Category: Mental Health History

On This Day … 06 March

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People (Deaths)

  • 1941 – Francis Aveling, Canadian priest, psychologist, and author (b. 1875).

Francis Aveling

Francis Arthur Powell Aveling MC ComC (25 December 1875 to 06 March 1941) was a Canadian psychologist and Catholic priest. He married Ethel Dancy of Steyning, Sussex in 1925.

Life

Francis Aveling was born at St. Catharines, Ontario 25 December 1875. He went to Bishop Ridley College in Ontario and McGill University before studying at Keble College at the University of Oxford, England. Aveling was received into the Roman Catholic Church by Father Luke Rivington in 1896 and entered the Pontificio Collegio Canadese in Rome. There he earned his doctor of divinity degree. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1899, and served as a curate in Tottenham, before becoming first rector of Westminster Cathedral Choir School. He was also a chaplain at the Cathedral, and to St. Wilfrid’s Convent, Chelsea.

In 1910, Aveling obtained a doctor of philosophy degree at the age of 35 from the University of Louvain (his advisor was Albert Michotte), and in 1912 he was recipient of a doctor of science degree from the University of London, and received the Carpenter Medal following his work On the Consciousness of the Universal and the Individual: A Contribution to the Phenomenology of the Thought Process. Subsequently, Aveling received his doctor of letters degree from the University of London.

Career

Aveling taught at University College, London from 1912 as a Lecturer (Assistant Professor), under the leadership of Charles Spearman, until the First World War. During that war he served in France as a chaplain in the British Army, after which he returned to the University of London. In 1922, he transferred to King’s College, London where he was promoted to reader (associate professor), and later to professor of psychology. He was an extern examiner in philosophy at the National University of Ireland; and a lecturer in pedagogical methods for the London County Council.

Aveling authored several books. He was the doctoral advisor of Raymond Cattell From 1926 until 1929, Aveling was also a president of the British Psychological Society. Aveling was a member of the Council of the International Congresses, of the Aristotelian Society, of the council and advisory board of the National Institute of Industrial Psychology, of the council of the British Institute of Philosophical Studies and of the Child Guidance Council.

He was a contributor to the Dublin Review, The American Catholic Quarterly Review, Catholic World, The nineteenth Century, The Journal of Psychology, and the Catholic Encyclopaedia.

On This Day … 05 March

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People (Births)

  • 1934 – Daniel Kahneman, Israeli-American economist and psychologist, Nobel Prize laureate.

Daniel Kahneman

Daniel Kahneman (born March 5, 1934) is an Israeli-American psychologist and economist notable for his work on the psychology of judgement and decision-making, as well as behavioural economics, for which he was awarded the 2002 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (shared with Vernon L. Smith). His empirical findings challenge the assumption of human rationality prevailing in modern economic theory.

With Amos Tversky and others, Kahneman established a cognitive basis for common human errors that arise from heuristics and biases, and developed prospect theory.

In 2011, he was named by Foreign Policy magazine in its list of top global thinkers. In the same year, his book Thinking, Fast and Slow, which summarises much of his research, was published and became a best seller. In 2015, The Economist listed him as the seventh most influential economist in the world.

He is professor emeritus of psychology and public affairs at Princeton University’s Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. Kahneman is a founding partner of TGG Group, a business and philanthropy consulting company. He was married to cognitive psychologist and Royal Society Fellow Anne Treisman, who died in 2018.

On This Day … 04 March

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People (Births)

  • 1916 – Hans Eysenck, German-English psychologist and theorist (d. 1997).

People (Deaths)

  • 1925 – James Ward, English psychologist and philosopher (b. 1843).

Hans Eysenck

Hans Jürgen Eysenck (04 March 1916 to 04 September 1997) was a German-born British psychologist who spent his professional career in Great Britain. He is best remembered for his work on intelligence and personality, although he worked on other issues in psychology. At the time of his death, Eysenck was the living psychologist most frequently cited in the peer-reviewed scientific journal literature.

Eysenck’s research purported to show that certain personality types had an elevated risk of cancer and heart disease. Scholars have identified errors and suspected data manipulation in Eysenck’s work, and large replications have failed to confirm the relationships that he purported to find. An enquiry on behalf of King’s College London found the papers by Eysenck to be “incompatible with modern clinical science”.

In 2019, 26 of his papers (all co-authored with Ronald Grossarth-Maticek) were considered “unsafe” by an enquiry on behalf of King’s College London. Fourteen of his papers were retracted in 2020, and journals issued 64 statements of concern about publications by him. Rod Buchanan, a biographer of Eysenck, has argued that 87 publications by Eysenck should be retracted.

Eysenck believed intelligence was genetically determined and cited a US study that seemed to show that the IQ of black children fell, on average, 12 points below white children.

James Ward

James Ward FBA (27 January 1843 to 04 March 1925) was an English psychologist and philosopher. He was a Cambridge Apostle.

On This Day … 03 March

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People (Births)

  • 1883 – Cyril Burt, English psychologist and geneticist (d. 1971).

Cyril Burt

Sir Cyril Lodowic Burt, FBA (03 March 1883 to 10 October 1971) was an English educational psychologist and geneticist who also made contributions to statistics.

He is known for his studies on the heritability of IQ. Shortly after he died, his studies of inheritance of intelligence were discredited after evidence emerged indicating he had falsified research data, inventing correlations in separated twins which did not exist.

On This Day … 27 February

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People (Births)

  • 1888 – Roberto Assagioli, Italian psychiatrist and psychologist (d. 1974).

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.

On This Day … 26 February

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People (Births)

People (Deaths)

  • 1930 – Mary Whiton Calkins, American philosopher and psychologist (b. 1863).
  • 1969 – Karl Jaspers, German-Swiss psychiatrist and philosopher (b. 1883).

Emile Coue

Émile Coué de la Châtaigneraie (26 February 1857 to 02 July 1926) was a French psychologist and pharmacist who introduced a popular method of psychotherapy and self-improvement based on optimistic autosuggestion.

Considered by Charles Baudouin to represent a second Nancy School, Coué treated many patients in groups and free of charge.

Sandie Shaw

Sandie Shaw, MBE (born Sandra Ann Goodrich; 26 February 1947) is an English singer. One of the most successful British female singers of the 1960s, she had three UK number one singles with “(There’s) Always Something There to Remind Me” (1964), “Long Live Love” (1965) and “Puppet on a String” (1967). With the latter, she became the first British entry to win the Eurovision Song Contest. She returned to the UK Top 40, for the first time in 15 years, with her 1984 cover of the Smiths song “Hand in Glove”. Shaw retired from the music industry in 2013.

Mary Whiton Calkins

Mary Whiton Calkins (30 March 1863 to 26 February 1930) was an American philosopher and psychologist, whose work informed theory and research of memory, dreams and the self. In 1903, Calkins was the twelfth in a listing of fifty psychologists with the most merit, chosen by her peers. Calkins was refused a Ph.D. by Harvard University because of her gender.

Calkins is a key figure in the history of women psychologists. At Wellesley College, Calkins established the first psychological laboratory for women. She was the first woman to complete the requirements for a doctoral degree in psychology with the unanimous support of the Harvard University psychology faculty, although the University refused to bestow it on the grounds that Harvard did not accept women. She later became president of the American Psychological Association and the American Philosophical Association, and was the first woman to be president of both.

She taught psychology and philosophy at Wellesley College for four decades, and conducted research there and at Harvard University for the majority of that time.

Karl Jaspers

Karl Theodor Jaspers (23 February 1883 to 26 February 1969) was a German-Swiss psychiatrist and philosopher who had a strong influence on modern theology, psychiatry, and philosophy.

After being trained in and practicing psychiatry, Jaspers turned to philosophical inquiry and attempted to discover an innovative philosophical system. He was often viewed as a major exponent of existentialism in Germany, though he did not accept the label.

On This Day … 23 February

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People (Births)

  • 1883 – Karl Jaspers, German-Swiss psychiatrist and philosopher (d. 1969).

Karl Jaspers

Karl Theodor Jaspers (23 February 1883 to 26 February 1969) was a German-Swiss psychiatrist and philosopher who had a strong influence on modern theology, psychiatry, and philosophy.

After being trained in and practicing psychiatry, Jaspers turned to philosophical inquiry and attempted to discover an innovative philosophical system. He was often viewed as a major exponent of existentialism in Germany, though he did not accept the label.

On This Day … 21 February

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Events

People (Births)

  • 1914 – Jean Tatlock, American psychiatrist and physician (d. 1944).
  • 1961 – Elliot Hirshman, American psychologist and academic.

Jean Tatlock

Jean Frances Tatlock (21 February 1914 to 04 January 1944) was an American psychiatrist and physician. She was a member of the Communist Party of the United States of America and was a reporter and writer for the party’s publication Western Worker. She is most widely known for her romantic relationship with Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Manhattan Project’s Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II.

The daughter of John Strong Perry Tatlock, a prominent Old English philologist and an expert on Geoffrey Chaucer, Tatlock was a graduate of Vassar College and the Stanford Medical School, where she studied to become a psychiatrist. Tatlock began seeing Oppenheimer in 1936, when she was a graduate student at Stanford and Oppenheimer was a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley. As a result of their relationship and her membership of the Communist Party, she was placed under surveillance by the FBI and her phone was tapped.

She suffered from clinical depression and completed suicide on 04 January 1944.

Elliot Hirshman

Elliot Lee Hirshman (born 21 February 1961) is an American psychologist and academic who is the president of Stevenson University in Owings Mills, Maryland since 03 July 2017.

Prior to Stevenson University he served as president at San Diego State University and served as the provost and senior vice president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

On This Day … 20 February

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People (Births)

  • 1893 – Elizabeth Holloway Marston, American psychologist and author (d. 1993).

People (Deaths)

  • 1996 – Solomon Asch, American psychologist and academic (b. 1907).

Elizabeth Holloway Marston

Elizabeth Holloway Marston (20 February 1893 to 27 March 1993) was an American attorney and psychologist. She is credited, with her husband William Moulton Marston, with the development of the systolic blood pressure measurement used to detect deception; the predecessor to the polygraph.

She is also credited as the inspiration for her husband’s comic book creation Wonder Woman, a character who was also fashioned on their polyamorous life partner, Olive Byrne.

Solomon Asch

Solomon Eliot Asch (14 September 1907 to 20 February 1996) was a Polish-American Gestalt psychologist and pioneer in social psychology.

He created seminal pieces of work in impression formation, prestige suggestion, conformity, and many other topics. His work follows a common theme of Gestalt psychology that the whole is not only greater than the sum of its parts, but the nature of the whole fundamentally alters the parts. Asch stated: “Most social acts have to be understood in their setting, and lose meaning if isolated. No error in thinking about social facts is more serious than the failure to see their place and function” (Asch, 1952, p. 61). Asch is most well known for his conformity experiments, in which he demonstrated the influence of group pressure on opinions. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Asch as the 41st most cited psychologist of the 20th century.

On This Day … 17 February

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People (Deaths)

  • 2012 – Ulric Neisser, German-American psychologist and academic (b. 1928).

Ulric Neisser

Ulric Richard Gustav Neisser (08 December 1928 to 17 February 2012) was a German-American psychologist and member of the US National Academy of Sciences.

He has been referred to as the “father of cognitive psychology”. Neisser researched and wrote about perception and memory. He posited that a person’s mental processes could be measured and subsequently analysed. In 1967, Neisser published Cognitive Psychology, which he later said was considered an attack on behaviourist psychological paradigms. Cognitive Psychology brought Neisser instant fame and recognition in the field of psychology. While Cognitive Psychology was considered unconventional, it was Neisser’s Cognition and Reality that contained some of his most controversial ideas. A main theme in Cognition and Reality is Neisser’s advocacy for experiments on perception occurring in natural (“ecologically valid”) settings. Neisser postulated that memory is, largely, reconstructed and not a snap shot of the moment. Neisser illustrated this during one of his highly publicised studies on people’s memories of the Challenger explosion. In his later career, he summed up current research on human intelligence and edited the first major scholarly monograph on the Flynn effect. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Neisser as the 32nd most cited psychologist of the 20th century.