Psychological Themes in Blaustein’s Philosophy

Abstract

In his works, Blaustein used a complex analytical method to describe psychic life. He explicitly called this approach “descriptive psychology” (psychologia deskryptywna), and he noted on many occasions that he did research “on the borderline of psychology.” This should come as no surprise, as he was trained in philosophy by Twardowski, a direct student of Brentano. The presence of Brentano’s thought in the school of Twardowski is well described by, for instance, Liliana Albertazzi, Arianna Betti, Jan Woleński, and others. Indeed, after his arrival in Lvov in 1895, in his early writings, Twardowski developed—as I attempt to show in this chapter—a Brentanian notion of philosophy based on psychology and focused on “mental phenomena.” By claiming that philosophy examines mental phenomena, Twardowski set the psychological trend of the Lvov–Warsaw School, which included, in addition to Blaustein, Władysław Witwicki (1878–1948), Bronisław Bandrowski (1879–1914), Ludwik Jaxa-Bykowski (1881–1948), Stefan Baley (1885–1952), Stefan Błachowski (1889–1962), Salomon Igel (1889–1942), Mieczysław Kreutz (1893–1971), and Walter Auerbach (1900–1942 [?]). In this chapter, I discuss Teresa Rzepa’s idea that Blaustein can be considered a part of this group of scholars. Psychology was still a popular field of research in Lvov during Blaustein’s studies in the 1920s. Following Twardowski, Blaustein indeed used a variety of descriptive-psychological tools in his investigations. Nonetheless, his view of psychology cannot be reduced only to the Brentano–Twardowski legacy. After all, he referred to Gestalt psychology or to the conception of psychology put forward by Dilthey, not to mention Husserl’s phenomenological psychology. Whereas I will discuss Blaustein’s polemic against Husserl’s method in Chap. 5, here I attempt to show that he combined a variety of detailed ideas and procedures that had been developed by, for instance, Brentano, Twardowski, Stumpf or Dilthey. By claiming this, I will argue against Krzysztof Wieczorek, who holds that Blaustein overcame Brentano’s heritage by adapting Husserl’s phenomenology. If Wieczorek was right, Blaustein’s descriptive psychology was a mere introduction to his phenomenology. Accordingly, the latter can be understood in Blaustein’s writings without the former, which—as I will show in this chapter—is false. In this regard, I will argue that philosophical psychology is one of the cornerstones of Blaustein’s method; as such, it cannot be excluded from Blaustein’s writings or reduced to his account of phenomenology.

In his works, Blaustein used a complex analytical method to describe psychic life. He explicitly called this approach “descriptive psychology” (psychologia deskryptywna),¹ and he noted on many occasions that he did research “on the borderline of psychology.” This should come as no surprise, as he was trained in philosophy by Twardowski, a direct student of Brentano. The presence of Brentano’s thought in the school of Twardowski is well described by, for instance, Liliana Albertazzi,² Arianna Betti,³ Jan Woleński,⁴ and others.⁵ Indeed, after his arrival in Lvov in 1895, in his early writings, Twardowski developed—as I attempt to show in this chapter—a Brentanian notion of philosophy based on psychology and focused on “mental phenomena.”⁶ By claiming that philosophy examines mental phenomena, Twardowski set the psychological trend of the Lvov–Warsaw School, which included, in addition to Blaustein, Władysław Witwicki (1878–1948), Bronisław Bandrowski (1879–1914), Ludwik Jaxa-Bykowski (1881–1948), Stefan Baley (1885–1952), Stefan Błachowski (1889–1962), Salomon Igel (1889–1942), Mieczysław Kreutz (1893–1971), and Walter Auerbach (1900–1942 [?]).⁷ In this chapter, I discuss Teresa Rzepa’s idea that Blaustein can be considered a part of this group of scholars.⁸ Psychology was still a popular field of research in Lvov during Blaustein’s studies in the 1920s. Following Twardowski, Blaustein indeed used a variety of descriptive-psychological tools in his investigations. Nonetheless, his view of psychology cannot be reduced only to the Brentano–Twardowski legacy. After all, he referred to Gestalt psychology or to the conception of psychology put forward by Dilthey, not to mention Husserl’s phenomenological psychology. Whereas I will discuss Blaustein’s polemic against Husserl’s method in Chap. 5, here I attempt to show that he combined a variety of detailed ideas and procedures that had been developed by, for instance, Brentano, Twardowski, Stumpf or Dilthey. By claiming this, I will argue against Krzysztof Wieczorek, who holds that Blaustein overcame Brentano’s heritage by adapting Husserl’s phenomenology.⁹ If Wieczorek was right, Blaustein’s descriptive psychology was a mere introduction to his phenomenology. Accordingly, the latter can be understood in Blaustein’s writings without the former, which—as I will show in this chapter—is false. In this regard, I will argue that philosophical psychology is one of the cornerstones of Blaustein’s method; as such, it cannot be excluded from Blaustein’s writings or reduced to his account of phenomenology.

3.1 Brentano and Blaustein on Psychology and Its Object

3.1.1 Brentanian Inspirations in Blaustein’s Writings

At first glance, Blaustein’s references to Brentano are rather rare and often not explicit. He accepted, for instance, the thesis that psychic acts are presentations or are based upon presentations,¹⁰ yet he did not argue for this thesis, nor did he characterize presentations in more detail. To explain this, one must take into account the wider context of the Lvov–Warsaw School, which was noticed by Roman Ingarden as early as 1936 during his Lvov lectures on Brentano. For him, Brentano’s thought was, as he put it, a kind of opinio communis for generations of philosophy students educated in Lvov by Twardowski.¹¹ From Ingarden’s point of view, scholars simply accepted many of Brentano’s ideas without further ado, but this meant that they were accepted uncritically. Certainly, Ingarden’s opinion addresses the case of Blaustein who did not provide any thorough analysis of the method used by Brentano or its different formulations. For instance, he did not notice the divide between the 1874 book and the 1880s descriptive psychology project¹² (after all, Twardowski did know the 1880s project as he participated in Brentano’s Vienna lectures). For this reason, it is more relevant to speak of Brentanian inspirations or themes in Blaustein.

In “Book One” of his Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte, Brentano famously declared that psychology is a science. This thesis, of course, followed from his early belief that “[t]he true method of philosophy is none other than that of the science of nature.”¹³ The claim that the method of philosophy is “none other” than the method of natural sciences is, however, ambiguous, as it can be read either as an attempt to reduce philosophy to (natural) sciences or as a project of adapting general scientific procedure to philosophy. In this regard, Ion Tănăsescu rightly argues for the latter by showing that Brentano adopted the methodology of (natural) science in his empirical psychology. As Tănăsescu explains, “[…] the core of the method of natural science consists of observation and explanation understood as the subsumption of phenomena under general laws and reduction of these laws to more general laws.”¹⁴ Next, Tănăsescu divides the procedure worked out in the 1874 book into eight steps: (1) experience on the basis of inner perception, (2) determination of the characteristic features of mental phenomena, (3) determination of the classes of mental phenomena, (4) investigation of the most basic mental elements (sensations) from which more complex phenomena arise, (5) inductive determination of the general laws of succession, (6) deduction of more specific laws, (7) testing of these laws in inductive procedures, and (8) determination of definitive psychological laws from which general mental laws will be derived.¹⁵ This being said, psychology was also a science (nauka) for Blaustein.¹⁶ Additionally, he used a method that resembled the procedure used by Brentano. Let me highlight the overlapping elements using the example of his 1930 book, Przedstawienia imaginatywne [Imaginative Presentations]: (1) Blaustein described exemplary experiences on the basis of inner perception (§ 8), (2) he determined some characteristic features of presentations (§§ 1–2), (3) he discussed (Twardowski’s) classification of presentations (§ 7), (4) he explicitly investigated sensations as the basis of complex phenomena (§§ 4–5), (5) he determined the laws of succession (in the field of presentations) (§§ 25–28), (6) he deduced more general laws regarding presentations (§§ 35–40), (7) he confronted these laws with descriptions of further phenomena, such as suppositions (§§ 41–49), and finally (8) he formulated general laws that enabled him to formulate a classification of presentations (§§ 47–58). Again, these affinities are still general, and without Blaustein’s clear self-commentary, it is unjustified to hold that he explicitly adapted Brentano’s procedure.

Nevertheless, Blaustein had another theme that came from Brentano’s Psychologie. In the 1874 book, Brentano argued that psychology is based upon inner perception, which provides evident knowledge and presents its objects as true in themselves; next, its objects are “more beautiful and sublime,” and they are “mostly our own.”¹⁷ Consequently, he adopted the thesis that psychology is a fundamental science, and as such, it has to precede natural sciences. This holds, of course, for philosophy too. In the book, Brentano referred to philosophy, as he put it, “merely in passing” (“nur ganz flüchtig”):

Let me point out merely in passing that psychology contains the roots of aesthetics, which, in a more advanced stage of development, will undoubtedly sharpen the eye of the artist and assure his progress. Likewise, suffice it to say that the important art of logic, a single improvement in which brings about a thousand advances in science, also has psychology as its source. In addition, psychology has the task of becoming the scientific basis for a theory of education, both of the individual and of society. Along with aesthetics and logic, ethics and politics also stem from the field of psychology.¹⁸

Philosophy, including aesthetics, logic or ethics, is comprehended as rooted in psychology, which, in turn, becomes “the scientific basis” for other disciplines. Brentano’s position, which consisted in the claim that a philosophical explication could be based on psychology, can be viewed as methodological psychologism.¹⁹ Blaustein seemed to accept this position by holding, e.g., that aesthetics is rooted in psychology; after all, he argued that aesthetic experiences are combinations of presentations which are viewed as psychic phenomena.²⁰ However, Blaustein went a step further and held that psychology is also the basis of non-philosophical disciplines such as pedagogy,²¹ penitentiary science,²² film studies,²³ or even military ethics.²⁴ He stated that the general approach of psychology illustrates its practical significance for non-philosophical disciplines. In this case, Blaustein’s belief mirrors Brentano’s conviction that the future of psychology lies in its practical application.²⁵

3.1.2 Reinterpreting Brentano’s Notion of Presentations

On a few occasions, Blaustein refers to the idea that psychic phenomena are presentations or are based upon presentations.²⁶ Roughly, he used the term “presentation” in accordance with Brentano, for whom a presentation was understood as a mental phenomenon or the basis of such a phenomenon. As such, it is defined in Psychologie in the context of physical phenomena as follows:

First of all, we illustrated the specific nature of the two classes by means of examples. We then defined mental phenomena as presentations or as phenomena which are based upon presentation; all the other phenomena being physical phenomena. Next we spoke of extension, which psychologists have asserted to be the specific characteristic of all physical phenomena, while all mental phenomena are supposed to be unextended. […] Further we found that the intentional in-existence, the reference to something as an object, is a distinguishing characteristic of all mental phenomena. No physical phenomenon exhibits anything similar. We went on to define mental phenomena as the exclusive object of inner perception; they alone, therefore, are perceived with immediate evidence. Indeed, in the strict sense of the word, they alone are perceived. On this basis we proceeded to define them as the only phenomena which possess actual existence in addition to intentional existence. Finally, we emphasized as a distinguishing characteristic the fact that the mental phenomena which we perceive, in spite of all their multiplicity, always appear to us as a unity, while physical phenomena, which we perceive at the same time, do not all appear in the same way as parts of one single phenomenon.²⁷

On this basis, according to Brentano, presentations (as a class of mental phenomena) have four distinctive features. (1) They are non-extended. (2) They are defined by intentionality, which is understood as the mental inexistence of an object. “Mental inexistence of an object” means that every mental phenomenon refers to a content and is directed toward an object.²⁸ (3) All mental phenomena and thus presentations are perceived in inner perception. Inner perception, in turn, is characterized by immediate, i.e., infallible, self-evidence. (4) Finally, any mental phenomenon or presentation is given as a whole, which for Brentano means that consciousness is given as a unity. Accordingly, he drew a sharp distinction between unity and simplicity. The former is given as a complex whole and thus does not appear as a simple object. Therefore, various acts are, as Brentano put it, “[…] parts of one single phenomenon in which they are contained, as one single and unified thing.”²⁹ In this regard, Brentano specified that “[…] the parts which can be distinguished in [a presentation] are to be regarded as mere divisions of a real unity.”³⁰ In other words, mental phenomena are conceived as mereological objects, i.e., as wholes which can be decomposed into their parts.³¹

Blaustein seemed to agree with Brentano in claiming that “[a] presentation is a specific, simple, intentional psychic act.”³² Blaustein accepted the thesis (1) that presentations are non-extended; following Brentano, in his 1928 book, Husserlowska nauka o akcie, treści i przedmiocie przedstawienia [Husserl’s Theory of the Act, Content and the Object of Presentation], Blaustein explicitly claimed that psychic acts are not spatial.³³ In addition, Blaustein accepted theses (2)–(4). However, it is too hasty to identify Blaustein’s account with that of Brentano. A subtle difference lies, for instance, in regard to thesis (2). Blaustein rejected the definition of intentionality as “the mental inexistence of the object” since this confuses the object with the act’s content.³⁴ This criticism, of course, followed from Twardowski’s account of the act-content-object structure. In any case, according to Blaustein, Brentano’s emphasis on “immanent” objects can be understood as an attempt to exclude metaphysical issues and to conduct research only in the field of empirical psychology. These differences, however, are not decisive. Blaustein reinterpreted Brentano’s thesis by holding that presentations are based on sensations, which, in turn, are understood as the simplest nuclei of psychic life. In this regard, he stated that “[…] every presentation is a sensation (the act of sensation) or is based upon a sensation or sensations.”³⁵ Thus, Blaustein agreed with Brentano that presentations serve to present their objects to us. Nonetheless, presentations are based upon sensations, which, in turn, are non-intentional.

There are two additional differences between Brentano and Blaustein. In “Book Two” of his Psychologie, Brentano argued for a three-part classification of mental phenomena: presentations (Vorstellungen), judgments (Urtheile) and emotions (Gemüthsbewegungen).³⁶ In short, by “presentation,” Brentano understood a phenomenon in which something appears to us. Next, “judgment” means acceptance (as true) or rejection (as false). Finally, “emotions” refer to the phenomena of love and hate. The last class encompasses both emotions and volition since, in Brentano’s view,³⁷ (1) desire consists in experiencing something as good or bad and, as such, it is an emotion, and (2) there is no clear-cut divide between them, but they are related. It seems that Blaustein did not accept this three-class taxonomy and preferred a four-part division in which emotions and the will are separated. He claimed, for instance, that aesthetic experiences combine (1) presentations, (2) judgments, (3) emotions and (4) volitional acts. He specified that presentations are the basis of aesthetic experiences, are dominated by emotions and are often associated with judgments; however, as he put it, they are “very rarely” associated with the will.³⁸ This description makes it evident that emotions and the will are separate and build different classes of mental phenomena. In Blaustein’s writings, however, one finds no argument for the four-class taxonomy. It can be argued that here he followed Twardowski, who—as we will see in Sect. 3.2—did not accept Brentano’s solution. However, to reiterate, this is only a hypothesis.

In the very last, ninth chapter of “Book Two” of Brentano’s Psychologie, one finds the important psychological law that “[…] phenomena of the three fundamental classes are most intimately intertwined,” and “[…] the three classes are of the utmost universality; there is no mental act in which all three are not present. There is a certain ubiquity pertaining to each class in all of our conscious life.”³⁹ Hence, in every mental act, all three phenomena are present; of course, they are united and are structured hierarchically, but one can always draw descriptive differences between them. The simplest phenomena here are presentations, followed by judgments and finally emotions since, following Brentano, “[…] it seems inconceivable that a being should be endowed with the capacity for love and hate without possessing that of judgment.”⁴⁰ Contrary to Brentano, Blaustein held that not every mental act encompasses all classes of phenomena. This difference arises in regard to presentations and judgments. In his 1931 book, Przedstawienia schematyczne i symboliczne [Schematic and Symbolic Presentations], he described inadequate presentations, such as interpreting a symbol or a schema (e.g., a map). Symbols or schemata present corresponding objects which are not present in relevant acts. These objects are manifested in unique and irreducible presentations that are referred to by Blaustein as “symbolic” and “schematic” presentations, respectively. In both cases, intuitive contents such as shapes and colors are apprehended, but they refer to non-intuitive objects.⁴¹ In this context, Irena Filozofówna, who criticized this element of Blaustein’s theory,⁴² stated that this description follows from the analysis of judgments and not presentations as such. For her, when judging, one “ascribes” features to an object or “interprets” the object as being such and such. Therefore, Blaustein’s confusion stems from the vague way in which judgments are described as “presenting” their objects. In contrast to Blaustein, Filozofówna held that intending objects as such and such, i.e., the intentional directedness of presentations, is possible not due to the matter of the act but to judgments. To be precise, Filozofówna referred here to the phenomenon of “vague judgments” (sądy niewyraźne), which are always present at the borders of mental life. As a result, she accepted Brentano’s thesis that both presentations and judgments are present in a mental act; therefore, Blaustein’s mistake followed from his confusion of different phenomena.

In his reply to Filozofówna, Blaustein held that her argument that symbolic and schematic presentations are founded on judgments does not take into account differences in experiencing different objects. He held that if one accepts Filozofówna’s view, one cannot understand the difference in experiencing, among others, a painting, a sculpture, a movie or a theater play; Blaustein stated that the differences here are unique (swoiste), suggesting that they lie in different ways or modes of experiencing. These different ways of experiencing are evident and, as Blaustein puts it, intuitively unquestionable (intuicyjnie niewątpliwe).⁴³ When referring to the clearness of inner perception, he added that it is unjustified to claim that symbolic or schematic experiences contain judgments since there are no judgments at all in such aesthetic experiences. In his view, one does not accept or reject anything while experiencing a symbol or a schema. More precisely, he questioned the need to comprehend “vague judgments” as necessary elements of the psychic life. If this is indeed the case, there are psychic acts which contain presentations but not judgments. Consequently, Blaustein rejected Brentano’s general idea that presentations and judgments are intertwined and are present in every mental act. To claim this, however, one has to generalize his view of “vague judgments” as necessary or unnecessary elements of the psychic life.

Importantly, there is another point which requires a reference to Alexius Meinong⁴⁴ and seems to prove the hypothesis that Blaustein rejected Brentano’s idea that “[…] the three classes [of mental phenomena] are of the utmost universality.” In his Przedstawienia imaginatywne [Imaginative Presentations], Blaustein considered whether watching a theater play can be described as experiencing an illusion⁴⁵; if this is indeed the case, the viewer’s experience can be divided into presentations and judgments, but no one comprehends an actor’s performance as true or false. To describe this phenomenon, Blaustein explicitly referred to Meinong’s idea of assumptions (Annahmen). For Meinong, assumptions are fantasy experiences that are placed between presentations and judgments⁴⁶; the idea that Blaustein coined in accordance with Meinong is that whereas judgments are object-directed and are accompanied by conviction, assumptions lack conviction. With this in mind, according to Blaustein, a theatergoer does not have any convictions and does not judge whether the world represented on the stage is true; instead, she comprehends a play in relation to her assumptions. More precisely, due to these assumptions, a theatergoer is distanced from her emotions. In this regard, Blaustein claimed that a theatergoer does not judge a theater play as true or false but assumes that it is fictional.⁴⁷ With these clarifications in mind, Blaustein’s position undermines Brentano’s idea that judgments are present in every experience; the case discussed by Blaustein shows that there are experiences, for instance, the experiences of theater goers, which do not contain judgments.

3.2 Twardowski’s Descriptive Method in Blaustein’s Texts

As shown above, Blaustein’s references to Brentano are rather indirect; even when they are more direct, they are still rather general. As a result, it is often difficult to define the details of his opinions on the descriptive method he formulated in Psychologie or on his original re-examinations and applications of the descriptive method. It was also suggested above in Sect. 3.1.1, following Ingarden,⁴⁸ that Brentano’s theory—due to Twardowski’s teaching activities—was common but implicit ground for the Lvov scholars. It is of course true that Twardowski, who studied in Vienna from 1885 to 1889, was strongly influenced by Brentano. As one reads in Twardowski’s Selbstdarstellung, his studies in Vienna “[…] bore the mark of […] Brentano,” and he testified that “Brentano became for me the model of a philosophical researcher.”⁴⁹ Twardowski was certainly a careful reader of his teacher’s works; moreover, because of his teaching in Lvov, he popularized Brentano’s theories within the circle of his students,⁵⁰ but it would surely be a mistake to hold that his concept of descriptive psychology is reducible to Brentano. In Ingarden’s opinion, “[…] Twardowski was a pupil of Brentano and always remained in close relations with the so-called Austrian school. In many points, however, he parted with his master and was independent, thus outdistancing numerous Brentanists.”⁵¹ Even if one finds the basically Brentanian concept of psychology in Twardowski’s early works, later, in approximately 1910–13, he introduced important changes, which, in turn, inspired Blaustein in his own research. In the following, I will first examine Twardowski’s early view of psychology, then his later account of it, and, finally, Blaustein’s references to Twardowski’s method of psychology.

3.2.1 Twardowski’s Early Account of Psychology and Its Method

Twardowski’s early account of psychology, which was elaborated in his Lvov lectures on psychology,⁵² was fully expressed in his article, “Psychologia wobec fizyologii i filozofii” [“Psychology vs. Physiology and Philosophy”],⁵³ which was originally published in Polish in 1897. Like Brentano’s philosophy,⁵⁴ his early account can be read in the context of the late nineteenth-century disputes on the possible methodological autonomy of psychology and its relation to philosophy. Twardowski’s general claim, which connects him with Brentano, Beneke, Elsenhans, Fechner, Krüger and Stumpf, is that philosophy as a scientific enterprise can be developed only as psychology since, as he put it, “[…] psychology supplies philosophy not only with its method, but also with its subject-matter.”⁵⁵ As a result, Twardowski took the stance of methodological psychologism, which naturally connects his position with Brentano.

In his text, Twardowski critically discussed Comte’s classification of psychology as a subdiscipline of physiology instead of a subdiscipline of philosophy. Comte’s position is justified, following Twardowski,⁵⁶ only if mental phenomena are a subdivision of physiological phenomena. Nonetheless, even if mental phenomena are, to some extent, dependent on the nervous system, this dependence is not sufficient for the possible identification of both phenomena. In contrast to Comte, and following Brentano,⁵⁷ Twardowski argued that psychology is irreducible to physiology since both disciplines have different objects: whereas psychology concerns mental phenomena, physiology investigates the physiological processes of the nervous system.⁵⁸ The difference between the two is twofold: (1) the former is non-spatial, i.e., mental phenomena are not determined by spatial relations, whereas (2) the latter are grasped by the outer senses. What is at stake here is that mental phenomena are only directly given in inner experience. In brief, Twardowski’s differentiation resembles Brentano’s distinction between mental phenomena (psychische Phänomene) and physical phenomena (physische Phänomene). After all, for Brentano, mental phenomena are perceivable only in inner perception or inner consciousness, which is described as immediate and infallible self-evidence. When Twardowski referred to Brentano’s idea of inner perception, he disagreed with Comte not only with regard to the question of the autonomy of psychology; more importantly, he rejected Comte’s devaluation of the introspective method. Indeed, Twardowski, like Brentano, accused Comte’s refutation of both inner perception and observation as being unjustified. Even though Comte comprehended both as identical, for Twardowski, inner perception is different (in terms of structure) from inner observation. For him, inner perception or introspection is the simple experience of an object in the sense of direct perception, and for this reason, inner perception is infallible.⁵⁹ In turn, inner observation is a complex act which binds the original experience of a mental phenomenon with a higher-order act of attention. However, if this is the case, due to the complex structure of the actual observation and the observed or original phenomenon, observation simply fails in comprehending original experiences and is thus fallible.⁶⁰ Moreover, mental phenomena are experienced in a permanent flow and are thus given only momentarily. It is precisely because of this “briefness” (krótkotrwałość),⁶¹ as Twardowski called this feature of mental phenomena in the “Psychology” lecture series, that observation is impossible. As he wrote:

Consequently, we must deem Comte’s expositions correct insofar as they pertain to the observation of mental phenomena. It seems to me that we are in fact incapable of tracing attentively the course of mental phenomena. We force them out of our mind in virtue of the very decision to observe them. But Comte went decidedly too far in rejecting along with inner experience, does not after all necessarily require observation, but may exist as long as a simple perceiving of one’s own mental state is possible.⁶²

Nonetheless, even if inner perception is infallible, it has some flaws. Like Brentano before him,⁶³ Twardowski was aware that inner perception limits infallible and evident cognition to a mere subjective (personal) life, which means that introspection is a subjective method. In other words, psychologists can introspect only their own psychic life.⁶⁴ This limitation results in accepting memory as a reliable source of psychological cognition. Twardowski formulated this postulate in the 1897 article,⁶⁵ and he repeated it in his 1900/01 lectures on psychology.⁶⁶ Twardowski’s conclusion mirrors the considerations of Brentano, for whom memory supports psychological methods of investigation. Consequently, Twardowski accepted Brentano’s thesis that inner perception is the primary source of psychology and that memory enables individual experiments to reactivate certain mental phenomena more than only once. Due to these experiments, one is able to describe mental phenomena as the unity of mental life.

To conclude, it should come as no surprise that Twardowski’s early account of psychology was deeply rooted in Brentano.⁶⁷ Twardowski followed his Vienna teacher by adopting the following points: (1) mental phenomena, which are understood as objects of inner perception, are the proper objects of psychological inquiry, (2) the introspective method is the basis of psychology, and (3) the aim of psychology is the description of mental phenomena; however, (4) mental phenomena are given only momentarily; for this reason, (5) introspection has to be supplemented by memory; consequently, (6) memory is the basis of mental experiments, which help to overcome subjective limitations of introspection by repeating some experiences; and finally, (7) Twardowski criticized Comte, who, although correct in rejecting observation as a method of psychology, still failed to accept introspection as the basis of psychology.

3.2.2 Twardowski’s Later Readings in Psychology: A Reexamination of Brentano

Thus far, in his early account of psychology, Twardowski followed Brentano. However, as early as 1903, he broke with the three-part classification of mental phenomena as presented in Brentano’s 1874 book. Namely, in the 1903/04 Lvov lectures on “Psychologia pożądań i woli” [“Psychology of Desires and Will”],⁶⁸ Twardowski discussed Brentano’s theory that emotions and volition are to be comprehended as one class of mental phenomena. As Twardowski argued, there are some situations in which one decides to do something even though one has no desire to do so.⁶⁹ In addition, some desires contain emotions. To justify his view, Twardowski sketched a mereological view of desires as a whole that encompasses (1) a presentation of the object; (2) a belief that the existence, resp. non-existence, of the object requires a certain emotion; (3) a belief or supposition that the object exists or not; and, finally, (4) a corresponding positive or negative emotion as a response to (2) and (3).⁷⁰ Twardowski attempted to show that desires have to be comprehended as mereological entities of the whole-parts structure, and as such, they are wholes with their (possible but unnecessary) parts, i.e., emotions. With this in mind, Twardowski held that emotions are parts of desires, but they cannot be reduced to desires. For this reason, Twardowski concluded that it is necessary and justified to comprehend emotions as a different class of mental phenomena than the will.⁷¹ Thus, contrary to Albertazzi,⁷² it is more appropriate to hold that Twardowski adopted the four-class taxonomy of mental phenomena.

Despite this difference, it is worth noting that Twardowski modified his early project of descriptive psychology. Initially, clearly influenced by Brentano, he went on to introduce major changes in the years 1910–13. In 1911, he published an important article titled “O czynnościach i wytworach” [“Actions and Products”].⁷³ In the same period, in 1910 and later in 1913, he published two substantial texts, both of which adopted the action–product distinction to describe the phenomenon of psychic life: O metodzie psychologii. Przyczynek do metodologii porównawczej badan naukowych [On the Method of Psychology. An Introduction to the Comparative Methodology of Scientific Research]⁷⁴; he also wrote an entry for an encyclopedia, O psychologii, jej przedmiocie, zadaniach, metodzie, stosunku do innych nauk i o jej rozwoju [On Psychology, its Subject-Matter, Aims, Method, Relation to Other Sciences and on its Development].⁷⁵ Although both psychological studies incorporated many Brentanian themes,⁷⁶ they slightly redefined or radicalized Brentano’s position; nonetheless, there are also a few points which mark a clear break with his psychologism. First, we focus on the differences.

To begin with, (1) in his later project, Twardowski consequently wrote about “psychic facts” instead of “mental phenomena” as the subject matter of psychology.⁷⁷ Of course, he defined the general object of psychology as the psychic life, but as a whole, it is analyzed as a set of particular facts and dispositions (i.e., conditions in which a certain fact exists). I think that this is not a mere terminological change; rather, it followed from a more general attempt to unify the methodological approach of psychology and the natural sciences. If psychology attempts to be a science, it has the same object, i.e., facts, yet comprehended from an introspective point of view. (2) This central change led to an important redefinition of Brentano’s⁷⁸ late division between psychognosy and genetic psychology as a division between exact and inexact sciences, respectively. Contrary to Brentano, Twardowski called both disciplines exact, as they are sciences. According to Twardowski, descriptive and genetic psychology support each other, and neither is a dominant science.⁷⁹ Rather, as he put it, descriptive psychology is a supplementary discipline in relation to genetic psychology. This position is a clear revision of Brentano’s position, for whom psychognosy was regarded as the basis of genetic psychology.⁸⁰ (3) This leads to another radicalization of Brentano in regard to his view of experiments as methodological tools for psychology. Experiments were understood by Twardowski in a twofold manner: (a) as introspective experiments, i.e., attempts to reactivate ex post someone’s own experience and, on the basis of mutual repetitions, to collect them as a unitary image of the type of certain psychic facts⁸¹; (b) as psychophysiological experiments, i.e., experiments designed in analogy to physics and physiology.⁸² Whereas Brentano would seemingly accept (a), he would probably reject (b). On the other hand, Twardowski said that the experimental method is objective, in contrast to the subjective method of introspection, which has serious limitations because of this subjective background. Therefore, it is true that:

Twardowski does not agree with Brentano that there is a strict distinction between empirical and experimental psychology or between descriptive and genetic psychology, as Brentano calls it. The method of inner perception needs to be supplemented by results of, for example, Wundt’s experiments, which have the advantage of being repeatable and being accessible not only to the agent who has the perceptions.⁸³

Next, (4) psychic facts were understood by Twardowski as wholes that include psychic actions or functions and psychic products.⁸⁴ As Jerzy Bobryk explained, psychic actions are acts such as “believe” or “perceive,” whereas psychic products are non-durable products such as “belief” or “perception,” where the product merges with the action.⁸⁵ This distinction is absent in Brentano. (5) Given, however, that some psychic products can become durable,⁸⁶ e.g., a belief can become a series of written sentences, a psychologist such as Twardowski⁸⁷ assumes that one can investigate the product and—by way of abstraction—one can indicate a founding psychic action understood as a disposition. But, if this is the case, Twardowski substituted (or rather supplemented) the Brentanian intuition for abstraction; thus, the abstracted object, e.g., disposition, has a hypothetical character, which means that it is not given directly. More importantly, the action–product division is crucial for understanding Twardowski’s method of analyzing cultural entities as psychic products, which are comprehended as durable results of psychic actions or functions. For instance, Twardowski’s method serves to interpret a novel or a poem (products in his terms) as an expression of a writer’s psychic life (actions in his view). Teresa Rzepa calls this “the method of psychological interpretation,” and she characterized it in the following way:

The key to this method is collecting and examining all human products as symptoms of mental life. The collected products are then the objects of the psychologist’s psychological interpretation. When interpreting products, the psychologist, so to speak, perceives psychic phenomena from a certain time distance, and these phenomena are the basis of products as symptoms [of mental life]. On this basis, one can draw conclusions about someone’s (including his or her own) mental life. […] Having collected an adequate amount of information about the relevant mental phenomenon on the basis of psychological interpretation of products, the psychologist formulates general laws and concepts for the scope of the studied phenomenon. One argues for them logically. […] Finally, one provides a series of examples, thereby supplementing [the research] with strict and reliable protocols containing a description of the given mental phenomenon.⁸⁸

This method was also used by Blaustein. In any case, (6) if the psychic product was indeed different from the psychic action, Twardowski adopted ontological anti-psychologism.⁸⁹ In addition, he did not adopt methodological psychologism; for Twardowski, psychology is no longer a fundamental science but an auxiliary science (nauka pomocnicza).⁹⁰ All in all, in his later account of psychology, Twardowski reexamined Brentano’s project in regard to the points discussed above. Nonetheless, these differences are far-reaching and justify the thesis about Twardowski’s original explorations in descriptive psychology.

3.2.3 Blaustein’s Use of Twardowski’s Method

Given the results of Sects. 3.2.1 and 3.2.2, it should come as no surprise that Blaustein’s view of Brentano was determined or even dominated by Twardowski’s readings on the method of psychology. After all, Twardowski adopted many theoretical and methodological results that had been formulated by his Vienna teacher. Notably, Blaustein used the term “descriptive psychology” (psychologia deskryptywna)⁹¹ instead of “empirical psychology” after the 1874 Psychologie; this seems to go back to Twardowski, who had the opportunity to hear Brentano’s 1887/88 and 1888/89 lectures on descriptive psychology.⁹² Given this, it can be argued that the presence of Twardowski in Blaustein’s writings is all-perversive, and for this reason, it is difficult to decide which particular ideas stem directly from Brentano or indirectly from the Brentanian writings of Twardowski.

Indeed, Blaustein accepted many of Twardowski’s ideas, which were also present in Brentano. (1) He was aware that mental phenomena are given in inner perception; for this reason, (2) he accepted introspection as the infallible source of psychological knowledge.⁹³ Next, (3) Blaustein emphasized memory as a reliable tool in psychology; against this background, (4) he wrote about the method of retrospection as being just as important as introspection.⁹⁴ This requirement followed Twardowski’s worry that mental phenomena are subjective and are characterized by their “briefness” (krótkotrwałość)⁹⁵; if lived experiences cannot be remembered, a psychologist is unable to describe them. Of course, (5) Blaustein agreed with Twardowski (and Brentano) that psychological tools serve to describe psychic life and that (6) the aim of this description is to classify mental phenomena, although Blaustein focused on the classification of presentations.⁹⁶ In addition, (7) he accepted introspective experiments as a tool in psychological research.⁹⁷ All the listed elements are seemingly common for Blaustein, Twardowski and Brentano. This list could also include (8) the method used in the analytical procedure, but let us shed more light on this last point.

In Sect. 3.1.1, it was claimed that Blaustein used a method which is generally comparable to Brentano’s procedure. One might follow Tadeusz Czeżowski⁹⁸ in calling the method used by Blaustein was “the method of analytic description.”⁹⁹ In the 1953 text, Czeżowski stated that this method serves to analyze empirical objects, i.e., mental phenomena, and to formulate general propositions about objects. He divided the procedure into a few phases. To begin with, (1) of a given phenomenon, it is necessary to identify a typical example or type which is different from a genus and a species; by a “type,” Czeżowski understood an exemplar which is the basis of a description and which serves to define the relevant species.¹⁰⁰ Next, (2) one describes the chosen exemplary case by ascribing typical features to the object. Czeżowski was clear that a description is not based on a gradual induction; rather, as he put it,¹⁰¹ it is based on the act of intuition (akt swoistej intuicji).¹⁰² Interestingly, he stated that this phase corresponds with, among others, Husserl’s method of eidetic intuition (Wesenschau), but the act that serves to generalize the description is fallible, and for this reason, one proceeds by trial and error. (3) Czeżowski held that a description—because of the act of intuition—leads one to an analytical and real definition of the analyzed object. This phase is crucial since, according to Czeżowski,¹⁰³ it makes one’s description general and apodictic. As a result, the described object becomes determined ex definitione. This, however, means that the analyzed object is no longer an exemplar but rather a definition of the object itself. Finally, (4) one confronts the definition with other exemplars of the relevant species and genus to verify or confirm the definition. Here, one can define atypical cases which do not fit the definition. Czeżowski held that the method has a dual aim since it serves (a) to determine basic terms and (b) to classify relevant objects. Czeżowski’s method was examined and discussed by, for instance, Rzepa,¹⁰⁴ Dariusz Łukasiewicz,¹⁰⁵ and, more recently, Maciej Zinkiewicz¹⁰⁶ and Anna Brożek,¹⁰⁷ all of whom seem to accept that Czeżowski’s exposition holds for Twardowski. However, is Czeżowski right in claiming that Blaustein used the same procedure?

In general, Blaustein’s method seems to fit Czeżowski’s position. To claim this, one might refer, for instance, to a fragment of “Chap. 2” of Blaustein’s Przedstawienia imaginatywne [Imaginative Presentations], in which he analyzed the intentional object of imaginative presentations.¹⁰⁸ Accordingly, (1) he began with an identification of typical examples or exemplars of relevant presentations: (a) an example of looking at yourself in the mirror and (b) Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra drama performed in a theater (§ 8). Next, (2) Blaustein ascribed some features to this type of presentation, for instance, a perspective orientation of perception as embedded in the viewer’s lived body (§§ 9–10). On this basis, (3) he confronted the preliminary description with further typical experiences; as a result, for example, he drew a parallel between spatial and temporal perspectives (§§ 11–14) or he investigated the problem of the causal relation between intentional objects or their relation to judgments (§§ 16–18). Furthermore, (4) he generalized his descriptions to formulate a thesis about the quasi-real character of intentional objects (§ 15); finally, (5) he formulated a definition of the intentional objects of imaginative presentations (§§ 19–21). Elsewhere, Blaustein explicitly held that the subject matter of description is types,¹⁰⁹ and he seemed to agree with Czeżowski’s thesis that definitions are not fixed but are open for further verification. Contrary to Czeżowski’s claim, Blaustein did not accept eidetic intuition (Wesenschau) as a satisfactory procedure and instead accepted abstraction and inverse deduction as more reliable.¹¹⁰ All in all, despite the detailed differences, I think that Czeżowski was right in claiming that Blaustein used a version of Twardowski’s methodological procedure.

As already noted, Twardowski’s division between psychic products and actions or functions is the basis of the method of psychological interpretation. To reiterate, this method serves to interpret selected (cultural) artifacts as products of related mental phenomena. This method was used by some members of the Lvov–Warsaw School, seemingly including Blaustein. According to his 1937 text on social psychology, the subject matter of psychological research is defined as mental phenomena, but it also includes psychic dispositions and products related to relevant psycho-physical actions. He wrote that “[p]sychology is the study of mental phenomena and dispositions and it also takes into account human behavior and its products if they are related to mental phenomena.”¹¹¹ Thus, psychology explores psychic products. In this regard, one might refer to Blaustein’s short 1929 book, Das Gotteserlebnis in Hebbels Dramen,¹¹² or to the 1932 text, “Goethe jako psycholog” [“Goethe as a Psychologist”].¹¹³ The book on Christian Friedrich Hebbel’s dramas begins with a discussion of Brentano’s thesis on the intentional structure of conscious acts: Blaustein explicitly claimed that this thesis is commonly accepted.¹¹⁴ Given that the act is intentional and has an object, Blaustein’s aim was to analyze acts which are intentionally directed toward God. He emphasized the dual direction of this research: acts and their objects. He even stated that the noematic perspective deepens noetic investigations.¹¹⁵ To explain this dual research direction, he used Twardowski’s language of actions or functions and products. His general aim was to describe the lived experience of God on the basis of Hebbel’s dramas. To do this, Blaustein interpreted the “psychological basis” (Twardowski’s term) and motives of the characters presented by Hebbel in his works. For instance, he analyzed Hebbel’s 1848 drama Herodes und Mariamne and asked how Mariamne’s trust in God determines her actions in the play.¹¹⁶ To be precise, for Blaustein, Hebbel’s dramas only provide typical examples of God experiences, and he aimed to describe these experiences as such. His aim was not to interpret Hebbel’s works as such or his personal faith. This was noticed by Hermann Schuster, who, in his review of Blaustein’s book, emphasized that he did not fall into a naïve psychologism which would consist in deducing Hebbel’s personal worldview on the basis of his works.¹¹⁷

Blaustein used a similar interpretative procedure in his later text on Goethe. In the article “Goethe jako psycholog” [“Goethe as a Psychologist”], he analyzed and interpreted fragments of Goethe’s poetry as examples of descriptions of complex lived experiences. In his view, “[…] in his poetry, Goethe had […] an extraordinary gift of subtle expression of experienced and imaginary psychic lived experiences and the ability to poetically shape dramatic or fictional characters with a clear psychological profile and a rich psychological life.”¹¹⁸ Once again, Goethe’s writings were of interest for Blaustein as the basis of the psychological description of complex psychic structures—not because of Goethe’s private life. On the basis of his writings, while juxtaposing fragments of his poems, Blaustein formulated, for instance, laws and claims of developmental psychology regarding the process of educating youths.¹¹⁹ Blaustein’s concrete ideas are not important here. Instead allow us to note that here he followed Twardowski’s method of psychological interpretation because he analyzed human or cultural products as expressions of psychic life, and on this basis, he attempted to formulate more general psychological laws.

3.3 Blaustein and Gestalt Psychology

3.3.1 Sensations and Gestalt Qualities

At the turn of 1927 and 1928, Blaustein spent a few months in Berlin, where he held a scholarship. At that time, the Berlin Psychological Institute was one of the leading research centers in Gestalt psychology.¹²⁰ In Ryszard Jadczak’s opinion, Blaustein’s works after his return to Lvov bore the mark of his intensive studies on Gestalt theories and the inspirations he drew from them.¹²¹ Among the courses he took in Berlin at that time, he listed, for instance, Stumpf’s “Hauptprobleme der Philosophie” [“Main Problems of Philosophy”], Wertheimer’s “Logik” [“Logic”], Lewin’s “Kinderpsychologie” [“Child Psychology”], and Köhler’s “Die philosophische Lage der Gegenwart” [“The Philosophical Position of Presence”] and “Biologische Psychologie” [“Biological Psychology”].¹²² This list shows that Blaustein was indeed well trained in Gestalt psychology. In addition, he mentioned personal exchanges with Stumpf (with whom he discussed, for instance, Husserl’s phenomenology)¹²³ and Köhler and Wertheimer (the latter was interested, e.g., in Ajdukiewicz’s axiomatization of traditional logic).¹²⁴ Taking this into account, it comes as no surprise that he referred to the Gestaltists on various occasions in his writings, not only in theoretical or methodological contexts.¹²⁵ In the following, I examine several elements of Blaustein’s theory and his method, which are derived from Gestalt psychology.

In his posthumous memory of Stumpf, published in 1937, Blaustein noticed that he was one of the leading thinkers in twentieth-century psychology.¹²⁶ For Blaustein, Stumpf preferred concrete research rather than developing a philosophical system. Of course, he was interested in different disciplines; yet, according to Blaustein, psychology and phenomenology are dominant in his writings. Of course, the question of Stumpf’s account of phenomenology is complex. Initially, Stumpf developed his conception under the influence of Brentano, but he then argued with Husserl because he suggested a different account of phenomenology.¹²⁷ Thus, Stumpf followed Brentano in claiming that psychology is the foundation of all sciences, including the philosophical sciences¹²⁸; accordingly, Stumpf followed Husserl in claiming that a priori laws cannot be reduced to lived experiences. In doing so, he combined methodological psychologism with ontological anti-psychologism. Stumpf shared with Brentano the thesis about two types of perceptions (external and internal) but differed from him in that he considered the observation (Beobachtung) of internal life to be a reliable method of psychological investigation.¹²⁹ Stumpf’s understanding of psychology and phenomenology is clearly expounded in two treaties: Erscheinungen und psychische Funktionen [Phenomena and Psychic Functions] and Zur Einteilung der Wissenschaften [On the Division of Sciences], written by Stumpf for Königlich-Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. In the former, Stumpf identified two types of objects: (1) phenomena (Erscheinungen) that are interrelated (Verhältnisse) and are accounted for as the content of sensory impressions (Inhalte der Sinnesempfindungen) and (2) psychic functions, which are described as acts or lived experiences and which integrate phenomena into certain compounds, developing concepts about them and exciting the will.¹³⁰ Both elements are dependent on one another and make up a real unity (reale Einheit), although they do enjoy “relative independence” as it is possible to describe their differences.

In Zur Einteilung der Wissenschaften, Stumpf made use of this distinction to develop a classification of sciences, two of which are of interest here: descriptive psychology examines psychic functions or, more precisely, elementary psychic functions and phenomenology examines phenomena.¹³¹ Consequently, Stumpf suggested an understanding of phenomenology that is different from Husserl’s.¹³² His phenomenology is less interested in investigating internal experiences, i.e., acts, than it is focused on the content of impressions themselves. In his Ideen I, Husserl mentioned this difference and suggested that Stumpf’s phenomenology may be equated to hyletics, albeit not entirely as there are methodological differences between the two: Husserl’s position is transcendental,¹³³ while Stumpf’s is psychologistic. Blaustein was aware of these conceptual and methodological differences.¹³⁴ It can be argued that the conception outlined in Stumpf’s two lectures—where transcendental claims were abandoned—was close to him. This is for two reasons. First, Blaustein accepted that pure a priori psychology is not possible, which means that observations and experiments are necessary; Stumpf has the same opinion.¹³⁵ I will discuss this issue later on. Second, in his doctoral thesis, published later as Husserlowska nauka… [Husserl’s Theory…], Blaustein claimed that the world is composed of two parts, namely, material and phenomenal¹³⁶; furthermore, he attributed impressions to the phenomenal world. The very expression “phenomenal world” originated with Stumpf’s philosophy, where he wrote about “Erscheinungswelt”¹³⁷; similarly, phenomena are accounted for as the content of sensations and are attributed to the layer of the world that is external to the psyche. It seems that Blaustein took this argument from Stumpf, even though he did not refer to him explicitly in this part of his work. This, however, is a mere hypothesis.¹³⁸

What connects Blaustein with Stumpf and, more broadly, the Berlin school of Gestaltpsychologie is the approach to perception as something focused on certain wholes. The very concept of “Gestalt” is not clear-cut and may denote a form, a structure or an aspect.¹³⁹ Gestaltists used this concept to emphasize that, rather than being only aspect-based, experiences capture their objects holistically. Wertheimer introduced the concept by pointing out the ordered nature of perception. In his early work entitled “Untersuchungen zur Lehre von der Gestalt” [“Laws of Organization in Perceptual Forms”]—originally published in 1923—he wrote as follows: “When we are presented with a number of stimuli we do not as a rule experience ‘a number’ of individual things, this one and that and that. Instead larger wholes separated from and related to one another are given in experience; their arrangement and division are concrete and definite.”¹⁴⁰ Hence, Gestalts present objects that are already ordered to a certain degree and are experienced by the subject as higher-order wholes. Blaustein’s account of perception is similar. When writing about perception in Przedstawienia imaginatywne [Imaginative Presentations], he emphasized that in addition to colors, we also experience Gestalt qualities (jakości postaciowe),¹⁴¹ meaning the entirety of specific qualities that are experienced in perception in a certain order. Importantly, however, perception does not capture elements of the Gestalt but rather the entirety of their arrangement precisely as they are arranged. In Przedstawienia schematyczne i symboliczne [Schematic and Symbolic Presentations], one also finds a relevant thesis, albeit formulated in regard to presentations: for Blaustein, presentations are founded on sensations which, in turn, are associated with Gestalt qualities; only such a complex phenomenon indicates its object.¹⁴² Blaustein stressed that the subject anticipates such wholes. He understood this “anticipation” as a psychic disposition of referring to complexes of psychic facts.¹⁴³ Thus, a given object may be accounted for in different ways, depending on the attitude of its perceiver. Blaustein also used a similar description to explain changes in the attitude of a subject to an object that, although unchanged, is captured differently depending on the attitude. One example of this type of perception is accounting for a person in a theater first as an actor and then later as, for instance, Shakespeare’s Hamlet or Othello.¹⁴⁴

3.3.2 Experiments in Psychology

As mentioned above, Blaustein was aware of the function ascribed to experiments by Gestaltists, and he was impressed by how they designed them and how helpful they could be. In one of his letters to Twardowski that was written during his stay in Berlin, Blaustein reported that he had read Lewin’s Gesetz und Experiment in der Psychologie [Law and Experiment in Psychology], a short book published in 1927, which he assessed as “well thought out.”¹⁴⁵ More importantly, however, he was able to observe how experiments are used in concrete research. After Köhler’s invitation, during his scholarship stay, he had an occasion to participate in meetings organized at the Berlin Psychological Institute. For instance, he appreciated the way in which Lewin or Wertheimer used a film camera to illustrate concrete objects of research or to control an ongoing experiment; he explicitly wrote that “I truly would like to contribute to popularizing this among us [in Lvov].”¹⁴⁶ In this vein, he noticed that the lectures he had an occasion to attend at the Institute were convincing and clear:

The last time a student of Müller referred to his research on lighting or on the perception of lighting, a professor from Oslo was also present as a guest. A day later, Köhler invited me to a lecture by Katz from Rostock about his own research and that of Dr. Engelmann on acoustic localization in animals. This lecture was one of the best in Berlin, and it confirmed my intention to do experimental work.¹⁴⁷

Indeed, after Blaustein returned to Lvov, he regularly referred to or used experiments in much of his work. This, however, does not mean that he abandoned the project of descriptive psychology or became an experimental psychologist. Instead, he tried to combine both approaches. He already saw a comparable intention in Stumpf, who contributed to experimental psychology yet trained his students—as Blaustein¹⁴⁸ put it—“in the spirit of Brentano,” since he was skeptical of understanding experiments as “the only salutary method of psychology.” To explain this, he also referred to Köhler and Wertheimer. At the very beginning of his 1930 Przedstawienia imaginatywne [Imaginative presentations], he wrote:

I do not oppose descriptive and experimental psychology—in line with the intentions of eminent experimental psychologists such as Köhler, Wertheimer and others. Descriptions and experiments are two methods of one discipline and the same discipline. This is not to say that there are no areas in psychological research that are available only for descriptive or experimental methods. In the great majority of cases, however, descriptions and experiments are two phases of psychological investigation. Although experiments sometimes verify the results of descriptive psychology, they are usually used to study specific problems on the basis of fundamental concepts that are analyzed and defined within the framework of descriptive psychology.¹⁴⁹

Accordingly, for Blaustein, experiments—in addition to descriptions—are among the methods of psychological research. They enable one to investigate topics which are inaccessible to descriptions. Next, they can either verify certain descriptions or can be a method that is used independently of these descriptions.

Nevertheless, it is important to keep in mind that Blaustein’s use of experimental methods has a dual reference: (1) to introspective experiments and (2) to non-introspective experiments. In a short but important article from 1931, “Z zagadnień dydaktyki psychologii” [“On the Issues of Psychology Didactics”], Blaustein juxtaposed two trends in psychology: the focus on either intuition (naoczność) or verbalism (werbalizm).¹⁵⁰ The former consists in an attempt to indicate or make relevant psychological laws evident; a psychologist attempts here to evoke experiences which are related to objects described by relevant laws. This can be accomplished with a certain lived experience as a form of intuition of the object, its apprehension in perception, in memory or in imagination. The latter account, i.e., verbalism, in turn, emphasizes verbal ways of presenting the objects of psychology; as such, it consists in conceptual thinking and is based on non-concrete, signitive and non-intuitive presentations. In this regard, Blaustein held that, of course, one cannot exclude verbalism from psychology, but a reliable psychology should accentuate the intuitive trend in the process of teaching since, due to intuition, one knows the basis of relevant psychological concepts.¹⁵¹ To do this, a psychologist has to use an introspective experiment which aims to induce someone to have relevant lived experiences. In “Z zagadnień dydaktyki psychologii” [“On the Issues of Psychology Didactics”], Blaustein discussed an example of an experiment that aimed to show what introspection is. First, a psychologist asked a participant to think, for instance, about a certain story. This, however, meant that the participant experiences something. Next, the participant was asked to name the lived experience; by doing so, the participant had to describe the lived experience accurately.¹⁵² Finally, the psychologist indicated that one internally experienced what is called introspection. This simple experiment described by Blaustein functions as an indication of a certain law or object of research. This type of experiment can be regarded as a supplement or further elaboration of a certain description. More precisely, at least in the example discussed above, due to intuitive indications, one can determine what introspection is. Hence, description and experimentation are designed as elements of one procedure, but Blaustein also referred to non-introspective experiments. This reference is evident in Blaustein’s object-directed or systematic studies on concrete phenomena; for instance, in his analysis of hearing a radio drama¹⁵³ or watching a movie in the cinema.¹⁵⁴ In his research, Blaustein referred to psychological experiments, e.g., acoustic experiments, which prove that acoustic experiences are less intense than visual experiences, or he used a survey method that can be applied to a certain group and used as the basis for experiments. According to Blaustein, the survey method is based on the observation and analysis of talks, personal interviews and surveys held by other scholars. Overall, Blaustein’s ideas here followed those of the Gestaltists to some extent.

3.4 The Project of Humanistic Psychology

In addition to the Gestaltists, in Berlin, Blaustein also met Spranger, a proponent of humanistic psychology (geisteswissenschaftliche Psychologie, psychologia humanistyczna).¹⁵⁵ Spranger, who studied under Dilthey in Berlin, developed his teacher’s descriptive psychology project by adopting his method yet expanding its thematic scope.¹⁵⁶ In one of his letters to Twardowski that was written during his stay in Berlin, Blaustein noticed that, in 1927/28, Spranger did not hold lectures but only classes on the culture account in research and on the concept of objective spirit (Gesit).¹⁵⁷ In addition, he mentioned some personal exchanges with Spranger, e.g., on Twardowski’s habilitation book.¹⁵⁸ Although Blaustein did not sympathize with Spranger’s nationalism, which was “exaggerated” (przesadny)¹⁵⁹ in his view, he valued his studies on the psychology of adolescence, and he referred to him in this regard in his own writings.¹⁶⁰ After his return to Lvov in 1928, Blaustein did not discuss Spranger’s or Dilthey’s projects in depth. Instead, he focused on analyzing Husserl’s theory of content, as well as on his original studies on presentations. Nonetheless, a few years later, in 1933–36, he presented a series of talks and studies on Spranger and Dilthey in which he explored the method of humanistic psychology, its object, and its basis in the humanities (Geisteswissenschaften). As a result, the method used by Blaustein also incorporated themes present in the writings of both Berlin scholars.

To begin with, Blaustein’s definition of the subject matter of psychology as a psychic life resembles not only Twardowski’s account but also that of Dilthey. In his work, Ideen über eine beschreibende und zergliedernde Psychologie [Ideas Concerning a Descriptive and Analytic Psychology], published originally in 1894, Dilthey opposed the explanatory and descriptive kinds of psychology. The former adopts different hypotheses about the nature of psychic life, such as the existence of impressions, and integrates them into cause-and-effect sequences to explain a given phenomenon.¹⁶¹ On the other hand, descriptive psychology presents elements and interdependencies of different forms of psychic life, such elements being not inferred or added but specifically and vividly experienced (erlebt).¹⁶² This method is also based on the internal experience and aims to account for psychic life as a whole; thus, it may be called holistic. Although Dilthey, as opposed to Twardowski, did not reject psychologism and claimed that psychology is a fundamental science, he put greater emphasis on a holistic account of psychic life than did Twardowski. Of course, Twardowski employed the term “psychic life” when writing about the subject matter of psychology,¹⁶³ but he immediately added that it can be treated as a conglomeration of psychic facts. Dilthey took the opposite view, consistently underlining that the relationships that shape our psychic life are incomprehensible outside their overall contexts. As he wrote:

In the human studies […] the nexus of psychic life constitutes originally a primitive and fundamental datum. We explain nature, we understand psychic life. For in inner experience [innere Erfahrung] the processes of one thing acting on another and the connections of functions or individual members of psychic life into a whole are also given. The experienced [erlebte] whole [Zusammenhang] is primary here, the distinction among its members only comes afterwards. It follows from this that the methods by means of which we study psychic life, history and society are very different from those which have led to the knowledge of nature. As for the question which we are here considering, it follows from the difference we noted that hypotheses do not all play the same role in psychology as in the study of nature. In the latter, all connectedness [Zusammenhang] is obtained by means of the formation of hypotheses; in psychology it is precisely the connectedness which is originally and continually given in lived experience [Erleben]: life exists everywhere only as a nexus or coherent whole. Psychology therefore has no need of basing itself on the concepts yielded from inferences in order to establish a coherent whole among the main groups of mental affairs.¹⁶⁴

In light of the passage quoted above, it seems that for Dilthey the object of psychological research is primarily a whole understood as the psychic life, which is composed of metal affairs or facts. This whole is decomposed into or analyzed as a set of these facts. Analysis of mental facts, in turn, is held in inner experience, which presents its object directly, namely, the psychic life. For this reason, a psychologist can refer to the mental object directly without unnecessary hypotheses. Dilthey’s understanding of psychology and its object is, of course, close to that of Blaustein’s. For instance, both thinkers seemed to emphasize inner experience, and they explicated its object as psychic life. There are, however, clear differences as Blaustein—contra Dilthey—accepted experiments as a reliable basis for psychology, or he explicitly criticized the metaphysical framework of Dilthey’s psychology.¹⁶⁵ Despite this critique, there are a few themes in Blaustein’s philosophy which seem to be rooted in Dilthey and Spranger.

First, Blaustein defined the object of psychology as a “primarily natural psychological whole”¹⁶⁶ or as the psychic life. The point here is not that the psychic life or a given lived experience are a whole (in the sense of an object composed of its parts). In his opinion, a description of a lived experience as a composition of presentations, emotions and judgments, i.e., decomposition of the psychic life into its elementary parts, is paradoxically far from being direct since it does not account for the relevant experience as a whole.¹⁶⁷ For Blaustein, this meant that a lived experience also includes its product (in Twardowski’s sense), which arises as a result of the relevant psychophysiological action. In this sense, psychic wholes can include (1) some psychophysiological products, (2) someone’s attitude toward a certain object and (3) a social relation which determines someone’s lived experience.¹⁶⁸ In addition, a psychologist often comprehends a person from an abstract point of view; for example, if one claims that lived experiences are intentional, one does not take into account that the person stands in concrete relation to the surrounding world. In this context, Blaustein wrote about the “anonymity” of psychological research.¹⁶⁹ But, again, this approach is partial and does not account for psychic life as a whole. Rather, psychic life is always given in a wider context which binds the mental with the biological basis of a person. Following Dilthey, Blaustein showed that a holistic account of the psychic life requires that its analysis includes other areas that shape it, such as religion, politics, etc. Given this, in Blaustein’s view, the psychic life is a whole which includes smaller wholes, which are products of a person. This kind of psychology, which studies thus-defined wholes, is called “humanistic” because it includes man in “the scope of humanistic reality.”¹⁷⁰

Blaustein employed a broad notion of human reality. In his talk “O rzeczywistości badanej przez nauki humanistyczne” [“On Reality Studied by the Humanities”], given on October 30, 1933, during the meeting of the Polish Philosophical Society, Blaustein claimed that the reality studied by the humanities is identical to the reality studied by natural sciences, i.e., the real world, yet it is regarded from an anthropocentric point of view.¹⁷¹ This means that reality is studied here insofar as it is the product of man’s actions. In general, Blaustein held that the humanist reality includes (1) human individuals, (2) (organized or unorganized) groups of human individuals, (3) products of human individuals, (4) products of groups of human individuals and, finally, (5) sets of such products.¹⁷² Group (5) includes (a) everyday objects, e.g., tools; (b) meaningful products, e.g., poems, theories, paintings; (c) aesthetic (non-practical) products, e.g., a musical work of art; (d) customs, which are understood as types of actions of human individuals; and (e) structures of social organizations, e.g., political systems.¹⁷³ Arguably, Blaustein accepted the general claim of humanistic psychology that one has to study concrete lived experiences in a wider cultural context than the mere abstract structure of lived experiences. After all, Blaustein’s studies concern phenomena such as watching a movie or listening to the radio, both of which can be comprehended as a specifically human reality. As we will see later in Chaps. 8 and 9, he described these phenomena as correlated with certain attitudes and, curiously enough, as embodied. For Blaustein, the object of psychology is not only spiritual but also, if not primarily, embodied. Blaustein used this claim in his analyses of the aesthetic perception of, for instance, a theatre play. The theatregoer is always seated in a specific location in the audience, which determines the way he perceives the show. One’s perception is further shaped by other factors that are not psychological in nature, such as the behavior of other audience members who are seated around the theatregoer. Naturally, the theatregoer’s perception will also be influenced by factors that are related to his individual biography, which, in turn, is rooted in culture and society. Hence, to be able to understand a simple act of perception, one must take into account all those elements which, as a whole, shape a complex lived experience in a given moment of psychic life.

Blaustein presented his view of Spranger and Dilthey on October 6, 1934, at the 335th plenary meeting of the Polish Philosophical Society. Twardowski noted that the discussion was intense and that the audience was interested in Blaustein’s talk. Although “[…] the talk was well prepared,” in Twardowski’s view, “it was misleading in regard to its content.”¹⁷⁴ It can be assumed that Twardowski saw in Blaustein’s humanistic psychology a project that could be reduced to his own descriptive psychology. After all, to define the subject matter of psychology, Blaustein adopted his teacher’s division between actions and products. In addition, Blaustein’s anti-metaphysical attitude seemed to be directly rooted in Twardowski’s philosophy. In his writings (apart from a few in 1933–36), Blaustein never declared that he adopted the tools of humanistic psychology. One can argue that Blaustein suspended the project he had discussed and left it in his writings as a mere research idea that was never developed; at best, it was applied in a limited scope, e.g., in regard to the cinema experience or to observing a theatre play. In this vein, Twardowski’s concerns that his descriptive approach was insufficient to analyze humanistic reality seem understandable. However, in the talk, which was published later in 1935 in Przegląd Filozoficzny [The Philosophical Review], one finds an original synthesis of Twardowski’s approach with that of Spranger or Dilthey. As such, this original approach can be regarded as the very beginning of the tradition of humanistic psychology in Poland, which anticipated the 1960s project of Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers.¹⁷⁵

***The aim of this chapter was to identify the psychological themes in Blaustein’s method. It was motivated by the need to address the problem of divergent interpretations of his thought. In this context, at the very beginning of the present chapter, I proposed the hypothesis that Blaustein can be viewed as a member of the psychological division of the Lvov–Warsaw School. With these ideas in mind, I outlined selected elements of the descriptive psychology of Brentano, Twardowski, Dilthey, and Gestalt psychology. In this regard, I attempted to show that Blaustein developed an original project of philosophical psychology. It turns out that Blaustein leaned on these traditions when defining the object of his analyses and the elements of his method. He understood the object of psychology as “psychic life” (Twardowski, Dilthey) and its method as introspection and retrospection (Brentano, Twardowski), thus enabling a descriptive analysis of types of lived experiences (Twardowski). In this regard, a psychologist’s task is to clarify the basic concepts of descriptive psychology (Twardowski) and, consequently, to classify mental phenomena. However, Blaustein did not accept the three-part division of mental phenomena (Brentano) and instead preferred a four-part taxonomy (Twardowski). In addition, it is important to note that he mainly developed the classification of presentations and did not elaborate a thorough argument for the four-part classification. Next, for Blaustein, any investigation must be multi-dimensional, i.e., it must focus on acts (Brentano), contents or impressions (Stumpf), and psychic products (Twardowski). His methodological approach did not exclude experiments (Twardowski, Stumpf, Wertheimer). It accounts for perception as an act directed at certain Gestalt forms (Wertheimer), and it refers to humanistic reality as its subject matter (Spranger).

It would be difficult, however, to call Blaustein an uncritical interpreter of the heritage psychology of nineteenth- and twentieth-century psychology. Proof of this is that—unlike some scholars operating in this tradition (early Twardowski, Dilthey, Stumpf)—he did not accept ontological psychologism, even though he seemed to accept methodological psychologism (Brentano). After all, he claimed that philosophical inquiry, e.g., in aesthetics, is preceded by psychological research. In his method, Blaustein focused on its practical impact for non-philosophical disciplines (Brentano). He also employed the method of psychological interpretation of cultural objects (Twardowski, Spranger). Overall, one can argue that the plurality of psychological themes in the method of Blaustein followed from his life-long quest for adequate methodological tools to describe the richness of psychic life. Although his method seemed to be rather eclectic, I think he contributed to the redefinition of philosophical psychology, for instance, in his (unfinished) project of humanistic psychology. By claiming this, I disagree with Wieczorek, who held that Blaustein overcame Brentano’s heritage by adopting Husserl’s phenomenology.¹⁷⁶ In light of the present chapter, this thesis has yet to be verified. It is evident that the descriptive, Gestalt, or humanistic themes in his psychology were cornerstones of the method he used, and as such, they cannot be ignored in his writings or reduced to his account of phenomenology. As we will see in Chap. 5, Blaustein was skeptical about Husserl’s method. I think the impact that descriptive and Gestalt types of psychology had on Blaustein is also visible in his understanding of phenomenology not as a priori eidetics but as an empirical discipline. Prior to this, however, in Chap. 4, I will examine Blaustein’s theory of presentations, which was formulated as an implementation of the methodological tools discussed here.