Category: Mental Health History

On This Day … 17 January

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People (Births)

  • 1881 – Harry Price, English psychologist and author (d. 1948).
  • 1887 – Ola Raknes, Norwegian psychoanalyst and philologist (d. 1975).
  • 1945 – Anne Cutler, Australian psychologist and academic.

Harry Price

Harry Price (17 January 1881 to 29 March 1948) was a British psychic researcher and author, who gained public prominence for his investigations into psychical phenomena and his exposing fraudulent spiritualist mediums.

He is best known for his well-publicised investigation of the purportedly haunted Borley Rectory in Essex, England.

Ola Raknes

Ola Raknes (17 January 1887 to 28 January 1975) was a Norwegian psychologist, philologist and non-fiction writer.

Born in Bergen, Norway, he was internationally known as a psychoanalyst in the Reichian tradition. He has been described as someone who spent his entire life working with the conveying of ideas through many languages and between different epistemological systems of reference, science and religion (Dannevig, 1975). For large portions of his life he was actively contributing to the public discourse in Norway. He has also been credited for his contributions to strengthening and enriching the Nynorsk language and its use in the public sphere.

Raknes was known as a thorough philologist and a controversial therapist. Internationally he was known as one of Wilhelm Reich’s closest students and defenders.

Anne Cutler

(Elizabeth) Anne Cutler (born 1945 in Melbourne) FRS, FBA, FASSA is a Research Professor at the MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development, Western Sydney University and Emeritus Director of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen.

After studying languages and psychology in Melbourne, Berlin and Bonn, Anne Cutler embraced psycholinguistics when it emerged as an independent field, going on to complete her PhD in the discipline at the University of Texas at Austin.

On This Day … 15 January

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People (Births)

  • 1842 – Josef Breuer, Austrian physician and psychiatrist (d. 1925).
  • 1877 – Lewis Terman, American psychologist, eugenicist, and academic (d. 1956).
  • 1958 – Boris Tadić, Serbian psychologist and politician, 16th President of Serbia.

Josef Breuer

Josef Breuer (15 January 1842 to 20 June 1925) was a distinguished physician who made key discoveries in neurophysiology, and whose work in the 1880s with his patient Bertha Pappenheim, known as Anna O., developed the talking cure (cathartic method) and laid the foundation to psychoanalysis as developed by his protégé Sigmund Freud.

Lewis Terman

Lewis Madison Terman (15 January 1877 to 21 December 1956) was an American psychologist and author. He was noted as a pioneer in educational psychology in the early 20th century at the Stanford Graduate School of Education.

He is best known for his revision of the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales and for initiating the longitudinal study of children with high IQs called the Genetic Studies of Genius. He was a prominent eugenicist and was a member of the Human Betterment Foundation. He also served as president of the American Psychological Association. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Terman as the 72nd most cited psychologist of the 20th century, in a tie with G. Stanley Hall.

Boris Tadic

Boris Tadić (born 15 January 1958) is a Serbian politician who served as the president of Serbia from 2004 to 2012.

Tadić was a member of the Democratic Party since its establishment in 1990, and has been their president from 2004 until 2012. After the downfall of Milošević, he was appointed in the government as the Minister of Telecommunications of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and would later serve as the first Minister of Defence of Serbia and Montenegro before being elected as the president in 2004. He was re-elected for his second term in 2008. Following his defeat in the 2012 presidential election and poor party ratings, he stepped down in November 2012, to take the position of the party’s Honorary President. After a split with the new leadership in January 2014, Tadić left the Democratic Party and formed his own New Democratic Party (later renamed Social Democratic Party) for the 2014 parliamentary election.

Tadić strongly advocates close ties with the European Union (EU) and Serbia’s European integration. During his presidency, the EU has abolished visas for Serbian citizens traveling to the Schengen Area countries, Serbian government signed the Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) and received an EU candidate status, as well as, Serbia has completed obligations to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). He became the first Serbian head of state or head of government to visit the Srebrenica Genocide Memorial and he launched an initiative for the Serbian parliament to adopt a resolution condemning the Srebrenica massacre. The period of a coalition government led by the Tadić’s Democratic Party was characterized by the challenges of the Kosovo declaration of independence and the global financial crisis, leading to low rates of economic growth. He is widely regarded as a pro-Western leader, who also favours balanced relations with Russia, the United States and the EU.

On This Day … 14 January

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People (Deaths)

Harry Stack Sullivan

Herbert “Harry” Stack Sullivan (21 February 1892 to 14 January 1949) was an American Neo-Freudian psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who held that “personality can never be isolated from the complex interpersonal relationships in which [a] person lives” and that “[t]he field of psychiatry is the field of interpersonal relations under any and all circumstances in which [such] relations exist”.

Having studied therapists Sigmund Freud, Adolf Meyer, and William Alanson White, he devoted years of clinical and research work to helping people with psychotic illness.

On This Day .. 12 January

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People (Births)

  • 1896 – David Wechsler, Romanian-American psychologist and author (d. 1981).
  • 1914 – Mieko Kamiya, Japanese psychiatrist and psychologist (d. 1979).
  • 1941 – Fiona Caldicott, English psychiatrist and psychotherapist.

David Wechsler

David Wechsler (12 January 1896 to 02 May 1981) was a Romanian-American psychologist. He developed well-known intelligence scales, such as the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC).

Wechsler is best known for his intelligence tests. He was one of the most influential advocates of the role of non-intellective factors in testing. He emphasized that factors other than intellectual ability are involved in intelligent behaviour. Wechsler objected to the single score offered by the 1937 Binet scale. Although his test did not directly measure non-intellective factors, it took these factors into careful account in its underlying theory. The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) was developed first in 1939 and then called the Wechsler-Bellevue Intelligence Test. From these he derived the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) in 1949 and the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence (WPPSI) in 1967. Wechsler originally created these tests to find out more about his patients at the Bellevue clinic and he found the then-current Binet IQ test unsatisfactory. The tests are still based on his philosophy that intelligence is “the global capacity to act purposefully, to think rationally, and to deal effectively with [one’s] environment”.

The Wechsler scales introduced many novel concepts and breakthroughs to the intelligence testing movement. First, he did away with the quotient scores of older intelligence tests (the Q in “I.Q.”). Instead, he assigned an arbitrary value of 100 to the mean intelligence and added or subtracted another 15 points for each standard deviation above or below the mean the subject was. While not rejecting the concept of general intelligence (as conceptualized by his teacher Charles Spearman), he divided the concept of intelligence into two main areas: verbal and performance (non-verbal) scales, each evaluated with different subtests.

A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Wechsler as the 51st most cited psychologist of the 20th century.

Mieko Kamiya

Mieko Kamiya (神谷 美恵子, Kamiya Mieko, 12 January 1914 to 22 October 1979) was a Japanese psychiatrist who treated leprosy patients at Nagashima Aiseien Sanatorium.

She was known for translating books on philosophy. She worked as a medical doctor in the Department of Psychiatry at Tokyo University following World War II. She was said to have greatly helped the Ministry of Education and the General Headquarters, where the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers stayed, in her role as an English-speaking secretary, and served as an adviser to Empress Michiko. She wrote many books as a highly educated, multi-lingual person; one of her books, titled On the Meaning of Life (Ikigai Ni Tsuite in Japanese), based on her experiences with leprosy patients, attracted many readers.

Fiona Caldicott

Dame Fiona Caldicott, DBE, FMedSci (12 January 1941 to 15 February 2021) was a British psychiatrist and psychotherapist who also served as Principal of Somerville College, Oxford. She was the National Data Guardian for Health and Social Care in England until her death.

On This Day … 11 January

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People (Births)

  • 1842 – William James, American psychologist and philosopher (d. 1910).
  • 1867 – Edward B. Titchener, English psychologist and academic (d. 1927).

People (Deaths)

  • 2007 – Robert Anton Wilson, American psychologist, author, poet, and playwright (b. 1932).

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. James wrote widely on many topics, including epistemology, education, metaphysics, psychology, religion, and mysticism. Among his most influential books are The Principles of Psychology, a groundbreaking 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.

Edward B. Titchener

Edward Bradford Titchener (11 January 1867 to 03 August 1927) was an English psychologist who studied under Wilhelm Wundt for several years.

Titchener is best known for creating his version of psychology that described the structure of the mind: structuralism. After becoming a professor at Cornell University, he created the largest doctoral program at that time in the United States. His first graduate student, Margaret Floy Washburn, became the first woman to be granted a PhD in psychology (1894).

Robert Anton Wilson

Robert Anton Wilson (born Robert Edward Wilson; 18 January 1932 to 11 January 2007) was an American author, futurist, and self-described agnostic mystic. Recognised within Discordianism as an Episkopos, pope and saint, Wilson helped publicize Discordianism through his writings and interviews.

Wilson described his work as an “attempt to break down conditioned associations, to look at the world in a new way, with many models recognized as models or maps, and no one model elevated to the truth”. His goal was “to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone but agnosticism about everything.”

In addition to writing several science-fiction novels, Wilson also wrote non-fiction books on extrasensory perception, mental telepathy, metaphysics, paranormal experiences, conspiracy theory, sex, drugs and what Wilson himself called “quantum psychology”.

Following a career in journalism and as an editor, notably for Playboy, Wilson emerged as a major countercultural figure in the mid-1970s, comparable to one of his co-authors, Timothy Leary, as well as Terence McKenna.

On This Day … 09 January

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People (Births)

  • 1879 – John B. Watson, American psychologist and academic (d. 1958).

People (Deaths)

  • 2012 – William G. Roll, German-American psychologist and parapsychologist (b. 1926).

John B. Watson

John Broadus Watson (09 January 1878 to 25 September 1958) was an American psychologist who popularized the scientific theory of behaviourism, establishing it as a psychological school.

Watson advanced this change in the psychological discipline through his 1913 address at Columbia University, titled Psychology as the Behaviourist Views It. Through his behaviourist approach, Watson conducted research on animal behaviour, child rearing, and advertising, as well as conducting the controversial “Little Albert” experiment and the Kerplunk experiment. He was also the editor of Psychological Review from 1910 to 1915. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Watson as the 17th most cited psychologist of the 20th century.

William G. Roll

William G. Roll (03 July 1926 to 09 January 2012) was an American psychologist and parapsychologist on the faculty of the Psychology Department of the University of West Georgia in Carrollton, Georgia.

Roll is most notable for his belief in poltergeist activity. He coined the term “recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis” (RSPK) to explain poltergeist cases. However, RSPK was never accepted by mainstream science and sceptics have described Roll as a credulous investigator.

On This Day … 08 January

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People (Births)

  • 1902 – Carl Rogers, American psychologist and academic (d. 1987).

Carl Rogers

Carl Ransom Rogers (08 January 1902 to 04 February 1987) was an American psychologist and among the founders of the humanistic approach (and client-centred approach) in psychology. Rogers is widely considered to be one of the founding fathers of psychotherapy research and was honoured for his pioneering research with the Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions by the American Psychological Association (APA) in 1956.

The person-centred approach, his own unique approach to understanding personality and human relationships, found wide application in various domains such as psychotherapy and counselling (client-centred therapy), education (student-centred learning), organisations, and other group settings. For his professional work he was bestowed the Award for Distinguished Professional Contributions to Psychology by the APA in 1972. In a study by Steven J. Haggbloom and colleagues using six criteria such as citations and recognition, Rogers was found to be the sixth most eminent psychologist of the 20th century and second, among clinicians, only to Sigmund Freud. Based on a 1982 survey among 422 respondents of US and Canadian psychologists, he was considered the most influential psychotherapist in history (Sigmund Freud was ranked third).

On This Day … 07 January

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People (Births)

  • 1946 – Michele Elliott, author, psychologist and founder of child protection charity Kidscape.

Michele Elliott

Michele Irmiter Elliott OBE is an author, psychologist, teacher and the founder and director of child protection charity Kidscape. She has chaired World Health Organisation and Home Office working groups and is a Winston Churchill fellow.

Early Life

Elliott was born on 07 January 1946 to James Irmiter and Ivy (née Dashwood). She graduated from Dixie Hollins High School in 1964. She attended the University of South Florida and the University of Florida, gaining a BA in Science and Education and a Masters’ degree in Psychology. She began working with families and children in 1968 in London.

Work

Elliott worked as a child psychologist at The American School in London, where her husband was a social studies teacher.

Kidscape

Elliott founded Kidscape in 1984 to help children stay safe from sexual abuse and from bullying.

Elliott has been a high-profile figure and Kidscape was named Charity of the Year in 2000. Writing in The Guardian, David Brindle suggested the award was “an undoubted reflection of the vibrancy of Michele Elliott”.

Female Child Sexual Abuse Offenders

Elliott, who had previously written books about male abuse of children, has undertaken pioneering work in investigating and raising awareness of the problem and extent of child sexual abuse committed by women, and the topic of female paedophilia, publishing the book Female Sexual Abuse of Children The Last Taboo in 1992. The book was well received by professionals and survivors’ organisations. Mike Lew described it as “an important and challenging work”, helping “to forge a new understanding of the issues”. Doody’s annual stated it was “an extremely valuable book for all professionals, and it greatly increases the current state of knowledge, or lack of that knowledge, that can have a profound influence on the survivor’s development and recovery”.

Elliott’s work in exposing the issue of child sexual abuse committed by women has also resulted in hostility from feminists. While compiling Female Sexual Abuse of Children, Elliott organised a conference in London concerning sexual abuse by women. After publishing the book, Elliott was subject to a “deluge” of hate mail from feminists.

Awards

In 2008 Elliot was honoured with an OBE by the Queen for services to children. The following year she was named Children and Young People’s Champion. She was awarded an honorary doctorate by Post University in 1998 and another honorary doctorate by the University of Birmingham in 2003. She was awarded a Winston Churchill Fellowship in 1996. Her book, “Bullies, Cyberbullies and Frenemies” received the Literary Classics Gold Award in 2013.

On This Day … 06 January

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People (Births)

  • 1915 – John C. Lilly, American psychoanalyst, physician, and philosopher (d. 2001).

People (Deaths)

  • 2014 – Julian Rotter, American psychologist and academic (b. 1916).

John C. Lilly

John Cunningham Lilly (06 January 1915 to 30 September 2001) was an American physician, neuroscientist, psychoanalyst, psychonaut, philosopher, writer and inventor. He was a member of a generation of counterculture scientists and thinkers that included Ram Dass, Werner Erhard and Timothy Leary, all frequent visitors to the Lilly home. He often stirred controversy, especially among mainstream scientists.

Lilly conducted high-altitude research during World War II and later trained as a psychoanalyst. He gained renown in the 1950s after developing the isolation tank. He saw the tanks, in which users are isolated from almost all external stimuli, as a means to explore the nature of human consciousness. He later combined that work with his efforts to communicate with dolphins. He began studying how bottlenose dolphins vocalize, establishing centres in the US Virgin Islands, and later San Francisco, to study dolphins. A decade later, he began experimenting with psychedelics, including LSD, often while floating in isolation. His work inspired two Hollywood movies, The Day of the Dolphin (1973) and Altered States (1980).

Julian Rotter

Julian B. Rotter (22 October 1916 to 06 January 2014) was an American psychologist known for developing social learning theory and research into locus of control. He was a faculty member at The Ohio State University and then the University of Connecticut. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Rotter as the 64th most eminent and 18th most widely cited psychologist of the 20th century. A 2014 study published in 2014 placed at #54 among psychologists whose careers spanned the post-World War II era.

On This Day … 02 January

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People (Deaths)

  • 2016 – Frances Cress Welsing, American psychiatrist and author (b. 1935).

Frances Cress Welsing

Frances Luella Welsing (née Cress; 18 March 1935 to 02 January 2016) was an American psychiatrist and well-known proponent of the Black supremacist melanin theory.  Her 1970 essay, The Cress Theory of Colour-Confrontation and Racism (White Supremacy), offered her interpretation of what she described as the origins of white supremacy culture.

She was the author of The Isis Papers: The Keys to the Colours (1991).