(
In 1916, an eminent psychologist recorded his impressio...)
In 1916, an eminent psychologist recorded his impressions of the fledgling film industry. His penetrating and prescient observations foretold the most modern developments of the cinematic art, and his classic survey, The Film: A Psychological Study, remains a text of enduring relevance to movie historians as well as students of film and psychology.
Ranging from considerations of the viewer's perception of on-screen depth and motion to examinations of the cinema's distinguishing and unique characteristics as an art form, this study arrives at strikingly modern conclusions about movies and their psychological values.
Hugo Münsterberg: Legends in the History of Psychology
(A Psychology Legend
Hugo Münsterberg was one of the most...)
A Psychology Legend
Hugo Münsterberg was one of the most stimulating thinkers in the history of psychology. A psychological polymath he conducted pioneering research within industrial (I/O), experimental, applied and clinical psychology. Hugo Münsterberg was also a passionate advocate of forensic psychology, a field in which he carried out innovative research into such things as witness memory, false confessions and the role of hypnosis in court. One of his earliest experiments tested subjects’ ability to discriminate between sounds heard in quick succession, the findings of which almost sixty years later were included as part of the preparation for the trial (which for obvious reasons never actually took place) of Lee Harvey Oswald to help address the question of how many shots had been fired during the assassination of President Kennedy.
Included in this tribute to Hugo Münsterberg is a brief account of his life, work and legacy written by William Stern shortly after Münsterberg's death in 1916, Münsterberg's presidential address on the topic of psychology and history which he delivered to the American Psychological Association in 1898; and a full-text copy of Münsterberg's landmark publication On The Witness Stand: Essays on Psychology and Crime which was originally published in 1908.
On the Witness Stand: Essays on Psychology and Crime
(THERE are about fifty psychological laboratories in the U...)
THERE are about fifty psychological laboratories in the United States alone. The average educated man has hitherto not noticed this. If he chances to hear of such places, he fancies that they serve for mental healing, or telepathic mysteries, or spiritistic performances. What else can a laboratory have to do with the mind? Has not the soul been for two thousand years the domain of the philosopher? What has psychology to do with electric batteries and intricate machines? Too often have I read such questions in the faces of visiting friends who came to the Harvard Psychological Laboratory in Emerson Hall and found, with surprise, twenty-seven rooms overspun with electric wires and filled with chronoscopes and kymographs and tachistoscopes and ergographs, and a mechanic busy at his work. The development of this new science could remain unnoticed because it was such a rapid one, surprising in its extent even to those who started it. When, as a young student, I went to the University of Leipzig in the eighties of the last century, the little psychological laboratory there, founded by Professor Wundt, was still the only one in the world. No Western country college would to-day be satisfied with those poor little rooms in which the master of the craft made his experiments with his few students. But since that time the Leipzig workshop has been steadily growing, and every year has seen the foundation of new institutes by the pupils of Wundt, and later by their pupils. The first German laboratory outside of Leipzig was the one which I founded in Freiburg just twenty years ago. At about the same time Stanley Hall and Cattell brought the work from Leipzig over the ocean. Today there exists hardly a university which has not opened a workshop for this youngest of the natural sciences.
On the Witness Stand: Essays on Psychology and Crime (Classic Reprint)
(Hugo Munsterburg was a pioneer of applied psychology. A l...)
Hugo Munsterburg was a pioneer of applied psychology. A long time professor of Harvard who struggled to separate his academic passions from his longing for his homeland in Germany, he created an inspirational storm in the quiet Boston town. This work is the combination of several articles previously published in journals and academic magazines where Munsterburg discusses the manifold psychological factors which impact on the outcome of a trial. Using this work, he illuminated a path for those of a rational or scientific bent to investigate the facts relayed by witnesses using experimental psychological methods and a background understanding of the western legal tradition. Amongst other pioneering work, he is one of the first to research the dynamics of a jury and its impact on judicial outcomes.
In 'On the Witness Stand, Essays in Psychology and Crime', the author does not question only individuals but puts our whole set of assumptions about witness testimony on trial. In a way, heavily reminiscent of Cartesian doubt, Munsterburg questions whether two witnesses to the same crime would remember the same thing and if they initially remembered the same incident, would they continue to do so? Would they perceive the same incident to begin with or would they walk through similar but ultimately parallel worlds?
In his search for the truth, Munsterburg goes so far as to describe his own faulty remembrances as a witness, making every attempt to deliver the truth in good faith. As a reader you will be gripped but made thrillingly uncertain about your perceptions, beliefs and memories. Take any memory and ask yourself, did it really happen that way?
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Hugo Munsterberg on Film: The Photoplay: A Psychological Study and Other Writings
(Hugo M&nsterberg's The Photoplay (1916) is one of the fir...)
Hugo M&nsterberg's The Photoplay (1916) is one of the first and most important early works of film theory. M&nsterberg's work on the emerging art of cinema remains a key document for film scholars, but it has long been out of print. In this new edition, Allan Langdale provides a critical introduction to the seminal text and collects numerous hard-to-find writings on film by M&nsterberg.
Hugo Münsterberg was an American psychologist and philosopher, who was interested in the applications of psychology to law, business, industry, medicine, teaching, and sociology.
Background
Hugo Münsterberg was born on June 1, 1863, in Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland), then a port city in West Prussia. His father, Moritz Münsterberg, was a lumber merchant who bought lumber in Russia and sold it in England. The business took his father frequently abroad and he always returned with glowing accounts of foreign countries, which undoubtedly stimulated the young son's imagination.
His mother, Anna Münsterberg, was an artist and although she took devoted care of her four sons, and supervised her household in true German thoroughness, she had sufficient time to continue her painting and pen-and-ink drawings.
The boys were encouraged in their love of good books, and Hugo and his brother Otto also devoted much time to music, the former playing the 'cello and the latter the violin.
Education
Münsterberg's education began with kindergarten. After a few years at a private school, he entered the Gymnasium of Danzig at the age of nine. His mother died when he was twelve, and this first and great sorrow changed him from a child into a thoughtful and serious youth. During his school years he engaged in many intellectual pursuits outside of the regular curriculum. When he was only fifteen he diverted himself by compiling a dictionary of foreign words used in German. He also amused himself with the study of Arabic and Sanskrit, and dipped into archeology.
In 1882 Münsterberg passed the final examination of the Gymnasium with credit, and as he desired to see more of the world, he spent a semester at the University of Geneva, where he improved his knowledge of the French language and literature.
In September 1882, he began his serious studies at the University of Leipzig. He started with social psychology but soon changed to medicine.
In 1883 Münsterberg attended lectures by Wilhelm Wundt and was so deeply impressed by the great teacher of psychology that he determined to devote himself to that subject, and entered the psychological laboratory at Leipzig, which has been the training ground of many American psychologists. He continued his study of medicine, however, along with psychology and passed the preliminary examination in the former subject in 1884.
In July 1885, he received his Doctor of Philosophy degree in psychology, his dissertation being upon the doctrine of natural adaptation. Münsterberg then went to Heidelberg to continue his medical studies, and in the summer of 1887 he received his medical degree and also passed an examination which permitted him to lecture as "privatdocent" at Freiburg.
Career
In 1887 Münsterberg lectured principally in philosophy. There was no psychological laboratory in the university, so he equipped rooms in his own house with apparatus, and attracted many students from Germany and foreign countries. In 1891 he was promoted to an assistant professorship.
In 1889 Münsterberg had attended the First International Congress of Psychology at Paris, and here it was that he first met William James. They corresponded frequently for the next few years, and James was so impressed by the young man's genius that in 1892 he invited him to come to Harvard for three years to take charge of the psychological laboratory, which was then in old Dane Hall. Münsterberg accepted, after obtaining leave of absence from Freiburg. He was highly successful as a teacher and an administrator and was offered a permanent professorship at the end of his three years' appointment, but he preferred to postpone the decision to settle in America and returned to Freiburg for two years.
Harvard, however, sent him urgent invitations to return, and in 1897 he yielded to the persuasive letters of President Eliot and William James. The decision was, as it turned out, a crucial one in his career, for he remained at Harvard until his death, and devoted himself without reserve to the furtherance of American psychology and to the education of the American youth.
Münsterberg soon began to give public lectures in various cities throughout the country, an activity that occupied much of his time in later years. The department of philosophy was sorely in need of a building of its own, and Münsterberg was one of the most active members in arousing interest in this project, and in raising funds for the purpose.
On Monday, May 25, 1903, the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the cornerstone of Emerson Hall was laid, and soon thereafter Münsterberg saw his dream come true of a laboratory especially equipped for experimental psychology. In the same year he took a prominent part in insuring the success of the Congress of Arts and Science at the St. Louis Exposition.
Besides his scientific and literary work, Münsterberg gave numerous lectures throughout the country on both psychological and cultural subjects. He carried on an extensive correspondence with the leading men of Europe and America and also found time to test his belief in the application of psychological methods to practical affairs, one of his first ventures being in the detection of crime. He also paved the way for the more extensive use of psychology in industry, medicine, arts, and education, and may justly be called one of the pioneers in the field of applied psychology.
In the laboratory he directed the research of a large group of students, and occasionally he gave psychotherapeutic treatment to patients whose cases seemed likely to yield data of scientific value. He was interested in psychic research, and although firmly convinced from his experience and his theory of mind that there was no such thing as mental telepathy or spiritism, he took part in a few scientific investigations of such alleged phenomena.
In 1910 Münsterberg was appointed exchange professor from Harvard to the University of Berlin. Inspired by the belief that harmony among nations could be brought about only by fostering the cultural ties between them, he devoted much of his time while in Berlin to the creation of the America Institute. On his return to Harvard, he became more engrossed than ever in applied psychology and devised many ingenious tests which he and his students tried out on the personnel of a number of large industrial plants.
With characteristic impulsiveness, Münsterberg made a hurried trip to Berlin in April 1912, to attend the meeting of German experimental psychologists. His last visit to his fatherland was in the summer of the same year, and although he was needing a vacation, the inner drive for creative work kept him busy on a book on applied psychology for part of the time.
The last years of his life were full of stress and sorrow. He was devoted to America, but he always remained loyal to his own country, and so from the first days of war until his death, he continued to write books and numerous newspaper and magazine articles in defense of Germany's action and in explanation of her motives and ideals. He was violently criticized and attacked from many quarters, and lost numerous friendships of long standing. He faced the storm courageously, but he felt the situation keenly, and the strain undoubtedly undermined his strength. On December 16, 1916, he had to walk to his lecture at Radcliffe against a stiff, cold wind. Münsterberg was exhausted on his arrival and died on the lecture platform before he had finished his opening sentence.
Achievements
Hugo Münsterberg has been listed as a noteworthy psychologist by Marquis Who's Who.
In philosophy, Hugo Münsterberg was an idealist of the type of Fichte. In psychology he had two principles. He believed that the causal law held for mental phenomena in so far as they were correlated with physiological processes. Here he was a determinist. When, however, Münsterberg considered the mental from the viewpoint of values, he believed in freedom.
Quotations:
"Whenever a great movement sweeps through the civilized world, it generally starts from the recognition of a great social wrong and from the enthusiasm for a thorough change. "
"Give to the child the truth, but that truth which makes life worth living, that truth which teaches him that life is a task and a duty, and that his true health and soundness and value will depend upon the energy with which he makes the world and his own body with its selfish desires subservient to unselfish ideals. "
Membership
In 1898, Hugo Münsterberg was elected president of the American Psychological Association.
Personality
Hugo Münsterberg was never familiar, yet always gracious and genial. He had a keen sense of humor, generosity of spirit, and warmth of heart, and delighted in the companionship of his friends. He was firm in his own opinion, and aggressive in debate, yet tolerant of the views of others.
He took little physical exercise, but he had great energy and his mind was never idle. Münsterberg was an unusually logical and clear thinker.
Connections
On August 7, 1887, Hugo Münsterberg married to Selma Oppler of Strassburg.
Father:
Moritz Münsterberg
Moritz Münsterberg had two sons with his first wife, Otto and Emil, and two with Anna, Hugo and Oscar.
