Edward b.titchener

The Anglo-American psychologist Edward Bradford Titchener (1867-1927) was the head of the structural school of psychology.

Edward Titchener was born on Jan. 11, 1867, in Chichester, England. Thefamily was old and distinguished, but there was little wealth. By scholarship, Titchener entered Malvern College, a top Anglican preparatory school, and demonstrated characteristic drive andexcellence. One year, when school awards were presented by the visiting American poet James Russell Lowell, Titchener was called so often that Lowell remarked, "Mr. Titchener, I am tired of seeing your face."The family intended Titchener for the Anglican clergy, but his interests were not in religion. In 1885 he entered Brasenose College, Oxford, on a classics scholarship but soon turned to a study ofbiology and then comparative psychology. He met Sir John Scott Burdon-Sanderson, one of England's first experimental biologists, and two great exponents of Darwinism, T. H. Huxley and John GeorgeRomanes. Titchener remained interested in comparative psychology, but there was not enough structure or rigor in the subject matter to satisfy him.

A few years earlier Wilhelm Wundt in Leipzig hadfounded psychology as a systematic and experimental science of the human mind. Burdon-Sanderson suggested that Titchener do his graduate work there in the "new psychology." With Wundt, Titchener found thekind of study he had been seeking, and this analytic study of human experience occupied him for the rest of his life.

After receiving his doctorate in 1892, Titchener accepted a position in therecently founded laboratory of psychology at Cornell University. He quickly rose to full professor and head of the department of psychology when psychology became independent from philosophy. To fill thevoid of textbooks in experimental psychology, he published his Outline of Psychology (1897) and his monumental four-volume Experimental Psychology (1901-1905). He was an inspiring speaker, and his...