Titchener’s System of Psychology

Abstract

Titchener, it has been observed, “always disliked labels as pinning one down” (Boring 1927, p. 497). He did not recognize himself as an “introspectionist.” Indeed, so extreme was his dislike of labels that he, characteristically, did not refer to “his [own] school by any other words than ‘we’” (Boring 1927, p. 497). Titchener did find the term “structuralism” for his own system somewhat useful, because it stressed the contrast between his own approach and that of functional psychology, but he was never happy with this nomenclature (Evans 1984, pp. 120–122).