Category: Mental Health History

On This Day … 11 September [2022]

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People (Births)

Sharon Lamb

Sharon Lamb (born 11 September 1955), is an American professor in the Department of Counselling and School Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Boston’s, College of Education and Human Development, and a fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA). She also sits on the editorial board of the academic journals Feminism & Psychology, and Sexualisation, Media, and Society.

Lamb is one of the authors of the APA’s report into the sexualisation of girls, which according to an article on Women and Hollywood is “the most downloaded document in the history of the APA’s website”. She is also a co-author for the APA’s Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Girls and Women.

Sharon Lamb also practices psychology in Shelburne Vermont where she performs evaluations for the courts, attachment evaluations and custody evaluations, and sees private therapy clients.

On This Day … 10 September [2022]

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Events

People (Deaths)

  • 2015 – Norman Farberow, American psychologist and academic (b. 1918).

Norman Farberow

Norman Louis Farberow (12 February 1918 to 10 September 2015) was an American psychologist, and one of the founding fathers of modern suicidology. He was among the three founders in 1958 of the Los Angeles Suicide Prevention Centre, which became a base of research into the causes and prevention of suicide.

On This Day … 09 September [2022]

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People (Deaths)

Jacques Lacan

Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (13 April 1901 to 9 September 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. Described as “the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud”, Lacan gave yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, and published papers that were later collected in the book Écrits. His work made a significant impact on continental philosophy and cultural theory in areas such as post-structuralism, critical theory, feminist theory and film theory, as well as on the practice of psychoanalysis itself.

Lacan took up and discussed the whole range of Freudian concepts, emphasizing the philosophical dimension of Freud’s thought and applying concepts derived from structuralism in linguistics and anthropology to its development in his own work, which he would further augment by employing formulae from predicate logic and topology. Taking this new direction, and introducing controversial innovations in clinical practice, led to expulsion for Lacan and his followers from the International Psychoanalytic Association. In consequence, Lacan went on to establish new psychoanalytic institutions to promote and develop his work, which he declared to be a “return to Freud”, in opposition to prevalent trends in psychology and institutional psychoanalysis collusive of adaptation to social norms.

On This Day … 02 September [2022]

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People (Births)

  • 1901 – Andreas Embirikos, Greek psychoanalyst and poet (d. 1975).

People (Deaths)

  • 1997 – Viktor Frankl, Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist (b. 1905).

Andreas Embirikos

Andreas Embirikos (Greek: Ανδρέας Εμπειρίκος; 02 September 1901 to 03 August 1975 in Kifissia, Attica) was a Greek surrealist poet and one of the first Greek psychoanalysts.

Embirikos came from a wealthy family as his father Leonidas Embirikos was an important ship-owner and politician. He was born in Brăila, Romania, but his family soon moved to Ermoupolis in Syros, one of the Greek islands in the Aegean Sea. When Embirikos was only seven years old they moved to Athens. While he was still a teenager his parents divorced; he started studying at the School of Philosophy of the National and Capodistrian University of Athens, but he decided to move to Lausanne to stay with his mother without graduating from the university.

The following years Embirikos studied a variety of subjects both in France and in the United Kingdom where he studied at King’s College London; however it was in Paris where he decided to study psychanalysis together with René Laforgue and joined the International Psychoanalytical Association.

Viktor Frankl

Viktor Emil Frankl (26 March 1905 to 02 September 1997) was an Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist, philosopher, writer, and Holocaust survivor.

He was the founder of logotherapy, a school of psychotherapy that describes a search for a life’s meaning as the central human motivational force. Logotherapy is part of existential and humanistic psychology theories.

Logotherapy was recognised as the third school of Viennese Psychotherapy, after those established by Sigmund Freud, and Alfred Adler.

Frankl published 39 books. The autobiographical Man’s Search for Meaning, a best-selling book, is based on his experiences in various Nazi concentration camps.

On This Day … 01 September [2022]

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Events

People (Births)

  • 1848 – Auguste Forel, Swiss myrmecologist, neuroanatomist, and psychiatrist (d. 1931).
  • 1902 – Kazimierz Dąbrowski, Polish psychiatrist and psychologist (d. 1980).
  • 1950 – Phil McGraw, American psychologist, author, and talk show host.

Auguste Forel

Auguste-Henri Forel (01 September 1848 to 27 July 1931) was a Swiss myrmecologist, neuroanatomist, psychiatrist and eugenicist, notable for his investigations into the structure of the human brain and that of ants. For example, he is considered a co-founder of the neuron theory. Forel is also known for his early contributions to sexology and psychology. From 1978 until 2000 Forel’s image appeared on the 1000 Swiss franc banknote.

Kazimierz Dabrowski

Kazimierz Dąbrowski (01 September 1902 to 26 November 1980 in Warsaw) was a Polish psychologist, psychiatrist, and physician. He is best known for his theory of “positive disintegration” as a mechanism in personality development. He was also a poet who used the pen name “Paul Cienin, Paweł Cienin”.

Phil McGraw

Phillip Calvin McGraw (born 01 September 1950), better known as Dr. Phil, is an American television personality and author best known for hosting the talk show Dr. Phil. He holds a doctorate in clinical psychology, though he ceased renewing his license to practice psychology in 2006.

McGraw rose to fame with appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show in the late 1990s. Oprah Winfrey then helped McGraw launch his own programme, Dr. Phil, in September 2002. The show is formatted as an advice show.

On This Day … 31 August [2022]

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People (Deaths)

  • 1920 – Wilhelm Wundt, German physician, psychologist, and philosopher (b. 1832).

Wilhelm Wundt

Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt (16 August 1832 to 31 August 1920) was a German physiologist, philosopher, and professor, known today as one of the fathers of modern psychology.

Wundt, who distinguished psychology as a science from philosophy and biology, was the first person ever to call himself a psychologist. He is widely regarded as the “father of experimental psychology”. In 1879, at the University of Leipzig, Wundt founded the first formal laboratory for psychological research. This marked psychology as an independent field of study. By creating this laboratory he was able to establish psychology as a separate science from other disciplines. He also formed the first academic journal for psychological research, Philosophische Studien (from 1881 to 1902), set up to publish the institute’s research.

A survey published in American Psychologist in 1991 ranked Wundt’s reputation as first for “all-time eminence” based on ratings provided by 29 American historians of psychology. William James and Sigmund Freud were ranked a distant second and third.

On This Day … 30 August [2022]

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People (Births)

Viktor Skumin

Victor Andreevich Skumin (Russian: Ви́ктор Андре́евич Ску́мин, born 30 August 1948) is a Russian and Soviet scientist, psychiatrist, philosopher and writer.

After graduating from the Kharkiv National Medical University in 1973, he became a psychotherapist in Kiev Institute of Cardiovascular Surgery. In 1978, he described a new disease, the Skumin syndrome. He introduced a method of psychotherapy and self-improvement based on optimistic autosuggestion for psychological rehabilitation of cardiosurgical patients (1979).

From 1980 to 1990, he was professor of psychotherapy at the Kharkiv Medical Academy of Post-graduate Education. The main result of his scientific activity was the discovery of the “syndrome of the neurotic phantom of somatic disease” and a “concept of the mental constituent of a chronic somatic disease”.

From 1990 to 1994, Skumin held positions as chaired professor of psychology and pedagogy, and of physical education and Health life at the Kharkiv State Academy of Culture. In 1994, he was elected to the post of the President-founder of the World Organisation of Culture of Health (Moscow). In 1995, Skumin became the first editor-in-chief of the journal To Health via Culture. He is known for inventing a popular term “Culture of Health” (1968).

Besides psychiatry and psychology, Skumin writes on healthy lifestyle, yoga, and philosophy. He co-authored series of illustrated books and articles on Agni Yoga, Roerichism, Russian cosmism, transhumanism, and New Age. He wrote books of fiction and lyrics for several songs.

On This Day … 28 August [2022]

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People (Births)

  • 1903 – Bruno Bettelheim, Austrian-American psychologist and author (d. 1990).

People (Deaths)

  • 1757 – David Hartley, English psychologist and philosopher (b. 1705).

Bruno Bettelheim

Bruno Bettelheim (28 August 1903 to 13 March 1990) was an Austrian-born psychologist, scholar, public intellectual and writer who spent most of his academic and clinical career in the United States. An early writer on autism, Bettelheim’s work focused on the education of emotionally disturbed children, as well as Freudian psychology more generally. In the US, he later gained a position as professor at the University of Chicago and director of the Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School for Disturbed Children, and after 1973 taught at Stanford University.

Bettelheim’s ideas, which grew out of those of Sigmund Freud, theorized that children with behavioural and emotional disorders were not born that way, and could be treated through extended psychoanalytic therapy, treatment that rejected the use of psychotropic drugs and shock therapy. During the 1960s and 1970s he had an international reputation in such fields as autism, child psychiatry, and psychoanalysis.

Much of his work was discredited after his death due to fraudulent academic credentials, allegations of patient abuse, accusations of plagiarism, and lack of oversight by institutions and the psychological community.

David Hartley

David Hartley FRS (18 June 1705 to 28 August 1757) was an English philosopher and founder of the Associationist school of psychology.

On This Day … 26 August [2022]

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People (Deaths)

  • 1910 – William James, American psychologist and philosopher (b. 1842).

William James

William James (11 January 1842 to 26 August 1910) was an American philosopher, historian, and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States. James is considered to be a leading thinker of the late 19th century, one of the most influential philosophers of the United States, and the “Father of American psychology”.

Along with Charles Sanders Peirce, James established the philosophical school known as pragmatism, and is also cited as one of the founders of functional psychology. A Review of General Psychology analysis, published in 2002, ranked James as the 14th most eminent psychologist of the 20th century. A survey published in American Psychologist in 1991 ranked James’s reputation in second place, after Wilhelm Wundt, who is widely regarded as the founder of experimental psychology. James also developed the philosophical perspective known as radical empiricism. James’s work has influenced philosophers and academics such as Émile Durkheim, W.E.B. Du Bois, Edmund Husserl, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Hilary Putnam, Richard Rorty, and Marilynne Robinson.

Born into a wealthy family, James was the son of the Swedenborgian theologian Henry James Sr. and the brother of both the prominent novelist Henry James and the diarist Alice James. James trained as a physician and taught anatomy at Harvard, but never practiced medicine. Instead he pursued his interests in psychology and then philosophy. He wrote widely on many topics, including epistemology, education, metaphysics, psychology, religion, and mysticism. Among his most influential books are The Principles of Psychology, a ground-breaking text in the field of psychology; Essays in Radical Empiricism, an important text in philosophy; and The Varieties of Religious Experience, an investigation of different forms of religious experience, including theories on mind-cure.