Münsterberg's Photoplays - continued...

On February 21, 1892, Münsterberg received a letter from James asking whether he would be interested in coming to Harvard as a guest professor and director of the psychology lab for a period of three years. James was quite impressed by Münsterberg's ongoing publications, seeing him as a "real genius" of the new discipline (and a "charming fellow", as he added in a letter to Henry Bowditch in April of the same year). After publication of the "Principles", James had also recognized the need to compete with other emerging psychology labs in the US and in Canada (e. g., Cornell, Toronto). Since he saw himself as unable to direct a laboratory ("I am by nature no experimentalist", he wrote to Münsterberg, on May 15), he turned to the young and brilliant scholar in Freiburg.

On May 13, Münsterberg cabled to James: "Joyfully Accepting the Call." Still in Freiburg, he started to re-organize the Harvard psychology lab, then located in Dane Hall (the first building of the Law School). The main issue was equipping the two rooms of the laboratory with appropriate instruments. Single items were already in possession of James (e. g., a Hipp chronoscope and a set of tuning forks by Koenig), and Münsterberg planned on bringing some of his own instruments from Freiburg. But the large majority of apparatuses and devices was to be newly acquired.

Chain Reaction Test at the Laboratory in Dane Hall

After having retooled the laboratory, Münsterberg started research and teaching at Harvard in the fall of 1892. Assisted by Herbert Nichols, Münsterberg was eager to spread the good news. In January 1893, he presented the new research and teaching facility to the readers of the Harvard Graduate Magazine and proudly declared: "[W]e have the most ample and complete collection of psychological apparatus in the world" (Münsterberg, 1893a, p. 202).

By the same token, Münsterberg presented a psychological research program that would not limit itself to experimenting with "normal adult men" (as had been the case in Wundtian psychology and Münsterberg's early work in Freiburg) but was meant to encompass comparative observations as well as historical and even literary studies. In striking contrast to the established German tradition of psychological research, Münsterberg even suggested that psychological experiments should be carried out in "children and the sick" as well as in "hypnotic subjects." Furthermore, he argued in favor of experiments in animal psychology – a research practice that was excluded from the Wundtian context in Leipzig.