Category: Mental Health History

On This Day … 24 August [2022]

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People (Births)

  • 1915 – James Tiptree Jr. (Alice Bradley Sheldon), American psychologist and science fiction author (d. 1987).
  • 1923 – Arthur Jensen, American psychologist and academic (d. 2012).

People (Deaths)

  • 2004 – Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, Swiss-American psychiatrist and academic (b. 1926).

James Tiptree Jr.

Alice Bradley Sheldon (born Alice Hastings Bradley; 24 August 1915 to 19 May 1987) was an American science fiction and fantasy author better known as James Tiptree Jr., a pen name she used from 1967 to her death. It was not publicly known until 1977 that James Tiptree Jr. was a woman. From 1974 to 1985 she also used the pen name Raccoona Sheldon. Tiptree was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2012.

Tiptree’s debut story collection, Ten Thousand Light-Years from Home, was published in 1973 and her first novel, Up the Walls of the World, was published in 1978. Her other works include 1973 novelette “The Women Men Don’t See”, 1974 novella “The Girl Who Was Plugged In”, 1976 novella “Houston, Houston, Do You Read?”, 1985 novel Brightness Falls from the Air, and 1990 short story “Her Smoke Rose Up Forever”.

Arthur Jensen

Arthur Robert Jensen (24 August 1923 to 22 October 2012) was an American psychologist and writer. He was a professor of educational psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. Jensen was known for his work in psychometrics and differential psychology, the study of how and why individuals differ behaviourally from one another.

He was a major proponent of the hereditarian position in the nature and nurture debate, the position that genetics play a significant role in behavioural traits, such as intelligence and personality. He was the author of over 400 scientific papers published in refereed journals and sat on the editorial boards of the scientific journals Intelligence and Personality and Individual Differences.

Jensen was controversial, largely for his conclusions regarding the causes of race-based differences in IQ. A 2019 study found him to be the most controversial intelligence researcher among 55 persons covered.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (08 July 1926 to 24 August 2004) was a Swiss-American psychiatrist, a pioneer in near-death studies, and author of the internationally best-selling book, On Death and Dying (1969), where she first discussed her theory of the five stages of grief, also known as the “Kübler-Ross model”.

Kübler-Ross was a 2007 inductee into the National Women’s Hall of Fame, was named by Time as one of the “100 Most Important Thinkers” of the 20th century and was the recipient of nineteen honorary degrees. By July 1982, Kübler-Ross taught 125,000 students in death and dying courses in colleges, seminaries, medical schools, hospitals, and social-work institutions. In 1970, she delivered an Ingersoll Lecture at Harvard University on the theme On Death and Dying.

On This Day … 23 August [2022]

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People (Births)

  • 1974 – Roberto Assagioli, Italian psychiatrist and author (b. 1888).

People (Deaths)

  • 1989 – R.D. Laing, Scottish psychiatrist and author (b. 1927).
  • 2013 – William Glasser, American psychiatrist and author (b. 1925).

Roberto Assagioli

Roberto Assagioli (27 February 1888 to 23 August 1974) was an Italian psychiatrist and pioneer in the fields of humanistic and transpersonal psychology.

Assagioli founded the psychological movement known as psychosynthesis, which is still being developed today by therapists and psychologists who practice the psychological methods and techniques he developed. His work, including two books and many monographs published as pamphlets, emphasized the possibility of progressive integration (that is, synthesis) of the personality.

R.D. Laing

Ronald David Laing (07 October 1927 to 23 August 1989), usually cited as R.D. Laing, was a Scottish psychiatrist who wrote extensively on mental illness – in particular, the experience of psychosis.

Laing’s views on the causes and treatment of psychopathological phenomena were influenced by his study of existential philosophy and ran counter to the chemical and electroshock methods that had become psychiatric orthodoxy. Taking the expressed feelings of the individual patient or client as valid descriptions of personal experience rather than simply as symptoms of mental illness, Laing regarded schizophrenia as a theory not a fact. Though associated in the public mind with the anti-psychiatry movement, he rejected the label. Politically, he was regarded as a thinker of the New Left. Laing was portrayed by David Tennant in the 2017 film Mad to Be Normal.

William Glasser

William Glasser (11 May 1925 to 23 August 2013) was an American psychiatrist.

Glasser was the developer of W. Edwards Deming’s workplace ideas, reality therapy and choice theory. His innovations for individual counselling, work environments and school, highlight personal choice, personal responsibility and personal transformation. Glasser positioned himself in opposition to conventional mainstream psychiatrists, who focus instead on classifying psychiatric syndromes as “illnesses” and prescribe psychotropic medications to treat mental disorders.

Based on his wide-ranging and consulting clinical experience, Glasser applied his theories to broader social issues, such as education, management, and marriage, to name a few. As a public advocate, Glasser warned the general public of potential detriments caused by older generations of psychiatry, wedded to traditional diagnosing of patients as having mental illnesses (brain disorders) and prescribing medications. In his view, patients simply act out their unhappiness and lack of meaningful personal connection with important people in their life. Glasser advocated educating the general public about mental health issues; offering, post-modern frameworks for finding and following healthy therapeutic direction.

On This Day … 21 August [2022]

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People (Births)

  • 1921 – Reuven Feuerstein, Romanian-Israeli psychologist and academic (d. 2014).

People (Deaths)

Reuven Feuerstein

Reuven Feuerstein (21 August 1921 to 29 April 2014) was an Israeli clinical, developmental, and cognitive psychologist, known for his theory of intelligence which states “it is not ‘fixed’, but rather modifiable”.

Feuerstein is recognised for his work in developing the theories and applied systems of structural cognitive modifiability, mediated learning experience, cognitive map, deficient cognitive functions, learning propensity assessment device, instrumental enrichment programs, and shaping modifying environments. These interlocked practices provide educators with the skills and tools to systematically develop students’ cognitive functions and operations to build meta-cognition.

Feuerstein was the founder and director of the International Centre for the Enhancement of Learning Potential (ICELP) in Jerusalem, Israel. For more than 50 years, Feuerstein’s theories and applied systems have been implemented in both clinical and classroom settings internationally, with more than 80 countries applying his work. Feuerstein’s theory on the malleability of intelligence has led to more than 2,000 scientific research studies and countless case studies with various learning populations

Helen Bamber

Helen Rae Bamber OBE, née Helen Balmuth (01 May 1925 to 21 August 2014), was a British psychotherapist and human rights activist.

She worked with Holocaust survivors in Germany after the concentration camps were liberated in 1945. In 1947, she returned to Britain and continued her work, helping to establish Amnesty International and later co-founding the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture. In 2005, she created the Helen Bamber Foundation to help survivors of human rights violations.

Throughout her life, Bamber worked with those who were the most marginalised: Holocaust survivors, asylum-seekers, refugees, victims of the conflict in Northern Ireland, trafficked men, women and children, survivors of genocide, torture, rape, female genital mutilation, British former Far East prisoners of war, former hostages and other people who suffered torture abroad. She worked in many countries including Gaza, Kosovo, Uganda, Turkey and Northern Ireland.

On This Day … 20 August [2022]

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People (Births)

  • 1913 – Roger Wolcott Sperry, American neuropsychologist and neurobiologist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1994).

People (Deaths)

  • 1985 – Donald O. Hebb, Canadian psychologist and academic (b. 1904).

Roger Wolcott Sperry

Roger Wolcott Sperry (20 August 1913 to 17 April 1994) was an American neuropsychologist, neurobiologist and Nobel laureate who, together with David Hunter Hubel and Torsten Nils Wiesel, won the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for his work with split-brain research.

A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Sperry as the 44th most cited psychologist of the 20th century.

Donald O. Hebb

Donald Olding Hebb FRS (22 July 1904 to 20 August 1985) was a Canadian psychologist who was influential in the area of neuropsychology, where he sought to understand how the function of neurons contributed to psychological processes such as learning.

He is best known for his theory of Hebbian learning, which he introduced in his classic 1949 work The Organisation of Behaviour. He has been described as the father of neuropsychology and neural networks. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Hebb as the 19th most cited psychologist of the 20th century. His views on learning described behaviour and thought in terms of brain function, explaining cognitive processes in terms of connections between neuron assemblies.

On This Day … 19 August [2022]

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People (Births)

  • 1911 – Anna Terruwe, Dutch psychiatrist and author (d. 2004).

Anna Terruwe

Dr. Anna A. A. Terruwe (19 August 1911 to 28 April 2004, Deurne) was a Catholic psychiatrist from the Netherlands. She discovered emotional deprivation disorder and how obsessive-compulsive disorder could be healed: the “bevestigingsleer,” the idea of “affirmation.”

Terruwe based her work on that of Thomas Aquinas and “the relevance of Thomistic rational psychology to neurosis and its treatment.” Her work is also based on that of Professor W.J.A.J. Duynstee, C.SS.R., LL.D. who studied Aquinas. Her theories are based on Aquinas’ understanding of what he calls the “nature of man.”

On This Day … 18 August [2022]

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People (Births)

  • 1914 – Lucy Ozarin, United States Navy lieutenant commander and psychiatrist (d. 2017).

People (Deaths)

  • 1990 – B.F. Skinner, American psychologist and philosopher, invented the Skinner box (b. 1904).

Lucy Ozarin

Lucy Dorothy Ozarin (18 August 1914 to 17 September 2017) was a psychiatrist who served in the United States Navy.

She was one of the first women psychiatrists commissioned in the Navy, and she was one of seven female Navy psychiatrists who served during World War II.

B.F. Skinner

Burrhus Frederic Skinner (20 March 1904 to 18 August 1990) was an American psychologist, behaviourist, author, inventor, and social philosopher. He was a professor of psychology at Harvard University from 1958 until his retirement in 1974.

Considering free will to be an illusion, Skinner saw human action as dependent on consequences of previous actions, a theory he would articulate as the principle of reinforcement: If the consequences to an action are bad, there is a high chance the action will not be repeated; if the consequences are good, the probability of the action being repeated becomes stronger.

Skinner developed behaviour analysis, especially the philosophy of radical behaviourism, and founded the experimental analysis of behaviour, a school of experimental research psychology. He also used operant conditioning to strengthen behaviour, considering the rate of response to be the most effective measure of response strength. To study operant conditioning, he invented the operant conditioning chamber (aka the Skinner box), and to measure rate he invented the cumulative recorder. Using these tools, he and Charles Ferster produced Skinner’s most influential experimental work, outlined in their 1957 book Schedules of Reinforcement.

Skinner was a prolific author, publishing 21 books and 180 articles. He imagined the application of his ideas to the design of a human community in his 1948 utopian novel, Walden Two, while his analysis of human behaviour culminated in his 1958 work, Verbal Behaviour.

Skinner, John B. Watson and Ivan Pavlov, are considered to be the pioneers of modern behaviourism. Accordingly, a June 2002 survey listed Skinner as the most influential psychologist of the 20th century.

On This Day … 16 August [2022]

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People (Births)

  • 1832 – Wilhelm Wundt, German physician, psychologist, and physiologist (d. 1920).

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 … 15 August [2022]

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People (Births)

  • 1958 – Simon Baron-Cohen, English-Canadian psychiatrist and author.

Simon Baron-Cohen

Sir Simon Philip Baron-Cohen FBA FBPsS FMedSci (born 15 August 1958) is a British clinical psychologist and professor of developmental psychopathology at the University of Cambridge. He is the director of the university’s Autism Research Centre and a Fellow of Trinity College. In 1985, Baron-Cohen formulated the mind-blindness theory of autism, the evidence for which he collated and published in 1995. In 1997, he formulated the foetal sex steroid theory of autism, the key test of which was published in 2015.

He has also made major contributions to the fields of typical cognitive sex differences, autism prevalence and screening, autism genetics, autism neuroimaging, autism and technical ability, and synaesthesia. Baron-Cohen was knighted in the 2021 New Year Honours for services to autistic people.

On This Day … 14 August [2022]

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People (Births)

  • 1840 – Richard von Krafft-Ebing, German-Austrian psychologist and author (d. 1902).

Richard von Krafft-Ebing

Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing (full name Richard Fridolin Joseph Freiherr Krafft von Festenberg auf Frohnberg, genannt von Ebing; 14 August 1840 to 22 December 1902) was a German psychiatrist and author of the foundational work Psychopathia Sexualis (1886).

Krafft-Ebing was born on 14 August 1840 in Mannheim, Germany. He studied medicine at the University of Heidelberg, where he specialised in psychiatry. He later practised in psychiatric asylums. After leaving his work in asylums, he pursued a career in psychiatry, forensics, and hypnosis.

He died in Graz on 22 December 1902. He was recognised as an authority on deviant sexual behaviour and its medico-legal aspects.

On This Day … 13 August [2022]

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People (Deaths)

  • 1995 – Jan Křesadlo, Czech-English psychologist and author (b. 1926).

Jan Kresadlo

Václav Jaroslav Karel Pinkava (09 December 1926 to 13 August 1995), better known by his pen name Jan Křesadlo, was a Czech psychologist who was also a prizewinning novelist and poet.

An anti-communist, Pinkava emigrated to Britain with his wife and four children following the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet-led armies of the Warsaw pact. He worked as a clinical psychologist until his early retirement in 1982, when he turned to full-time writing. His first novel “Mrchopěvci” (GraveLarks) was published by Josef Škvorecký’s emigre publishing house 68 Publishers, and earned the 1984 Egon Hostovský prize.

He chose his pseudonym (which means firesteel) partly because it contains the uniquely Czech sound ř; in addition, he was fond of creating more pseudonyms such as Jake Rolands (an anagram), J.K. Klement (after his grandfather, for translations into English), Juraj Hron (for his Slovak-Moravian writings), Ferdinand Lučovický z Lučovic a na Suchým dole (for his music), Kamil Troud (for his illustrations), Ἰωάννης Πυρεῖα (for his Astronautilia), and more.

Pinkava was also active in choral music, composing (among others) a Glagolitic Mass. As well, he worked in mathematical logic, discovering the many-valued logic algebra which bears his name.

A polymath and polyglot, Pinkava was fond of setting intense goals for himself, such as translating Jaroslav Seifert’s interwoven sonnet cycle about Prague, ‘A Wreath of Sonnets’. He published a collection of his own poems in seven languages. Perhaps his most staggering achievement is ΑΣΤΡΟΝΑΥΤΙΛΙΑ Hvězdoplavba, a 6575-line science fiction epic poem, an odyssey in classical Homeric Greek, with its parallel hexameter translation into Czech. This was published shortly after his death, in a limited edition. (ISBN 80-237-2452-5) Only his first, prize-winning novel has been published in English translation, as GraveLarks in a bilingual edition in 1999 (ISBN 9788086013817) and in a revised edition in 2015 (ISBN 9780993377303).

He is the father of film director Jan Pinkava who received an Oscar for Geri’s Game in 1998 and also illustrated GraveLarks.