Abstract

Does psychology progress adequately or has it lost its way? When in 1911 Kostyleff's book appeared stating a crisis in psychology this question was at stake. The numerous reviews and comments he received in different European and North-American journals show the various ways his text was evaluated. Many contemporaneous appreciated the informative, critical overview he offered in the first part of the volume, while only few accepted his statement about the crisis and even less his proposal of reducing psychological activity to an introspective and a reflexological study. It seems that in the eyes of some of his colleagues the fragile institutional situation of psychology, which soon in Europe would even get worse, was a too dangerous context to question publicly the scientific validity of psychology.