Tag: Psychologist

Who is James Dobson?

Published on by Andrew Marshall1 Comment

Introduction

James Clayton Dobson Jr. (commonly known as Jim Dobson, born 21 April 1936) is an American evangelical Christian author, psychologist, and founder of Focus on the Family (FOTF), which he led from 1977 until 2010.

In the 1980s he was ranked as one of the most influential spokesmen for conservative social positions in American public life. Although never an ordained minister, he was called “the nation’s most influential evangelical leader” by The New York Times while Slate portrayed him as a successor to evangelical leaders Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.

As part of his former role in the organisation, he produced the daily radio programme Focus on the Family, which the organisation has said was broadcast in more than a dozen languages and on over 7,000 stations worldwide, and reportedly heard daily by more than 220 million people in 164 countries. Focus on the Family was also carried by about sixty US television stations daily. Dobson also founded the Family Research Council in 1981. He is no longer affiliated with Focus on the Family. Dobson founded Family Talk as a non-profit organisation in 2010 and launched a new radio broadcast, Family Talk with Dr. James Dobson, that began on 03 May 2010, on over 300 stations nationwide.

Early Life and Education

James Dobson was born to Myrtle Georgia (née Dillingham) and James C. Dobson, Sr., on 21 April 1936, in Shreveport, Louisiana. From his earliest childhood, religion played a central part in his life. He once told a reporter that he learned to pray before he learned to talk, and says he gave his life to Jesus at the age of three, in response to an altar call by his father. He is the son, grandson, and great-grandson of Church of the Nazarene ministers.

The parents took their young son along to watch his father preach. Like most Nazarenes, they forbade dancing and going to movies. Young “Jimmie Lee” (as he was called) concentrated on his studies.

Dobson studied academic psychology, which most evangelical Christians in the 1950s and 1960s did not look upon favourably. He came to believe that he was being called to become a Christian counsellor or perhaps a Christian psychologist. He attended Pasadena College (now Point Loma Nazarene University) as an undergraduate and served as captain of the school’s tennis team. In 1967, Dobson received his doctorate in psychology from the University of Southern California.

Career

In 1967, he became an Associate Clinical Professor of Paediatrics at the University of Southern California School of Medicine for 14 years. He spent 17 years on the staff of the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles in the Division of Child Development and Medical Genetics.

For a time, Dobson worked as an assistant to Paul Popenoe at the Institute of Family Relations, a marriage-counselling centre, in Los Angeles.

Dobson arguably first became well-known with the publication of Dare to Discipline (1970), which encouraged parents to use corporal punishment in disciplining their children. Dobson’s social and political opinions are widely read among many evangelical church congregations in the United States.

In 1977 he founded Focus on the Family. Dobson published monthly bulletins, which were dispensed as inserts in some Sunday church-service bulletins.

Dobson interviewed serial killer Ted Bundy on-camera the day before Bundy’s execution on 24 January 1989. The interview became controversial because Bundy was given an opportunity to attempt to explain his actions (the rape and murder of 30 young women). Bundy claimed in the interview (in a reversal of his previous stance) that violent pornography played a significant role in moulding and crystallising his fantasies. In May 1989, during an interview with John Tanner, a Republican Florida prosecutor, Dobson called for Bundy to be forgiven. The Bundy tapes gave Focus on the Family revenues of over $1 million, $600,000 of which it donated to anti-pornography groups and to anti-abortion groups.

Dobson stepped down as President and CEO of Focus on the Family in 2003, and resigned from the position of chairman of the board in February 2009. Dobson explained his departure as twofold: one to allow a smooth transfer of leadership to the next generation, and in this case, to Jim Daly who he directly appointed as his replacement. And secondly, due to some differences in opinion about organisational positions which represented “significant philosophical differences” with successor Jim Daly. He said, “I have believed for many years that one of the biggest mistakes a founder and president can make is to stay too long. By holding the reins of power as the years go by, an executive prevents his organization from developing the leadership to carry on when he dies or suddenly decides to step down. Then a crisis can occur that may even doom the ministry. We have all seen that happen.”

In 2010, Dobson founded the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute, a non-profit organisation that produces his radio programme, Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk.

Dobson frequently appears as a guest on the Fox News Channel.

Personal Life

Dobson married Shirley Deere on 26 August 1960. The couple have two children, Danae and Ryan. Ryan was adopted by the Dobsons.

Awards

At the invitation of Presidents and Attorneys General, Dobson has also served on government advisory panels and testified at several government hearings. He was given the “Layman of the Year” award by the National Association of Evangelicals in 1982, “The Children’s Friend” honour by Childhelp USA (an advocate agency against child abuse) in 1987, and the Humanitarian Award by the California Psychological Association in 1988. In 2005, Dobson received an honorary doctorate (his 16th) from Indiana Wesleyan University and was inducted into IWU’s Society of World Changers, while speaking at the university’s Academic Convocation.[6]

In 2008, Dobson’s Focus on the Family program was nominated for induction into the National Radio Hall of Fame. Nominations were made by the 157 members of the Hall of Fame and voting on inductees was handed over to the public using online voting. The nomination drew the ire of gay rights activists, who attempted to have the program removed from the nominee list and to vote for other nominees to prevent it from being approved. However, the programme garnered enough votes and was subsequently inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame

Social Views

Views on Marriage

James Dobson is a strong proponent of marriage defined as “one where husband and wife are lawfully married, are committed to each other for life,” and have a homemaker mother and breadwinner father. According to his view, women are not deemed inferior to men because both are created in God’s image, but each gender has biblically mandated roles. He recommends that married women with children under the age of 18 focus on mothering, rather than work outside the home.

In his 2004 book Marriage Under Fire, Dobson suggests that heterosexual marriage rates in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden have been falling, and that this is due to the recognition of same-sex relationships by those countries during the 1990s. He remarks that the “institution of marriage in those countries is rapidly dying” as a result, with most young people cohabiting or choosing to remain single (living alone) and illegitimacy rates rising in some Norwegian counties up to 80%.

Dobson writes that “every civilization in the world” has been built upon marriage. He also believes that homosexuality is neither a choice nor genetic, but is caused by external factors during early childhood. He anecdotally cites as evidence the life of actress Anne Heche, who was previously in a relationship with Ellen DeGeneres. Criticising “the realities of judicial tyranny,” Dobson has written that “[t]here is no issue today that is more significant to our culture than the defense of the family. Not even the war on terror eclipses it.”

Critics have stated that Dobson’s views on homosexuality do not represent the mainstream views of the mental health community, with Dan Gilgoff referring to the positions of the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association on homosexuality.

Views on Schooling

Focus on the Family supports private school vouchers and tax credits for religious schools. According to Focus on the Family website, Dobson believes that parents are ultimately responsible for their children’s education, and encourages parents to visit their children’s schools to ask questions and to join the PTA so that they may voice their opinions. Dobson opposes sex education curricula that are not abstinence-only.

According to People for the American Way, Focus on the Family material has been used to challenge a book or curriculum taught in public schools. Critics, such as People for the American Way, allege that Focus on the Family encourages Christian teachers to establish prayer groups in public schools. Dobson supports student-led prayer in public schools, and believes that allowing student-led Christian prayer in schools does not violate the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Views on Discipline within the Family

In his book Dare to Discipline, Dobson advocates the spanking of children up to eight years old when they misbehave, but warns that “corporal punishment should not be a frequent occurrence” and that “discipline must not be harsh and destructive to the child’s spirit.”[citation needed] He warns against “harsh spanking” because “It is not necessary to beat the child into submission; a little bit of pain goes a long way for a young child. However, the spanking should be of sufficient magnitude to cause the child to cry genuinely.”

Dobson has called disciplining children to be a necessary but unpleasant part of raising children that should only be carried out by qualified parents:

Anyone who has ever abused a child—or has ever felt himself losing control during a spanking—should not expose the child to that tragedy. Anyone who has a violent temper that at times becomes unmanageable should not use that approach. Anyone who secretly ‘enjoys’ the administration of corporal punishment should not be the one to implement it.

In his book The Strong-Willed Child, Dobson suggests that if authority is portrayed correctly to a child, the child will understand how to interact with other authority figures:

By learning to yield to the loving authority … of his parents, a child learns to submit to other forms of authority which will confront him later in his life—his teachers, school principal, police, neighbors and employers.[51]

In Dobson’s opinion, parents must uphold their authority and do so consistently: “When you are defiantly challenged, win decisively.” In The Strong-Willed Child, Dobson draws an analogy between the defiance of a family pet and that of a small child, and concludes that “just as surely as a dog will occasionally challenge the authority of his leaders, so will a little child—only more so” (emphasis in original).

When asked “How long do you think a child should be allowed to cry after being punished? Is there a limit?” Dobson responded:

Yes, I believe there should be a limit. As long as the tears represent a genuine release of emotion, they should be permitted to fall. But crying quickly changes from inner sobbing to an expression of protest … Real crying usually lasts two minutes or less but may continue for five. After that point, the child is merely complaining, and the change can be recognized in the tone and intensity of his voice. I would require him to stop the protest crying, usually by offering him a little more of whatever caused the original tears. In younger children, crying can easily be stopped by getting them interested in something else.

Sociologists John Bartkowski and Christopher Ellison have stated that Dobson’s views “diverge sharply from those recommended by contemporary mainstream experts” and are not based on any sort of empirical testing, but rather are nothing more than expressions of his religious doctrines of “biblical literalism and ‘authority-mindedness.'”

Views on Tolerance and Diversity

In the winter of 2004-2005, the We Are Family Foundation sent American elementary schools approximately 60,000 copies of a free DVD using popular cartoon characters (especially SpongeBob SquarePants) to “promote tolerance and diversity.” Dobson contended that “tolerance” and “diversity” are “buzzwords” that the We Are Family Foundation misused as part of a “hidden agenda” to promote homosexuality. Kate Zernik noted Dobson asserting: “tolerance and its first cousin, diversity, ‘are almost always buzzwords for homosexual advocacy.'” He stated on the Focus on the Family website that “childhood symbols are apparently being hijacked to promote an agenda that involves teaching homosexual propaganda to children.” He offered as evidence the association of many leading LGBT rights organisations, including GLAAD, GLSEN, HRC, and PFLAG, with the We Are Family Foundation as shown by links which he claims once existed on their website.

The We Are Family Foundation countered that Dobson had mistaken their organisation with “an unrelated Web site belonging to another group called ‘We Are Family,’ which supports gay youth.” Dobson countered:

I want to be clear: the We Are Family Foundation—the organization that sponsored the video featuring SpongeBob and the other characters was, until this flap occurred, making available a variety of explicitly pro-homosexual materials on its Web site. It has since endeavored to hide that fact, but my concerns are as legitimate today as they were when I first expressed them in January.

In September 2005, Tolerance.org published a follow-up message advertising the DVD’s continued availability, including We Are Family Foundation president Nancy Hunt’s speculation that many of the DVDs may be “still sitting in boxes, unused, because of Dobson’s vitriolic attack.”

Views on Homosexuality

Dobson believes that God defines marriage as between one man and one woman only and describes this as the central stabilising institution of society. Dobson believes that any sexual activity outside of such a union – including homosexuality – cannot be approved by God.[citation needed] In Dobson’s view, homosexuality results from influences in a child’s environment rather than an inborn trait. He states that homosexual behaviour, specifically “unwanted same-sex attraction”, has been and can be “overcome” through understanding developmental models for homosexuality and choosing to heal the complex developmental issues which led to same-sex attraction.

Focus on the Family ministry sponsors the monthly conference Love Won Out, where participants hear “powerful stories of ex-gay men and women.” Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (P-FLAG) has protested against the conference in Orlando, questioning both its methodology and supposed success. In regards to the conference, Dobson has stated that “Gay activists come with preconceived notions about who we are and what we believe and about the hate that boils from within, which is simply not true. Regardless of what the media might say, Focus on the Family has no interest in promoting hatred toward homosexuals or anyone else. We also don’t wish to deprive them of their basic constitutional rights … The Constitution applies to all of us.” Dobson strongly opposes the movement to legitimise same-sex relationships. In his book Bringing Up Boys, Dobson states, “[T]he disorder is not typically ‘chosen.’ Homosexuals deeply resent being told that they selected this same-sex inclination in pursuit of sexual excitement or some other motive. It is unfair, and I don’t blame them for being irritated by that assumption. Who among us would knowingly choose a path that would result in alienation from family, rejection by friends, disdain from the heterosexual world, exposure to sexually transmitted diseases such as AIDS and tuberculosis, and even a shorter lifespan?”

Sociologist Judith Stacey criticised Dobson for claiming that sociological studies show that gay couples do not make good parents. She stated that Dobson’s claim “is a direct misrepresentation of my research.” In response to Dobson’s claim that “there have been more than ten thousand studies that have showed that children do best when they are raised with a mother and a father who are committed to each other,” Stacey replied that “[a]ll of those studies that Dobson is referring to are studies that did not include gay or lesbian parents as part of the research base.”

Dobson objected to a bill expanding the prohibition of sexual orientation-based discrimination in the areas of “public accommodation, housing practices, family planning services and twenty other areas.” He said that, were such a bill passed, public businesses could no longer separate locker rooms and bathrooms by gender, which he claimed would lead to a situation where, “every woman and little girl will have to fear that a predator, bisexual, cross-dresser or even a homosexual or heterosexual male might walk in and relieve himself in their presence.”

Political and Social Influence

Although Dobson initially remained somewhat distant from Washington politics, in 1981 he founded the Family Research Council as a political arm through which “social conservative causes” could achieve greater political influence. In 1996, he cast a vote for US Taxpayers’ Party Presidential candidate Howard Phillips.

In late 2004, Dobson led a campaign to block the appointment of Arlen Specter to head of the Senate Judiciary Committee because of Specter’s pro-abortion rights stance. Responding to a question by Fox News personality Alan Colmes on whether he wanted the Republican Party to be known as a “big-tent party,” he replied, “I don’t want to be in the big tent … I think the party ought to stand for something.” In 2006, Focus on the Family spent more than a half million dollars to promote a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage in its home state of Colorado.

A May 2005 article by Chris Hedges in Harper’s Magazine described Dobson as “perhaps the most powerful figure in the Dominionist movement” and “a crucial player in getting out the Christian vote for George W. Bush.” Discernment Ministries, a site that describes dominionism as a heresy, characterized Dobson as belonging to the “Patriotic American” brand of dominionism, calling him “One of its most powerful leaders.”

In November 2004, Dobson was described by the online magazine Slate as “America’s most influential evangelical leader.” The article stated:

“Forget Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, who in their dotage have marginalized themselves with gaffes … Dobson is now America’s most influential evangelical leader, with a following reportedly greater than that of either Falwell or Robertson at his peak … Dobson may have delivered Bush his victories in Ohio and Florida.”

Further, “He’s already leveraging his new power. When a thank-you call came from the White House, Dobson issued the staffer a blunt warning that Bush “needs to be more aggressive” about pressing the religious right’s pro-life, anti-gay rights agenda, or it would “pay a price in four years”. Dobson has sometimes complained that the Republican Party may take the votes of social conservatives for granted, and has suggested that evangelicals may withhold support from the GOP if the party does not more strongly support conservative family issues: “Does the Republican Party want our votes, no string attached—to court us every two years, and then to say, ‘Don’t call me, I’ll call you’—and not to care about the moral law of the universe? … Is that what they want? Is that the way the system works? Is this the way it’s going to be? If it is, I’m gone, and if I go, I will do everything I can to take as many people with me as possible.”

However, in 2006, Dobson said that, while “there is disillusionment out there with Republicans” and “that worries me greatly,” he nonetheless suggested voters turn out and vote Republican in 2006. “My first inclination was to sit this one out,” but according to The New York Times, Dobson then added that “he had changed his mind when he looked at who would become the leaders of Congressional committees if the Democrats took over.”

Dobson garnered national media attention once again in February 2008 after releasing a statement in the wake of Senator John McCain’s expected success in the so-called “Super Tuesday” Republican primary elections. In his statement, Dobson said: “I cannot, and will not, vote for Senator John McCain, as a matter of conscience,” and indicated that he would refrain from voting altogether if McCain were to become the Republican candidate, echoing other conservative commentators’ concerns about the Senator’s conservatism. He endorsed Mike Huckabee for president.[citation needed] After McCain selected an anti-abortion candidate, Sarah Palin, as his running mate, Dobson said that he was more enthusiastic in his support for the Republican ticket. When Palin’s 17-year-old daughter’s pregnancy was revealed, Dobson issued a press release commending Palin’s stance, saying:

We have always encouraged the parents to love and support their children and always advised the girls to see their pregnancies through, even though there will of course be challenges along the way. That is what the Palins are doing, and they should be commended once again for not just talking about their pro-life and pro-family values, but living them out even in the midst of trying circumstances.

On 24 June 2008, Dobson criticized statements made by US Presidential candidate Barack Obama in Obama’s 2006 “Call to Renewal” address. Dobson stated that Obama was “distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own world view.” On 23 October 2008, Dobson published a “Letter from 2012 in Obama’s America” that proposed that an Obama presidency could lead to: mandated homosexual teachings across all schools; the banning of firearms in entire states; the end of the Boy Scouts, home schooling, Christian school groups, Christian adoption agencies, and talk radio; pornography on prime-time and daytime television; mandatory bonuses for gay soldiers; terrorist attacks across America; the nuclear bombing of Tel Aviv; the conquering of most of Eastern Europe by Russia; the end of health care for Americans over 80; out-of-control gasoline prices; and complete economic disaster in the United States, among other catastrophes. In the days after the 2008 presidential election, Dobson stated on his radio program that he was mourning the Obama election, claiming that Obama supported infanticide, would be responsible for the deaths of millions of unborn children, and was “going to appoint the most liberal justices to the Supreme Court, perhaps, that we’ve ever had.”

Dobson supports intelligent design and has spoken at conferences on the subject, and frequently criticizes evolution. In 2007, Dobson was one of 25 evangelicals who called for the ouster of Rev. Richard Cizik from his position at the National Association of Evangelicals because Cizik had taken a stance urging evangelicals to take global warming seriously.

On 13 June 2007, the National Right to Life Committee ousted Colorado Right to Life after the latter ran a full-page ad criticising Dobson.

On 30 May 2010, Dobson delivered the pre-race invocation at the NASCAR Coca-Cola 600 automobile race, raising criticism about his association with a sport associated with sponsors and activities which would not meet his definition of family-friendly.

At a National Day of Prayer event in the US Capitol, Dobson called Barack Obama “the abortion president.” He said, “President Obama, before he was elected, made it very clear that he wanted to be the abortion president. He didn’t make any bones about it. This is something that he really was going to promote and support, and he has done that, and in a sense he is the abortion president.” Among others, Rep. Janice Hahn complained because Dobson used the National Day of Prayer for partisan purposes. She said, “Dobson just blew a hole into this idea of being a nonpartisan National Day of Prayer. It was very disturbing to me … and really a shame. James Dobson hijacked the National Day of Prayer—this nonpartisan, nonpolitical National Day of Prayer—to promote his own distorted political agenda.”

Dobson endorsed Ted Cruz in the 2016 Republican primaries. Dobson would later go on to endorse Trump in the general election against Hillary Clinton. Dobson has been named by Christianity Today as one of the Trump Administration’s top “Evangelical Faith Advisers”.

In 2020, Dobson worked alongside other conservative Evangelicals and Evangelical organizations, including Jim Daly and Focus on the Family, to support the re-election of President Donald Trump. He echoed his support of the President throughout the impeachment proceedings earlier that year.

Ecumenical Relations

Dobson and Charles Colson were two participants in a 2000 conference at the Vatican on the global economy’s impact on families. During the conference, the two Protestants met with Pope John Paul II. Dobson later told Catholic News Service that though he has theological differences with Roman Catholicism, “when it comes to the family, there is far more agreement than disagreement, and with regard to moral issues from abortion to premarital sex, safe-sex ideology and homosexuality, I find more in common with Catholics than with some of my evangelical brothers and sisters.”

In November 2009, Dobson signed an ecumenical statement known as the Manhattan Declaration calling on evangelicals, Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians not to comply with rules and laws permitting abortion, same-sex marriage and other matters that go against their religious consciences.

On This Day … 07 April [2022]

Published on by Andrew MarshallLeave a comment

People (Births)

  • 1924 – Morton Bard, American psychologist (d. 1997).
  • 1978 – Jaqueline Jesus, Brazilian psychologist and activist.

Morton Bard

Morton Bard (07 March 1924 to 04 December 1997) was an American psychologist, known for the research he undertook on the psychology of crime victims. He was a one-time member of the New York Police Department, a psychologist, and a professor who studied the reactions of crime victims.

Bard, in partnership with the police, conducted studies of crime victims (e.g. hostages, rape victims, and the families of murder victims). He published two volumes on domestic violence and crisis intervention. He also is recognised for having laid the foundation of victim-focused training into many law enforcement academies and the FBI National Academy.

In 1979, Bard co-authored The Crime Victim’s Book. This volume provides practical information on how best to identify and support the needs of crime victims. The Crime Victim’s Book was considered a “bible” for not only advocates but also crime victims. He is considered to have been a pivotal critical thinker in the development of the modern discipline of crisis intervention. He also wrote scholarly articles on the training of police officers in the application of different forms of crisis intervention out in the field.

Jaqueline Jesus

Jaqueline Gomes de Jesus (born 07 March 1978) is a Brazilian psychologist, writer, and LGBT activist.

Who was Roger Wolcott Sperry?

Published on by Andrew Marshall1 Comment

Introduction

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.

Early Life and Education

Sperry was born in Hartford, Connecticut, to Francis Bushnell and Florence Kraemer Sperry. His father was in banking, and his mother trained in business school. He was raised in an upper middle-class environment, which stressed academic achievement. Roger had one brother, Russell Loomis. Their father died when Roger was 11. Afterwards, his mother became assistant to the principal in the local high school.

Sperry went to Hall High School in West Hartford, Connecticut, where he was a star athlete in several sports, and did well enough academically to win a scholarship to Oberlin College. At Oberlin, he was captain of the basketball team, and he also took part in varsity baseball, football, and track. He also worked at a café on campus to help support himself. Sperry was an English major, but he took an Intro to Psychology class taught by a Professor named R.H. Stetson who had worked with William James, the father of American Psychology. This class sparked Sperry’s interest in the brain and how it can change. Stetson was disabled and had trouble getting around so Sperry would help him out by driving him to and from wherever he needed to go. This included taking Stetson to lunch with his colleagues. Sperry would just sit at the end of the table and listen to Stetson and his colleagues discuss their research and other psychological interests.

This increased Sperry’s interest in Psychology even more and after he received his undergraduate degree in English from Oberlin he decided to stay and get his master’s degree in Psychology. He received his bachelor’s degree in English in 1935 and a master’s degree in psychology in 1937. He received his Ph.D. in zoology from the University of Chicago in 1941, supervised by Paul A. Weiss. Sperry then did postdoctoral research with Karl Lashley at Harvard University though most of his time was spent with Lashley at the Yerkes Primate Research Centre in Orange Park, Florida.

Career

In 1942, Sperry began work at the Yerkes Laboratories of Primate Biology, then a part of Harvard University. There he focused on experiments involving the rearranging of motor and sensory nerves. He left in 1946 to become an assistant professor, and later associate professor, at the University of Chicago. In 1949, during a routine chest x-ray, there was evidence of tuberculosis. He was sent to Saranac Lake in the Adironack Mountains in New York for treatment. It was during this time when he began writing his concepts of the mind and brain, and was first published in the American Scientist in 1952. In 1952, he became the Section Chief of Neurological Diseases and Blindness at the National Institutes of Health and finished out the year at the Marine Biology Laboratory in Coral Gables, Florida. Sperry went back to The University of Chicago in 1952 and became an Associate Professor of Psychology. He was not offered tenure at Chicago and planned to move to Bethesda, Maryland but was held up by a delay in construction at the National Institutes of Health. During this time Sperry’s friend Victor Hepburn invited him to lecture about his research at a symposium. There were professors from the California Institute of Technology in the audience of the symposium who, after listening to Sperry’s lecture, were so impressed with him they offered him a job as the Hixson Professor of Psychobiology. In 1954, he accepted the position as a professor at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech as Hixson Professor of Psychobiology) where he performed his most famous experiments with Joseph Bogen, MD and many students including Michael Gazzaniga.

Under the supervision of Paul Weiss while earning his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago, Sperry became interested in neuronal specificity and brain circuitry and began questioning the existing concepts about these two topics. He asked the simple question first asked in his Introduction to Psychology class at Oberlin: Nature or nurture? He began a series of experiments in an attempt to answer this question. Sperry crosswired the motor nerves of rats’ legs so the left nerve controlled the right leg and vice versa. He would then place the rats in a cage that had an electric grid on the bottom separated into four sections. Each leg of the rat was placed into one of the four sections of the electric grid. A shock was administered to a specific section of the grid, for example the grid where the rat’s left back leg was located would receive a shock. Every time the left paw was shocked the rat would lift his right paw and vice versa. Sperry wanted to know how long it would take the rat to realise he was lifting the wrong paw. After repeated tests Sperry found that the rats never learned to lift up the correct paw, leading him to the conclusion that some things are just hardwired and cannot be relearned. In Sperry’s words, “no adaptive functioning of the nervous system took place.” During Sperry’s postdoctoral years with Karl Lashley at Harvard and at the Yerkes Laboratories of Primate Biology in Orange Park, Florida, he continued his work on neuronal specificity that he had begun as a doctoral student and initiated a new series of studies involving salamanders. The optic nerves were sectioned and the eyes rotated 180 degrees. The question was whether vision would be normal after regeneration or would the animal forever view the world as “upside down” and right-left reversed. Should the latter prove to be the case, it would mean that the nerves were somehow “guided” back to their original sites of termination. Restoration of normal vision (i.e., “seeing” the world in a “right-side-up” orientation) would mean that the regenerating nerves had terminated in new sites, quite different from the original ones. The animals reacted as though the world was upside down and reversed from right to left. Furthermore, no amount of training could change the response. These studies, which provided strong evidence for nerve guidance by “intricate chemical codes under genetic control” (1963) culminated in Sperry’s chemoaffinity hypothesis (1951).

Sperry later served on the Board of Trustees and as Professor of Psychobiology Emeritus at California Institute of Technology. The Sperry Neuroscience Building at Oberlin College was named in his honor in 1990.

Nobel Prize

Sperry was granted numerous awards over his lifetime, including the California Scientist of the Year Award in 1972, the National Medal of Science in 1989, the Wolf Prize in Medicine in 1979, and the Albert Lasker Medical Research Award in 1979, and the Nobel Prize for Medicine/Physiology in 1981 that he shared with David H. Hubel and Torsten N. Wiesel. Sperry won this award for his work with “split-brain” patients. The brain is divided into two hemispheres, the left and right hemispheres, connected in the middle by a part of the brain called the corpus callosum. In “split-brain” patients, the corpus callosum has been severed due to the patients suffering from epilepsy, a disease that causes intense and persistent seizures. Seizures begin in one hemisphere and continue into the other hemisphere. Cutting the corpus callosum prevents the seizures from moving from one hemisphere to the other, which then prevents seizures from occurring, thus allowing the patients to function normally instead of suffering from continuous seizures.

Sperry first became interested in “split-brain” research when he was working on the topic of interocular transfer, which occurs when “one learns with one eye how to solve a problem then, with that eye covered and using the other eye, one already knows how to solve the problem”. Sperry asked the question: “how can the learning with one eye appear with the use of the other?” Sperry cut nerves in the eyes of cats so the left eye was connected to the left hemisphere and the right eye was connected to the right hemisphere; he also cut the corpus callosum. The cats were then taught to distinguish a triangle from a square with the right eye covered. Then the cats were presented the same problem with the left eye covered; the cats had no idea what they had just learned with the right eye and because of this could be taught to distinguish a square from a triangle. Depending on which eye was covered, the cats would either distinguish a square from a triangle or a triangle from a square, demonstrating that the left and right hemispheres learned and remembered two different events. This led Sperry to believe that the left and right hemispheres function separately when not connected by the corpus callosum.

Sperry’s research with “split-brain” cats helped lead to the discovery that cutting the corpus callosum is a very effective treatment for patients who suffer from epilepsy. Initially after the patients recovered from surgery there were no signs that the surgery caused any changes to their behaviour or functioning. This observation rendered the question: if the surgery had absolutely no effect on any part of the patients’ normal functioning then what is the purpose of the corpus callosum? Was it simply there to keep the two sides of the brain from collapsing, as Karl Lashley jokingly put it? Sperry was asked to develop a series of tests to perform on the “split-brain” patients to determine if the surgery caused changes in the patients’ functioning or not.

Working with his graduate student Michael Gazzaniga, Sperry invited several of the “split-brain” patients to volunteer to take part in his study to determine if the surgery affected their functioning. These tests were designed to test the patients’ language, vision, and motor skills. When a person views something in the left visual field (that is on the left side of their body), the information travels to the right hemisphere of the brain and vice versa. In the first series of tests, Sperry would present a word to either the left or right visual field for a short period of time. If the word was shown to the right visual field, meaning the left hemisphere would process it, then the patient could report seeing the word. If the word was shown to the left visual field, meaning the right hemisphere would process it, then the patient could not report seeing the word. This led Sperry to believe that only the left side of the brain could articulate speech. However, in a follow-up experiment, Sperry discovered that the right hemisphere does have some language abilities. In this experiment, he had the patients place their left hands in a tray full of objects located under a partition so the patient would not be able to see the objects. Then a word was shown to the patient’s left visual field, which was processed by the right side of the brain. This word described one of the objects in the tray, so the patient’s left hand picked up the object corresponding to the word. When participants were asked about the word and the object in their hand, they claimed they had not seen the word and had no idea why they were holding the object. The right side of the brain had recognised the word and told the left hand to pick it up, but because the right side of the brain cannot speak and the left side of the brain had not seen the word, the patient could not articulate what they had seen.

In another series of experiments further examining the lateralisation of language in the left and right hemispheres, Sperry presented one object to the left visual field and a different object to the right visual field of the “split-brain” patients. The patient’s left hand was put under a partition and then the patient was asked to draw with their left hand what they had been shown. The patients would draw what they had seen in their left visual field, but when asked what they had drawn would describe what had been shown to their right visual field. These tests proved that when the corpus callosum is severed, it breaks the connection between the left and right hemispheres, making them unable to communicate with each other. Not only are they unable to communicate with each other, but also without the corpus callosum connecting them one hemisphere has no idea that the other hemisphere even exists. There was even evidence of this outside the laboratory when some of the patients reported that, “while their left hand was unbuttoning their shirt, the right hand would follow along behind and button it again.” These experiments were beneficial to numerous people in many different ways.

In his words (1974), each hemisphere is:

indeed a conscious system in its own right, perceiving, thinking, remembering, reasoning, willing, and emoting, all at a characteristically human level, and … both the left and the right hemisphere may be conscious simultaneously in different, even in mutually conflicting, mental experiences that run along in parallel

This research contributed greatly to understanding the lateralisation of brain function. In 1989, Sperry also received the National Medal of Science. Afterwards in 1993, Sperry received the Lifetime Achievement Award from APA.

In addition to his contribution in establishing the lateralised function of the brain, Sperry is noted for his “chemoaffinity hypothesis”, which has not only been influential in formation of testable hypotheses in how precise neuronal wiring diagram is established in the brain, but the hypothesis itself has been verified by numerous experiments.

The cells and fibers of the brain must carry some kind of individual identification tags, presumably cytochemical in nature, by which they are distinguished one from another almost, in many regions, to the level of the single neurons.

In the words of a 2009 review article in Science magazine:

“He suggested that gradients of such identification tags on retinal neurons and on the target cells in the brain coordinately guide the orderly projection of millions of developing retinal axons. This idea was supported by the identification and genetic analysis of axon guidance molecules, including those that direct development of the vertebrate visual system.”

This was confirmed in the seventies by Marshall W. Nirenberg’s work on chick retinas and later on Drosophila melanogaster larvae.

The experiments conducted by Sperry focused on four major ideas which were also called “turnarounds”: equipotentiality, split brain studies, nerve regeneration and plasticity, and psychology of the consciousness.

Personal Life

In 1949, Sperry married Norma Gay Deupree. They had one son, Glenn Michael, and one daughter, Janeth Hope. Sperry was a quiet, thoughtful, and modest man with an insatiable curiosity. He never stopped working, questioning, or learning up until his death in 1994 of ALS or Lou Gehrig’s Disease. Sperry could often be found in his office with his feet propped up on his desk scribbling in his notebook or deep in thought. Sperry was an avid palaeontologist and displayed his large fossil collection in his home. He was also a very talented sculptor, artist, and ceramicist. He enjoyed going on camping and fishing trips with his wife and children in Baja, California.

Awards and Honours

  • 1931–1935 Amos C. Miller Scholarship, Oberlin College.
  • 1941–1942 National Research Council Fellowship.
  • 1954 Distinguished Alumni Citation, Oberlin College.
  • 1960 Elected National Academy of Sciences.
  • 1963 Elected American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
  • 1969 Howard Crosby Warren Medal, Society of Experimental Psychologists.
  • 1971 Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award, American Psychological Association.
  • 1972 Co-recipient, William Thomson Wakeman Research Award, National Paraplegia Foundation.
  • 1972 California Scientist of the Year Award.
  • 1972 Honorary Doctor of Science Degree, University of Cambridge.
  • 1973 Passano Award in Medical Science.
  • 1974 Elected Honorary Member American Neurological Association.
  • 1974 Elected American Philosophical Society.
  • 1975 Co-recipient Claude Bernard Science Journalism Award.
  • 1976 Karl Spencer Lashley Award of American Philosophical Society.
  • 1976 Elected Foreign Member of Royal Society (ForMemRS).
  • 1976 Honorary Doctor of Science Degree, University of Chicago.
  • 1978 Elected Member Pontifical Academy of Sciences.
  • 1979 Honorary Doctor of Science, Kenyon College.
  • 1979 Wolf Prize in Medicine.
  • 1979 Ralph W. Gerard Prize in Neuroscience of the Society for Neuroscience.
  • 1979 International Visual Literacy Association Special Award for 1979.
  • 1979 Albert Lasker Medical Research Award.
  • 1980 Honorary Doctor of Science Degree, Rockefeller University.
  • 1980 Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.
  • 1981 Shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine.
  • 1981 Founding member of the World Cultural Council.
  • 1982 Honorary Doctor of Science Degree, Oberlin College.
  • 1982 California State Psychological Association Award for Distinguished Scientific Achievements in Psychology.
  • 1986 Realia Award of the Institute for Advanced Philosophic Research.
  • 1987 Mentor Society Award.
  • 1988 Elected Foreign Member USSR Academy of Sciences.
  • 1989 National Medal of Science.
  • 1989 Elected William James Fellow, American Psychological Society.
  • 1993 Lifetime Achievement Award, American Psychological Association.

Who was Carl Hovland?

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Introduction

Carl Iver Hovland (12 June 1912 to 16 April 1961) was a psychologist working primarily at Yale University and for the US Army during World War II who studied attitude change and persuasion.

He first reported the sleeper effect after studying the effects of the Frank Capra’s propaganda film Why We Fight on soldiers in the Army. In later studies on this subject, Hovland collaborated with Irving Janis who would later become famous for his theory of groupthink. Hovland also developed social judgment theory of attitude change. Carl Hovland thought that the ability of someone to resist persuasion by a certain group depended on your degree of belonging to the group.

Biography

Carl Iver Hovland was born in Chicago on 12 June 1912. As a child, he had a deep interest in music. Up until college, when psychology became a major part of his life, he was looking into a musical career. In 1938 he married Gertrude Raddatz.

He was recruited by Samuel Stouffer, a sociologist who was on leave from University of Chicago. Hovland had the responsibility of leading a team of fifteen researchers.

Hovland was involved in a study of the conditions under which people are most likely to change their attitudes in response to persuasive messages. The Yale Group’s work was first described in Hovland’s book Communication and Persuasion, published in 1953.

His major interests in his last few years of life were with concept-formation, which he approached with computer simulation.

Contributions

Psychological research was Hovland’s intellectual joy. Especially in his early career, his investigations covered many topics. His papers in psychological journals included a study of test reliability, a major review of the literature on apparent movement, as well as his four classical papers on conditioned generalization from his doctoral dissertation.

Hovland began to emphasize micro-level analysis of propaganda and its effects. Hovland’s army experiments were the beginnings of that micro-level analysis of an individual. Hovland’s “core conceptual variable was attitude”.

Hovland believed that if he was able to recognise the attitude an individual has towards a trigger, he would be able to predict the behaviour and actions of an individual over time. However, there were many studies that argued the contrary and showed that “an attitude toward a person or object does not predict or explain an individual’s overt behavior regarding that person or object”. This revelation of low correlation did not necessarily render findings useless but instead led to further research on how under certain circumstances it was possible to change a person’s behaviour via their attitudes.

While Hovland focused on an individual rather than a group level, he began to take into consideration interpersonal communication in the form of persuasion. Specifically, Hovland was responsible for carrying out a series of studies that contributed to the “cumulative understanding of persuasion behavior that has never since been matched or even rivaled”.

To test and apply his theorisation Hovland worked proposed the SMCR model. The SMCR model consists of four components – source variables, message variables, channel variables, and receiver variables. By manipulating each of these variables, Hovland was able to advance his “message-learning approach to attitude change”. There were problems with his particular approach, however, in that by focusing on a single dimension of the SMCR model, Hovland was unable to do more than isolate a factor rather than study the synergy between the different variables.

Death

Hovland died in on 16 April 1961. When Hovland learned that he had cancer, he continued to work with his Yale doctoral students and conduct persuasion experiments. Finally, when he could work no more, he left his office in the Psychology Department, went to his home in New Haven, drew a bathtub full of water, and drowned himself.

On This Day … 06 April [2022]

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People (Births)

  • 1967 – Tanya Byron, English psychologist and academic.

Tanya Byron

Tanya Byron (born 06 April 1967) is a British psychologist, writer, and media personality, best known for her work as a child therapist on television shows Little Angels and The House of Tiny Tearaways.

She also co-created the BBC Two sitcom The Life and Times of Vivienne Vyle with Jennifer Saunders, and still contributes articles to various newspapers.

In 2008, she became Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Edge Hill University and is the first and current Chancellor of the same institution.

Who was Erik H. Erikson?

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Introduction

Erik H. Erikson, Psychologist, Psychoanalyst (1)
Erik H. Erikson, Psychologist and Psychoanalyst.

Erik Homburger Erikson (born Erik Salomonsen; 15 June 1902 to 12 May 1994) was a Danish-German-American developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst known for his theory on psychological development of human beings.

He coined the phrase identity crisis.

Despite lacking a bachelor’s degree, Erikson served as a professor at prominent institutions, including Harvard, University of California, Berkeley, and Yale. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Erikson as the 12th most eminent psychologist of the 20th century.

Early Life

Erikson’s mother, Karla Abrahamsen, came from a prominent Jewish family in Copenhagen, Denmark. She was married to Jewish stockbroker Valdemar Isidor Salomonsen, but had been estranged from him for several months at the time Erik was conceived. Little is known about Erik’s biological father except that he was a non-Jewish Dane. On discovering her pregnancy, Karla fled to Frankfurt am Main in Germany where Erik was born on 15 June 1902 and was given the surname Salomonsen. She fled due to conceiving Erik out of wedlock, and the identity of Erik’s birth father was never made clear.

Following Erik’s birth, Karla trained to be a nurse and moved to Karlsruhe. In 1905 she married Erik’s Jewish paediatrician, Theodor Homburger. In 1908, Erik Salomonsen’s name was changed to Erik Homburger, and in 1911 he was officially adopted by his stepfather. Karla and Theodor told Erik that Theodor was his real father, only revealing the truth to him in late childhood; he remained bitter about the deception all his life.

The development of identity seems to have been one of Erikson’s greatest concerns in his own life as well as being central to his theoretical work. As an older adult, he wrote about his adolescent “identity confusion” in his European days. “My identity confusion”, he wrote “[was at times on] the borderline between neurosis and adolescent psychosis.” Erikson’s daughter wrote that her father’s “real psychoanalytic identity” was not established until he “replaced his stepfather’s surname [Homburger] with a name of his own invention [Erikson].” The decision to change his last name came about as he started his job at Yale, and the “Erikson” name was accepted by Erik’s family when they became American citizens. It is said his children enjoyed the fact they would not be called “Hamburger” any longer.

Erik was a tall, blond, blue-eyed boy who was raised in the Jewish religion. Due to these mixed identities, he was a target of bigotry by both Jewish and gentile children. At temple school, his peers teased him for being Nordic; while at grammar school, he was teased for being Jewish. At Das Humanistische Gymnasium his main interests were art, history and languages, but he lacked a general interest in school and graduated without academic distinction. After graduation, instead of attending medical school as his stepfather had desired, he attended art school in Munich, much to the liking of his mother and her friends.

Uncertain about his vocation and his fit in society, Erik dropped out of school and began a lengthy period of roaming about Germany and Italy as a wandering artist with his childhood friend Peter Blos and others. For children from prominent German families, taking a “wandering year” was not uncommon. During his travels he often sold or traded his sketches to people he met. Eventually, Erik realized he would never become a full-time artist and returned to Karlsruhe and became an art teacher. During the time he worked at his teaching job, Erik was hired by an heiress to sketch and eventually tutor her children. Erik worked very well with these children and was eventually hired by many other families that were close to Anna and Sigmund Freud. During this period, which lasted until he was 25 years old, he continued to contend with questions about his father and competing ideas of ethnic, religious, and national identity.

Psychoanalytic Experience and Training

When Erikson was twenty-five, his friend Peter Blos invited him to Vienna to tutor art at the small Burlingham-Rosenfeld School for children whose affluent parents were undergoing psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud’s daughter, Anna Freud. Anna noticed Erikson’s sensitivity to children at the school and encouraged him to study psychoanalysis at the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute, where prominent analysts August Aichhorn, Heinz Hartmann, and Paul Federn were among those who supervised his theoretical studies. He specialised in child analysis and underwent a training analysis with Anna Freud. Helene Deutsch and Edward Bibring supervised his initial treatment of an adult. Simultaneously he studied the Montessori method of education, which focused on child development and sexual stages. In 1933 he received his diploma from the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute. This and his Montessori diploma were to be Erikson’s only earned academic credentials for his life’s work.

United States

In 1930 Erikson married Joan Mowat Serson, a Canadian dancer and artist whom Erikson had met at a dress ball. During their marriage, Erikson converted to Christianity. In 1933, with Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in Germany, the burning of Freud’s books in Berlin and the potential Nazi threat to Austria, the family left an impoverished Vienna with their two young sons and emigrated to Copenhagen. Unable to regain Danish citizenship because of residence requirements, the family left for the United States, where citizenship would not be an issue.

In the United States, Erikson became the first child psychoanalyst in Boston and held positions at Massachusetts General Hospital, the Judge Baker Guidance Centre, and at Harvard Medical School and Psychological Clinic, establishing a singular reputation as a clinician. In 1936, Erikson left Harvard and joined the staff at Yale University, where he worked at the Institute of Social Relations and taught at the medical school.

Erikson continued to deepen his interest in areas beyond psychoanalysis and to explore connections between psychology and anthropology. He made important contacts with anthropologists such as Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson, and Ruth Benedict. Erikson said his theory of the development of thought derived from his social and cultural studies. In 1938, he left Yale to study the Sioux tribe in South Dakota on their reservation. After his studies in South Dakota, he travelled to California to study the Yurok tribe. Erikson discovered differences between the children of the Sioux and Yurok tribes. This marked the beginning of Erikson’s life passion of showing the importance of events in childhood and how society affects them.

In 1939 he left Yale, and the Eriksons moved to California, where Erik had been invited to join a team engaged in a longitudinal study of child development for the University of California at Berkeley’s Institute of Child Welfare. In addition, in San Francisco, he opened a private practice in child psychoanalysis.

While in California he was able to make his second study of American Indian children when he joined anthropologist Alfred Kroeber on a field trip to Northern California to study the Yurok.

In 1950, after publishing the book, Childhood and Society, for which he is best known, Erikson left the University of California when California’s Levering Act required professors there to sign loyalty oaths. From 1951 to 1960 he worked and taught at the Austen Riggs Centre, a prominent psychiatric treatment facility in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where he worked with emotionally troubled young people. Another famous Stockbridge resident, Norman Rockwell, became Erikson’s patient and friend. During this time he also served as a visiting professor at the University of Pittsburgh where he worked with Benjamin Spock and Fred Rogers at Arsenal Nursery School of the Western Psychiatric Institute.

He returned to Harvard in the 1960s as a professor of human development and remained there until his retirement in 1970. In 1973 the National Endowment for the Humanities selected Erikson for the Jefferson Lecture, the United States’ highest honour for achievement in the humanities. Erikson’s lecture was titled Dimensions of a New Identity.

Theories of Development and the Ego

Erikson is credited with being one of the originators of ego psychology, which emphasized the role of the ego as being more than a servant of the id. Although Erikson accepted Freud’s theory, he did not focus on the parent-child relationship and gave more importance to the role of the ego, particularly the person’s progression as self. According to Erikson, the environment in which a child lived was crucial to providing growth, adjustment, a source of self-awareness and identity. Erikson won a Pulitzer Prize and a US National Book Award in category Philosophy and Religion for Gandhi’s Truth (1969), which focused more on his theory as applied to later phases in the life cycle.

In Erikson’s discussion of development, he rarely mentioned a stage of development by age. In fact he referred to it as a prolonged adolescence which has led to further investigation into a period of development between adolescence and young adulthood called emerging adulthood. Erikson’s theory of development includes various psychosocial crises where each conflict builds off of the previous stages. The result of each conflict can have negative or positive impacts on a person’s development, however, a negative outcome can be revisited and readdressed throughout the life span. On ego identity versus role confusion: ego identity enables each person to have a sense of individuality, or as Erikson would say, “Ego identity, then, in its subjective aspect, is the awareness of the fact that there is a self-sameness and continuity to the ego’s synthesizing methods and a continuity of one’s meaning for others”. Role confusion, however, is, according to Barbara Engler, “the inability to conceive of oneself as a productive member of one’s own society.” This inability to conceive of oneself as a productive member is a great danger; it can occur during adolescence, when looking for an occupation.

Erikson’s Theory of Personality

The Erikson life-stages, in order of the eight stages in which they may be acquired, are listed below, as well as the “virtues” that Erikson has attached to these stages, (these virtues are underlined).

  1. Hope, Basic Trust vs. Basic Mistrust: This stage covers the period of infancy, 0-1½ years old, which is the most fundamental stage of life, as this is the stage that all other ones build off of. Whether the baby develops basic trust or basic mistrust is not merely a matter of nurture. It is multi-faceted and has strong social components. It depends on the quality of the maternal relationship. The mother carries out and reflects her inner perceptions of trustworthiness, a sense of personal meaning, etc. on the child. An important part of this stage is providing stable and constant care of the infant. This helps the child develop trust that can transition into relationships other than parental. Additionally, children develop trust in others to support them. If successful in this, the baby develops a sense of trust, which “forms the basis in the child for a sense of identity.” Failure to develop this trust will result in a feeling of fear and a sense that the world is inconsistent and unpredictable.
  2. Will, Autonomy vs. Shame: This stage covers early childhood around 1½-3 years old and introduces the concept of autonomy vs. shame and doubt. The child begins to discover the beginnings of his or her independence, and parents must facilitate the child’s sense of doing basic tasks “all by himself/herself.” Discouragement can lead to the child doubting his or her efficacy. During this stage the child is usually trying to master toilet training. Additionally, the child discovers their talents or abilities, and it is important to ensure the child is able to explore those activities. Erikson states it is essential to allow the children freedom in exploration but also create an environment welcoming of failures. Therefore, the parent should not punish or reprimand the child for failing at the task. Shame and doubt occurs when the child feels incompetent in ability to complete tasks and survive. Will is achieved with success of this stage. Children successful in this stage will have “self-control without a loss of self-esteem.”
  3. Purpose, Initiative vs. Guilt: This stage covers preschool children from ages three to five. Does the child have the ability to do things on her own, such as dress herself? Children in this stage are interacting with peers, and creating their own games and activities. Children in this stage practice independence and start to make their own decisions. If allowed to make these decisions, the child will develop confidence in her ability to lead others. If the child is not allowed to make certain decisions, then a sense of guilt develops. Guilt in this stage is characterised by a sense of being a burden to others, and the child will therefore usually present themselves as a follower as they lack the confidence to do otherwise. Additionally, the child is asking many questions to build knowledge of the world. If the questions earn responses that are critical and condescending, the child will also develop feelings of guilt. Success in this stage leads to the virtue of purpose, which is the normal balance between the two extremes.
  4. Competence, Industry vs. Inferiority. This area covers school age children from five to twelve. Children compare their self worth to others around them. Friends can have a significant impact on the growth of the child. The child can recognise major disparities in personal abilities relative to other children. Erikson places some emphasis on the teacher, who should ensure that children do not feel inferior. During this stage the child’s friend group increases in importance in his life. Often during this stage the child will try to prove competency with things rewarded in society, and also develop satisfaction with his abilities. Encouraging the child increases feelings of adequacy and competency in ability to reach goals. Restriction from teachers or parents leads to doubt, questioning, and reluctance in abilities and therefore may not reach full capabilities. Competence, the virtue of this stage, is developed when a healthy balance between the two extremes is reached.
  5. Fidelity, Identity vs. Role Confusion: This section deals with adolescence, meaning those between twelve and eighteen years old. This occurs when we start to question ourselves and ask questions relevant to who we are and what we want to accomplish. Who am I, how do I fit in? Where am I going in life? The adolescent is exploring and seeking for her own unique identity. This is done by looking at personal beliefs, goals, and values. The morality of the individual is also explored and developed. Erikson believes that if the parents allow the child to explore, she will determine her own identity. If, however, the parents continually push her to conform to their views, the teen will face identity confusion. The teen is also looking towards the future in terms of employment, relationships, and families. Learning the roles she provides in society is essential since the teen begins to develop the desire to fit in to society. Fidelity is characterised by the ability to commit to others and acceptance of others even with differences. Identity crisis is the result of role confusion and can cause the adolescent to try out different lifestyles.
  6. Love, Intimacy vs. Isolation: This is the first stage of adult development. This development usually happens during young adulthood, which is between the ages of 18 to 40. This stage marks a transition from just thinking about ourselves to thinking about other people in the world. We are social creatures and as a result need to be with other people and form relationships with them. Dating, marriage, family and friendships are important during this stage in their life. This is due to the increase in the growth of intimate relationships with others. It is important to note that ego development earlier in life (middle adolescence) is a strong predictor of how well intimacy for romantic relationships will transpire in emerging adulthood. By successfully forming loving relationships with other people, individuals are able to experience love and intimacy. They also feel safety, care, and commitment in these relationships. Furthermore, if individuals are able to successfully resolve the crisis of intimacy versus isolation, they are able to achieve the virtue of love. Those who fail to form lasting relationships may feel isolated and alone.
  7. Care, Generativity vs. Stagnation: The second stage of adulthood happens between the ages of 40–65. During this time people are normally settled in their lives and know what is important to them. A person is either making progress in his career or treading lightly in his career and unsure if this is what he wants to do for the rest of his working life. Also during this time, a person may be raising their children. If they are a parent, then they are re-evaluating their life roles. This is one way of contributing to society along with productivity at work and involvement in community activities and organisations. Individuals that exercise the concept of generativity believe in the next generation and seek to nurture them in creative ways through practices such as parenting, teaching, and mentoring. Having a sense of generativity can be considered significant for both the individual and the society, exemplifying their roles as effective parents, leaders for organizations, etc. If a person is not comfortable with the way his life is progressing, he is usually regretful about the decisions that he has made in the past and feels a sense of uselessness.
  8. Wisdom, Ego Integrity vs. Despair: This stage affects the age group of 65 and on. During this time an individual has reached the last chapter in her life and retirement is approaching or has already taken place. Individuals in this stage must learn to accept the course of their life or they will look back on it with despair. Ego-integrity means the acceptance of life in its fullness: the victories and the defeats, what was accomplished and what was not accomplished. Wisdom is the result of successfully accomplishing this final developmental task. Wisdom is defined as “informed and detached concern for life itself in the face of death itself.” Having a guilty conscience about the past or failing to accomplish important goals will eventually lead to depression and hopelessness. Achieving the virtue of the stage involves the feeling of living a successful life.
  9. Ninth Stage: Psychosocial Crises: All first eight stages in reverse quotient order.

Favourable outcomes of each stage are sometimes known as virtues, a term used in the context of Erikson’s work as it is applied to medicine, meaning “potencies”. These virtues are also interpreted to be the same as “strengths”, which are considered inherent in the individual life cycle and in the sequence of generations. Erikson’s research suggests that each individual must learn how to hold both extremes of each specific life-stage challenge in tension with one another, not rejecting one end of the tension or the other. Only when both extremes in a life-stage challenge are understood and accepted as both required and useful, can the optimal virtue for that stage surface. Thus, ‘trust’ and ‘mis-trust’ must both be understood and accepted, in order for realistic ‘hope’ to emerge as a viable solution at the first stage. Similarly, ‘integrity’ and ‘despair’ must both be understood and embraced, in order for actionable ‘wisdom’ to emerge as a viable solution at the last stage.

Erikson’s Psychology of Religion

Psychoanalytic writers have always engaged in nonclinical interpretation of cultural phenomena such as art, religion, and historical movements. Erik Erikson gave such a strong contribution that his work was well received by students of religion and spurred various secondary literature.

Erikson’s psychology of religion begins with an acknowledgement of how religious tradition can have an interplay with a child’s basic sense of trust or mistrust. With regard to Erikson’s theory of personality as expressed in his eight stages of the life cycle, each with their different tasks to master, each also included a corresponding virtue, as mentioned above, which form a taxonomy for religious and ethical life. Erikson extends this construct by emphasizing that human individual and social life is characterised by ritualisation, “an agreed-upon interplay between at least two persons who repeat it at meaningful intervals an in recurring contexts.” Such ritualisation involves careful attentiveness to what can be called ceremonial forms and details, higher symbolic meanings, active engagement of participants, and a feeling of absolute necessity. Each life cycle stage includes its own ritualisation with a corresponding ritualism: numinous vs. idolism, judicious vs. legalism, dramatic vs. impersonation, formal vs. formalism, ideological vs. totalism, affiliative vs. elitism, generational vs. authoritism, and integral vs. dogmatism.

Perhaps Erikson’s best-known contributions to the psychology of religion were his book length psychobiographies, Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History, on Martin Luther, and Gandhi’s Truth, on Mohandas K. Gandhi, for which he remarkably won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Both books attempt to show how childhood development and parental influence, social and cultural context, even political crises form a confluence with personal identity. These studies demonstrate how each influential person discovered mastery, both individually and socially, in what Erikson would call the historical moment. Individuals like Luther or Gandhi were what Erikson called a Homo Religiosus, individuals for whom the final life cycle challenge of integrity vs. despair is a lifelong crisis, and they become gifted innovators whose own psychological cure becomes an ideological breakthrough for their time.

Personal Life

Erikson married Canadian-born American dancer and artist Joan Erikson (née Sarah Lucretia Serson) in 1930 and they remained together until his death.

The Eriksons had four children: Kai T. Erikson, Jon Erikson, Sue Erikson Bloland, and Neil Erikson. His eldest son, Kai T. Erikson, is an American sociologist. Their daughter, Sue, “an integrative psychotherapist and psychoanalyst”, described her father as plagued by “lifelong feelings of personal inadequacy”. He thought that by combining resources with his wife, he could “achieve the recognition” that might produce a feeling of adequacy.

Erikson died on 12 May 1994 in Harwich, Massachusetts. He is buried in the First Congregational Church Cemetery in Harwich.

On This Day … 04 April [2022]

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People (Deaths)

  • 2012 – A. Dean Byrd, American psychologist and academic (b. 1948).

A. Dean Byrd

Albert Dean Byrd (1948 to 04 April 2012) was a former president of the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), a research organisation that advocates sexual orientation change efforts (SOCE).

He was a psychologist who focused on SOCE, and wrote on the topic. Although raised by a Buddhist mother and a Baptist father, Byrd converted to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) and was very active in the debate within the church on issues involving homosexuality.

Who was Tomas Transtromer?

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Introduction

Tomas Tranströmer during the Writers’ and Literary Translators’ International Conference in June 2008.

Tomas Gösta Tranströmer (15 April 1931 to 26 March 2015) was a Swedish poet, psychologist and translator.

His poems captured the long Swedish winters, the rhythm of the seasons and the palpable, atmospheric beauty of nature. Tranströmer’s work is also characterised by a sense of mystery and wonder underlying the routine of everyday life, a quality which often gives his poems a religious dimension. He has been described as a Christian poet.

Tranströmer is acclaimed as one of the most important Scandinavian writers since the Second World War. Critics praised his poetry for its accessibility, even in translation. His poetry has been translated into over 60 languages. He was the recipient of the 1990 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the 2004 International Nonino Prize, and the 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Life and Work

Early Life

Tranströmer was born in Stockholm in 1931 and raised by his mother Helmy, a schoolteacher, following her divorce from his father, Gösta Tranströmer, an editor. He received his secondary education at the Södra Latin Gymnasium in Stockholm, where he began writing poetry. In addition to selected journal publications, his first collection of poems, 17 Poems, was published in 1954. He continued his education at Stockholm University, graduating as a psychologist in 1956 with additional studies in history, religion and literature. Between 1960 and 1966, Tranströmer split his time between working as a psychologist at the Roxtuna centre for juvenile delinquents and writing poetry. He also worked as a psychologist at the Labour Market Institute in Västerås from 1965 to 1990.

Poetry

Tranströmer is considered to be one of the “most influential Scandinavian poet[s] of recent decades”. Tranströmer published 15 collected works over his extensive career, which have been translated into over 60 languages. An English translation by Robin Fulton of his entire body of work, New Collected Poems, was published in the UK in 1987 and expanded in 1997. Following the publication of The Great Enigma, Fulton’s edition was further expanded into The Great Enigma: New Collected Poems, published in the US in 2006 and as an updated edition of New Collected Poems in the UK in 2011. He published a short autobiography, Minnena ser mig (The Memories see me), in 1993.

By the mid-1960s, Tranströmer became close friends with poet Robert Bly. The two corresponded frequently, and Bly would translate Tranströmer’s poems into English. In 2001 Bonniers, Tranströmer’s publisher, released Air Mail, a work consisting of Tranströmer’s and Bly’s day-to-day correspondence on personal, contemporary and literary matters c. 1965-1991 – in a style that vividly conveyed how close friends the two had soon become. Bly also helped arrange readings for his fellow poet in America. The Syrian poet Adunis helped spread Tranströmer’s fame in the Arab world, accompanying him on reading tours.

In the 1970s, other poets accused Tranströmer of being detached from his own age, since he did not deal overtly with social and political issues in his poems and novels. His work, though, lies within and further develops the Modernist and Expressionist/Surrealist language of 20th-century poetry; his clear, seemingly simple pictures from everyday life and nature in particular reveals a mystic insight to the universal aspects of the human mind. A poem of his was read at Anna Lindh’s memorial service in 2003.

Tranströmer went to Bhopal immediately after the gas tragedy in 1984, and alongside Indian poets such as K. Satchidanandan, took part in a poetry reading session outside the plant.

Tranströmer suffered a stroke in 1990 that left him partially paralyzed and unable to speak; however, he continued to write and publish poetry through the early 2000s. One of his final original volumes of poetry, Den stora gåtan, was published in 2004, translated into English in 2006 as The Great Enigma.

Music

Tranströmer played the piano throughout his life; after his stroke, which paralysed the right side of his body, he taught himself to play only with his left hand. He often said that the playing was a way for him to continue living after the stroke.

Tranströmer’s daughter Emma is a concert singer. In 2011 she released the album Dagsmeja, containing songs based on Tranströmer’s poems.

Many composers and musicians have worked with his poems. Among these are Jan Garbarek, Ulf Grahn, Madeleine Isaksson, Margareta Hallin, Lars Edlund, Sven-David Sandström, Jan Sandström and Anders Eliasson.

Death

Tranströmer died in Stockholm on 26 March 2015 at 83, less than 3 weeks before his 84th birthday.

Awards and Honours

  • 1966: Bellman Prize (Sweden).
  • 1981: Petrarca-Preis (Germany).
  • 1990: Neustadt International Prize for Literature (US).
  • 1990: Nordic Council Literature Prize, for For the Living and the Dead (Nordic countries).
  • 1991: Swedish Academy Nordic Prize (Sweden).
  • 1992: Horst Bienek Prize for Poetry (Germany).
  • 1996: Augustpriset, for Sorgegondolen (Sweden).
  • 1998: Jan Smrek Prize (Slovakia).
  • 2003: Struga Poetry Evenings Golden Wreath (Macedonia).
  • 2004: International Nonino Prize (Italy).
  • 2007: The Griffin Trust, Lifetime Recognition Award (Griffin Poetry Prize) (Canada).
  • 2011: Title of Professor (Swedish: Professors namn), granted by the Cabinet of Sweden (Sweden).
  • 2011: Nobel Prize for Literature (Sweden).
  • Other awards include the Övralid Prize and the Swedish Award from International Poetry Forum.

Nobel Prize in Literature, 2011

Tranströmer was announced as the recipient of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature. He was the 108th winner of the award and the first Swede to win since 1974. Tranströmer had been considered a perennial frontrunner for the award in years past, with reporters waiting near his residence on the day of the announcement in prior years. The Swedish Academy revealed that he had been nominated every single year since 1993.

Tranströmer’s wife, Monica, said he had been notified by telephone four minutes before the announcement was made. The Nobel Committee stated that Tranströmer’s work received the prize “because, through his condensed, translucent images, he gives us fresh access to reality.”

Permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy Peter Englund said, “He’s been writing poetry since 1951 when he made his debut. And has quite a small production, really. He’s writing about big questions. He’s writing about death, he’s writing about history and memory, and nature.” Prime Minister of Sweden Fredrik Reinfeldt said he was “happy and proud” at the news of Tranströmer’s achievement. Meanwhile, international response to the award has been mixed. The prize announcement led to the immediate reissuing of at least two volumes of Tranströmer’s poetry.

Who was Alice Miller?

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Introduction

Alice Miller, Psychologist and Psychoanalyst.

Alice Miller, born as Alicija Englard (12 January 1923 to 14 April 2010), was a Polish-Swiss psychologist, psychoanalyst and philosopher of Jewish origin, who is noted for her books on parental child abuse, translated into several languages. She was also a noted public intellectual.

Her book The Drama of the Gifted Child caused a sensation and became an international bestseller upon the English publication in 1981. Her views on the consequences of child abuse became highly influential. In her books she departed from psychoanalysis, charging it with being similar to the poisonous pedagogies.

Life

Miller was born in Piotrków Trybunalski, Poland into a Jewish family. She was the oldest daughter of Gutta and Meylech Englard and had a sister, Irena, who was five years younger. From 1931 to 1933 the family lived in Berlin, where nine-year-old Alicija learned the German language. Due to the National Socialists’ seizure of power in Germany in 1933 the family turned back to Piotrków Trybunalski. As a young woman, Miller managed to escape the Jewish Ghetto in Piotrków Trybunalski, where all Jewish inhabitants were interned since October 1939, and survived World War II in Warsaw under the assumed name of Alicja Rostowska. While she was able to smuggle her mother and sister out, in 1941, her father died in the ghetto.

She retained her assumed name Alice Rostovska when she moved to Switzerland in 1946, where she had won a scholarship to the University of Basel.

In 1949 she married Swiss sociologist Andreas Miller, originally a Polish Catholic, with whom she had moved from Poland to Switzerland as students. They divorced in 1973. They had two children, Martin (born 1950) and Julika (born 1956). Shortly after his mother’s death Martin Miller stated in an interview with Der Spiegel that he had been beaten by his authoritarian father during his childhood – in the presence of his mother. Miller first stated that his mother did not intervene and was emotionally abusive. These events happened decades before Alice Miller’s awakening about the dangers of such childrearing methods. Martin also mentioned that his mother was unable to talk with him, despite numerous lengthy conversations, about her wartime experiences, as she was severely burdened by them.

In 1953 Miller gained her doctorate in philosophy, psychology and sociology. Between 1953 and 1960, Miller studied psychoanalysis and practiced it between 1960 and 1980 in Zürich.

In 1980, after having worked as a psychoanalyst and an analyst trainer for 20 years, Miller “stopped practicing and teaching psychoanalysis in order to explore childhood systematically.” She became critical of both Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Her first three books originated from research she took upon herself as a response to what she felt were major blind spots in her field. However, by the time her fourth book was published, she no longer believed that psychoanalysis was viable in any respect.[11]

In 1985 Miller wrote about the research from her time as a psychoanalyst: “For twenty years I observed people denying their childhood traumas, idealising their parents and resisting the truth about their childhood by any means.” In 1985 she left Switzerland and moved to Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in Southern France.

In 1986, she was awarded the Janusz Korczak Literary Award for her book Thou Shalt Not Be Aware: Society’s Betrayal of the Child.

In April 1987 Miller announced in an interview with the German magazine Psychologie Heute (Psychology Today) her rejection of psychoanalysis. The following year she cancelled her memberships in both the Swiss Psychoanalytic Society and the International Psychoanalytic Association, because she felt that psychoanalytic theory and practice made it impossible for former victims of child abuse to recognise the violations inflicted on them and to resolve the consequences of the abuse, as they “remained in the old tradition of blaming the child and protecting the parents”.

One of Miller’s last books, Bilder meines Lebens (“Pictures of My Life”), was published in 2006. It is an informal autobiography in which the writer explores her emotional process from painful childhood, through the development of her theories and later insights, told via the display and discussion of 66 of her original paintings, painted in the years 1973-2005.

Between 2005 and her death in 2010, she answered hundreds of readers’ letters on her website, where there are also published articles, flyers and interviews in three languages. Days before her death Alice Miller wrote: “These letters will stay as an important witness also after my death under my copyright”.

Miller died on 14 April 2010, at the age of 87, at her home in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence by suicide after severe illness and diagnosis of advanced-stage pancreatic cancer.

Work

Miller extended the trauma model to include all forms of child abuse, including those that were commonly accepted (such as spanking), which she called poisonous pedagogy, a non-literal translation of Katharina Rutschky’s Schwarze Pädagogik (black or dark pedagogy/imprinting).

Drawing upon the work of psychohistory, Miller analyzed writers Virginia Woolf, Franz Kafka and others to find links between their childhood traumas and the course and outcome of their lives.

The introduction of Miller’s first book, The Drama of the Gifted Child, first published in 1979, contains a line that summarises her core views. In it, she writes:

Experience has taught us that we have only one enduring weapon in our struggle against mental illness: the emotional discovery and emotional acceptance of the truth in the individual and unique history of our childhood.

In the 1990s, Miller strongly supported a new method developed by Konrad Stettbacher, who himself was later charged with incidents of sexual abuse. Miller came to know about Stettbacher and his method from a book by Mariella Mehr titled Steinzeit (Stone Age). Having been strongly impressed by the book, Miller contacted Mehr in order to get the name of the therapist. From that time forward, Miller refused to make therapist or method recommendations. In open letters, Miller explained her decision and how she originally became Stettbacher’s disciple, but in the end she distanced herself from him and his regressive therapies.

In her writings, Miller is careful to clarify that by “abuse” she does not only mean physical violence or sexual abuse, she is also concerned with psychological abuse perpetrated by one or both parents on their child; this is difficult to identify and deal with because the abused person is likely to conceal it from themselves and may not be aware of it until some event, or the onset of depression, requires it to be treated. Miller blamed psychologically abusive parents for the majority of neuroses and psychoses. She maintained that all instances of mental illness, addiction, crime and cultism were ultimately caused by suppressed rage and pain as a result of subconscious childhood trauma that was not resolved emotionally, assisted by a helper, which she came to term an “enlightened witness.” In all cultures, “sparing the parents is our supreme law,” wrote Miller. Even psychiatrists, psychoanalysts and clinical psychologists were unconsciously afraid to blame parents for the mental disorders of their clients, she contended. According to Miller, mental health professionals were also creatures of the poisonous pedagogy internalised in their own childhood. This explained why the Commandment “Honour thy parents” was one of the main targets in Miller’s school of psychology.

Miller called electroconvulsive therapy “a campaign against the act of remembering”. In her book Abbruch der Schweigemauer (The Demolition of Silence), she also criticised psychotherapists’ advice to clients to forgive their abusive parents, arguing that this could only hinder recovery through remembering and feeling childhood pain. It was her contention that the majority of therapists fear this truth and that they work under the influence of interpretations culled from both Western and Oriental religions, which preach forgiveness by the once-mistreated child. She believed that forgiveness did not resolve hatred, but covered it in a dangerous way in the grown adult: displacement on scapegoats, as she discussed in her psycho-biographies of Adolf Hitler and Jürgen Bartsch, both of whom she described as having suffered severe parental abuse.

A common denominator in Miller’s writings is her explanation of why human beings prefer not to know about their own victimisation during childhood: to avoid unbearable pain. She believed that the unconscious command of the individual, not to be aware of how he or she was treated in childhood, led to displacement: the irresistible drive to repeat abusive parenting in the next generation of children or direct unconsciously the unresolved trauma against others (war, terrorism, delinquency), or against him or herself (eating disorders, drug addiction, depression).

The Roots of Violence

According to Alice Miller, worldwide violence has its roots in the fact that children are beaten all over the world, especially during their first years of life, when their brains become structured. She said that the damage caused by this practice is devastating, but unfortunately hardly noticed by society. She argued that as children are forbidden to defend themselves against the violence inflicted on them, they must suppress the natural reactions like rage and fear, and they discharge these strong emotions later as adults against their own children or whole peoples: “child abuse like beating and humiliating not only produces unhappy and confused children, not only destructive teenagers and abusive parents, but thus also a confused, irrationally functioning society”. Miller stated that only through becoming aware of this dynamic can we break the chain of violence.

Who is David Perrett?

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Introduction

David Ian Perrett FBA FRSE (born 11 April 1954) is a professor of psychology at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, where he leads the Perception Lab.

Background

The main focus in his team’s research is on face perception, including facial cues to health, effects of physiological conditions on facial appearance, and facial preferences in social settings such as trust games and mate choice. He has published over 400 peer-reviewed articles, many of which appearing in leading scientific journals such as the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series B – Biological Sciences, Psychological Science, and Nature.

Perrett received the British Psychological Society President’s Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychological Knowledge in 2000, the Golden Brain Award of Minerva Foundation in 2002,[9] the Experimental Psychology Society Mid-Career prize (2008), and a British Academy Wolfson Research Professorship (2009-2012).