Summarize the history of the controversy concerning psychology as a pure, scientific discipline as opposed to an applied discipline.
The discovery of differences in the observations deduced by the astronomers incited interest in a new field, that is, sensory psychology. This led to a proper analytic research on sensation and perception. Muller, Helmholtz, Weber et al worked on this scientific investigation influencing other psychologists as well, like Wundt.
Wundt discovered psychology as a discipline which has independent existence. He emphasized on the fact that psychology is a basic discipline, rather than an applied psychology, which primarily looks on to the scientific analysis.
Astonishingly, Wundt’s people did not agree with their mentor’s beliefs and started their own investigation after completing their thesis work. Their work primarily concerned the individual differences, which were not taken into account, and applied psychology.
One of them was Munsterberg, who worked consistently on developing applied psychology. Other than Munsterberg, many functionalists believing in functionalism supported applied psychology and agreed with the fact that individual differences and applied psychology are interrelated.