55 WUTSSBURG SCHOOL

It is a group of scientists headed by O. Külpe, a Snemetsky psychologist, who studied at the beginning of the 20th century. at the University of Würzburg (Bavaria), higher psychological processes (thinking, will) through a laboratory experiment in combination with a modified method of introspection (“experimental self-observation”, in which the person undergoing the test carefully observed the dynamics of the sensations experienced by him at each of the stages of instruction execution) . The German psychologists K. Marbe, N. A. Buhler, the English psychologist G. Watt, the Belgian psychologist A. Mishott and others belonged to the Würzburg school (VS).

It was revealed that thinking is a mental process, the laws of which are not reduced either to the laws of logic or to the laws of the origin of associations.

The peculiarity of mental processes was explained by the fact that associations are selected in comparison with the tendencies created by the subject's task. The organizing role was guided by the installation anticipating the search for a solution, which some representatives of the High School considered to be the “installation of consciousness”, others as an unconscious act (since it is hidden from introspection).

In contrast to the perceptions generally accepted at that time, VS concluded that there are non-sensory components in the mind (mental actions and senses and meanings that are independent of sensory images). Therefore, the specificity of the concept of VS is usually considered in that it included the concept of ugly thinking in psychology. The process of thinking was studied by her as a change of operations, which sometimes acquire affective tension.

The works of psychologists of the Higher School of Education set a number of major problems that relate to the qualitative differences between thinking and other cognitive processes, revealed the limitations of the associative concept, its inability to logically explain the selectivity and direction of acts of consciousness. But at the same time, thinking without any images (“pure” thinking) was wrongfully opposed to its other forms, and the dependence of mental activity on speech and practical activity was ignored.

The idealistic HS methodology, which reflected the influence of the German philosophers F. Brent-but and E. Husserl, prevented the disclosure of the real causes of mental processes.

The data obtained by the high school was criticized by representatives of other schools of experimental psychology who also used the introspection method (V. Wundt, E. B. Titchener, G. E. Muller), which led to a crisis of the introspective direction in general.