Pure psychology, applied psychology, and the institutionalisation of psychology

The paper argues against the traditional way of presenting applied psychology as an offspring of pure, university-based psychology. Rather, the university discipline of psychology came into existence in order to foster applications of psychology. This proposition rests on the distinction between the discipline of psychology and the domain of psychology. Whereas the domain psychology is many centuries old, psychology as a discipline was created at German universities in the context of the educational reforms in the first quarter of the nineteenth century when the philosophical faculties were allotted the task of training Gymnasium teachers. Psychology was supposed to confer educational knowledge, and therefore psychology was for the first time institutionalised as a university discipline. When at the beginning of the twentieth century a demand for the creation of an applied psychology was proclaimed, originally the idea was to insert psychological knowledge into various professional trainings following the example of the teachers' training. Unexpectedly, a new profession arose that defined itself specifically through the expert training in psychology. This profession transformed the discipline psychology such that today the training of psychologists is perceived as its principal objective. During this transformation arose the illusion of applied psychology being the offspring of pure, basic research oriented psychology.