Tag: Psychologist

On This Day … 19 March [2022]

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People (Deaths)

  • 1996 – Lise Østergaard, Danish psychologist and politician (b. 1924).

Lise Ostergaard

Anna Elisabeth “Lise” Østergaard (18 November 1924 to 19 March 1996) was a Danish psychologist and a politician in the social-democratic party.

Under Anker Jørgensen’s leadership, she was Minister without Portfolio (1977-1980) and Minister of Culture (February 1980 to September 1982). As a psychologist, she was head of psychology in Copenhagen’s Rigshospitalet (1958) as well as the first woman to become professor of clinical psychology at Copenhagen University (1963), a position she resumed after her political career ended in the mid-1980s.

On This Day … 18 March [2022]

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People (Births)

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

People (Deaths)

  • 1980 – Erich Fromm, German psychologist and philosopher (b. 1900).

Frances Cress Welsing.

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

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

Erich Fromm

Erich Seligmann Fromm (23 March 1900 to 18 March 1980) was a German social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher, and democratic socialist.

He was a German Jew who fled the Nazi regime and settled in the US. He was one of the founders of The William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Psychology in New York City and was associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory.

On This Day … 17 March

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People (Births)

  • 1877 – Otto Gross, Austrian-German psychoanalyst and philosopher (d. 1920).
  • 1922 – Patrick Suppes, American psychologist and philosopher (d. 2014).

People (Deaths)

  • 1917 – Franz Brentano, German philosopher and psychologist (b. 1838).

Otto Gross

Otto Hans Adolf Gross (17 March 1877 to 13 February 1920) was an Austrian psychoanalyst. A maverick early disciple of Sigmund Freud, he later became an anarchist and joined the utopian Ascona community.

His father Hans Gross was a judge turned pioneering criminologist. Otto initially collaborated with him, and then turned against his determinist ideas on character.

A champion of an early form of anti-psychiatry and sexual liberation, he also developed an anarchist form of depth psychology (which rejected the civilising necessity of psychological repression proposed by Freud). He adopted a modified form of the proto-feminist and neo-pagan theories of Johann Jakob Bachofen, with which he attempted to return civilization to a ‘golden age’ of non-hierarchy. Gross was ostracized from the larger psychoanalytic movement, and was not included in histories of the psychoanalytic and psychiatric establishments. He died in poverty.

Greatly influenced by the philosophy of Max Stirner and Friedrich Nietzsche and the political theories of Peter Kropotkin, he in turn influenced D.H. Lawrence (through Gross’s affair with Frieda von Richthofen), Franz Kafka and other artists, including Franz Jung and other founders of Berlin Dada. His influence on psychology was more limited. Carl Jung claimed his entire worldview changed when he attempted to analyse Gross and partially had the tables turned on him.

He became addicted to drugs in South America where he served as a naval doctor. He was hospitalized several times for drug addiction, sometimes losing his guardianship of himself to his father in the process. As a Bohemian drug user from youth, as well as an advocate of free love, he is sometimes credited as a founding grandfather of 20th-century counterculture.

Patrick Suppes

Patrick Colonel Suppes (17 March 1922 to 17 November 2014) was an American philosopher who made significant contributions to philosophy of science, the theory of measurement, the foundations of quantum mechanics, decision theory, psychology and educational technology. He was the Lucie Stern Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Stanford University and until January 2010 was the Director of the Education Program for Gifted Youth also at Stanford.

Franz Brentano

Franz Clemens Honoratus Hermann Josef Brentano (16 January 1838 to 17 March 1917) was an influential German philosopher, psychologist, and former Catholic priest (withdrawn in 1873 due to the definition of papal infallibility in matters of Faith) whose work strongly influenced not only students Edmund Husserl, Sigmund Freud, Tomáš Masaryk, Rudolf Steiner, Alexius Meinong, Carl Stumpf, Anton Marty, Kazimierz Twardowski, and Christian von Ehrenfels, but many others whose work would follow and make use of his original ideas and concepts.

On This Day … 16 March

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People (Births)

  • 1937 – Amos Tversky, Israeli-American psychologist and academic (d. 1996).

People (Deaths)

  • 1841 – Félix Savart, French physicist and psychologist (d. 1791).

Amos Tversky

Amos Nathan Tversky (16 March 1937 to 02 June 1996) was an Israeli cognitive and mathematical psychologist and a key figure in the discovery of systematic human cognitive bias and handling of risk.

Much of his early work concerned the foundations of measurement. He was co-author of a three-volume treatise, Foundations of Measurement. His early work with Daniel Kahneman focused on the psychology of prediction and probability judgement; later they worked together to develop prospect theory, which aims to explain irrational human economic choices and is considered one of the seminal works of behavioural economics.

Six years after Tversky’s death, Kahneman received the 2002 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for the work he did in collaboration with Amos Tversky (The prize is not awarded posthumously). Kahneman told The New York Times in an interview soon after receiving the honour: “I feel it is a joint prize. We were twinned for more than a decade.”

Tversky also collaborated with many leading researchers including Thomas Gilovich, Itamar Simonson, Paul Slovic and Richard Thaler. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Tversky as the 93rd most cited psychologist of the 20th century, tied with Edwin Boring, John Dewey, and Wilhelm Wundt.

Felix Savart

Félix Savart (30 June 1791 to 16 March 1841) was a physicist and mathematician who is primarily known for the Biot–Savart law of electromagnetism, which he discovered together with his colleague Jean-Baptiste Biot.

His main interest was in acoustics and the study of vibrating bodies. A particular interest in the violin led him to create an experimental trapezoidal model. He gave his name to the savart, a unit of measurement for musical intervals, and to Savart’s wheel – a device he used while investigating the range of human hearing.

On This Day … 13 March

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People (Deaths)

  • 1990 – Bruno Bettelheim, Austrian-American psychologist and author (b. 1903).

Bruno Bettelheim

Bruno Bettelheim (28 August 1903 to 13 March 1990) was an Austrian-born psychologist, scholar, public intellectual and author who spent most of his academic and clinical career in the US. An early writer on autism, Bettelheim’s work focused on the education of emotionally disturbed children, as well as Freudian psychology more generally. In the US, he later gained a position as professor at the University of Chicago and director of the Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School for Disturbed Children, and after 1973 taught at Stanford University.

Bettelheim’s ideas, which grew out of those of Sigmund Freud, theorised that children with behavioural and emotional disorders were not born that way, and could be treated through extended psychoanalytic therapy, treatment that rejected the use of psychotropic drugs and shock therapy. During the 1960s and 1970s he had an international reputation in such fields as autism, child psychiatry, and psychoanalysis.

Much of his work was discredited after his death due to fraudulent academic credentials, allegations of patient abuse, accusations of plagiarism, and lack of oversight by institutions and the psychological community.

On This Day … 11 March

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People (Births)

  • 1915 – J.C.R. Licklider, American computer scientist and psychologist (d. 1990).

People (Deaths)

  • 1999 – Herbert Jasper, Canadian psychologist, anatomist, and neurologist (b. 1906).
  • 1999 – Camille Laurin, Canadian psychiatrist and politician (b. 1922).

J.C.R. Licklider

Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider (11 March 1915 to 26 June 1990), known simply as J.C.R. or “Lick”, was an American psychologist and computer scientist who is considered among prominent figures in computer science development and general computing history.

He is particularly remembered for being one of the first to foresee modern-style interactive computing and its application to all manner of activities; and also as an Internet pioneer with an early vision of a worldwide computer network long before it was built. He did much to initiate this by funding research which led to much of it, including today’s canonical graphical user interface, and the ARPANET, the direct predecessor to the Internet.

He has been called “computing’s Johnny Appleseed”, for planting the seeds of computing in the digital age; Robert Taylor, founder of Xerox PARC’s Computer Science Laboratory and Digital Equipment Corporation’s Systems Research Center, noted that “most of the significant advances in computer technology – including the work that my group did at Xerox PARC – were simply extrapolations of Lick’s vision. They were not really new visions of their own. So he was really the father of it all”.

Herbert Jasper

Herbert Henri Jasper OC GOQ FRSC (27 July 1906 to 11 March 1999) was a Canadian psychologist, physiologist, neurologist, and epileptologist (neurologist who specialises in the treatment of epilepsy).

Born in La Grande, Oregon, he attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon and received his PhD in psychology from the University of Iowa in 1931 and earned a Doctor of Science degree from the University of Paris for research in neurobiology.

From 1946 to 1964 he was Professor of Experimental Neurology at the Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University and then from 1965 to 1976 he was Professor of Neurophysiology, Université de Montréal. He did his most important research with Wilder Penfield at McGill University. He was a member of the American Academy of Neurology and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was also a member of the Canadian Neurological Society and the Royal Society of Medicine. He wrote more than 350 scientific publications.

Camille Laurin

Camille Laurin (06 May 1922 to 11 March 1999) was a psychiatrist and Parti Québécois (PQ) politician in the Canadian province of Quebec. A MNA member for the riding of Bourget, he is considered the father of Quebec’s language law known informally as “Bill 101”.

Obtained a degree in psychiatry from the Université de Montréal.

On This Day … 07 March

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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 recognized 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.

Jesus is the daughter of a computer operator and a mining science teacher. She has a sibling, a younger brother. Jesus lived most of her life in Ceilândia. A good student, she studied chemistry, for a year before switching majors. She holds an M.Sc. in Psychology from the University of Brasília, and a PhD in Social Psychology, Work and Organisations from the same institution. She worked at the University of Brasília from 2003-2008 as a diversity adviser and also coordinated a centre for black students. She was one of the organisers of Brasilia’s Pride parade, and participated in the development of Brazil’s goals for the UN’s Millennium Dome. Jesus has proactively addressed discriminatory actions, refusing to accept passive prejudice. She began her human rights activism in 1997, with “Estructuración”, a Brasilia homosexual group, serving first as secretary and in 1999, became president. In that period, she worked alongside government and educational institutions, in fighting prejudice and valuing differences, speaking at the opening of the 5th National Conference on Human Rights. Jesus participated in various social movements. In 2000, with Luiz Mott, she co-founded the Academic Association of Gays, Lesbians and Sympathisers of Brazil, serving as general secretary. She was appointed to the editorial board of the Grupo Gay Negro de Bahia; and founded the NGO Acciones Ciudades en Orientación sexual.

On This Day … 06 March

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People (Deaths)

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

Francis Aveling

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

Life

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

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

Career

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

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

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

On This Day … 05 March

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People (Births)

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

Daniel Kahneman

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

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

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

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

On This Day … 04 March

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People (Births)

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

People (Deaths)

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

Hans Eysenck

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

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

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

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

James Ward

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