Prewar & Postwar Psychology

Abstract

This chapter sketches the ecosystem of psychology in Europe during the decades preceding the Great War and in its aftermath, as crystallized in competing schools of thought, to provide the framework required to delve into the psychological universe of Taghi Erani. Psychology as science of the mind (versus psychology as science of behavior), the forerunner of modern-day cognitive science, articulated by Wundt and applied to individual and societal psychology, is the strand critical for an appreciation of Taghi Erani’s foray in psychology. Wundt’s school of thought, placing volition as the central problem of psychology, highlighting the plasticity of behavior shaped by neurobiological and social–experiential conditions, provides a counterpoint to essentialist interpretations of human nature and behavior, in vogue after the Great War, man as innately depraved.