Chi osserva chi? Oswald Külpe e la Würzburger Schule su introspezione ed esperimento in psicologia

Who observes whom? Oswald Külpe and the Würzburg School on introspection and experiment in psychology. The progress of scientific psychology during the late 19th century brought a new topic into the long-discussed issue of self-observation, namely that of psychological experiment. Authors as Wundt considered this method the instrument to make introspection scientifically valuable, thus maintaining the old idea of psychology as the science of looking into oneself. Towards the end of the century, though, Avenarius proposed a new model of psychology, in which psychophysical experiment was no longer a mere aid for self-observation, rather becoming a new paradigm for psychology. In his Grundriss Külpe embraced this new idea of psychology as a science based on the observation of the dependency between the brain and the psychic contents, and consequently as a collective research involving more than just one person looking into himself. Although later Külpe and his followers – the so-called Würzburger Schule – rejected the psychophysical approach, they kept the idea that psychological observation was not self-observation, since psychology could become an objective and general science only through experiments in which the researcher registered the experiences of a third person.