The First Laboratory of the Mind

In 1879, in Leipzig, Wilhelm Wundt opens the first laboratory dedicated to experimental study of the mind. Psychology ceases to be a branch of philosophy to become a science of measurement. Wundt wants to subject mental life to experimental method: his laboratory mainly measures reaction times — the interval, of a few hundredths of a second, between a stimulus and the subject's response, supposed to reveal the duration of elementary mental operations.

The approach rests on controlled introspection: trained observers describe their sensations under strictly regulated conditions. The ambition is to decompose consciousness into simple elements, as chemistry decomposes matter. Today experimental introspection is largely abandoned, but the institution of the laboratory remains.

Leipzig's laboratory becomes a worldwide matrix. Students from all over Europe and the United States are trained there before founding their own centers — James, Cattell, Titchener. Wundt durably imposes the idea that the mind can be measured, even if the tools have changed.