2 - On the way to becoming an independent discipline: the institutionalization of psychology in the universities to 1941

Summary

In the history of the academic institutionalization of psychology in Germany the National Socialist period is part of the phase of its establishment as an independent discipline. In Germany this was largely a matter of setting up new professorships in the universities. These usually bring institutes, personnel, budgets, libraries, and so forth in their wake. This chapter therefore examines the extent to which psychology gained or lost chairs during the Third Reich. This quantitative question is accompanied by a qualitative one: What reasons were there for the loss or creation of chairs in psychology, and what teaching and research contents were to be institutionalized? This question of the content of institutionalization will also be pursued by studying the appointments to chairs; this will act as a gauge of the development of demands placed on the subject and the orientation of the subject itself. While the investigation concentrates on universities, the technical colleges (Technische Hochschulen) are also considered. The representation of psychology in pedagogical academies and other teacher training institutes will be considered in Chapter 4 on the development of occupational fields for the profession.

Before the introduction of the Diploma Examination Regulations, or DPO (Diplom-Priifungsordnung), in 1941, each newly created chair of psychology had to be justified for that particular university, which led on occasion to severe disputes. With the DPO, however, the need for new chairs resulted from a state regulation, since it was possible to train psychologists only at universities with a chair.