author
Edward Bradford Titchener
1867–1927
A leading early psychologist, he helped establish experimental psychology in the United States and became the thinker most closely linked with structuralism. His work aimed to break conscious experience into its basic elements, and his influence shaped a generation of students at Cornell.
1 Audiobook
A Beginner's Psychology
by Edward Bradford Titchener
About the author
Born in Chichester, England, on January 11, 1867, Edward Bradford Titchener studied at Oxford and later worked with Wilhelm Wundt in Leipzig. In 1892 he joined Cornell University, where he spent the rest of his career and built one of the most influential psychology laboratories in the United States.
Titchener is best known for developing and promoting structuralism, an approach that tried to analyze the mind by describing the basic parts of conscious experience. He also played an important role in establishing experimental psychology as a serious academic field in America, and reference works consistently identify him as one of its major early figures.
He died in Ithaca, New York, on August 3, 1927. Although structuralism itself did not remain dominant, his teaching, research program, and institutional influence helped define what modern psychology looked like in its early decades.