Münsterberg's photoplays : instruments and models in his laboratories at Freiburg and Harvard (1891-1893)

Hugo Münsterberg (1863 1916) is often quoted as a pioneer of applied psychology. He is also well-known for his philosophy of values, his early theory of the cinema (The Photoplay, 1916), and the fact that future writer Gertrude Stein (1874-1946), then a student at Radcliffe College, worked in his laboratory in the late 1890s. Less familiar is Münsterberg's role as a creative experimenter and energetic director of psychological laboratories in Germany and the United States. In this role, Münsterberg contributed significantly to the transition from a cognitive and/or idealist "Physiological Psychology" in the sense of Wilhelm Wundt to the pragmatist and/or functional "Science of Mental Life" as advocated by William James and others.