rapid movementof the locomotive the soul cannot distinguish all theexternal objects that are required for the reliable estima-tion of distance. Thus, the judgment that our soul makeswith regard to the size of the objects in these extremeconditions is based on a preliminary false judgment—theminor of two premises is false. In other words, it is evi-dent Parrot was formulating, here, the concept of uncon-scious inferences which is better known as the concept ofunbewusster Schluss formulated by Hermann vonHelmholtz—the psychic activities that lead us to inferthat in front of us, at a certain place, there is a certainobject of a certain character (Helmholtz, 1910). How-ever, in the year of Parrot’s publication, Helmholtz wasonly 18 years old and would write his Handbuch derPhysiologischen Optik only 20 years later. According toBoring, Helmholtz obviously adopted the idea of uncon-scious inferences while he was in Königsberg andexposed its essentials in a lecture that was published in1855 (Boring, 1957, p. 315). Although the hypothesis ofunconscious inferences was implicit in this paper, it wasnot named as such and was later elaborated by WilhelmWundt in his Beiträge zur Theorie der Sinneswahrneh-mung (Wundt, 1858).

Parrot was not the Wrst to suggest the existence of theinvoluntary reasoning-like operations in order to reach asatisfactory explanation of certain phenomena in thehuman perception (HatWeld, 2002). For example, Alha-zen’s theory of “unconscious inferences” resemblesHelmholtz’ theory of unbewusster Schluss practically inall important details (Bauer, 1911). According to Alha-zen, perceptual judgments occur in an extremely shortinterval of time. The faculty of perceptual judgment doesnot syllogize by ordering and composing words, that fac-ulty perceived the conclusion without need for words orfor repeating and ordering premises (II 26b) (Sabra,1989, p. xxcvi–xcvii).

One remarkable aspect of Parrot’s article was a pro-posed plan of an experiment by which it is possible todetermine the time that the soul uses to form its ideasand make judgments. The idea was to make systematicobservations on the apparent size of locomotives movingat a given speed and placing objects at diVerentmeasured distances. This experimental plan, irrespectiveof its actual accomplishment, clearly recognises the

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possibility of subjecting psychological processes toexperimental study, contrary to Kant’s inXuential opin-ion that no such thing is possible (HatWeld, 1998).

So, although the notion of unconscious inference wasconceptualised nine centuries earlier by Alhazen andindependently became re-invented by Parrot many yearsbefore Helmholtz and Wundt articulated and coined thedoctrine of unconscious inferences, it is Helmholtz andWundt who are usually credited for the achievement andnot Alhazen. Aside from the concept of unconsciousinferences itself, Parrot had the idea that the speed ofmental processes is not inWnitely high and that in princi-ple, it can be determined by systematic observations ofphenomena of the type he observed in the moving train.His way of thinking is in harmony with Fechner,Helmholtz and Wundt, who all, in one or another way,demonstrated that sensory judgments can be quantiWed,that a measurable quantity of time is required for theirexecution, and that they are related to events in the phys-ical environment in a meaningful way. Parrot shared theconviction of the founding fathers of psychology that itis possible to study the phenomena of mind in the samegeneral way that the physical world is studied and can bedescribed in terms of either mechanical or mathematicallaws (Allik & Konstabel, 2005).

The personal equation and Friedrich Struve

In 1811, Parrot organised a special stipend for a talentedphilology graduate, Friedrich Georg Wilhelm Struve(1793–1864), to continue his studies in a completely newdirection—mathematics and astronomy. Only a fewyears later, in 1813, Struve had became the director ofthe Dorpat observatory, and exactly in the same year anew observatory was erected in Königsberg under thesupervision of Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel (1784–1846). Inorder to improve the precision of astronomical observa-tions, Bessel proposed to calibrate observers by estab-lishing their, as it came to be called, personal equations.In 1820, Bessel performed at Königsberg one of the mostimportant experiments in the whole history of experi-mental psychology. He and his assistant Walbeck Wrstselected ten stars, and then they independently observedthe transit of Wve of them in one night and of the remain-ing Wve in the following night, and so on, for Wve nights.Bessel was always found to observe the transit earlierthan Wallbeck. The two observers diVered systematicallyby about 1 s, a time diVerence that was even larger thanthat found between the observations of the AstronomerRoyal Nevil Maskelyne and his assistant David Kinne-brook, participants in one of the most famous incidentsin the prehistory of the experimental psychology(Boring, 1957). In 1823, Bessel had an opportunity torepeat a similar comparison with another assistant Arge-lander. Again, a systematic diVerence was found betweenthe two observers. This convinced Bessel that there areirreducible individual diVerences between observers.

Even if a given observer was consistent with himself ondiVerent trials, his mean judgment time systematicallydisagrees with the same judgment made by anotherobserver. To verify these observations, Bessel was espe-cially eager to compare himself with Struve in Dorpat,who already had earned a reputation as being one of thebest astronomical observers. Having no opportunity fora direct comparison, Bessel sent three of his assistantsWalbeck1, Argelander2 and Knorre to Dorpat in 1821,1823 and 1825, respectively, to compare their observa-tion data with Struve. Through them, Bessel establishedindirectly the relation between the personal observationtimes between himself and Struve. Only in 1834 did Bes-sel and Struve Wnd an opportunity to compare them-selves directly and conWrm the indirect predictions(Boring, 1957, p. 137).3

The further history of this problem is well known: in1861, Wilhelm Wundt constructed his famous pendulum,also known as Wundt’s complication clock, that swungacross a scale and caused a spring to give a click at agiven point of excursion. The basic design reproducedessential properties of Bradley’s “eye and ear” method(cf. Boring, 1957, p. 135) that was used for astronomicalmeasurements. The Wrst series of experiments on com-pound reaction (Boring, 1957, p. 324) were conducted byMax Friedrich in the Wrst psychological laboratoryfounded by Wundt in 1879 (Domanski, 2004).

There is no evidence about Friedrich Struve’s directcontribution to the problem of the personal equationsbesides the practical use of it. However, it was the com-munication between Königsberg and Dorpat that helpedto discover measurable individual diVerences betweenhuman observers, which belongs, despite of its seemingtriviality, to one of the most consequential discoveries inthe whole history of psychology.

Alfred Volkmann and Weber’s Law

Gustav Theodor Fechner’s Elemente der Psychophysics,published in 1860, established a solid foundation forexperimental psychology. As Boring noticed, “withFechner it was born, quite as old, and also quite as

1 In 1821, H. J. Walbeck (1794–1823) was an astronomer in Turku,Finland and he died only 2 years later at the age of 29. In 1819, hecalculated dimensions of the Earth which were very close to the cor-rect values known today.2 Friedrich Wilhelm August Argelander (1799–1875) later becamedirector of the observatory at the University of Bonn.3 There are few errors in the name index of otherwise accurate Bor-ing’s History (Boring, 1957). He is referring to Struve as O.W. Struvewhich is certainly wrong. The correct reference should be FriedrichGeorg Wilhelm Struve whose son Otto Wilhelm was not even bornwhen the Wrst personal equation was determined. The reverse errorhas happened with regard to Knorre. Boring erroneously thinks thatBessel wrote about Ernst Christoph Friedrich Knorre (1759–1810)who was also an astronomer, but he had died 15 years ago when hisson Karl Freidrich Knorre visited Königsberg in 1825 (cf. Petrov &Pinigin, 2002).

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young, as a baby” (Boring 1957, p. 275). Fechner had, ofcourse, predecessors including Ernst Weber after whomFechner named “Weber’s law”. Ernst Heinrich Weber(1795–1878) was a professor of anatomy and physiologyat Leipzig from 1818 and thereafter. Fechner consideredWeber’s law as a cornerstone from which he could moveforward to derive his psychophysical law simply by logi-cal deduction. Therefore, it was the greatest importanceto establish the universality of the Weber’s law beyondtactual perception from where it was established Wrst.

At the time when young Fechner got his degree inmedicine in 1822, another young man, Alfred WilhelmVolkmann (1800–1878) enrolled as a student of medicineat Leipzig in 1821. Together with Rudolph HermannLotze (1817–1881) Fechner and Volkmann formed asmall intellectual group, which dissolved only in 1837when Volkmann received his professorship in Dorpat(Boring, 1957, p. 277). Four years earlier, in 1833,Fechner had married Volkmann’s sister.

The role of Volkmann in the development of psycho-physics is generally acknowledged. Usually it is men-tioned that “in co-operation with Volkmann, Fechnerdeveloped the method of “average error” (already in usein astronomy) for use in visual and tactual measure-ment” (Murphy, 1964, p. 90). It is, however, important tonote that the role of Volkmann was not only to assistFechner, but in 1864, Volkmann also reported indepen-dently that the threshold for length discriminationincreases with the increase of the reference length. Thiswas one of the Wrst demonstrations of Weber’s law in thevisual domain. This fundamental Wnding about distancejudgment—Weber’s law for spatial intervals—has beenreplicated repeatedly since then, for a variety of stimuliand response modes, and was proved to be one of the fewWrmly established and replicable facts of psychology (cf.Burbeck & Hadden, 1993). Volkmann, like Fechnerbefore him, was also interested in the transfer of training.Fechner was one of the Wrst who reported data showingthat learning to write with one hand facilitates the sameactivity with the other hand. In his studies, he was againable to relay on previous studies done by Volkmann whodemonstrated experimentally that the reduction of the“two-point” threshold in certain regions through train-ing lowered the threshold in other regions as well (cf.Murphy 1964, p. 241). He also determined the speed ofeye movements and constructed the Wrst prototype of thetachistoscope (Volkmann, 1859). Volkmann also wrote asection on vision in Wagner’s.4 Handwörterbuch derPhysiologie, which became a standard textbook for thenext half of a century. Among other observations, herepeated his earlier explanation to upright vision: themost natural explanation of upright vision is that it doesnot require an explanation (Volkmann, 1836, p. 41).

Perhaps Volkmann’s most important contribution toexperimental psychology concerns not only visual physi-

ology but also principles of operation of the whole ner-vous system. In 1832, he published in Müller’s Archiv, astudy in which he demonstrated the inhibitory role of thevagus nerve on cardiac activity. Usually the discovery ofa entirely new kind of nervous action—inhibition—iscredited to Volkmann’s teachers in Leipzig University,the Weber brothers (Fulton, 1930, p. 276; Singer &Underwood, 1962, p. 331). It was claimed that Volkmannjust “missed an important opportunity”. Volkmann him-self never regarded the observed eVect as some technicalerror or an uninteresting observation. He realised theimportance of his discovery despite the dominant beliefthat activation could only lead to the increase of nervousactivity (Käbin, 1986, p. 79).

Helmholtz paid respect to Volkmann and cited hiswork in his Handbook of Physiological Optics (1867) 58times (Piper, 2000). Therefore, it is not surprising thatBoring listed Volkmann beside Helmholtz and Fechneras one of the “founding fathers” of the experimental psy-chology (Boring, 1957, p. 384).

Arthur Joachim von Oettingen and the system of harmony

Arthur Joachim von Oettingen (1836–1920) was the old-est of the six Oettingen brothers. Like his two otherbrothers, he became a professor of Tartu University atage 31. Besides physics, which was his main subject, hewas particularly interested in music and held a specialcourse on the perception of music. He summarised hisexplorations in a book called Das Harmoniesystem induale Entwicklung which was recognised by musical the-orists at that time (Oettingen, 1866). Hermann vonHelmholtz, for example, was particularly interested inOettingen’s report according to which the old modalsong tradition was still alive and strong amongEstonians; they had diYculties to master the Protestantplainsong, common in Europe, because of its high lead-ing tone (Ross, 1991). It is interesting that in the princi-pal dispute between August Seebeck5 and Helmholtz,concerning the question whether the perceived pitch isdetermined by the objective Fourier components or not,Oettingen rather took the position of his countrymanrather than Helmholtz’s. In his theory of consonance anddissonance Oettingen, like Seebeck before him, proposedthat higher harmonics can collaborate in the creation ofthe perceived pitch which could depart from the physi-cally present or absent fundamental tone. Ernst Mach,for example, used Oettingen’s harmony theory as a

4 Rudolf Wagner’s son, Adolf Wagner (1835–1917) was a professorof Dorpat University (1865–1868) known as the central theorist of‘state socialism’ (Drechsler, 1997).

5 August Seebeck’s farther, Thomas Seebeck (1770–1831) was bornin Tallinn and, despite the fact that he spent the most part of his lifein Germany, was estimated by his contemporaries as belonging tothe Baltic German elite not only due to his famous career as a phys-icist but also due to his close friendship with Goethe. Thomas See-beck is known in the history of physics with his seminal works inthermo-electricity. He also discovered several new entoptic colorphenomena (Ross, 1991).

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substantial evidence against Helmholtz’ acoustic theory(Mach, 1922, p. 222).

It is certainly not a coincidence that one of Oettin-gen’s students Wilhelm Friedrich Ostwald (1853–1932)winner of the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1909 was alsointerested in the analysis of music and art. As Ostwaldwrites in his memories he attended Oettingen’s lectureson psychology of music and was particularly inspired byhis theory of harmony, which contained several funda-mental discoveries. Although Ostwald found Harmonie-system inspiring it was in his opinion written in suchobscure manner that nobody has really managed to readit, except the author himself and the typesetter. Inspiredby Oettingen’s lectures Ostwald himself tried to applyquantitative methods to the analysis of Beethoven’spiano sonatas (Ostwald, 1926). Unfortunately, Ostwald’sstudies in musical harmony are not widely known andhave been overshadowed by his more celebrated studieson colour harmony (Ostwald, 1918). In 1927, Ostwaldeven lectured in the Bauhaus School of art and made astrong impression on Wassily Kandinsky (Ball, 2003).

Emil Kraepelin and experimental psychology

Emil Kraepelin (Neustrelitz, Germany, 1856—München,1926) is by far the most important experimental psychol-ogist who has been associated with Estonia. The founderof modern psychiatry he became professor of psychiatryat Dorpat University in 1886 when he was 30 years old(Steinberg & Angermeyer, 2001). It was Wundt who sug-gested to his favourite student about medical vocationinstead of the uncertainties of being a psychologist. In hisMemoirs Kraepelin summarises his years in Tartu in thefollowing way: “...besides my clinical training I was ableto hold quite a number of independent lectures aboutcriminal psychology, forensic psychiatry, about the con-science and its disorders and experimental psychology.There was never lack of students for these lectures. I con-sidered psychological discussions, based on Wundt’smodel, to be specially important and I made the studentsmake reports on individual problems” (Kraepelin, 1987,p. 42). As he later confessed, experimental work appealedto him much more than clinical work (Kraepelin, 1987, p.42). There were two main reasons to be not satisWed withhis clinical work: the Wrst was the language barrier6 andthe second was the insuYcient number of patients.Therefore, fortunately to psychology, he concentrated onpsychology. He wrote about it:The conditions for starting a school of psychology inDorpat were favourable. The distinguished physiologist,

Alexander Schmidt, had placed a room in his new instituteat our disposal, which was of great help, as the clinic wastoo far away and had no spare room. The universitymechanics Schulze proved to be an exceptionally skilledand understanding helper and produced a number of wellinvented and carefully planned machines for various inves-tigations. Luckily, I found a lot of keen, self-sacriWcingstudents prepared to devote many, many months’ worksolely to their doctorate theses. Thus, studies were made,which brought important new Wndings with them; forexample the work by Michelson on the depth of sleep, indi-vidual psychology by Oehrn, time sense by Eyner, contrastsensitivity with perception of space by Higier and thediversion of attention by Bertels. DiYculties to overcomeon the technical side were often considerable and I con-stantly admired the patience of the youngsters in with-standing all these obstacles. Sometimes, the physicistArthur von Oettingen gave us his kind advice.” (Kraepelin,1987, pp. 44–45).

Kraepelin found the general scientiWc life in Dorpatstimulating, as there were always a number of youngerprofessors present, who worked with enthusiasm. Hewrote that with the university very near, the universitymembers had active contact with one another in anatmosphere of unconditional equality (Kraepelin,1987, p. 47). In these conditions, Kraepelin pursueddiVerent lines of investigation, including wordassociations:I had set up my own equipment for the measurement ofmental reactions and carried out tests on aphasic and othersuitable psychiatric patients and on manic patients. I madethe surprising discovery that the association’s times wereby no means shorter, but were often longer and very irreg-ular. This fact led me to understand that the Xight of ideaswas not the accelerated consequence of mental images, butwere volatile and instable emerging processes in the con-science” (p. 44).

Among psychological problems, however, the subjectof Kraepelin’s special interest was fatigue. He regardedhis established work curve as his chief contribution.W. Weygandt, who wrote an elaborate obituary in Psy-chologische Arbeiten, revealed that Kraepelin had hopedto receive the Nobel award not for dementia praecox orhis nosological classiWcation but for his results on thework curve (Roback, 1961, p. 308).

It is not surprising that today, almost a century laterof his innovative studies, he remains one of the mostcited behavioural scientists of all times. According to theSocial Sciences Citation Index Kraepelin was cited 6,618times in the period from 1972 to 2005 (November) morethan 200£ every year.

Along with the intensive RussiWcation campaignlaunched in 1889, the autonomy of the University ofDorpat was considerably reduced: rector, deans andprofessors were not elected any more but appointed bythe Minister of Education (the appointment of the rec-tor required approval by the czar himself). Besidesdiminishing the role of Baltic Germans, one of the goalsof these reforms was to prevent people from lower

6 His knowledge of Estonian was quite enough to make a tremen-dous impression on the personell of the Istanbul’s mental asylum hevisited during one of his frequent travels. During his visit a patientwas shown, whose origin was unclear, as he spoke a completely un-known language. The Estonian sailman was, of course, very happyto Wnd someone, who could speak at least few words of his mothertongue with him (Kraepelin, 1987, p. 82).

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strata to study at the university. In order to achieve thisgoal, the study fee was increased from 10 to 50 roublesper year. Typically for the Russian Empire, then andlater, strict quotas of Jews admitted by the universitieswere imposed (Siilivask, 1982, p. 258). Russian becamethe oYcial language of teaching and all German profes-sors who were not able or willing to lecture in Russianhad to leave Tartu. Among those who had to leaveDortpat, or Jurjev, as it was renamed, were Oettingen,Ostwald, and Kraepelin.

Wladimir Tchisch as a successor of Kraepelin

One of the Wrst Russian students of Wundt, WladimirTchisch (1855–1922)7 was appointed as a successor ofKraepelin. When Tchisch arrived at Leipzig in 1884, henaturally was appointed to work with Wundt’s pendu-lum and complication reaction. He noticed in particularthat in some cases a click could be heard before the pen-dulum actually reached the spring; in other cases theclick appeared later when the pendulum had alreadypassed the spring (Tchisch, 1885). Since then diVerenttime paradoxes fascinated philosophers as well as psy-chologists (cf. Dennett, 1991). For example, the apparentlagging behind of a moving object in relation to a shortsound or Xash was repeatedly rediscovered and hasrecently become known under the name of the Flash–Lag EVect (Nijhawan, 1994; Kreegipuu & Allik, 2004).

Concerning his teaching, Tchisch regularly heldcourses on experimental psychology and superviseddoctoral dissertations that had a clear experimental–psychological orientation (Ramul, 1974). From thetitles of dissertations supervised by Tchisch the follow-ing can be named: experiments concerning spatialmemory of the skin (E. Loewenton, 1893); memory ofactive movements (F. Schneider, 1894); the senseof location and its memory (B. Barth, 1894); memoryof visual perceptions (K. Zaborovsky, 1894); compara-tive study of tactile and gustatory sensitivity of womenfrom diVerent social classes (W.V. Dehm, 1894); thechange of pulse and aspiration during diVerent psychi-cal states (G. Hirsch, 1899); an experimental study ofthe skin sensitivity (G. Hildebrand, 1899) (Ramul,1974, p. 107).

The list of these studies characterises Tchisch’s some-what unsystematic interests which nevertheless kept thetradition of experimental psychological investigationsalive at Tartu University. Some of them, especially theinXuence of social factors on perception, anticipated thepopularity of these problems in the subsequent history ofpsychology.

Two experimentalists with Estonian connections

It is impossible to avoid mentioning the two psycholo-gists who never practised their profession in Estonia butwere nevertheless connected to Estonia. They areWolfgang Köhler (1887–1967) and Oswald Külpe (1862–1915)

Wolfgang Köhler (1887–1967), the main theoreticianof gestalt psychology, was born in Tallinn (Reval) in hisparents residence Toomkooli 4 (Schulgasse 9) on the 21stof January, 1887 (Lõo, 2004). His farther, Franz Köhler,was the Headmaster of the German Gymnasium (Doms-chule) and his residence was just across the street. Hismother, Wilhelmine Girgensohn, was a daughter of luth-eran priest. When Köhler was about 6, the family movedto Germany. The main reason for leaving Estonia wasagain the campaign of RussiWcation which put an end toeducation in other languages rather than Russian.

There is no need to reiterate the importance of Wolf-gang Köhler, one of the most distingushed psychologistsof the twentieth century. Besides his illustrious profes-sional career he is an example of extraordinary personalintegrity. Only few German scientists and intellectualshad the courage to protest against the dismissal of Jew-ish scientists after the Nazis took power in January 1933.Köhler was an exception. With the dismissal of JamesFranck, the physicist and Nobel Prize winner in 1925,Köhler made a public statement. On April 28, 1933 hewrote for the Deutsches Allgemeine Zeitung, the last anti-nazi article to be published under the Nazi regime. In thisarticle he wrote that Franck’s dismissal “shows the deep-est reason why all these people are not joining the Party:they feel moral imposition. They believe that only thequality of human being should determine his worth, thatintellectual achievement, character, and obvious contri-bution to German culture retain their signiWcancewhether a person is Jewish or not” (Henle, 1978; Ash,1995, p. 326 V.).

Oswald Külpe, the founder of the Würzburg School,was born near the Baltic coast in Courland which is nowLatvia. He began his studies of psychology under Wundtin Leipzig but then went to Berlin for a semester to studyhistory instead. Afterwards he returned to psychologyagain and studied three semesters in Göttingen withG.E. Müller who had succeeded Lotze (Boring, 1957,pp. 397–398). In 1885, however, he left Göttingen andwent to Tartu for a whole year in order to graduate as anart historian. After receiving his degree, he returned toLeipzig where he wrote, as an assistant of Wundt, anintroductory textbook (Külpe, 1893). Wundt, as it is wellknown, was very skeptical about the possibility of study-ing, in a scientiWcally sound way, anything more intricatethan elementary sensations and simple motor responses.More complex phenomena, like feelings and thoughts,are too Wrmly enclosed by the boundaries of the subjectand their causes are generally hidden from objectiveinvestigation. Külpe, in turn, states in his textbook thatin principle there is no topic of psychological inquiry

7 Sometimes in Russian (means ‘siskin’) is also transcribedinto the Latin alphabet as Chizh. William James’ Principles referredto him as Tschisch (James, 1890).

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which cannot be approached by the experimentalmethod. And experimental psychology is therefore fullywithin its rights when it claims to be the general psychol-ogy (Külpe, 1893). In Wundt’s view, Külpe’s approach topsychology was based on an erroneous overestimation ofthe scope of natural science and reduces psychology to akind of “applied physiology” (Danziger, 1979, p. 211). Inany case, Külpe was unwilling to follow Wundt’s recom-mendations and like Ebbinghaus, who had broughtmemory as another specimen of the “higher mental pro-cesses”, under the scrutiny of experimental methods,decided to bring thought into the laboratory as well(Boring, 1957, p. 402). This basic idea marked the begin-ning of the Würzburg School and the breakdown ofanother barrier on the way of experimental psychology.

Dorpat School of psychology of religion

Karl Gustav Girgensohn (1875–1925) was a cousin ofWolfgang Köhler’s mother, Wilhelmine Girgensohn(Lõo, 2004). In 1903, Girgensohn returned to Dorpatafter studies in Germany for defending his Master Thesis“The religion, its psychical form and its central idea”(Die Religion, ihre psychischen Formen und ihre Zentrali-dee). Seven years later, in 1910, he obtained his doctoraldegree from Berlin University. At the same year animportant event happened which changed his life. HeWnally found an answer to a question that had puzzledhim: is it possible by means of the modern science toexplain the nature of Christianity? A colleague at DorpatUniversity introduced Girgensohn to the revolutionarywork of the Würzburg School (WulV, 1991, p. 554). In1910 he accepted Külpe’s invitation to spend a term withhim at Bonn. Girgensohn soon became a convincedadherent of the Würzburg School procedures. Hebelieved that the method of experimental introspectionsuits ideally to the study of religious experiences and canresolve the debate of the psychological nature of religion.

In 1911 Girgensohn began his experiments by labori-ously recording the observations of 14 individuals,including himself. He presented to his subjects not verywell known texts from various theological writers, andrecorded the thoughts and feelings as they arose in hissubjects while they were reading the texts. Girgensohnnot only recorded the associations of his subject, but alsointerviewed them in order to further explore theirresponses to the texts. In this Wrst experiment, each par-ticipant was tested on 26 diVerent texts. The work lastedfor 2 years and the Wrst results of the Wrst experimentalstudy of religious experience were summarised in 1913.In 1921 his monumental book containing more than 700pages was published (Girgensohn, 1921). Girgensohn’sideas inspired many people and as WulV (1991, p. 16)wrote: “Students and visiting scholars found their way toDorpat and, after 1919, to Greifswald and then to Leip-zig, in order to work with Girgensohn”. This group ofpeople formed an intellectual unity which is still called

the Dorpat School of religious psychology (WulV, 1985).After Girgensohn’s unexpected death in 1925, WernerGruehn (1887–1961) became the leader of the Dorpatschoool. The full program of the Dorpat School is repre-sented in the large handbook Contemporary Piety(Gruehn, 1956). David WulV’s (1991) most comprehen-sive treatise on psychology of religion devotes an entirechapter to Girgensohn and the Dorpat School.

The history of psychology can be seen as a strugglefor a deWnition of the borderline separating psychologi-cal issues allowing for an experimental approach andissues that do not. Kant’s pessimistic dictum that “noother thinking subject can be subjected to our experi-ments in accordance with purpose” still captivated theminds of most psychologists (Ramul, 1960). Many areas,including that of human thought which Wundt believedto remain terra incognita forever, were already emanci-pated from Kant’s moratorium. Religious experience, asattacked by the Dorpat School, certainly belonged tothose topic least expected to the subject of systematicexperimental analysis.

Concluding remarks

In 1919, after Estonia had obtained independence, TartuUniversity became a national university with instructionlanguage being primarily Estonian. The Wrst professor ofpsychology was Konstantin Ramul (1879–1975) who isprimarily known as a historian of psychology (Ramul,1963; Ramul, 1974; Ramul, 1960). In 1921, one ofRamul’s assistants Juhan Tork (1889–1980)8 spent onesemester in Leipzig where he attended, among the others,lectures of Wilhelm Wundt. Returning from Germany,he brought with him equipment that was needed tolaunch a laboratory of experimental psychology.Although this laboratory mainly served for teaching pur-poses, it played, together with Ramul’s general theoreti-cal attitudes (cf. Ramul, 1929), an essential constituent inkeeping the experimental research tradition alive evenduring the period of Soviet occupation (Allik, 1992).Without this tradition it would have been absolutelyimprobable that in 2003, 48 articles were published inJournals and other sources indexed by the PsychINFOdatabase with at least one author having an EstonianaYliation. Divided by the number of population it gives36.3 articles per million of population which is, for exam-ple, only slightly less than the same indicator ofGermany (42.7) but a little bit more than that of France(28.8).9

8 Juhan Tork is an author of the most important psychological studythat was carried out between two wars. In 1940, he published doc-toral dissertation (Tork, 1940) on the intelligence of Estonian chil-dren based on the study of 6,000 schoolchildren (cf. Must, Must, &Raudik, 2003).9 There were 3,527 and 1,732 articles of which one author either hadGerman or French aYliation, respectively.

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Acknowledgements I would like to thank Dirk Vorberg and a re-viewer for valuable comments and suggestions.

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