Otto Selz

Otto Selz (14 February 1881 – 27 August 1943) was a German psychologist from Munich, Bavaria, who formulated the first non-associationist theory of thinking, in 1913.

[1][2][3] Influenced by the German phenomenological tradition,[4] Selz used the method of introspection, but unlike his predecessors, his theory developed without the use of images and associations.

Wilhelm Wundt used the method of introspection in the 1880s, but thought that higher-level mental processes could not be studied in the scientific laboratory.

[3] Selz's career was shortened by Nazi policies in Europe, which banned him from his profession in Germany because he was Jewish.

In 2004, philosopher and psychologist Michel ter Hark, University of Groningen, published a book called Popper, Otto Selz and the Rise of Evolutionary Epistemology, in which he argues that Karl Popper got part of his ideas from Selz.