10 - Harvard University

Summary

At Harvard University, Professor Allport received me with the utmost affection. One, because that was his nature, and two, because he could find out news from me about German psychology, and about the work at the institute in Hamburg. He was only seven years my senior, so he was very young as well.

The four months I spent at that famous university—where William James's spirit still loomed over Emerson Hall—were a true delight. Mrs. Allport was an incredibly distinguished lady, also a psychology graduate, who made friends with my wife. By now my wife had also started to look into psychology but also into English language and literature, on top of her French. We then formed a warm friendship with the Cantrils. Our only regret was that months now passed faster than weeks. Looking back now, with today's eyes, my wife and I believe in our hearts that our best professors were the Allports, who enjoyed our good days and who were deeply pained by our harsh years of ordeal.

After a long discussion with Allport about my studies in Germany, where he had also studied with Stern, Köhler, and Spranger, I paid a visit to my colleagues to get to know them. In the evening I was introduced to Professor Boring, the head of the psychology department, who was also very well informed on German psychology, but only on the experimental kind, his specialty. He had come to Harvard from Cornell University, where he studied under Titchener, Wundt's student. This was how he went into experimental methodology. He had started by studying engineering, but he turned to psychology to clarify certain pathological states he suffered from. After he came to Harvard, he started psychotherapy with Hans Sacks, but with fairly unsatisfactory results.

When I left Emerson Hall I looked once again at the painting hung over the entrance, representing a discussion between James, Royce, and Parker. Charles Peirce, who had inspired James's pragmatism, was missing, even though he is one of the founders of mathematical logic. At that time, however, this discipline had few followers, even though Morgan was also American. However, the neopositivists from Vienna—after it was taken over by Hitler—brought it to new heights.