The history of psychology at the University of Basel
Psychology in Basel has seen several beginnings – as a philosophical subdiscipline, as an independent subject, as an institute, and finally as a faculty. More than 130 years passed between the first and the last of these starts. During this time, psychology not only changed institutionally but also in content: from a primarily phenomenological-hermeneutic approach to a discipline rooted in empirical methods. The establishment of a faculty represents just the latest step in a long process of separation from the humanities..
Psychology is the science of human experience and behavior. This rather broad definition has been valid from the first conception of psychology by Aristotle (384–324 BCE) to the present day. And for nearly as long, psychology was practiced as a discipline belonging to philosophy. This remained the case even when psychology, as a field of study, was introduced to academic teaching in the second half of the nineteenth century. In Basel, this occurred in 1866 when the second statutory chair of philosophy was also entrusted with psychological questions.
The consideration of psychology as a subdiscipline largely depended on the respective chair holders. Notably, the philosophers Paul Häberlin (1878–1960) and Karl Jaspers (1883–1969) played significant roles in advancing the importance of psychology in Basel. However, psychology did not receive its own faculty appointments until the mid-twentieth century. The first professorship in psychology within the humanities was held by Hans Kunz in 1951. Fifteen years later, Kunz was promoted from an associate to a full professor. Both positions remained under the auspices of the Philosophical Seminar. Psychology could now be studied as an independent subject, yet the connection to philosophy remained close – so close that psychology could only be chosen as a major by those who also studied philosophy as a minor.
Psychology achieved its independence within the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences with the establishment of its own institute in 1978. The “Study Regulations for the Subject of Psychology,” issued in August of that year, broke with the required philosophical curriculum. Yet Prof. Gerhard Steiner, the first head of the institute, imposed new minor subject obligations that had to be fulfilled depending on the chosen specialization. Although the reform met with strong resistance from students, it became the foundation of psychology studies at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences for the next twenty-five years. A reorientation in the field also took place; experimental methods were increasingly used to collect data, with statistical procedures applied for their analysis.
The empirical profile has been particularly enhanced since the establishment of the faculty in 2003 by incorporating methods from the natural sciences. This is especially true in the field of molecular psychology, which conducts its research in close cooperation with the Basel Biozentrum (Center for Molecular Life Sciences). In addition to this division, founded in spring 2007, as of 2010 there were eight others, five of which also date from after the turn of the millennium. The young Faculty of Psychology is thus experiencing rapid growth – not least in terms of student enrollment. And it is precisely in this aspect that one of the greatest challenges lies today: the number of students and divisions has grown significantly faster than the number of professorships. As a result, there is a continuous overload in teaching, which the Faculty of Psychology has regularly lamented in annual reports and evaluation dossiers since it was founded.