Phenomenology and Psychology: Germany, Austria, the Netherlands

In this chapter, we discuss how phenomenology developed in Germany and Austria from the idea of psychology as the foundation of all sciences, including logic and philosophy, into an anti-psychologism. Phenomenology eventually emerged in multiple varieties (Sect. 2.1), two of which, transcendental phenomenology of Husserl and the phenomenology of essences of Scheler and others, were most influential in the Netherlands, though in adapted versions. Section 2.2 focuses on the postwar Weimar period that was most influential in Dutch universities. In Sect. 2.3 we briefly focus on the Dutch philosophical and psychological landscape from 1900 to 1960, when psychology slowly developed from the German-inspired science of consciousness to the first beginnings of an Anglo-Saxon-inspired science of behavior. We restrict our overview to the developments in the main universities offering higher education in the postwar period by briefly discussing the founding fathers of psychology in the Netherlands. In this chapter, we focus on five of the six main universities in the Netherlands of the 1950s. In Chap. 3 , we will look at the early history of psychology in Utrecht to show the context of how, after World War II, the so-called Utrecht School developed.