Introduction to the psychology of the experiment

Introduction to the psychology of the experiment opened a new period in the history of psychological science. The first psychological experimental studies unfolded on the basis of associative doctrine. However, associative psychology, embarking on a new path and taking an important step towards rapprochement with natural science, did not in any way want to compromise its theoretical principles: the introspective concept of consciousness, the doctrine of inner experience and the subjective psychological method. She retained her concept of the structure of consciousness and the associative laws that determine the course of psychic phenomena. Still claiming the rejection of "metaphysics", which meant the philosophical problems of science, psychology and in the new conditions proceeded from the ideological interpretation of the nature of the psychic. As before, she considered her task to be a description and classification of psychic facts, and everything that was given to consciousness was the criterion for them.
Convergence with physiology was carried out on the basis of the theory of the psychophysical, or rather, psychophysiological parallelism. The psychological experiment was based on a combination of objective physiological methods, borrowed primarily from the physiology of the sense organs, with an introspective method. Objective research tools were used, as adherents of experimental psychology asserted, in order to create better conditions for introspection and for accurate recording of the results obtained in this way. However, for higher mental processes, among which was thinking, this connection of mental and physiological processes was denied and they remained outside the limits of experimental research. This distinction served as the basis for the division of empirical psychology into two disciplines: physiological psychology and autonomous - the study of mental processes without regard to physiological ones.
Associative psychology experimental research not only did not help to overcome the difficulties that it faced, but also aggravated them. The solution of questions of thinking in this period clearly reveals those internal contradictions that prove to be destructive for associative psychology. In the new conditions there is a separation of sensations from thinking, which strikes the very theoretical basis of associationism — the single associative principle of building all mental formations from the simplest states of consciousness. Deepening this gap, Wundt also proposed a special method for studying thinking - studying it from the products of human culture, which actually replaced the study of the psychology of thinking with a history of culture. Leaving the primacy of the associative principle for lower forms of mental activity, Wundt approves a new principle of activity for higher forms of mental life. He develops the theory of apperception as a synthetic process of a higher order than the associative ones. In apperception, he sees the ultimate determining factor of mental activity, considering that in the stream of consciousness phenomena their associations are directed by apperceptive processes.