Generations of "wasted chances" : Władysław Heinrich and psychology in Poland

The aim of this article is to present Władysław Heinrich as one of the pioneers of Polish psychology. In the first part, Heinrich’s achievements are presented in the broad context of the political, ethnic, and cultural situation in Polish territory as well as with regard to some of the most important figures in Polish psychology from the 19th and early 20th centuries (e.g., Wiszniewski, Ochorowicz, Abramowski, Twardowski). The outlined characteristics of several projects for practicing psychology show the academic centers with which Polish researchers entered into dialogue (e.g., Brentano and Freud in Vienna, Flournoy in Switzerland). The article also explains the indigenization of various trends coming from those centers and what the process of internationalization looked like. The second and main part of the article presents the scientific curriculum vitae et studiorum of Heinrich and its links to behaviorism. It is discussed in reference both to Henri Piéron’s proposal for a behavior-focused psychology and to a paper by Heinrich’s student Strzembosz that compares his mentor’s views with those of early behaviorists such as Parmelee, Meyer, Weiss, Pillsbury, and Watson as well as to the Gestalt psychologists. Although some similarities between early American behaviorism and Heinrich’s behavior-focused approach undoubtedly exist, the specific European cultural context shaped the latter in a different direction. The case of Heinrich (and Piéron) shows, however, that Watson’s behaviorism was not the only form that an objective, behavior-focused psychology could take at the turn of the 20th century. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved