Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911) and Eduard Spranger (1882-1963) on the developing person.

Abstract

At the end of the 19th century most psychologists conceptualized psychology as a natural science. However, a few philosopher-psychologists, including Wilhelm Dilthey, envisioned psychology as a Geisteswissenschaft with understanding as its core method. It is less known that Dilthey also promoted ideas for developmental psychology. This paper addresses the views of Wilhelm Dilthey and his student Eduard Spranger on the human mind and developmental psychology. While Dilthey provided general guidelines for studying mental life, Spranger promoted a holistic characterization of adolescence gained through the method of understanding. It is suggested that a geisteswissenschaftliche psychology may offer relevant, yet, neglected insights for contemporary developmental psychology.

Homo neoliberalus: From personality to forms of subjectivity

“…His “method” was hermeneutic and required an in-depth knowledge of cultural being during his time and in his society. In contrast to Dilthey’s hermeneutics, Spranger’s concept of understanding required to overcome individuals, empathy, or personal experience, in order to understand a culture’s objective cultural connections and its historical and social conditions, from which a form of life was derived (see Teo, 2003). The process of understanding required Spranger to attend to meaning relations that may not be given to individual consciousness.…”

El legado de Wilhelm Dilthey: las pedagogías culturalistas

“…131-164 a través de su vivencia y de su comprensión: la comprensión hermenéutica consiste en reconstruir en sentido inverso, de afuera hacia adentro, la vivencia original (Zamora, 2001, 49). Como es evidente, la psicología explicativa de las Ciencias de la Naturaleza se opone, en el plano metodológico, a la Psicología comprensiva (Verstehende Psychologie), propia de las Ciencias del espíritu, que se convierte en la ciencia modelo para el estudio e investigación del mundo espiritual (Dilthey, 1978d;López, 1990;Teo, 2003). Como hemos dicho, si las Ciencias de la Naturaleza proceden basándose en la explicación, es decir, estableciendo nexos causales, las Ciencias del espíritu excluyen la causalidad, el atomismo y, consecuentemente, la explicación.…”

Narrative Therapy: A Return to the Intrapsychic Perspective?

“…In the 19th century it shifted from the interpretation of texts per se to all human productions -verbal and nonverbal, historical and current (Phillips, 1996). In trying to establish hermeneutics as the methodology of understanding in the human sciences, Wilhelm Dilthey -a German philosopher -proposed that instead of explaining the natural behaviour of human animals in causal terms, attempts should be made to understand the behaviour of human persons in terms of their experience and inner motivation -inner life (Gallagher,2004;Phillips,1996;Teo, 2003). Hermeneutics, in this sense, involves an explicit intrapsychic emphasis.…”