Category: Mental Health History

On This Day … 15 January [2023]

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People (Births)

  • 1877 – Lewis Terman, American psychologist, eugenicist, and academic (d. 1956).
  • 1958 – Boris Tadić, Serbian psychologist and politician, 16th President of Serbia.

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.

Born in Sarajevo, he graduated from the University of Belgrade with a degree in psychology. He later worked as a journalist, military psychologist, and as a teacher at the First Belgrade Gymnasium.

On This Day … 14 January [2023]

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People (Deaths)

  • 1949 – Harry Stack Sullivan, American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst (b. 1892).

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 [2023]

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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 (d. 2021).

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). 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, FRCP, FRCPI, FRCPsych, FRCGP (née Soesan; 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 [2023]

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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. 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 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, psychologist, and self-described agnostic mystic. Recognised within Discordianism as an Episkopos, pope and saint, Wilson helped publicise 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 recognised as models or maps, and no one model elevated to the truth”. His goal was “to try to get people into a state of generalised 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 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 [2023]

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People (Births)

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

John B. Watson

John Broadus Watson (09 January 1878 to 25 September 1958) was an American psychologist who popularised 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.

On This Day … 08 January [2023]

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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 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, Rogers’s 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 received the Award for Distinguished Professional Contributions to Psychology from 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 of 422 respondents of US and Canadian psychologists, he was considered the most influential psychotherapist in history (Freud ranked third).

On This Day … 07 January [2023]

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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.

On This Day … 06 January [2023]

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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 Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, and Werner Erhard, 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 vocalise, 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), as well as the videogame series Ecco the Dolphin.

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 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 … 30 December [2022]

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People (Deaths)

  • 2002 – Eleanor J. Gibson, American psychologist and academic (b. 1910).

Eleanor J. Gibson

Eleanor Jack Gibson (07 December 1910 to 30 December 2002) was an American psychologist who focused on reading development and perceptual learning in infants. Gibson began her career at Smith College as an instructor in 1932, publishing her first works on research conducted as an undergraduate student. Gibson was able to circumvent the many obstacles she faced due to the Great Depression and gender discrimination, by finding research opportunities that she could meld with her own interests. Gibson, with her husband James J. Gibson, created the Gibsonian ecological theory of development, which emphasized how important perception was because it allows humans to adapt to their environments. Perhaps her most well-known contribution to psychology was the “visual cliff,” which studied depth perception in both human and animal species, leading to a new understanding of perceptual development in infants. Gibson was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1971, the National Academy of Education in 1972, and to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1977. In 1992, she was awarded the National Medal of Science.

On This Day … 29 December [2022]

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People (Deaths)

  • 1939 – Madeleine Pelletier, French psychiatrist, feminist and political activist (b. 1874).

Madeleine Pelletier

Madeleine Pelletier (18 May 1874 to 29 December 1939)[1] was a French psychiatrist, first-wave feminist, and political activist. Born in Paris, Pelletier frequented socialist and anarchist groups in her adolescence. She became a doctor in her twenties, overcoming a large educational gap, and was France’s first woman to receive a doctorate in psychiatry. Pelletier joined freemasonry, the French Section of the Workers’ International, and came to lead a feminist association. She set out to join the October Revolution but returned disillusioned. In France, she continued to advocate for feminist and communist causes, and wrote numerous articles, essays, and literary works, even following a stroke in 1937 which made her hemiplegic. Pelletier was charged with having performed an abortion in 1939 despite her condition precluding her ability to perform this act. She was placed in a mental asylum where her health deteriorated and she died of a second stroke later that year.