Herbart's psychology is an important theoretical basis of his educational thought, and they are closely related. He believes that psychology determines the methods and means to achieve educational goals.

Herbart was the first thinker in western history who studied psychology as an independent discipline and tried to build it into a science. Herbart's psychology is directly related to education and teaching from the beginning, and his psychology is an educational psychology. Therefore, Herbart is usually regarded as the founder of modern educational psychology.

Any kind of philosophy and psychology must have the "essence" of education in order to be truly applied to the field of education and teaching, or to have an impact on the field of education. Herbart psychology is like this.

Herbart mainly studies apperception, interest and attention in psychology.

The word apperception was first put forward by Leibniz. Herbart absorbed the independence of his criticism and drew lessons from Kant, Locke and others, and put forward his own views and applied them to teaching.

The basic meaning of Herbart's apperception theory is that when a new stimulus works, the appearance enters the field of consciousness through the door of the senses; If it is strong enough to arouse the activities of existing similar concepts under the threshold of consciousness and unite with them, then the power gained from it will expel the concepts that previously dominated consciousness and become the center of consciousness, and the new sensory representation will be combined with the existing concepts to form an apperception group (that is, the result of cognitive activities). If the concept similar to the new representation already exists in the field of consciousness, then the combination of the two will further consolidate its position. He also pointed out that interest is an important condition for apperception.

Herbart put forward a complete set of educational theories on the basis of his psychology. Many of his educational theories involve psychological knowledge and are applied flexibly. Herbart's teaching stage theory came into being, and the teaching process mainly includes four stages: clarity, connection, system and method, and each stage represents a psychological process. This is the application of apperception theory. Herbart combined the knowledge of pedagogy and psychology, and there are still many in his educational theory, which further developed psychology. The formation and theoretical basis of Herbart's educational thought