James Drever

The Present Position in Psychology

ALMOST exactly a quarter of a century ago-in the year I906the George Combe Department of Psychology was established in this University, thanks to the farsightedness of Professor PringlePattinson, who has, to our regret, now gone from among us, and Professor Sir Edward Sharpey Schafer, who is happily with us still, and to the generosity of the George Combe Trustees. In his inaugural lecture, delivered in the old Natural History classroom, my predecessor, Dr. W. G. Smith, discussed the scope and relations of modern psychology. He emphasized the fact that modern psychology had extended its boundaries far beyond the psychology taught in the past in this and other universities, that it now included child psychology, animal psychology, abnormal psychology, physiological psychology, and experimental psychology, all developed studies, and that its growth in importance had been commensurate with its expansion. During the quarter of a century that has since elapsed the expansion of psychology has been, if possible, even more striking. The number of psychologists has increased tenfold, the practical applications of psychology have grown and extended in the most astonishing way, and popular interest in the science has been awakened in a way and to an extent quite unknown twenty-five years ago. It has seemed to me, therefore, that a review of the present position in psychology may not be without value, and I have accordingly chosen for the subject of my inaugural lecture very much the same subject as my predecessor chose. One of the oldest of studies, but one of the youngest of sciences, psychology can hardly be said to have a history of its own until towards the end of the nineteenth century. As a definite science, professing the general aims, and acknowledging the general principles and standards of the physical and natural sciences, its beginnings may most appropriately be dated from the formal establishment of Wundts psychological laboratory at Leipzig in 1879. Of course the study of psychology did not begin in I879. Before this time for more than two thousand years psychology had been studied and taught by philosophers, but as an integral part of philosophy. The year I879 marks the beginnings of the breakaway of psychology from philosophy, the first attempt of psychology to stand on its own feet 1 Inaugural Lecture to the Chair of Psychology at the University of Edinburgh.