Graz School

The Graz School, also called Meinong's School, was a school of experimental psychology and object theory headed by Alexius Meinong, professor and chair of philosophy at the University of Graz, where he founded the Graz Psychological Institute in 1894. Meinong developed it with students such as Christian von Ehrenfels, the founder of Gestalt psychology, and Alois Höfler, and its pupils included Fritz Heider, Stephan Witasek and Vittorio Benussi. Its phenomenological psychology and philosophical semantics made advances in philosophy and psychological science, and it is known for object theory and a theory of the mind that took descriptive psychology as the fundamental discipline. It also embraced Brentano's empiricist method and intentionality thesis, played a part in the rise of Gestalt theory, and belonged to the wider movement of Austrian realism.