Münsterberg's Nightmare: Psychology and History in fin-de-siècle Germany and America

This article demonstrates that Hugo M?nsterberg's presidential address "Psychology and History," delivered to the American Psychological Association in 1898, should be understood in the German context of the 1890s. It constituted a response to a central feature of fin-de-si?cle culture in Europe, the revolt against positivism. To be more precise, M?nsterberg reacted against a new intellectual trend that was arising in Germany in the middle 1890s: the call for a historically oriented social psychology put forward by Wilhelm Dilthey-who was explicitly attacking M?nsterberg's physiological conception of psychology-and new cultural historians like Karl Lamprecht and others who seemed to be putting Dilthey's program into practice.