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theories advocated by the Würzburgers. On a series of cards, he presented typed words, a
stimulus word and a task or Aufgabe, and asked the subjects for a careful introspective description
of their thinking. Examples follow of the stimulus word, the Aufgabe, and a particular final
response word, but not the detailed protocol:
Hunting - Coordinate
Hunting - Superordinate
Parson - Coordinate
Poem - Superordinate
Rowing
Sport
Chaplain
Work of Art
Sometimes the task was to find the opposite of a stimulus word, or to name a part of the stimulus
word or a whole of which the word was a part.
Based on analysis of hundreds of protocols, SELZ accepted the Würzburgers' ideas that thought
need not be accompanied by images and that association was not adequate to explain thinking,
but rejected the notion of a determining tendency inherent in the stimulus word. Rather, he
emphasized the integration of the stimulus word and the Aufgabe into a Gesamtaufgabe, a
complex of relationships. In difficult tasks, the complex may be incomplete but may serve as an
antizipierendes, a schematic anticipation or anticipatory scheme, whose completion yields the
response word. To SELZ, both reproductive and productive thinking consisted essentially of the
completion of the anticipatory schema.
SELZ described his experiments in two large books, the first one published in 1913 and the second
in 1922.[22b] Portions of them are translated into English in the volume edited by FRIJDA and DE
GROOT,[22] which also includes a condensation, both in German and English, of SELZs 1924 work
on productive and reproductive thinking.[22c] SELZ had about 30 publications.
SELZ never married. All his life he found it difficult to engage in close relationships, perhaps a
consequence of the "fundamental aloofness between father and son" (p.3).[22a]
In 1920 SELZ was offered a lectureship in the philosophy of law at the University of Bonn where in
1921 he was appointed "professor extraordinary," which obligated him to give a weekly one-hour
lecture on the philosophy of law each semester. This occupation with law may have contributed to
his writing style "that is nothing short of torture to his readers" (p. 4).[22a]
In 1923 he accepted an invitation to the Chair of Philosophy, Psychology, and Pedagogy in the
Handelshochschule of Mannheim. On 4 December 1923 the Minister of Education and Culture
appointed him a full professor. For ten years he held the position, even attaining the honor of
Vice-Chancellorship in 1929. Thus, at the start of April 1933, SELZ was 52 years old, and the
incumbent of the Wilhelm WUNDT Chair and Director of the Mannheim Institute of Psychology.
But along with other Jews, in 1933 he was dismissed from his position, his fortunes forever
changed by the Nazis. "By Decree No. A 7642 of the Baden Minister for Culture and Education,
issued on April 6, 1933 and conveyed on the morrow by the Rector of the school, he had been
notified that in the interest of the maintenance of security and public order he was sent on
indefinite leave of absence" (p. 13).[22d] From then on he no longer had access to the Mannheim
Institute. SELZ suffered terribly from being cut off from the Institute and his colleagues. Initially he
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