Psychology’s first major theoretical position or school came from the writings of Wilhelm Wundt, a professor of philosophy, who founded the first formal laboratory of Psychology at the University of Leipzig, in Germany, in 1879. Wundt’s laboratory was the site of formal research conducted by many students such as Tichener, Weber etc., who became some of the most renounced psychologists in the world. According to Wundt, the subject matter of psychology was immediate conscious experience. The mind is the sum total of various mental experiences (thoughts, feelings, sensation, attention etc.) and consciousness is the total sum of the mental experiences. Psychologists thus should seek to understand the structure of the mind. Therefore, the school came to be known as structuralism. The structuralists hoped to develop a sort of “mental chemistry” by analyzing experience into basic “elements” or “building blocks”.
To study the elements of the mind Wundt developed “introspection method” – a method in which trained individuals report in detail on their conscious experiences in response to specific stimuli (e.g., sounds, optical illusions, other visual stimuli) that are presented to them under controlled conditions. Wundt’s studies led him to conclude that there are three basic elements; which he called sensations (the direct products of external stimulation), images (sensation like experience produced by the mind), and feelings (the emotional component of an experience).
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