DESIGN QUESTIONS I N ARCHIVAL RESEARCH* WOLFGANG Q. BRINGMANN

An examination of the recent literature in the history of psychology reveals that authors have generally made extensive use of primary sources when discussing the theories and scientific contributions of eminent psychologists. Unfortunately, such original writings have rarely been employed in their biographical accounts. Instead, one finds a far too heavy reliance on a small number of classical texts whose data and interpretations are generally accepted without any apparent attempts to independently assess their validity. If biographical writings in the history of psychology are to generally attain the high standards of works like Ellenberger’s history of dynamic psychiatry (6), researchers in our field will have to explore and utilize archival sources to a far greater degree than has been done in the past.

Archives have been quite clearly defined by Homes (9) : They are the documents of some creating agency and have a special meaning because of that fact. A second characteristic is that they were created in the course of official business, so to speak. Their purpose was to get things done, and they have (or had) a special order established by their creator for his own purposes, and when preserved in that order, they are revealing of those purposes. Each document is given and later exhibits a relationship to all the others that is meaningful and that can easily be obscured or lost if this order is tampered with. A final characteristic is that all these documents are tied in one complete set or body that is unique and possesses a kind of “organic” character, a whole which has a meaning from and is greater than the sum of its parts [p. 41.

Thus, an archive stands in marked contrast to a library collection in that the original context of documents is preserved.

Archival collections, which have been of particular value to me in my researches in the origin and development of 19th century German psychology, fall into three categories (12, 16) : First, there are public archives established by local, state and national governing bodies. These archives are usually open to the public. Institu- tional and organizational archives are often semipublic. The archives of various church and educational organizations are included here. Finally, there are family and personal archives which are private. Some of these have the characteristics of true archives. More frequently private collections consist of isolated and selected documents which are not preserved in context.

*The Symposium on Archival Research in the History of Ps chology was held on 31 August 1973 in Montreal, Canada, in the framework pf the 81st Annual Jonvention of the American Psy- chological Association, joined by the Canadian Psychological Association. I

WOLFGANG G. BRINGMANN holds an appointment as Professor of Psychology at the Uni- versity of Windsor in Canada and teaches primarily in the areas of history and clinical mess- ment. He is a native of Germany and received his W.D. in Clinical Psychology from the Uni- versity of Alabama in 1964. His current research interests include the hmtorical development of models of psychopathology, the use of research design in historical investigation, and the development of scientific psychology during the nineteenth century. He is currently working on the first full-length biography of Wilhelm Wundt in English, which will be based on archival and documentary sources.

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24 WOLFGANG G. BHING3IANN

Only a small number of bchavioural scientists have addressed themsclvcs to methodological and design issues in archival research (1, 5, 6, 9, 10, 17). Of great importance is the work of Allport (1) ~ 1 1 0 dealt a t length with content analysis in his pioneering 1942 monograph, The use of persoiial documents in psychological science. Webb, Campbell, Schwarz and Sechrest (17) have discussed archives as a source of “non-reactive data” which may contain “substantial errors in the material” but are usually free from “masking or sensitivity” caused by the subject’s kno\\ledge that he or she is the object of psychological research. These authors, like Holmes (9), focused on the importance of context factors and note that “. . . holes in the data are suspect . . .” and raise the questions of selectivity in the collection or survival of records. Checks for internal and external consistency were suggested as partial control for incompleteness of data. Ellenberger’s (5 ) canon follows in a very similar vein: “1. Never take anything for granted. 2. Check everything. 3. Replace everything in its contcxt”. I<erlinger (10) has treated historical investiga- tions as a type of em post facto research. Usually, in this form of study, the indepen- dent or antecedent variable or variables have already occurred and the researcher begins with the observation of the dependent or consequent variable. The major problems with this type of investigation are the lack of control over extraneous variables, the large number of potentially important independent variables and consequently the serious danger of misintcrpreting relationships. He has suggested that one can largely overcome thesc problenis by explicitly formulating not just a single research hypothesis but several “control” hypotheses as well, which specify the antecedcnt or independent variable. The historical researcher would then collect evidence in support of not one but several predictions. Although it may not bc possible to absolutely verify OT refute predicted relationships in such historical research, one can a t least establish rank-orders of plausibility among several alterna- tive explanations. It has been my experience that, if one takes care to examine alternative explanations in terms of the full surrounding historical context, that one often can discover a more general explanation which allows for a reconciliation of apparent contradictions.

The use of the control hypothesis method will be illustrated by an example drawn from ongoing research for a biography of Wilhelm Maz imi l ian Wundt (1832- 1920). The specific topic to be examined by this procedure is the religious affiliation of Wundt’s father, who has consistently been identified as a Lutheran minister in American biographical accounts. The original source for this view appears t o have been Titchener, who stated in his obituary for his teacher “. . . Wilhelm Max [sic] Wundt was born the son of a Lutheran pastor, a t Neckarau in Baden on August 16, 1832 . . .” (16). Despite the fact that Titchener was careful to state that many biographical details in his eulogy were conjectural in nature, Boring (3) and virtually all American writers, who drew upon Boring as a major source, have presented this statement as a fact. German sources, on the other hand, never identify Wundt’s father as a Lutheran minister but instead have regarded him either as a Reformed (11, 13) or, more generally, as a Protestant pastor. Thus, the existing biographical literature on Wundt has offered three control hypotheses for which archival evi- dence will be examined within the historical context of the time of his birth in the Grand Duchy of Baden (8).

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DESIGN QUESTIONS IN ARCHIVAL RESEARCH 25

A painstaking search of public, institutional and private archives in Baden yielded the following results: no evidence whatsoever was found that Wundt’s father was a Lutheran minister. Support for the view that he was a Reformed clergyman is substantial. From the end of the sixteenth century on, Wundt’s ancestors included numerous Calvinist ministers and theologians (4). Specifically, the 1798 death certificate of his paternal grandfather describes him as a “Reformed Preacher” and the 1808 death record of his wife describes her husband in somewhat greater detail as “Pastor of the Evangelical-Reformed Church in Wieblingen” (7) near Heidelberg. The strongest support for the opinion that Wundt’s father was R

Reformed minister is provided by the fact that he was ordained in the Reformed Church in 1809 and served several other Reformed congregations before moving to the Reformed Church in Neckarau where Wundt was born (14).

Despite the apparent conclusiveness of this information, i t is still necessary, as Ellenberger (5) has instructed us “to replace everything in its context.” In the early 19th century Wundt’s home state recognized three major Christian denomina- tions: the Roman Catholic, the Reformed, and the Lutheran Churches. Usually, a person became a member of one of these by infant baptism. Thus, almost without exception one acquired the same religion as one’s parents. However, in 1821 Luther- an and Reformed congregations in Baden were administratively combined into one organization which was variously referred to as United ( ‘ I Uniert”), Evangelical (“Evangelisch”), Protestant (“Protestantisch”) or any combination of these terms. The resulting denomination combined both Lutheran and Reformed doctrines but made some allowances for local traditions regarding ritual (14).

Thus, at the time of Wundt’s birth his father was officially a Protestant mini- ster. The birth and baptismal record of Wundt in the City Archive in hiannheini (2) show in his father’s own handwriting that he identified himself indeed as a “Protestant Minister” (“Prot. Pfarrer”). In addition, Wundt described himself as the son of an “. . . Evangelical - Protestant Minister in the villages of Leuter- shausen and Heidelsheim . . .” in the handwritten curriculum vitae, which he submitted as part of his application for the state board examination in medicine in 1855 (18).

In conclusion, this application of the control hypothesis demonstrates, I believe, quite amply the danger of prematurely accepting a plausible alternative hypothesis, even with the support of substantial documentary evidence. An exam- ination of the historical evidence revealed that none of the hypotheses, derived from the literature, was, strictly speaking, true. Instead, we find that Wundt’s father was a Reformed minister by family tradition, education and even ordination. However, he became a Protestant minister in 1821 by an administrative decision and officiated in this capacity a t the time of Wundt’s birth and baptism in August 1832.

DISCUSSION

Despite the fact that numerous sources mention Wundt’s father was a minister and even specify, correctly or incorrectly, the denomination to which he belonged, it is regrettable that historical authors have neglected to make any attempt to extract meaning from Wundt’s upbringing in the home of a minister. The homes of German ministers were regarded as substantially important for the development

26 WOLFGANG G. BRINGMANN

of German cultural traditions. Literally hundreds of eminent German theologians, philosophers, writers, educators, ministers, jurists, linguists, historians, physicians, musicians and natural scientists were born and raised in the homes of Protestant ministers (4). It has been estimated that ministers, who represented a minute proportion of the overall population, provided about seven per cent of all university students during the early nineteenth century (4). Among students of the natural sciences, there were about as many who were sons of ministers as those who were sons of physicians (4). It is of particular interest to social scientists that sons of German ministers, in the tradition of preacher's kids in North America, often became rebels, not only against restricting home atmospheres, but also reformers and innovators of the culture at large. In this connection, i t is significant to note the neglect of most biographers in observing that Wundt had a successful political career and was at one time very much involved with the labour reform movement (4). Perhaps most important from a biographer's point of view, is the whole issue of Wundt's personal religious views. It is known that as a politician, he strongly supported the unpopular abolition of church control over educational institutions in his native state of Baden (4). On the other hand, as a philosophical idealist, he was strongly opposed to positivism and materialism, and he has generally been viewed as a supporter of, rather than a detractor from, organized religion (11, 14).

I n closing, one may perhaps wonder if it is really necessary to devote so much time and effort to establish data in such a painstaking manner. Again, I think the best answer to this question has been given by Ellenberger (5 ) who said ". . . Yes, i t is necessary, because these data provide the framework and the substance of biographical construction. Without them there is no true history . . ."

BIBLIOGRAPHY 1 . ALLPORT, G. W. The use of personal documents in psychological science. New York: Social

2, BIRTH AND BAPTISMAL RECORD, City Archive, Mannheim, 1832. 3. BORING, E. A history of experimental psychology. New York: Appleton, 1929. 4. BRINGMANN, W. Wundt at Heidelberg 1846-1874. Paper read a t Annual Meeting of the Ameri-

5. ELLENBERGER, H. Methodology in writing the history of dynamic psychiatry. In G. Mora

6. ELLENBERGER, H. The discovery of the unconscious. New York: Basic Books, 1970b. 7. EULER, F. W. Personal communication. December, 1972. 8. HEUNISCH, A. J. V. Beschreibung des Grossherzogthums Baden. Heidelberg : Groos, 1833. 9. HOLMES, 0. W. History and theory of archival practice. In R. E. Stevens (Ed.) University

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Archives. Champaign, Illinois, 1964. 0

10. KERLINGER, F. Foundations of behavioral research. New York: Holt, 1964. 11. PETERSEN, P. Wilhelm Wundt urid seine Zeit. Stuttgart: Kurtz, 1925. 12. SCHETELICH, E. Taschenbuch Archivwesen der DDR. Berlin: Staatsverlag DDR, 1970. 13. SCHLOTTE, F. Beitrage zumLebensbild Wilhelm Wundts aus seinem Briefwechsel. Wissen-

14. SCHULZE, W. A. Geschichte der evangelischen Gemeinde Neckarau. Mannheim : Haas, 1970. 15. TITCHENER, E. Wilhelm Wundt. American Journal of Psychology, 1921, 32, 161-178. 16. VEREIN DEUTSCHER ARCHIVARI: Verzeichnis der Archivare. Wiesbaden: Verein deutscher

17. WEBB, E., CAMPBELL, L). T., SCHWARTZ, It. l). and SECHREST, L. Unobtrusive masures: non-

18. WUNDT, E. Wilhelm Wundt's Werk. Miinchen: Beck, 1927. 19.

schaftliche Zeitschrift der Karl-Marx-Universitat Leipzig, 1955/56, 6, 333-349.

Archivare, 1972.

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WUNDT, W. Handwritten curriculum vitae. Karlsruhe: State Archive, 1855.