Tag: Psychologist

On This Day … 08 July

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People (Births)

  • 1857 – Alfred Binet, French psychologist and graphologist (d. 1911).
  • 1921 – John Money, New Zealand psychologist and sexologist, responsible for controversial sexual identity study on David Reimer (d. 2006).
  • 1926 – Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, Swiss-American psychiatrist and author (d. 2004).

People (Deaths)

  • 1939 – Havelock Ellis, English psychologist and author (b. 1859).

Alfred Binet

Alfred Binet (08 July 1857 to 18 October 1911), born Alfredo Binetti, was a French psychologist who invented the first practical IQ test, the Binet–Simon test. In 1904, the French Ministry of Education asked psychologist Alfred Binet to devise a method that would determine which students did not learn effectively from regular classroom instruction so they could be given remedial work. Along with his collaborator Théodore Simon, Binet published revisions of his test in 1908 and 1911, the last of which appeared just before his death.

John Money

John William Money (08 July 1921 to 07 July 2006) was a New Zealand psychologist, sexologist and author known for his research into sexual identity and biology of gender and his conduct towards vulnerable patients. He was one of the first researchers to publish theories on the influence of societal constructs of gender on individual formation of gender identity. Money introduced the terms gender identity, gender role and sexual orientation and popularised the term paraphilia. He spent a considerable amount of his career in America.

Recent academic studies have criticized Money’s work in many respects, particularly in regard to his involvement with the involuntary sex-reassignment of the child David Reimer, his forcing this child and his brother to simulate sex acts which Money photographed and the adult suicides of both brothers.

Money’s writing has been translated into many languages and includes around 2,000 articles, books, chapters and reviews. He received around 65 honours, awards and degrees in his lifetime. He was also a patron of many famous New Zealand artists, such as Rita Angus and Theo Schoon.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (08 July 1926 to 24 August 2004) was a Swiss-American psychiatrist, a pioneer in near-death studies, and author of the internationally best-selling book, On Death and Dying (1969), where she first discussed her theory of the five stages of grief, also known as the “Kübler-Ross model”.

Kübler-Ross was a 2007 inductee into the National Women’s Hall of Fame, was named by Time as one of the “100 Most Important Thinkers” of the 20th century and was the recipient of nineteen honorary degrees. By July 1982, Kübler-Ross taught 125,000 students in death and dying courses in colleges, seminaries, medical schools, hospitals, and social-work institutions. In 1970, she delivered an Ingersoll Lecture at Harvard University on the theme On Death and Dying.

Havelock Ellis

Henry Havelock Ellis (02 February 1859 to 08 July 1939) was an English physician, eugenicist, writer, progressive intellectual and social reformer who studied human sexuality. He co-wrote the first medical textbook in English on homosexuality in 1897, and also published works on a variety of sexual practices and inclinations, as well as on transgender psychology. He is credited with introducing the notions of narcissism and autoeroticism, later adopted by psychoanalysis.

Ellis was among the pioneering investigators of psychedelic drugs and the author of one of the first written reports to the public about an experience with mescaline, which he conducted on himself in 1896. He supported eugenics and served as one of 16 Vice-Presidents of the Eugenics Society from 1909 to 1912.

On This Day … 07 July

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People (Births)

  • 1924 – Natalia Bekhtereva, Russian neuroscientist and psychologist (d. 2008).

People (Deaths)

  • 2006 – John Money, New Zealand-American psychologist and author (b. 1921).

Natalia Bekhtereva

Natalia Petrovna Bekhtereva (07 July 1924 to 22 June 2008) was a Soviet and Russian neuroscientist and psychologist who developed neurophysiological approaches to psychology, such as measuring the impulse activity of human neurons. She was a participant in the documentary films The Call of the Abyss (Russian: Зов бездны) and Storm of Consciousness (Russian: Штурм сознания), which aroused wide public interest. Candidate of Biological Sciences, Doctor of Medicine, Full Professor.

She was brought up with her brother in an orphanage. She graduated from the First Pavlov State Medical University of St. Petersburg (1941-1947) and graduate school of the Pavlov Institute of Physiology. In the summer of 1941, more than 700 students entered the University; by the end of the training, only 4 graduates survived. The rest perished from war and hunger. She survived the Siege of Leningrad.

She worked as a junior research fellow at the Institute of Experimental Medicine, USSR Academy of Medical Sciences (1950-1954). After working her way up from a senior research fellow to the head of the laboratory and Deputy Director, she worked at the Research Neurosurgical Institute named after Professor Andrey L. Polenov of the USSR Ministry of Health (1954-1962). In 1959 she became a Doctor of Medicine. Since 1962 – at the Institute of Institute of Experimental Medicine, USSR Academy of Medical Sciences (the head of the Department of human neurophysiology; the Deputy Director for Research; from 1970 to 1990 – the Director).

In 1975, she became an academician of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences (subsequently Russian Academy of Medical Sciences). In 1981, she became an academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union. Starting in 1990, she was the scientific director of the Centre “Brain” of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union. In 1992 she became the head of the scientific group of the neurophysiology of thinking, creativity and consciousness of the Institute for Human Brain of the RAS.

She was Vice President of the International Union of Physiological Sciences (1974-1980) and Vice President of the International Organization for Psychophysiology (1982-1994).

She worked as editor-in-chief of the academic journals Human Physiology (1975-1987) and International Journal of Psychophysiology (1984-1994).

Deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union of the 8th convocation (1970-1974) and People’s Deputy of the Soviet Union (1989-1991).

John Money

John William Money (08 July 1921 to 7 July 2006) was a New Zealand psychologist, sexologist and author known for his research into sexual identity and biology of gender and his conduct towards vulnerable patients. He was one of the first researchers to publish theories on the influence of societal constructs of gender on individual formation of gender identity. Money introduced the terms gender identity, gender role and sexual orientation and popularised the term paraphilia. He spent a considerable amount of his career in America.

Recent academic studies have criticized Money’s work in many respects, particularly in regard to his involvement with the involuntary sex-reassignment of the child David Reimer, his forcing this child and his brother to simulate sex acts which Money photographed and the adult suicides of both brothers.

Money’s writing has been translated into many languages and includes around 2,000 articles, books, chapters and reviews. He received around 65 honours, awards and degrees in his lifetime. He was also a patron of many famous New Zealand artists, such as Rita Angus and Theo Schoon.

On This Day … 02 July

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People (Deaths)

  • 1926 – Émile Coué, French psychologist and pharmacist (b. 1857).

Emile Coue

Émile Coué de la Châtaigneraie (26 February 1857 to 02 July 1926) was a French psychologist and pharmacist who introduced a popular method of psychotherapy and self-improvement based on optimistic autosuggestion. Considered by Charles Baudouin to represent a second Nancy School, Coué treated many patients in groups and free of charge.

On This Day … 01 July

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People (Births)

  • 1818 – Karl von Vierordt, German physician, psychologist and academic (d. 1884).
  • 1917 – Humphry Osmond, English-American lieutenant and psychiatrist (d. 2004)

Karl von Vierordt

Karl von Vierordt (01 July 1818 to 22 November 1884) was a German physiologist.

Vierordt was born in Lahr, Baden. He studied at the universities of Berlin, Göttingen, Vienna, and Heidelberg, and began a practice in Karlsruhe in 1842. In 1849 he became a professor of theoretical medicine at the University of Tübingen, and in 1853 a professor of physiology.

Vierordt developed techniques and tools for the monitoring of blood circulation. He is credited with the construction of an early “hemotachometer”, an apparatus for monitoring the velocity of blood flow. In 1854, he created a device called a sphygmograph, a mechanism consisting of weights and levers used to estimate blood pressure, and considered to be a forerunner of the modern sphygmomanometer. One of his better known written works was a treatise on the arterial pulse, titled Die Lehre vom Arterienpuls in gesunden und kranken Zuständen.

Vierordt also made substantial contributions to the psychology of time perception, via his book (published in 1868) Der Zeitsinn nach Versuchen, “The experimental study of the time sense”. This reported a large number of experiments on the perception of duration, with the time sense being considered a “general sense” along with the perception of space, in contrast to the “special senses” such as vision and hearing. Included in this book is discussion of, and evidence for, what has come to be known as Vierordt’s Law: roughly the proposition that short durations tend to be overestimated, while long durations tend to be underestimated.

Between these two extremes is a “point of indifference” where the “time sensation”, in Vierordt’s terminology, corresponds exactly to physical time. However, the 1868 book does much more than report this “law” and contains extensive discussions of different methods used to measure duration perception, as well as different sorts of errors that can occur.

Although Vierordt was not the first person to carry out experiments on time perception, his 1868 book involved much more extensive experimentation and discussion than had been carried out until then.

He died in Tübingen, aged 66.

Humphrey Osmond

Humphry Fortescue Osmond (01 July 1917 to 06 February 2004) was an English psychiatrist who expatriated to Canada, then moved to work in the United States. He is known for inventing the word psychedelic and for his research into interesting and useful applications for psychedelic drugs. Osmond also explored aspects of the psychology of social environments, in particular how they influenced welfare or recovery in mental institutions.

As a young man, he worked for an architect and attended Guy’s Hospital Medical School at King’s College London. While active as a surgeon-lieutenant in the Navy during World War II, Osmond trained to become a psychiatrist.

Work with Psychedelics

After the war, Osmond joined the psychiatric unit at St George’s Hospital, London where he rose to become senior registrar. His time at the hospital was to prove pivotal in three respects: firstly it was where he met his wife Amy “Jane” Roffey who was working there as a nurse, secondly he met Dr John Smythies who was to become one of his major collaborators, and thirdly he first encountered the drugs that would become associated with his name (and his with theirs): LSD and mescaline. While researching the drugs at St George’s, Osmond noticed that they produced similar effects to schizophrenia and he became convinced that the disease was caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain. These ideas were not well received amongst the psychiatric community in London at the time. In 1951, Osmond and Smythies moved to Saskatchewan, Canada to join the staff of the Weyburn Mental Hospital in the southeastern city of Weyburn, Saskatchewan.

At Weyburn, Osmond recruited a group of research psychologists to turn the hospital into a design-research laboratory. There, he conducted a wide variety of patient studies and observations using hallucinogenic drugs, collaborating with Abram Hoffer and others. In 1952, Osmond related the similarity of mescaline to adrenaline molecules, in a theory which implied that schizophrenia might be a form of self-intoxication caused by one’s own body. He collected the biographies of recovered schizophrenics, and he held that psychiatrists can only understand the schizophrenic by understanding the rational way the mind makes sense of distorted perceptions. He pursued this idea with passion, exploring all avenues to gain insight into the shattered perceptions of schizophrenia, holding that the illness arises primarily from distortions of perception. Yet during the same period, Osmond became aware of the potential of psychedelics to foster mind-expanding and mystical experiences.

In 1953, English-born Aldous Huxley was long-since a renowned poet and playwright who, in his twenties, had gone on to achieve success and acclaim as a novelist and widely published essayist. He had lived in the US for well over a decade and gained some experience screenwriting for Hollywood films. Huxley had initiated a correspondence with Osmond. In one letter, Huxley lamented that contemporary education seemed typically to have the unintended consequence of constricting the minds of the educated – close the minds of students, that is, to inspiration and to many things other than material success and consumerism. In their exchange of letters, Huxley asked Osmond if he would be kind enough to supply a dose of mescaline.

In May of that year, Osmond travelled to the Los Angeles area for a conference and, while there, provided Huxley with the requested dose of mescaline and supervised the ensuing experience in the author’s home neighbourhood. As a result of his experience, Huxley produced an enthusiastic book called The Doors of Perception, describing the look of the Hollywood Hills and his responses to artwork while under the influence. Osmond’s name appears in four footnotes in the early pages of the book (in references to articles Osmond had written regarding medicinal use of hallucinogenic drugs).

Osmond was respected and trusted enough that in 1955 he was approached by Christopher Mayhew (later, Baron Mayhew), an English politician, and guided Mayhew through a mescaline trip that was filmed for broadcast by the BBC.

Osmond and Abram Hoffer were taught a way to “maximize the LSD experience” by the influential layman Al Hubbard, who came to Weyburn. Thereafter they adopted some of Hubbard’s methods.

Humphry Osmond first proposed the term “psychedelic” at a meeting of the New York Academy of Sciences in 1956. He said the word meant “mind manifesting” (from “mind”, ψυχή (psyche), and “manifest”, δήλος (delos)) and called it “clear, euphonious and uncontaminated by other associations.” Huxley had sent Osmond a rhyme containing his own suggested invented word: “To make this trivial world sublime, take half a gram of phanerothyme” (θυμός (thymos) meaning ‘spiritedness’ in Ancient Greek.) Osmond countered with “To fathom Hell or soar angelic, just take a pinch of psychedelic” (Alternative version: To fall in Hell or soar angelic / You’ll need a pinch of psychedelic).

Osmond is also known for a study in the late 1950s in which he attempted to cure alcoholics with LSD. He claimed to have achieved a fifty-percent success rate. Osmond noticed that some drinkers were only able to give up drinking after an episode of delirium tremens and tried to replicate this state in patients through giving them high doses of the drug. This came to be known as the psychedelic treatment model, contrasted to the psycholytic model that used low doses to help release repressed material from the mind which it was hoped would help the psychotherapeutic process. One of Osmond’s patients during this time was Bill W., co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. However, what with the growing reputation for psychedelics’ potential for enabling spiritual insight, rather than a delirium tremens type of experience, Bill W. hoped to recapture a mystical state of consciousness that he had experienced, years earlier, without a drug.

On This Day … 30 June

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People (Births)

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

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.

Biography

He was the son of Gérard Savart, an engineer at the military school of Metz. His brother, Nicolas, who was a student at the École Polytechnique and an officer in the engineering corps, did work on vibration. At the military hospital at Metz, Savart studied medicine and later he went on to continue his studies at the University of Strasbourg, where he received his medical degree in 1816. Savart became a professor at Collège de France in 1820 and was the co-originator of the Biot-Savart law, along with Jean-Baptiste Biot. Together, they worked on the theory of magnetism and electrical currents. Their law was developed and published in 1820. The Biot-Savart law relates magnetic fields to the currents which are their sources.

Savart also studied acoustics. He developed the Savart wheel which produces sound at specific graduated frequencies using rotating discs.

Félix Savart is the namesake of a unit of measurement for musical intervals, the savart, though it was actually invented by Joseph Sauveur (Stigler’s law of eponymy).

On This Day … 28 June

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People (Births)

  • 1948 – Daniel Wegner, Canadian-American psychologist and academic (d. 2013).

People (Deaths)

  • 2012 – Richard Isay, American psychiatrist and author (b. 1934).

Daniel Wegner

Daniel Merton Wegner (28 June 1948 to 05 July 2013) was an American social psychologist. He was a professor of psychology at Harvard University and a fellow of both the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was known for applying experimental psychology to the topics of mental control (for example ironic process theory) and conscious will, and for originating the study of transactive memory and action identification. In The Illusion of Conscious Will and other works, he argued that the human sense of free will is an illusion.

After gaining his doctorate in 1974, he spent sixteen years teaching at Trinity University, becoming a full Professor in 1985. From 1990 to 2000, he researched and taught at the University of Virginia, after which he joined the faculty at Harvard University.

Awards

In 2011, Wegner was awarded the William James Fellow Award by the Association for Psychological Science, the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award by the American Psychological Association, and the Distinguished Scientist Award by the Society of Experimental Social Psychology. In 2012, he was awarded the Donald T. Campbell Award by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP). Furthermore, shortly after Wegner’s death in 2013, SPSP announced that its annually awarded Theoretical Innovation Prize would henceforth be known as the Daniel M. Wegner Theoretical Innovation Prize to honour Wegner’s memory and his innovative work.

Richard Isay

Richard A. Isay (13 December 1934 to 28 June 2012) was an American psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, author and gay activist. He was a professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College and a faculty member of the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. Isay is considered a pioneer who changed the way that psychoanalysts view homosexuality.

Richard Isay was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Isay graduated from Haverford College and the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. Soon after completing his psychiatry residency at Yale University, he completed his training at the Western New England Psychoanalytic Institute. Throughout his career, Isay maintained a private practice of psychiatry and psychoanalysis and was an influential teacher and supervisor. He was the programme chairman of the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA), the American Program Chairman of the International Psychoanalytical Association and chairman of the Committee on Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Issues of the American Psychiatric Association.

In 1983, as chair of the APsaA’s programme committee, Isay organised a panel called “New Perspectives on Homosexuality”. Isay argued that homosexuality is a normal variant of sexual identity, and that psychoanalysts should stop trying to change the sexual orientation of their patients, which he considered injurious, creating a firestorm of controversy. “Several analysts walked out”, Isay later recalled. Isay soon became the first openly gay member of the association.

Isay wrote widely on the subjects of psychoanalysis and homosexuality, including texts such as Being Homosexual: Gay Men and Their Development. Being Homosexual was one of the first books to argue that homosexuality is an inborn identity, and the first to describe a non-pathological developmental pathway that is specific to gay men. It is widely considered a breakthrough in psychoanalytic theory and an important, historical work.

In an autobiographical chapter of his book, Becoming Gay: The Journey to Self-Acceptance, Isay tells the story of how he spent ten years trying to change his homosexual orientation. During his analysis, he married. After completing his analysis, he realised that he was, in fact, gay. He was closeted in his professional life for several years, during which time he became a prominent member of the American Psychoanalytic Association. He began to write about homosexuality shortly after meeting his life partner and future husband, Gordon Harrell, in 1979.

In Becoming Gay, Isay recounts that with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, he threatened to sue the APsaA, due to their discriminatory policies. As a result, on 09 May 1991, the APsaA adopted a non-discrimination policy for the training of analytic candidates and changed its position statement on homosexuality. 1991 was also the year that the APsaA agreed to allow gays and lesbians to become training analysts, and to promote gay and lesbian teachers and supervisors.

This fundamental change in position by the APsaA created a ripple effect that was felt throughout the profession. The ApsaA was and is the preeminent psychoanalytic organisation in the world. These changes of position and practice by the APsaA became a stimulus for reform. They were slowly copied by psychoanalytic, psychiatric, psychological and social work organisations internationally. A few years later, these changes were adopted by psychoanalytic groups in the UK.

On This Day … 24 June

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People (Births)

  • 1795 – Ernst Heinrich Weber, German physician and psychologist (d. 1878).

Ernst Heinrich Weber

Ernst Heinrich Weber (24 June 1795 to 26 January 1878) was a German physician who is considered one of the founders of experimental psychology. He was an influential and important figure in the areas of physiology and psychology during his lifetime and beyond. His studies on sensation and touch, along with his emphasis on good experimental techniques led to new directions and areas of study for future psychologists, physiologists, and anatomists.

Ernst Weber was born into an academic background, with his father serving as a professor at the University of Wittenberg. Weber became a doctor, specialising in anatomy and physiology. Two of his younger brothers, Wilhelm and Eduard, were also influential in academia, both as scientists with one specialising in physics and the other in anatomy. Ernst became a lecturer and a professor at the University of Leipzig and stayed there until his retirement.

On This Day … 23 June

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People (Births)

Ellyn Kaschak

Ellyn Kaschak (born 23 June 1943), is an American clinical psychologisy, Professor of Psychology at San Jose State University. She is one of the founders of the field of feminist psychology, which she has practiced and taught since 1972.

Her many publications, including Engendered Lives: A New Psychology of Women’s Experience (Kaschak, 1993), and Sight Unseen: Gender and Race through Blind Eyes (Kaschak, 2015), have helped define the field. She was the editor of the academic journal, Women & Therapy, for twenty years.

On This Day … 22 June

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People (Births)

  • 1871 – William McDougall, English psychologist and polymath (d. 1938).
  • 1891 – Franz Alexander, Hungarian psychoanalyst and physician (d. 1964).
  • 1919 – Henri Tajfel, Polish social psychologist (d. 1982).
  • 1940 – Joan Busfield, English sociologist, psychologist, and academic.
  • 1946 – Sheila Hollins, Baroness Hollins, English psychiatrist and academic.

People (Deaths)

  • 2008 – Natalia Bekhtereva, Russian neuroscientist and psychologist (b. 1924).

William McDougall

William McDougall FRS (22 June 1871 to 28 November 1938) was an early 20th century psychologist who spent the first part of his career in the United Kingdom and the latter part in the United States. He wrote a number of influential textbooks, and was important in the development of the theory of instinct and of social psychology in the English-speaking world.

McDougall was an opponent of behaviourism and stands somewhat outside the mainstream of the development of Anglo-American psychological thought in the first half of the 20th century; but his work was known and respected among lay people.

Psychical Research

McDougall was a strong advocate of the scientific method and academic professionalisation in psychical research. He was instrumental in establishing parapsychology as a university discipline in the US in the early 1930s. The traditional historiography of psychical research, dominated by the ‘winners’ of the race for ‘the science of the soul’, reveals fascinating epistemological incommensurabilities and a complex set of interplays between scientific and metaphysical presuppositions in the making and keeping alive of the scientific status of psychology. Thus, revised histories of psychical research and its relationship to psychology with a critical thrust not limited to that which has been viewed with suspicion anyway, offer both a challenge and a promise to historians, the discussion of which the present article hopes to stimulate (Sommer, 2012). In 1920, McDougall served as president of the Society for Psychical Research, and in the subsequent year of its US counterpart, the American Society for Psychical Research.

McDougall worked to enlist a number of scientific, religious, ethical, political and philosophical issues and causes into a wide “actor-network” which finally pushed through the institutionalization and professionalisation of parapsychology. He was also a member of the Scientific American committee that investigated the medium Mina Crandon. He attended séances with the medium and was sceptical about her “ectoplasmic hand”. He suspected that it was part of an animal, artificially manipulated to resemble a hand. McDougall’s suspicion was confirmed by independent experts who had examined photographs of the hand.

McDougall was critical of spiritualism, he believed that some of its proponents such as Arthur Conan Doyle misunderstood psychical research and “devote themselves to propaganda”. In 1926, McDougall concluded “I have taken part in a considerable number of investigations of alleged supernormal phenomena; but hitherto have failed to find convincing evidence in any case, but have found rather much evidence of fraud and trickery.”

McDougall, however, continued to encourage scientific research on psychic phenomena and in 1937 was a founding co-editor (with Joseph Banks Rhine) of the peer-reviewed Journal of Parapsychology, which continues to be published. Because he was the first to formulate a theory of human instinctual behaviour, he influenced the development of the new field of social psychology.

Franz Alexander

Franz Gabriel Alexander (22 January 1891 to 0 8 March 1964) was a Hungarian-American psychoanalyst and physician, who is considered one of the founders of psychosomatic medicine and psychoanalytic criminology.

Life

Franz Gabriel Alexander, in Hungarian Alexander Ferenc Gábor, was born into a Jewish family in Budapest in 1891, his father was Bernhard Alexander, a philosopher and literary critic, his nephew was Alfréd Rényi, a Hungarian mathematician who made contributions in combinatorics, graph theory, number theory but mostly in probability theory. Alexander studied in Berlin; there he was part of an influential group of German analysts mentored by Karl Abraham, including Karen Horney and Helene Deutsch, and gathered around the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute. ‘In the early 1920s, Oliver Freud was in analysis with Franz Alexander’ there — Sigmund Freud’s son — while ‘Charles Odier, one of the first among French psychoanalysts, was analysed in Berlin by Franz Alexander’ as well.

In 1930 he was invited by Robert Hutchins, then President of the University of Chicago, to become its Visiting Professor of Psychoanalysis. Alexander worked there at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, where Paul Rosenfels was one of his students. End 1950s he was among the first members of the Society for General Systems Research.

Franz Alexander died in Palm Springs, California in 1964.

Early Writings (1923-1943)

Alexander was a prolific writer. Between ‘The Castration Complex in the Formation of Character [1923] … [&] Fundamental Concepts of Psychosomatic Research [1943]’ he published nearly twenty other articles, contributing on a wide variety of subjects to the work of the “second psychoanalytic generation”.

‘Alexander in his “vector analysis”… measured the relative participation of the three basic directions in which an organism’s tendencies towards the external world may be effective: reception, elimination, and retention’. In this he may have been a forerunner to Erik H. Erikson’s later exploration of ‘Zones, Modes, and Modalities’.

He also explored the ‘morality demanded by the archaic superego … an automatized pseudo morality, characterized by Alexander as the corruptibility of the superego’.

Notable too was his exploration of acting out in real life, ‘in which the patient’s entire life consists of actions not adapted to reality but rather aimed at relieving unconscious tensions. It was this type of neurosis that was first described by Alexander under the name of neurotic character’.

Psychosomatic Work and Short-Term Psychotherapy

Franz Alexander led the movement looking for the dynamic interrelation between mind and body. Sigmund Freud pursued a deep interest in psychosomatic illnesses following his correspondence with Georg Groddeck who was, at the time, researching the possibility of treating physical disorders through psychological processes.

Together with Freud and Sándor Ferenczi, Alexander developed the concept of autoplastic adaptation. They proposed that when an individual was presented with a stressful situation, he could react in one of two ways:

  • Autoplastic adaptation: The subject tries to change himself, i.e. the internal environment.
  • Alloplastic adaptation: The subject tries to change the situation, i.e. the external environment.

From the 1930s through the 1950s, numerous analysts were engaged with the question of how to shorten the course of therapy but still achieve therapeutic effectiveness. These included Alexander, Ferenczi, and Wilhelm Reich. Alexander found that the patients who tended to benefit the most greatly from therapy were those who could rapidly engage, could describe a specific therapeutic focus, and could quickly move to an experience of their previously warded-off feelings. These also happened to represent those patients who were the healthiest to begin with and therefore had the least need for the therapy being offered. Clinical research revealed that these patients were able to benefit because they were the least resistant. They were the least resistant because they were the least traumatised and therefore had the smallest burden of repressed emotion. However, among the patients coming to the clinic for various problems, the rapid responders represented only a small minority. What could be offered to those who represented the vast bulk of patients coming for treatment? See further Intensive short-term dynamic psychotherapy.

Henri Tajfel

Henri Tajfel (born Hersz Mordche; 22 June 1919 to 03 May 1982) was a Polish social psychologist, best known for his pioneering work on the cognitive aspects of prejudice and social identity theory, as well as being one of the founders of the European Association of Experimental Social Psychology.

Early Research

Tajfel’s early research at University of Durham and University of Oxford involved examining the processes of social judgement. He believed that the cognitive processes of categorisation contributed strongly to the psychological dimensions of prejudice, which went against the prevailing views of the time. Many psychologists assumed that extreme prejudice was the result of personality factors, such as authoritarianism. According to this perspective, only those with personalities that predisposed them to prejudice were likely to become bigots. Tajfel believed this was mistaken. He had seen how large numbers of Germans – not just those with particular personalities – had given their support to Nazism and had held extreme views about Jews. Nazism would not have been successful without the support of “ordinary” Germans. Tajfel sought to discover whether the roots of prejudice might be found in “ordinary” processes of thinking, rather than in “extraordinary” personality types.

He conducted a series of experiments, investigating the role of categorization. One of his most notable experiments looked at the way that people judged the length of lines. He found that the imposition of a category directly affected judgements. If the lines, which were presented individually, were shown without any category label, then errors of judgement tended to be random. If the longest lines were each labelled A, and the shortest were labelled B, then the errors followed a pattern. Perceivers would tend to judge the lines of each category (whether A or B) as being more similar to each other than they were; and perceivers would judge the differences between categories as greater than they were (i.e., the differences between the longest B line and the shortest ‘A’ line). These findings have continued to influence subsequent work on categorisation and have been replicated subsequently.

Tajfel viewed these investigations into social judgement as being directly related to the issue of prejudice. Imposing category distinctions on lines (A and B) was like dividing the social world into different groups of people (e.g., French, Germans, British). The results of his experiments showed how cognitively deep-seated it was for perceivers to assume that all members of a certain nationality-based category (for instance, all the French or all the British) were more similar to each other than they actually were, and to assume that the members of different categories differed more than they did (for instance, to exaggerate the differences between the French and the British). In this respect, the judging of lines was similar to making stereotyped judgements about social groups. Tajfel also argued that if the categories were of value to the perceiver, then these processes of exaggeration were likely to be enhanced.

The implications of this position were profound. It meant that some of the basic psychological roots of prejudice lay not in particular personality types, but in general, “ordinary” processes of thinking, especially processes of categorising. Tajfel outlined these ideas in his article, “Cognitive Aspects of Prejudice”, which was first published in 1969 and has been republished subsequently. For this article, Tajfel was awarded the first annual Gordon Allport Intergroup Relations Prize by the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues.

Intergroup Relations

Having moved to Bristol University, Tajfel began his work on intergroup relations and conducted the renowned minimal groups experiments. In these studies, test subjects were divided arbitrarily into two groups, based on a trivial and almost completely irrelevant basis. Participants did not know other members of the group, did not even know who they were, and had no reason to expect that they would interact with them in the future. Still, members of both groups allocated resources in such a way that showed favouritism for members of their own group in a way that maximized their own group’s outcomes in comparison to the alternate group, even at the expense of maximum gains for their own group. Even “on the basis of a coin toss…simple categorization into groups seems to be sufficient reason for people to dispense valued rewards in ways that favor in-group members over those who are ‘different'”.

Social Identity Theory

Subsequently, Tajfel and his student John Turner developed the theory of social identity. They proposed that people have an inbuilt tendency to categorise themselves into one or more “ingroups”, building a part of their identity on the basis of membership of that group and enforcing boundaries with other groups.

Social identity theory suggests that people identify with groups in such a way as to maximise positive distinctiveness. Groups offer both identity (they tell us who we are) and self-esteem (they make us feel good about ourselves). The theory of social identity has had a very substantial impact on many areas of social psychology, including group dynamics, intergroup relations, prejudice and stereotyping, and organizational psychology.

Tajfel’s Influence

Henri Tajfel’s influence on social psychology, especially in Britain and Europe, continues to be significant. His influence has reached beyond his particular views on social identity and social judgement, as he had a wide vision of creating a social psychology that was genuinely social and was engaged with broader issues. Too much social psychology was, in his view, trivial and based on what he called “experiments in a vacuum”. Tajfel thought that social psychologists should seek to address serious social problems by examining how psychological dimensions interact with historical, ideological, and cultural factors.

The influence of his general vision can be seen in the book Social Groups and Identities. This book was a posthumous tribute to Tajfel, containing chapters written by many of his former students. Some of his students went on to develop his theories of social identity and some continued his early work on social judgement. There were also chapters from former students who developed very different sorts of social psychology. However, both those who continued Tajfel’s work directly and those who moved in other directions were united in paying tribute to the force of Tajfel’s vision for a broad-based, politically important social psychology.

Joan Busfield

Joan Busfield (born 22 June 1940), is a British sociologist and psychologist, Professor of Sociology at the University of Essex and former President of the British Sociological Association (2003-2005). Her research focuses on psychiatry and mental disorder.

She originally trained as a clinical psychologist at the Tavistock Clinic, and holds an MA from St Andrews, and an MA and a PhD from Essex.

Sheila Hollins

Sheila Clare Hollins, Baroness Hollins, (born 22 June 1946) is a professor of the psychiatry of learning disability at St George’s, University of London, and was created a crossbench life peer in the House of Lords on 15 November 2010 taking the title Baroness Hollins, of Wimbledon in the London Borough of Merton and of Grenoside in the County of South Yorkshire.

She was President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists from 2005 to 2008, succeeded by Dinesh Bhugra. From 2012 to 2013 she was president of the British Medical Association (BMA) and was formerly chair of the BMA Board of Science. In 2014 Pope Francis appointed her a member of the newly created Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors. The Baroness is also a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Centre for Child Protection and is President of the Royal Medical Benevolent Fund.

Natalia Bekhtereva

Natalia Petrovna Bekhtereva (07 July 1924 to 22 June 2008) was a Soviet and Russian neuroscientist and psychologist who developed neurophysiological approaches to psychology, such as measuring the impulse activity of human neurons. She was a participant in the documentary films The Call of the Abyss (Russian: Зов бездны) and Storm of Consciousness (Russian: Штурм сознания), which aroused wide public interest. Candidate of Biological Sciences, Doctor of Medicine, Full Professor.

She is Vladimir Bekhterev’s granddaughter. She was brought up with her brother in an orphanage. She graduated from the First Pavlov State Medical University of St. Petersburg (1941-1947) and graduate school of the Pavlov Institute of Physiology. In the summer of 1941, more than 700 students entered the University; by the end of the training, only 4 graduates survived. The rest perished from war and hunger. She survived the Siege of Leningrad.

She worked as a junior research fellow at the Institute of Experimental Medicine, USSR Academy of Medical Sciences (1950-1954). After working her way up from a senior research fellow to the head of the laboratory and Deputy Director, she worked at the Research Neurosurgical Institute named after Professor Andrey L. Polenov of the USSR Ministry of Health (1954-1962). In 1959 she became a Doctor of Medicine. Since 1962 – at the Institute of Institute of Experimental Medicine, USSR Academy of Medical Sciences (the head of the Department of human neurophysiology; the Deputy Director for Research; from 1970 to 1990 – the Director).

In 1975, she became an academician of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences (subsequently Russian Academy of Medical Sciences). In 1981, she became an academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union. Starting in 1990, she was the scientific director of the Centre “Brain” of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union. In 1992 she became the head of the scientific group of the neurophysiology of thinking, creativity and consciousness of the Institute for Human Brain of the RAS.

She was Vice President of the International Union of Physiological Sciences (1974-1980) and Vice President of the International Organization for Psychophysiology (1982-1994).

She worked as editor-in-chief of the academic journals Human Physiology (1975-1987) and International Journal of Psychophysiology (1984-1994).

Deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union of the 8th convocation (1970-1974) and People’s Deputy of the Soviet Union (1989-1991).

On This Day … 21 June

Published on by Andrew MarshallLeave a comment

People (Births)

  • 1880 – Arnold Gesell, American psychologist and paediatrician (d. 1961).
  • 1924 – Jean Laplanche, French psychoanalyst and academic (d. 2012).

Arnold Gesell

Doctor Arnold Lucius Gesell (21 June 1880 to 29 May 1961) was an American clinical psychologist, paediatrician and professor at Yale University known for his research and contributions to the field of child development.

Gesell served as a teacher and high school principal before seeking his psychological doctorate at Clark University, where the university’s president, G. Stanley Hall, had founded a child study movement. Arnold received his PhD from Clark in 1906.

Gessell worked at several educational facilities in New York City and Wisconsin before obtaining a professorship at the Los Angeles State Normal School, now known as The University of California, Los Angeles(UCLA)). There he met fellow teacher Beatrice Chandler who would become his wife. They later had a daughter and a son, Federal District Judge Gerhard Gesell.

Gesell also spent time at schools for the mentally disabled, including the Vineland Training School in New Jersey. Having developed an interest in the causes and treatment of childhood disabilities, Gesell began studying at the University of Wisconsin Medical School to better understand physiology. He later served as an assistant professor at Yale University while continuing to study medicine. He developed the Clinic of Child Development there and received his M.D. in 1915. He was later given a full professorship at Yale.

Gesell also served as the school psychologist for the Connecticut State Board of Education and helped to develop classes to help children with disabilities succeed. This historic appointment made Dr. Gesell the first school psychologist in the US He wrote several books, including The Preschool Child from the Standpoint of Public Hygiene and Education in 1923, The Mental Growth of the Preschool Child in 1925 (which was also published as a film), and An Atlas of Infant Behaviour (chronicling typical milestones for certain ages) in 1934. He co-authored with Frances Ilg two childrearing guides, Infant and Child in the Culture of Today in 1943, and The Child from Five to Ten in 1946.

Gesell made use of the latest technology in his research. He used the newest in video and photography advancements. He also made use of one-way mirrors when observing children, even inventing the Gesell dome, a one-way mirror shaped as a dome, under which children could be observed without being disturbed. In his research he studied many children, including Kamala, the wolf girl. He also did research on young animals, including monkeys.

As a psychologist, Gesell wrote and spoke about the importance of both nature and nurture in child development. He cautioned others not to be quick to attribute mental disabilities to specific causes. He believed that many aspects of human behaviour, such as handedness and temperament were heritable. He explained that children adapted to their parents as well as to one another. He advocated for a nationwide nursery school system in the United States.

Gesell’s popular books spread his ideas beyond academia. His core message, urging parents to “nourish the child’s trustfulness in life”, resonated with child advocates long before Dr. Benjamin Spock became America’s most prominent parental advisor. In The Child from Five to Ten, Gesell wrote, “It is no longer trite to say that children are the one remaining hope of mankind. . . If we could but capture their transparent honesty and sincerities! They still have much to teach us, if we observe closely enough”.

Gesell’s ideas came to be known as Gesell’s Maturational Theory of child development. Based on his theory, he published a series of summaries of child development sequences, called the Gesell Developmental Schedules.

The Gesell Institute of Human Development, named after him, was started by his colleagues from the Clinic of Child Development, Frances Ilg and Louise Bates Ames in 1950, after Gesell retired from the university in 1948. In 2012, the institute was renamed the Gesell Institute of Child Development.

Jean Laplanche

Jean Laplanche (21 June 1924 to 06 May 2012) was a French author, psychoanalyst and winemaker. Laplanche is best known for his work on psychosexual development and Sigmund Freud’s seduction theory, and wrote more than a dozen books on psychoanalytic theory. The journal Radical Philosophy described him as “the most original and philosophically informed psychoanalytic theorist of his day.”

From 1988 to his death, Laplanche was the scientific director of the German to French translation of Freud’s complete works (Oeuvres Complètes de Freud/Psychanalyse – OCF.P) in the Presses Universitaires de France, in association with André Bourguignon, Pierre Cotet and François Robert.

Laplanche attended the École Normale Supérieure in the 1940s, studying philosophy. He was a student of Jean Hyppolite, Gaston Bachelard and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. In 1943, during the Vichy regime, Laplanche joined the French Resistance, and was active in Paris and Bourgogne. In 1946-1947, he visited Harvard University for a year. Instead of joining that university’s philosophy department, he instead studied at the Department of Social Relations, and became interested in psychoanalytic theory. After returning to France, Laplanche began attending lectures and undergoing psychoanalytic treatment under Jacques Lacan. Laplanche, advised by Lacan, began studying medicine, and eventually earned his doctorate and became an analyst himself, joining the International Psychoanalytical Association, of which he remained a member until his death.