Wahrnehmung und Gegenstandswelt: Grundlegung einer Psychologie vom Gegenstand her (Perception and the World of Objects: Foundations of a Psychology from the Object’s Perspective) FIRST EDITION
Leipzig und Wien: Franz Deuticke, 1934.
First Edition. Hardcover. TEXT IN GERMAN. 9 5/8" X 6 3/4". 193pp, plus 18 illustrations in-text. Bound in ochre cloth over boards, titled in dark brown to spine and upper board. Moderate wear to binding, with covers showing general soiling and darkening, with scattered rubbing to cloth and bumping to corners and head of spine. Hinges a touch tender; binding remains quite firm and sound. Pages are clean and unmarked aside from a striking provenance: the ownership signature of Dr. Else Frenkel appears in ink on the front free endpaper. A later institutional stamp reads “Withdrawn from Warner Brown Collection.” Text in German.
This is a first edition, in German, of the foundational work of Egon Brunswik (1903–1955), Austrian-born psychologist and one of the earliest theorists of ecological psychology. Published while Brunswik was Privatdozent at the University of Vienna and dedicated to his mentor Karl Bühler, the book laid the groundwork for his later probabilistic models of perception and behavior. Brunswik’s theories would find their greatest development in the U.S., where he emigrated in the face of rising fascism, eventually teaching at Berkeley alongside Edward Tolman.
Of extraordinary note is the provenance: the inscription matches the known signature of Dr. Else Frenkel-Brunswik (1908–1958), Brunswik’s intellectual collaborator and later his wife. Frenkel-Brunswik was a pioneering psychologist in her own right, best known for co-authoring The Authoritarian Personality (1950) with Theodor Adorno and colleagues—a landmark study in postwar social psychology. This copy, therefore, may well have passed through both of their hands during their time in Vienna.
The Warner Brown Collection stamp further situates this volume in American academic circulation, likely after the couple’s emigration. Brown was a prominent experimental psychologist at UC Berkeley, where Frenkel-Brunswik and Brunswik both held appointments. Additionally, this volume was purchased from the collection Anders Ericsson (1947-2020), “The Expert on Experts,” Florida State University cognitive psychologist, and globally recognized researcher in the field of performance studies and the psychological nature of expertise whose work Malcolm Gladwell popularized in his bestselling book Outliers.
A unique and compelling artifact from the intellectual ferment of interwar Vienna, touching on multiple major threads in 20th-century psychology and philosophy. Very good. Item #16844
Price: $695.00