Watt was born and raised in
Aberdeen, Scotland. He entered the
University of Aberdeen in 1896, graduating with a Master's degree in philosophy in 1900. He attended the
University of Berlin under the supervision of
Carl Stumpf in 1901–1902, but then moved on to Külpe and
Würzburg, where he completed his doctorate in 1906. Watt's
dissertation was on thought processes and problem solving (
Experimentelle Beiträge zu einer Theorie des Denkens). An English abstract of his dissertation appeared in the journal article "Experimental Contribution to a Theory of Thinking" (1906). In 1907 Watt returned to Britain, taking up lectureships in psychophysiology at the
University of Liverpool and, in 1908, in psychology at
University of Glasgow. In 1909 he published
The Economy and Training of Memory, a book for teachers. He was visiting Würzburg in 1914 when World War I broke out, and was interned in a civilian prisoners camp. He was released and returned to Glasgow in 1915, his health permanently damaged. (American philosopher-psychologist
George Stuart Fullerton suffered a similar fate.) In 1917, Watt published
The Psychology of Sound, and, in 1919,
The Psychology of Music, topics that he had studied under Stumpf more than 15 years earlier. Watt died in 1925 at the age of 46. Two additional books were published posthumously:
The Sensory Basis and Structure of Knowledge (1925) and
The Common Sense of Dreams (1929). In the latter, Watt proposed an alternative to
Sigmund Freud's method of
dream interpretation. ==Books==