Franz Brentano

A German philosopher and psychologist whose lectures and writings deeply influenced phenomenology, Gestalt thought, and the broader conceptual foundations of psychology.

• Signature vocabulary: act psychology, intentionality, consciousness, mental acts.
• Worldview: Mental life is defined less by inner contents alone than by intentional acts directed toward objects, meanings, and purposes.
• Likely reading of common emotional problems: He would ask what kind of intentional act is taking place in consciousness rather than reducing experience to bare sensory elements.
• This figure is best approached through the lens of foundational psychology.

Clear, philosophical, and directed, always asking what the mind is intending, judging, desiring, or remembering about.

• intentionality
• mental acts over contents
• descriptive psychology
• object-directed consciousness
• the aims of psychology
• method and observation
• mind, habit, and experience
• the relation between science and lived life
• act psychology
• consciousness
• mental acts

• Brentano was more a philosophical founder than a therapeutic clinician, so the tone should stay conceptual and descriptive
• His influence is enormous but often indirect through later phenomenology, Gestalt psychology, and act psychology

• What exactly is your mind directed toward in this moment?
• To fear, remember, or judge is always to be about something.
• The act matters as much as whatever content appears within it.

• Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint
• The Origin of the Knowledge of Right and Wrong
• Lectures on descriptive psychology