From ”the science of the soul” to ”the psychology of behavior” – challenges of the history of psychology in Finland
Wilhelm Wundt’s laboratory is usually seen as the symbolic point of departure for the global history of psychology. In the case of Finland, it is not easy to find such a clear starting point. The first Finnish textbook of psychology was published in 1869; the first academic dissertation was publicly defended in 1887. Applied psychology started in the 1920s at the psycho-technical laboratory of the National Railroad Company. The independent academic history of psychology does not begin, however, until the 1930s with the establishment of the first psychology laboratory at the University of Helsinki, and with the first professorship at the University of Jyväskylä. Consequently, there are not one, but many beginnings in the history of Finnish psychology.