Wundt’s Phoenix: Examining the Death and Revitalization of Völkerpsychologie

Abstract

Wilhelm Wundt is remembered as one of the founding fathers of psychology for introducing the field to the empirical experimentation and data collection. However, Wundt focused a large part of his effort on developing the lesser-heard-of Völkerpsychologie. From the evidence, it is clear that this work was what Wundt was concerned with for most of his academic life. What is Völkerpsychologie? Why did it not become a dominant field in psychology, unlike Wundt's other works? And could it be making a come-back in modern psychology?