THE PROBLEMS OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 



BY EDWARD BRADFORD TITCHENER 



[Edward Bradford Titchener, Sage Professor of Psychology, Cornell University, 

 since 1895. b. Chichester, England, January 11, 1867. M.A. Oxon; Ph.D. 

 Leipzig; LL.D. University of Wisconsin; Research Student in Physiology, 

 Oxford, 1889-90; Extension Lecturer in Biology, Oxford, 1892. Assistant 

 Professor of Psychology, Cornell University, 1892-95. Fellow of Associa- 

 tion for the Advancement of Science; Member of American Philosophical 

 Society; Neurological Society, London; Aristotelian Society, London; Fellow 

 of Zoological Society; Hon. Member of Mind Association. Author of An Out- 

 line of Psychology; A Primer of Psychology; Experimental Psychology; and 

 translations of several psychological works.] 



THE first difficulty that confronts one, as one attempts to envisage 

 the problems of experimental psychology, is the difficulty of defini- 

 tion. What is a psychological experiment? What is the scope of 

 experimental psychology? Is experiment simply a method of work, 

 applicable to all or to some special parts of the psychological system; 

 or is experimental psychology a distinct branch of psychology, 

 sharply marked off from other and coordinate branches? 



The programme of this Congress would seem to have decided the 

 issue in the latter sense; for we find sections of General Psychology, 

 of Comparative and Genetic Psychology, of Abnormal Psychology, 

 and of Social Psychology, arranged alongside of our own Section 

 of Experimental Psychology. If, then, I wished to take shelter 

 behind the plan of the programme, I might, with some show of 

 justification, confine myself to the discussion of those problems in 

 normal, human, adult psychology which still form the staple material 

 of experimental investigation in the laboratories, and might omit 

 all reference to the extensions of the experimental method to out- 

 lying fields. Such a course would, nevertheless, be unsatisfactory. 

 The extensions of the method are coming to play a larger and larger 

 part in psychological discussions and in our psychological literature; 

 and it behoves us to take up a stand with regard to them, positive 

 or negative, appreciative or critical. I shall try not to shirk this 

 duty. Let me say, however, at the outset and I shall have more 

 to say upon the matter presently that, whatever else experi- 

 mental psychology may be, there can be no doubt that the subjects 

 to which the programme apparently limits us are experimental 

 psychology. The examination, under strictly controlled and pro- 

 perly varied conditions, of the normal, adult, human mind, this 

 is psychological experiment in its pure, primary, and typical form. 

 And it is this typical experimental psychology the problems of which 

 we have, in the. first place, to consider. 



