Fuchs A H
Department of Psychology, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine 04011-8469, USA.
Hist Psychol. 2000 Feb;3(1):3-19. doi: 10.1037/1093-4510.3.1.3.
Professors of mental philosophy who taught and wrote textbooks in colleges and universities in the United States before the Civil War contributed significantly to the development of the new psychology that replaced mental philosophy in the last quarter of the 19th century. Their contributions have been neglected in textbooks on the history of psychology, even those devoted to the history of psychology in the United States. These mental philosophers eased the transition to, and influenced the nature of, the new psychology in the United States by establishing a place in the curriculum for mental philosophy that the new psychology came to occupy; by identifying the topics for laboratory methods to address; by pursuing an empirical, inductive, scientific approach to the study of the mind; and by their tradition of functional analysis that came to characterize psychology in the United States.
在内战前在美国学院和大学教授并编写教科书的精神哲学教授们，对19世纪最后25年取代精神哲学的新心理学的发展做出了重大贡献。他们的贡献在心理学史教科书中被忽视了，甚至在那些专门讲述美国心理学史的教科书中也是如此。这些精神哲学家通过在课程中为新心理学后来占据的精神哲学确立一席之地，从而缓和了向美国新心理学的过渡并影响了其性质；通过确定实验室方法要解决的主题；通过采用经验主义、归纳法、科学的方法来研究心智；以及通过他们的功能分析传统，这种传统后来成为美国心理学的特征。
