HISTORY OF TURKISH PSYCHOLOGY

It is a very great honour for me to be invited to give an address to this most distinguished gathering as the psychologist from Istanbul University, who has been a member of the faculty longest. Our conference Chairperson Professor Çiğdem Kağıtçıbaşı, has kindly asked me to talk on the subject of the history of Turkish psychology, which suited me very well indeed, for I have been, by chance, a fortunate observer of this most interesting process. Psychology in Turkey, as everywhere else, has a long past, but a short history. Psychology as a science is still young. After all, Wundt's Laboratory of Experimental Psychology, as we all know, was only founded in Leipzig in 1879. And, last year here in Turkey, at Istanbul University, we celebrated the Seventieth Anniversary of the establishment of the Chair of Psychology. So not quite fourty years after Wundt's laboratory was established, the scientific teaching of Psychology and psychological experiments has been included in the curriculum of Istanbul University. For, in 1915 as part of a plan to reform Istanbul University, (then the only University in Turkey,) and bring it into line with other Western Universities, twenty guest professors from Germany were invited to join the staff.