This text became foundational for the Würzburg School of psychology and sparked heated controversy with Wilhelm Wundt.

In the same year Moritz Schlick and Robert Reininger were also appointed as full professors; the latter would become president of the Philosophical Society of Vienna until its disbandment in 1938.

He also worked in the field of the philosophy of language as a follower of the school of Franz Brentano, Alexius Meinong, Josef Klemens Kreibig and Alois Höfler.

[citation needed] On 23 March 1938, Bühler was briefly detained by the Nazis, which caused him to flee to London in 1940, then to Oslo.

[citation needed] In 1959 Karl Bühler was honored with the Wilhelm Wundt Medal of the German Society of Psychology.