Tag: Psychologist

On This Day … 11 February

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People (Births)

  • 1925 – Virginia E. Johnson, American psychologist and academic (d. 2013).

People (Deaths)

  • 1958 – Ernest Jones, Welsh neurologist and psychoanalyst (b. 1879).

Virginia E. Johnson

Virginia E. Johnson, born Mary Virginia Eshelman (11 February 1925 to 24 July 2013), was an American sexologist, best known as a member of the Masters and Johnson sexuality research team. Along with her partner, William H. Masters, she pioneered research into the nature of human sexual response and the diagnosis and treatment of sexual dysfunctions and disorders from 1957 until the 1990s.

Early Life

Virginia Johnson was born in Springfield, Missouri, the daughter of Edna (née Evans) and Hershel “Harry” Eshelman, a farmer. Her paternal grandparents were members of the LDS Church, and her father had Hessian ancestry. When she was five, her family moved to Palo Alto, California, where her father worked as a groundskeeper for a hospital. The family later returned to Missouri and farming. Virginia enrolled at her hometown’s Drury College at age 16, but dropped out and spent four years working in the Missouri state insurance office. She eventually returned to school, studying at the University of Missouri and the Kansas City Conservatory of Music, and during World War II began a music career as a band singer. She sang country music for radio station KWTO in Springfield, where she adopted the stage name Virginia Gibson.

Johnson moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where she became a business writer for the St. Louis Daily Record. Eschewing a singing career, Johnson enrolled at Washington University in St. Louis, intending to earn a degree in sociology but never attaining one.

Sexological Works

Johnson met William H. Masters in 1957 when he hired her as a research assistant at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Washington University in St. Louis. Masters trained her in medical terminology, therapy, and research during the years she worked as his assistant. Together they developed polygraph-like instruments that were designed to measure sexual arousal in humans. Using these tools, Masters and Johnson observed and measured about 700 men and women who agreed to engage in sexual activity with other participants or masturbate in Masters’ laboratory. By observing these subjects, Johnson helped Masters identify the four stages of sexual response. This came to be known as the human sexual response cycle. The cycle consists of the excitement phase, plateau phase, orgasmic phase, and resolution phase. In 1964, Masters and Johnson established their own independent non-profit research institution in St. Louis called the Reproductive Biology Research Foundation. The centre was renamed the Masters and Johnson Institute in 1978.

In April 2009, Thomas Maier reported in Scientific American that Johnson had serious reservations about the Masters and Johnson Institute’s programme to convert homosexuals into heterosexuals, a programme which ran from 1968 to 1977.

Personal Life

By her early 20s, Johnson had married a Missouri politician; the marriage lasted two days. She then married a much older attorney, whom she also divorced. In 1950, Johnson married bandleader George Johnson, with whom she had a boy and a girl, before divorcing in 1956. In 1971, Johnson married William Masters after he divorced his first wife. They were divorced in 1993, though they continued to collaborate professionally. Johnson died in July 2013 “of complications from several illnesses”.

Masters, who married again after his divorce from Johnson, died in 2001.

In Popular Culture

The American cable network Showtime debuted Masters of Sex, a dramatic television series based on the 2009 biography of the same name, on September 29, 2013. The series stars Lizzy Caplan as Johnson.

Ernest Jones

Alfred Ernest Jones FRCP MRCS (01 January 1879 to 11 February 1958) was a Welsh neurologist and psychoanalyst. A lifelong friend and colleague of Sigmund Freud from their first meeting in 1908, he became his official biographer. Jones was the first English-speaking practitioner of psychoanalysis and became its leading exponent in the English-speaking world. As President of both the International Psychoanalytical Association and the British Psycho-Analytical Society in the 1920s and 1930s, Jones exercised a formative influence in the establishment of their organisations, institutions and publications.

Early Career

After obtaining his medical degrees, Jones specialised in neurology and took a number of posts in London hospitals. It was through his association with the surgeon Wilfred Trotter that Jones first heard of Freud’s work. Having worked together as surgeons at University College Hospital, he and Trotter became close friends, with Trotter taking the role of mentor and confidant to his younger colleague. They had in common a wide-ranging interest in philosophy and literature, as well as a growing interest in Continental psychiatric literature and the new forms of clinical therapy it surveyed. By 1905 they were sharing accommodation above Harley Street consulting rooms with Jones’s sister, Elizabeth, installed as housekeeper. Trotter and Elizabeth Jones later married. Appalled by the treatment of the mentally ill in institutions, Jones began experimenting with hypnotic techniques in his clinical work.

Jones first encountered Freud’s writings directly in 1905, in a German psychiatric journal in which Freud published the famous Dora case-history. It was thus he formed “the deep impression of there being a man in Vienna who actually listened with attention to every word his patients said to him…a revolutionary difference from the attitude of previous physicians…”

Jones’s early attempts to combine his interest in Freud’s ideas with his clinical work with children resulted in adverse effects on his career. In 1906 he was arrested and charged with two counts of indecent assault on two adolescent girls whom he had interviewed in his capacity as an inspector of schools for “mentally defective” children. At the court hearing Jones maintained his innocence, claiming the girls were fantasising about any inappropriate actions by him. The magistrate concluded that no jury would believe the testimony of such children and Jones was acquitted. In 1908, employed as a pathologist at a London hospital, Jones accepted a colleague’s challenge to demonstrate the repressed sexual memory underlying the hysterical paralysis of a young girl’s arm. Jones duly obliged but, before conducting the interview, he omitted to inform the girl’s consultant or arrange for a chaperone. Subsequently, he faced complaints from the girl’s parents over the nature of the interview and he was forced to resign his hospital post.

Psychoanalytical Career

Whilst attending a congress of neurologists in Amsterdam in 1907, Jones met Carl Jung, from whom he received a first-hand account of the work of Freud and his circle in Vienna. Confirmed in his judgement of the importance of Freud’s work, Jones joined Jung in Zurich to plan the inaugural Psychoanalytical Congress. This was held in 1908 in Salzburg, where Jones met Freud for the first time. Jones travelled to Vienna for further discussions with Freud and introductions to the members of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. Thus began a personal and professional relationship which, to the acknowledged benefit of both, would survive the many dissensions and rivalries which marked the first decades of the psychoanalytic movement, and would last until Freud’s death in 1939.

With his career prospects in Britain in serious difficulty, Jones sought refuge in Canada in 1908. He took up teaching duties in the Department of Psychiatry of the University of Toronto (from 1911, as Associate Professor of Psychiatry). In addition to building a private psychoanalytic practice, he worked as pathologist to the Toronto Asylum and Director of its psychiatric outpatient clinic. Following further meetings with Freud in 1909 at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, where Freud gave a series of lectures on psychoanalysis, and in the Netherlands the following year, Jones set about forging strong working relationships with the nascent American psychoanalytic movement. He gave some 20 papers or addresses to American professional societies at venues ranging from Boston, to Washington and Chicago. In 1910 he co-founded the American Psychopathological Association and the following year the American Psychoanalytic Association, serving as its first Secretary until 1913.

Jones undertook an intensive programme of writing and research, which produced the first of what were to be many significant contributions to psychoanalytic literature, notably monographs on Hamlet and On the Nightmare. A number of these were published in German in the main psychoanalytic periodicals published in Vienna; these secured his status in Freud’s inner circle during the period of the latter’s increasing estrangement from Jung. In this context in 1912 Jones initiated, with Freud’s agreement, the formation of a Committee of loyalists charged with safeguarding the theoretical and institutional legacy of the psychoanalytic movement. This development also served the more immediate purpose of isolating Jung and, with Jones in strategic control, eventually manoeuvring him out of the Presidency of the International Psychoanalytical Association, a post he had held since its inception. When Jung’s resignation came in 1914, it was only the outbreak of the Great War that prevented Jones from taking his place.

Returning to London in 1913, Jones set up in practice as a psychoanalyst, founded the London Psychoanalytic Society, and continued to write and lecture on psychoanalytic theory. A collection of his papers was published as Papers on Psychoanalysis, the first account of psychoanalytic theory and practice by a practising analyst in the English language.

By 1919, the year he founded the British Psychoanalytical Society, Jones could report proudly to Freud that psychoanalysis in Britain “stands in the forefront of medical, literary and psychological interest” (letter 27 January 1919 (Paskauskas 1993)). As President of the Society – a post he would hold until 1944 – Jones secured funding for and supervised the establishment in London of a Clinic offering subsidised fees, and an Institute of Psychoanalysis, which provided administrative, publishing and training facilities for the growing network of professional psychoanalysts.

Jones went on to serve two periods as President of the International Psychoanalytic Association from 1920 to 1924 and 1932 to 1949, where he had significant influence. In 1920 he founded the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, serving as its editor until 1939. The following year he established the International Psychoanalytic Library, which published some 50 books under his editorship. Jones soon obtained from Freud rights to the English translation of his work. In 1924 the first two volumes of Freud’s Collected Papers was published in translations edited by Jones and supervised by Joan Riviere, his former analysand and, at one stage, ardent suitor. After a period in analysis with Freud, Riviere worked with Jones as the translation editor of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis. She then was part of a working group Jones set up to plan and deliver James Strachey’s translations for the standard edition of Freud’s work. Largely through Jones’ energetic advocacy, the British Medical Association officially recognised psychoanalysis in 1929. The BBC subsequently removed him from a list of speakers declared to be dangerous to public morality. In the 1930s Jones and his colleagues made a series of radio broadcasts on psychoanalysis.

After Adolf Hitler took power in Germany, Jones helped many displaced and endangered Jewish analysts to resettle in England and other countries. Following the Anschluss of March 1938, Jones flew into Vienna at considerable personal risk to play a crucial role in negotiating and organising the emigration of Freud and his circle to London.

The Jones-Freud Controversy

Jones’s early published work on psychoanalysis had been devoted to expositions of the fundamentals of Freudian theory, an elaboration of its theory of symbolism, and its application to the analysis of religion, mythology, folklore and literary and artistic works. Under the influence of Melanie Klein, Jones’ work took a new direction.

Klein had made an impact in Berlin in the new field of child analysis and had impressed Jones in 1925 when he attended her series of lectures to the British Society in London. At Jones’s invitation she moved to London the following year; she soon acquired a number of devoted and influential followers. Her work had a dramatic effect on the British Society, polarising its members into rival factions as it became clear that her approach to child analysis was seriously at odds with that of Anna Freud, as set out in her 1927 book An Introduction to the Technique of Child Analysis. The disagreement centred around the clinical approach to the pre-Oedipal child; Klein argued for play as an equivalent to free association in adult analyses. Anna Freud opposed any such equivalence, proposing an educative intervention with the child until an appropriate level of ego development was reached at the Oedipal stage. Klein held this to be a collusive inhibition of analytical work with the child.

Influenced by Klein, and initiating what became known as the Jones-Freud controversy, Jones set out to explore a range of interlinked topics in the theory of early psychic development. These included the structure and genesis of the superego and the nature of the feminine castration complex. He coined the term phallocentrism in a critique of Freud’s account of sexual difference. He argued together with Klein and her Berlin colleague, Karen Horney, for a primary femininity, saying that penis envy arose as a defensive formation rather than arising from the fact, or “injury”, of biological asymmetry. In a corresponding reformulation of the castration complex, Jones introduced the concept of “aphanisis” to refer to the fear of “the permanent extinction of the capacity (including opportunity) for sexual enjoyment”.

These departures from orthodoxy were noted in Vienna and were topics that were featured in the regular Freud-Jones correspondence, the tone of which became increasingly fractious. Faced with accusations from Freud of orchestrating a campaign against him and his daughter, Jones sought to allay Freud’s concerns without abandoning his new critical standpoint. Eventually, following a series of exchange lectures between the Vienna and London societies, which Jones arranged with Anna Freud, Freud and Jones resumed their usual cordial exchanges.

With the arrival in Britain of refugee German and Viennese analysts in the 1930s, including Anna Freud in 1938, the hostility between the orthodox Freudians and Kleinians in the British Society grew more intense. Jones chaired a number of “extraordinary business meetings” with the aim of defusing the conflict, and these continued into the war years. The meetings, which became known as the controversial discussions, were established on a more regular basis from 1942. By that time, Jones had removed himself from direct participation, owing to ill health and the difficulties of war-time travel from his home in Elsted, West Sussex. He resigned from the presidency of the British Society in 1944, the year in which, under the presidency of Sylvia Payne, there finally emerged a compromise agreement which established parallel training courses providing options to satisfy the concerns of the rival groups that had formed: followers of Anna Freud, followers of Melanie Klein and a non-aligned group of Middle or Independent Group analysts. It was agreed further that all the key policy making committees of the BPS should have representatives from the three groups.

Later Life

After the end of the war, Jones gradually relinquished his many official posts whilst continuing his psychoanalytic practice, writings and lecturing. The major undertaking of his final years was his monumental account of Freud’s life and work, published to widespread acclaim in three volumes between 1953 and 1957. In this he was ably assisted by his German-speaking wife, who translated much of Freud’s early correspondence and other archive documentation made available by Anna Freud. His uncompleted autobiography, Free Associations, was published posthumously in 1959.

Jones was made a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (FRCP) in 1942, Honorary President of the International Psychoanalytical Association in 1949, and was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Science degree at Swansea University (Wales) in 1954.

Jones died in London on 11 February 1958, and was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium. His ashes were buried in the grave of the oldest of his four children in the churchyard of St Cadoc’s Cheriton on the Gower Peninsula.

On This Day … 07 February

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People (Births)

People (Deaths)

  • 2015 – Marshall Rosenberg, American psychologist and author (b. 1934).

Alfred Adler

Alfred Adler (07 February 1870 to 28 May 1937) was an Austrian medical doctor, psychotherapist, and founder of the school of individual psychology. His emphasis on the importance of feelings of inferiority, the inferiority complex, is recognised as an isolating element which plays a key role in personality development. Alfred Adler considered a human being as an individual whole, therefore he called his psychology “Individual Psychology” (Orgler 1976).

Adler was the first to emphasize the importance of the social element in the re-adjustment process of the individual and who carried psychiatry into the community. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Adler as the 67th most eminent psychologist of the 20th century.

Marshall Rosenberg

Marshall Bertram Rosenberg (06 October 1934 to 07 February 2015) was an American psychologist, mediator, author and teacher. Starting in the early 1960s he developed Nonviolent Communication, a process for supporting partnership and resolving conflict within people, in relationships, and in society. He worked worldwide as a peacemaker and in 1984 founded the Centre for Nonviolent Communication, an international non-profit organisation for which he served as Director of Educational Services.

On This Day … 06 February

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People (Births)

  • 1839 – Eduard Hitzig, German neurologist and psychiatrist (d. 1907).
  • 1852 – C. Lloyd Morgan, English zoologist and psychologist (d. 1936).

People (Deaths)

  • 2012 – David Rosenhan, American psychologist and academic (b. 1929).

Eduard Hitzig

Eduard Hitzig (06 February 1838 to 20 August 1907) was a German neurologist and neuropsychiatrist of Jewish ancestry born in Berlin.

He studied medicine at the Universities of Berlin and Würzburg under the instruction of famous men such as Emil Du Bois-Reymond (1818-1896), Rudolf Virchow (1821-1902), Moritz Heinrich Romberg (1795-1873), and Karl Friedrich Otto Westphal (1833-1890). He received his doctorate in 1862 and subsequently worked in Berlin and Würzburg. In 1875, he became director of the Burghölzli asylum, as well as professor of psychiatry at the University of Zurich. In 1885, Hitzig became a professor at the University of Halle where he remained until his retirement in 1903.

Hitzig is remembered for his work concerning the interaction between electric current and the brain. In 1870, Hitzig, assisted by anatomist Gustav Fritsch (1837-1927), applied electricity via a thin probe to the exposed cerebral cortex of a dog without anaesthesia. They performed these studies at the home of Fritsch because the University of Berlin would not allow such experimentation in their laboratories. What Hitzig and Fritsch had discovered is that electrical stimulation of different areas of the cerebrum caused involuntary muscular contractions of specific parts of the dog’s body. They identified the brain’s “motor strip”, a vertical strip of brain tissue on the cerebrum in the back of the frontal lobe, which controls different muscles in the body. In 1870, Hitzig published his findings in an essay called Ueber die elektrische Erregbarkeit des Grosshirns (On the Electrical Excitability of the Cerebrum). This experimentation was considered the first time anyone had done any localised study regarding the brain and electric current.

However this was not the first time Hitzig had experienced the interaction between the brain and electricity; earlier in his career as a physician working with the Prussian Army, he experimented on wounded soldiers whose skulls were fractured by bullets. Hitzig noticed that applying a small electric current to the brains of these soldiers caused involuntary muscular movement.

Hitzig and Fritsch’s work opened the door to further localized testing of the brain by many others including Scottish neurologist, David Ferrier.

C. Lloyd Morgan

Conwy Lloyd Morgan, FRS (06 February 1852 to 06 March 1936) was a British ethologist and psychologist. He is remembered for his theory of emergent evolution, and for the experimental approach to animal psychology now known as Morgan’s Canon, a principle that played a major role in behaviourism, insisting that higher mental faculties should only be considered as explanations if lower faculties could not explain a behaviour.

David Rosenhan

David L. Rosenhan (22 November 1929 to 06 February 2012) was an American psychologist. He is best known for the Rosenhan experiment, a study challenging the validity of psychiatry diagnoses.

Rosenhan received his Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics in 1951 from Yeshiva College, his master’s degree in economics in 1953 and his doctorate in psychology in 1958, both from Columbia University. As further described in his obituary published by the American Psychological Association (APA), “Rosenhan was a pioneer in applying psychological methods to the practice of law, including the examination of expert witnesses, jury selection, and jury deliberation.” He was:

a professor of law and of psychology at Stanford University from 1971 until his retirement in 1998… Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty, he was a member of the faculties of Swarthmore College, Princeton University, Haverford College, and the University of Pennsylvania. He also served as a research psychologist at the Educational Testing Service.

He later became a professor emeritus in law and psychology at Stanford University. Rosenhan was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and various psychological societies, including the APA,[1] and had been a visiting fellow at Wolfson College at Oxford University.[citation needed]

Rosenhan died on 06 February 2012, at the age of 82.

On This Day … 04 February

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People (Deaths)

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

Carl Rogers

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

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

On This Day … 01 February

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People (Births)

  • 1846 – G. Stanley Hall, American psychologist and academic (d. 1924).

G. Stanley Hall

Granville Stanley Hall (01 February 1846 to 24 April 1924) was a pioneering American psychologist and educator. His interests focused on childhood development and evolutionary theory. Hall was the first president of the American Psychological Association and the first president of Clark University. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Hall as the 72nd most cited psychologist of the 20th century, in a tie with Lewis Terman.

New Discipline of Psychology

In 1887, Hall founded the American Journal of Psychology, and in 1892 was appointed as the first president of the American Psychological Association. In 1889 he was named the first president of Clark University, a post he filled until 1920. During his 31 years as president, Hall remained intellectually active. He was instrumental in the development of educational psychology, and attempted to determine the effect adolescence has on education. He was also responsible for inviting Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung to visit and deliver a lecture series in 1909 at the Clark Conference. Hall promised Freud an honorary degree from Clark University in exchange. Hall and Freud shared the same beliefs on sex and adolescence. This was Freud’s first and only visit to America and the biggest conference held at Clark University. It was also the most controversial conference, given that Freud’s research was based on theories that Hall’s colleagues criticised as non-scientific.

In 1888, when he was tapped for the Clark presidency from the faculty of Johns Hopkins University, the 44 year-old Hall was already well on his way to eminence in the then emerging field of psychology. His establishment of experimental laboratories at Johns Hopkins, the first in the discipline, quickly became the measure of the fully modern psychology department. Over his 32 years as a scholar/teacher president at Clark, he had an influence over the future shape of the field of psychology.

What attracted some to Hall and his ideas, and alienated others, were his “music man” propensities. He was the promoter, the impresario par excellence. Hall could “put on a party”, as he did with the extraordinary celebrations in 1899 and 1909, on the occasions of the 10th and 20th anniversaries of the opening of Clark University. He did so with an incomparable sense of daring – inviting major figures with unconventional, unpopular, or even scandalous ideas, and then promoting them with the press. He seemed always to be founding new journals or scholarly associations to disseminate his ideas and those of scholars whose perspectives were consistent with his own. Among his creations were the widely respected American Journal of Psychology and the American Psychological Association. He also helped found the Association of American Universities. Ross described this side of Hall as journalist, entrepreneur, and preacher.

In 1917, Hall published a book on religious psychology, Jesus the Christ in the Light of Psychology. The book was written in two volumes to define Jesus Christ in psychological terms. Hall thoroughly discussed all that is written about Christ, and the probable mental mechanisms of Christ and all of those who believed in him and wrote about him. He analyses the myths, the magic, etc., built up about the name and life of Christ. He dissects the parables and discusses the miracles, the death and the resurrection of Jesus. He endeavours to reduce all possible expressions or trends which he finds in Jesus and his followers to their genetic origins, and with that aid in comparative psychology, especially the knowledge of anthropology and childhood tendencies, he points out here and there certain universal trends which are at the bottom of it all. This was his least successful work. In 1922, at the age of 78, he published the book Senescence, a book on aging.

Darwin’s theory of evolution and Ernst Haeckel’s recapitulation theory were large influences on Hall’s career. These ideas prompted Hall to examine aspects of childhood development in order to learn about the inheritance of behaviour. The subjective character of these studies made their validation impossible. He believed that as children develop, their mental capabilities resemble those of their ancestors and so they develop over a lifetime the same way that species develop over eons. Hall believed that the process of recapitulation could be sped up through education and force children to reach modern standards of mental capabilities in a shorter length of time. His work also delved into controversial portrayals of the differences between women and men, as well as the concept of racial eugenics. While Hall was a proponent of racial eugenics, his views were less severe in terms of creating and keeping distinct separations between races. Hall believed in giving “lower races” a chance to accept and adapt to “superior civilisation”. Hall even commended high ranking African Americans in society as being “exception to the Negro’s diminished evolutionary inheritance”. Hall viewed civilisation in a similar fashion he viewed biological development. Humans must allow civilisation to “run its natural evolution”. Hall saw those who did not accept the superior civilisation as being primitive “savages”. Hall viewed these civilisations in a similar fashion as he viewed children, stating that “their faults and their virtues are those of childhood and youth”. Hall believed that men and women should be separated into their own schools during puberty because it allowed them to be able to grow within their own gender. Women could be educated with motherhood in mind and the men could be educated in more hands-on projects, helping them to become leaders of their homes. Hall believed that schools with both sexes limited the way they could learn and softened the boys earlier than they should be. “It is a period of equilibrium, but with the onset of puberty the equilibrium is disturbed and new tendencies arise. Modifications in the reproductive organs take place and bring about secondary sexual characteristics. Extroversion gives way slowly to introversion, and more definitely social instincts begin to play an increasing role.”

Hall was also influenced by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and his theory of evolution. Hall found the idea of passing on memories from parent to offspring was a plausible mode of inheritance.

Anomalistic Psychology

Hall was one of the founding members and a vice President of the American Society for Psychical Research. The early members of the society were sceptical of paranormal phenomena. Hall took a psychological approach to psychical phenomena. By 1890 he had resigned from the society. He became an outspoken critic of parapsychology.

Hall was an early psychologist in the field of anomalistic psychology. Hall and his assistant Amy Tanner from Clark University were notable debunkers of spiritualism and carried out psychological and physiological tests on mediums. Tanner published Studies in Spiritism (1910) with an introduction by Hall. The book documented the tests carried out by Hall and Tanner in the séance sittings held with the medium Leonora Piper. Hall and Tanner had proven by tests that the personalities of Piper were fictitious creations and not discarnate spirits.

Legacy and Honours

Hall contributed a large amount of work in understand adolescent development, some of which still holds true today. Hall observed that males tend to have an increase in sensation seeking and aggression during adolescence. Hall also observed an increase in crime rates during the adolescent years.[11] He noted that in terms of aggression there are two types; relational aggression and physical aggression. Relational aggression relates to gossiping, rumour spreading, and exclusions of others. Hall noted that relational aggression occurs more frequently in females while physical aggression occurs more often in males.

Much of the mark that Hall left behind was from his expansion of psychology as a field in the United States. He did a lot of work to bring psychology to the United States as a legitimate form of study and science. He began the first journal dedicated only to psychology in the United States of America, called the American Journal of Psychology. He was also the first president of the American Psychological Association. All of the work that Hall did in the field of psychology and for psychology in the United States of America allowed for all the other psychologists to follow in his foot steps and to become psychologists in the United States. Without the effort from Hall it could have taken many more years for psychology to become a field in the United States.

The World War II Liberty Ship SS Granville S. Hall was named in his honour.

What is Integrative Psychotherapy?

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Introduction

Integrative psychotherapy is the integration of elements from different schools of psychotherapy in the treatment of a client.

Integrative psychotherapy may also refer to the psychotherapeutic process of integrating the personality: uniting the “affective, cognitive, behavioural, and physiological systems within a person”.

Background

Initially, Sigmund Freud developed a talking cure called psychoanalysis; then he wrote about his therapy and popularised psychoanalysis. After Freud, many different disciplines splintered off. Some of the more common therapies include: psychodynamic psychotherapy, transactional analysis, cognitive behavioural therapy, gestalt therapy, body psychotherapy, family systems therapy, person-centred psychotherapy, and existential therapy. Hundreds of different theories of psychotherapy are practiced (Norcross, 2005, p.5).

A new therapy is born in several stages. After being trained in an existing school of psychotherapy, the therapist begins to practice. Then, after follow up training in other schools, the therapist may combine the different theories as a basis of a new practice. Then, some practitioners write about their new approach and label this approach with a new name.

A pragmatic or a theoretical approach can be taken when fusing schools of psychotherapy. Pragmatic practitioners blend a few strands of theory from a few schools as well as various techniques; such practitioners are sometimes called eclectic psychotherapists and are primarily concerned with what works. Alternatively, other therapists consider themselves to be more theoretically grounded as they blend their theories; they are called integrative psychotherapists and are not only concerned with what works, but why it works (Norcross, 2005, p.8).

For example, an eclectic therapist might experience a change in their client after administering a particular technique and be satisfied with a positive result. In contrast, an integrative therapist is curious about the “why and how” of the change as well. A theoretical emphasis is important: for example, the client may only have been trying to please the therapist and was adapting to the therapist rather than becoming more fully empowered in themselves.

Different Routes to Integration

The most recent edition of the Handbook of Psychotherapy Integration (Norcross & Goldfried, 2005) recognized four general routes to integration: common factors, technical eclecticism, theoretical integration, and assimilative integration (Norcross, 2005).

Common Factors

The first route to integration is called common factors and “seeks to determine the core ingredients that different therapies share in common” (Norcross, 2005, p.9). The advantage of a common factors approach is the emphasis on therapeutic actions that have been demonstrated to be effective. The disadvantage is that common factors may overlook specific techniques that have been developed within particular theories. Common factors have been described by Jerome Frank (Frank & Frank, 1991), Bruce Wampold (Wampold & Imel, 2015), and Miller, Duncan and Hubble (2005). Common factors theory asserts it is precisely the factors common to the most psychotherapies that make any psychotherapy successful.

Some psychologists have converged on the conclusion that a wide variety of different psychotherapies can be integrated via their common ability to trigger the neurobiological mechanism of memory reconsolidation in such a way as to lead to deconsolidation (Ecker, Ticic & Hulley 2012; Lane et al. 2015; Welling 2012 – but for a more hesitant view of the role of memory reconsolidation in psychotherapy see the objections in some of the invited comments in: Lane et al. 2015).

Technical Eclecticism

The second route to integration is technical eclecticism which is designed “to improve our ability to select the best treatment for the person and the problem…guided primarily by data on what has worked best for others in the past” (Norcross, 2005, p.8). The advantage of technical eclecticism is that it encourages the use of diverse strategies without being hindered by theoretical differences. A disadvantage is that there may not be a clear conceptual framework describing how techniques drawn from divergent theories might fit together. The most well known model of technical eclectic psychotherapy is Arnold Lazarus’ (2005) multimodal therapy. Another model of technical eclecticism is Larry E. Beutler and colleagues’ systematic treatment selection (Beutler, Consoli, & Lane, 2005).

Theoretical Integration

The third route to integration commonly recognised in the literature is theoretical integration in which “two or more therapies are integrated in the hope that the result will be better than the constituent therapies alone” (Norcross, 2005, p.8). Some models of theoretical integration focus on combining and synthesizing a small number of theories at a deep level, whereas others describe the relationship between several systems of psychotherapy. One prominent example of theoretical synthesis is Paul Wachtel’s model of cyclical psychodynamics that integrates psychodynamic, behavioural, and family systems theories (Wachtel, Kruk, & McKinney, 2005). Another example of synthesis is Anthony Ryle’s model of cognitive analytic therapy, integrating ideas from psychoanalytic object relations theory and cognitive psychotherapy (Ryle, 2005). Another model of theoretical integration is specifically called integral psychotherapy (Forman, 2010; Ingersoll & Zeitler, 2010). The most notable model describing the relationship between several different theories is the transtheoretical model (Prochaska & DiClemente, 2005).

Assimilative Integration

Assimilative integration is the fourth route and acknowledges that most psychotherapists select a theoretical orientation that serves as their foundation but, with experience, incorporate ideas and strategies from other sources into their practice. “This mode of integration favours a firm grounding in any one system of psychotherapy, but with a willingness to incorporate or assimilate, in a considered fashion, perspectives or practices from other schools” (Messer, 1992, p.151). Some counsellors may prefer the security of one foundational theory as they begin the process of integrative exploration. Formal models of assimilative integration have been described based on a psychodynamic foundation (Frank, 1999; Stricker & Gold, 2005) and based on cognitive behavioural therapy (Castonguay, Newman, Borkovec, Holtforth, & Maramba, 2005).

Govrin (2015) pointed out a form of integration, which he called “integration by conversion”, whereby theorists import into their own system of psychotherapy a foreign and quite alien concept, but they give the concept a new meaning that allows them to claim that the newly imported concept was really an integral part of their original system of psychotherapy, even if the imported concept significantly changes the original system. Govrin gave as two examples Heinz Kohut’s novel emphasis on empathy in psychoanalysis in the 1970s and the novel emphasis on mindfulness and acceptance in “third-wave” cognitive behavioural therapy in the 1990s to 2000s.

Other Models that Combine Routes

In addition to well-established approaches that fit into the five routes mentioned above, there are newer models that combine aspects of the traditional routes.

Clara E. Hill’s (2014) three-stage model of helping skills encourages counsellors to emphasize skills from different theories during different stages of helping. Hill’s model might be considered a combination of theoretical integration and technical eclecticism. The first stage is the exploration stage. This is based on client-centred therapy. The second stage is entitled insight. Interventions used in this stage are based on psychoanalytic therapy. The last stage, the action stage, is based on behavioural therapy.

Good and Beitman (2006) described an integrative approach highlighting both core components of effective therapy and specific techniques designed to target clients’ particular areas of concern. This approach can be described as an integration of common factors and technical eclecticism.

Multitheoretical psychotherapy (Brooks-Harris, 2008) is an integrative model that combines elements of technical eclecticism and theoretical integration. Therapists are encouraged to make intentional choices about combining theories and intervention strategies.

An approach called integral psychotherapy (Forman, 2010; Ingersoll & Zeitler, 2010) is grounded in the work of theoretical psychologist and philosopher Ken Wilber (2000), who integrates insights from contemplative and meditative traditions. Integral theory is a meta-theory that recognises that reality can be organised from four major perspectives: subjective, intersubjective, objective, and interobjective. Various psychotherapies typically ground themselves in one these four foundational perspectives, often minimising the others. Integral psychotherapy includes all four. For example, psychotherapeutic integration using this model would include subjective approaches (cognitive, existential), intersubjective approaches (interpersonal, object relations, multicultural), objective approaches (behavioural, pharmacological), and interobjective approaches (systems science). By understanding that each of these four basic perspectives all simultaneously co-occur, each can be seen as essential to a comprehensive view of the life of the client. Integral theory also includes a stage model that suggests that various psychotherapies seek to address issues arising from different stages of psychological development (Wilber, 2000).

The generic term, integrative psychotherapy, can be used to describe any multi-modal approach which combines therapies. For example, an effective form of treatment for some clients is psychodynamic psychotherapy combined with hypnotherapy. Kraft & Kraft (2007) gave a detailed account of this treatment with a 54-year-old female client with refractory IBS in a setting of a phobic anxiety state. The client made a full recovery and this was maintained at the follow-up a year later.

Comparison with Eclecticism

In Integrative and Eclectic Counselling and Psychotherapy (Woolfe & Palmer, 2000, pp.55 & 256), the authors make clear the distinction between integrative and eclectic psychotherapy approaches: “Integration suggests that the elements are part of one combined approach to theory and practice, as opposed to eclecticism which draws ad hoc from several approaches in the approach to a particular case.” Psychotherapy’s eclectic practitioners are not bound by the theories, dogma, conventions or methodology of any one particular school. Instead, they may use what they believe or feel or experience tells them will work best, either in general or suiting the often immediate needs of individual clients; and working within their own preferences and capabilities as practitioners (Norcross & Goldfried, 2005, pp.3-23).

References

  • Beutler, L.E., Consoli, A.J. & Lane, G. (2005). Systematic treatment selection and prescriptive psychotherapy: an integrative eclectic approach. In J.C. Norcross & M.R. Goldfried (Eds.), Handbook of Psychotherapy Integration (2nd Ed, pp.121-143). New York: Oxford.
  • Brooks-Harris, J.E. (2008). Integrative Multitheoretical Psychotherapy. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin.
  • Castonguay, L.G., Newman, M.G., Borkovec, T.D., Holtforth, M.G. & Maramba, G.G. (2005). Cognitive-behavioral assimilative integration. In J.C. Norcross & M.R. Goldfried (Eds.), Handbook of Psychotherapy Integration (2nd Ed, pp.241-260). New York: Oxford.
  • Ecker, B., Ticic, R. & Hulley, L. (2012). Unlocking the Emotional Brain: Eliminating Symptoms at Their Roots Using Memory Reconsolidation. New York: Routledge.
  • Forman, M.D. (2010). A Guide to Integral Psychotherapy: Complexity, Integration, and Spirituality in Practice. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
  • Frank, J.D. & Frank, J.B. (1991). Persuasion and Healing: A Comparative Study of Psychotherapy (3rd Ed). Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University.
  • Frank, K.A. (1999). Psychoanalytic Participation: Action, Interaction, and Integration. Mahwah, NJ: Analytic Press.
  • Good, G.E. & Beitman, B.D. (2006). Counseling and Psychotherapy Essentials: Integrating Theories, Skills, and Practices. New York: W.W. Norton.
  • Govrin, A. (2015). Blurring the threat of ‘otherness’: integration by conversion in psychoanalysis and CBT. Journal of Psychotherapy Integration. 26(1), pp.78-90.
  • Hill, C.E. (2014). Helping Skills: Facilitating Exploration, Insight, and Action. 4th Ed. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
  • Ingersoll, E. & Zeitler, D. (2010). Integral Psychotherapy: Inside Out/Outside In. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
  • Kraft T. & Kraft D. (2007). Irritable bowel syndrome: symptomatic treatment approaches versus integrative psychotherapy. Contemporary Hypnosis, 24(4), pp.161-177.
  • Lane, R.D., Ryan, L., Nadel, L. & Greenberg, L.S. (2015). Memory reconsolidation, emotional arousal and the process of change in psychotherapy: new insights from brain science. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 38, pp.e1.
  • Lazarus, A.A. (2005). Multimodal therapy. In J.C. Norcross & M.R. Goldfried (Eds), Handbook of Psychotherapy Integration. 2nd Ed. pp.105-120). New York: Oxford.
  • Messer, S.B. (1992). A critical examination of belief structures in integrative and eclectic psychotherapy. In J.C. Norcross, & M. R. Goldfried, (Eds), Handbook of Psychotherapy Integration (pp.130-165). New York: Basic Books.
  • Miller, S.D., Duncan, B.L. & Hubble, M.A. (2005). Outcome-informed clinical work. In J.C. Norcross, & M.R. Goldfried (Eds.), Handbook of Psychotherapy Integration (2nd Ed, pp. 84-102). New York: Oxford.
  • Norcross, J.C. (2005). A primer on psychotherapy integration. In J.C. Norcross & M.R. Goldfried (Eds), Handbook of Psychotherapy Integration (2nd Ed, pp.3-23). New York: Oxford.
  • Norcross, J.C. & Goldfried, M.R. (Eds) (2005). Handbook of Psychotherapy Integration (2nd Ed). New York: Oxford.
  • Prochaska, J.O. & DiClemente, C.C. (2005). The transtheoretical approach. In J.C. Norcross & M.R. Goldfried (Eds), Handbook of Psychotherapy Integration (2nd Ed, pp.147-171). New York: Oxford.
  • Ryle, A. (2005). Cognitive analytic therapy. In J.C. Norcross & M.R. Goldfried (Eds), Handbook of Psychotherapy Integration (2nd Ed, pp.196-217). New York: Oxford.
  • Stricker, G. & Gold, J. (2005). Assimilative psychodynamic psychotherapy. In J.C. Norcross & M.R. Goldfried (Eds.), Handbook of Psychotherapy Integration (2nd Ed, pp.221-240). New York: Oxford.
  • Wachtel, P.L., Kruk, J.C. & McKinney, M.K. (2005). Cyclical psychodynamics and integrative relational psychotherapy. In J.C. Norcross & M.R. Goldfried (Eds), Handbook of Psychotherapy Integration (2nd Ed, pp.172-195). New York: Oxford.
  • Wampold, B.E. & Imel Z.E. (2015). The Great Psychotherapy Debate: The Evidence for What Makes Psychotherapy Work (2nd Ed). New York: Routledge.
  • Welling, H. (June 2012). Transformative emotional sequence: towards a common principle of change. Journal of Psychotherapy Integration, 22(2), pp.109-136.
  • Wilber, K. (2000). Integral Psychology: Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy. Boston: Shambhala.
  • Woolfe, R. & Palmer, S. (2000). Integrative and Eclectic Counselling and Psychotherapy. London; Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

On This Day … 27 January

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People (Births)

  • 1904 – James J. Gibson, American psychologist and academic (d. 1979).

James J. Gibson

James Jerome Gibson (27 January 1904 to 11 December 1979), was an American psychologist and one of the most important contributors to the field of visual perception.

Gibson challenged the idea that the nervous system actively constructs conscious visual perception, and instead promoted ecological psychology, in which the mind directly perceives environmental stimuli without additional cognitive construction or processing. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked him as the 88th most cited psychologist of the 20th century, tied with John Garcia, David Rumelhart, Louis Leon Thurstone, Margaret Floy Washburn, and Robert S. Woodworth.

Education and Career

Gibson began his undergraduate career at Northwestern University, but transferred after his freshman year to Princeton University, where he majored in philosophy. While enrolled at Princeton, Gibson had many influential professors including Edwin B. Holt who advocated new realism, and Herbert S. Langfeld who had taught Gibson’s experimental psychology course. After taking Langfeld’s course, Gibson decided to stay at Princeton as a graduate student and pursued his Ph.D. in psychology with Langfeld serving as his doctoral adviser. His doctoral dissertation focused on memory of visual forms, and he received his Ph.D. in 1928.

E.B. Holt, who was taught by William James, inspired Gibson to be a radical empiricist. Holt was a mentor to Gibson. While Gibson may not have directly read William James’ work, E.B. Holt was the connecting factor between the two. Holt’s theory of molar behaviourism brought James philosophy of radical empiricism into psychology. Heft argues that Gibson’s work was an application of William James’. Gibson believed that perception is direct and meaningful. He discussed the meaning of perception through his theory of affordances. Gibson also was influenced by James’ neutral monism, nothing is solely mental or physical.

Gibson started his career at Smith College where he taught psychology. While at Smith, Gibson encountered two influential figures in his life, one of which was the Gestalt psychologist Kurt Koffka. Although Gibson did not agree with Gestalt psychology, he nevertheless agreed with Koffka’s belief that the primary investigations of psychology should be problems related to perception. The other important figure Gibson met during his time at Smith College was his wife, Eleanor Jack, who became a prominent psychologist known for her investigations such as the “visual cliff.” The two were married on 17 September 1932, and later had two children, James Jerome Jr. in 1940 and Jean Grier in 1943.

In 1941, Gibson entered the US Army, where he became the director of a unit for the Army Air Forces’ Aviation Psychology Programme during World War II. Of particular interest to him was the effect flying an aircraft had on visual perception. He used his findings to help develop visual aptitude tests for screening out pilot applicants. He was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel in 1946. After the war ended, he returned to Smith College for a short period during which he began writing his first book, The Perception of the Visual World, in which he discussed visual phenomena such as retinal texture gradient and retinal motion gradient. Before the book was published in 1950, Gibson moved to Cornell University where he continued to teach and conduct research for the rest of his life.

What is Multiple Impact Therapy?

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Introduction

Multiple impact therapy (MIT) is a group psychotherapy technique most often used with families in extreme crisis.

It was one of the first group therapy programmes developed in the United States. In multiple impact therapy (MIT), families are seen concurrently by a number of multi-disciplinary medical professionals. The duration of the therapy is short, typically ranging from one to two full treatment days.

The focus of treatment is to find and evaluate structural patterns within the family, evaluate those patterns to see if they are the source of the problem, then modify the structure to alleviate the problem.

Background

MIT as a therapy technique was developed at the University of Texas Medical Branch in the 1950s. At the time, Texas had very few psychoanalysts and those that were available were unaffordable to most families. Because treatment was scarce, there were few specialised programmes for adolescents, many were admitted as patients to psychiatric hospitals. Beginning in 1957, parents began bringing their troubled kids to the University of Texas Medical Branch for treatment.

Dr. Robert MacGregor, the lead researcher of group psychotherapy at the University of Texas Medical Branch, began developing MIT by interviewing entire families together in a single session. MacGregor and his team established their main goal as highlighting and emphasizing the parent’s concern to the disturbed child. Between 1957 and 1958, the team saw 12 families as the procedures were being developed. The initial sessions showed that therapy with individual members, together with group sessions, produced the most effective results. The individual sessions gave members the opportunity to voice their personal resentments while the group sessions gave therapists the opportunity to repair poor communication between family members. The therapy’s short, intensive time frame was originally due to life constraints involving time and travel; however, researchers kept the structure because the momentum created in the two day meetings reduced the overall number of sessions needed for the family to improve.

Procedure

MIT may be prescribed to families as a treatment option for a number of reasons: when conventional therapy fails to show results, as an alternative to hospitalisation, as a final course of action before hospitalisation, or for families who were already in group therapy but were seeing few results.

Treatment occurs in approximately seven steps over a two-day period.

Planning

Because many families participating in MIT are unfamiliar with the treatment and with psychotherapy, the planning phase informs the family about what is to be expected over the two days of treatment. Therapists use this time to review current information about the child and interview the community representative (or inpatient staff member) to gather personal details.

Briefing

After the family arrives, the therapy team and family meet for an initial conference to establish why they are gathered there. Intergroup conflict may be high in this phase. Blaming, criticism and aggressive accusations are commonplace. Therapists typically look for signs of defective communication among the family members and make note for later meetings. At the end of this group meeting, each member meets with an individual therapist.

Pressurised Ventilation

In individual meetings with the parents, parents are under a high degree of stress from the full group meeting. Therapists specifically look for the hardships the parents have faced in dealing with their child’s delinquency.

Initial Interview with the Child

The brief initial interview with the child takes place to match family patterns with the child’s behaviour.

Multiple Therapist Situation

After the initial group meet and individual meetings, therapists meet with any member or any number of members together as they see fit. Notes and other data collected (some studies video recorded the group meetings) are used in this procedure to address behavioural patterns and breakdowns in communication. This phase takes up the majority of the first day.

Team-Family Conference

A final group meeting convenes at the end of day one. Family members face each other again for the first time since the initial meeting. The sharing of the revised attitudes the group have towards one another takes place. The shift from conflict in the initial interview to the improved attitudes in the final team conference leads to the creation of a climate of change among the group.

Second Day Procedures

The second day attempts to begin in the same climate that created in the first. Day one often illuminates many of the breakdowns the family has experienced while day two focuses on retention of improved attitudes and application to the family’s unique situation. On day two, logistical considerations are often discussed such as: should the child remain hospitalised, continue schooling, or consider a different method of treatment. A two-month and six month follow up appointment is typically scheduled.

Potential Positive and Negative Outcomes

The use of an interdisciplinary team allows the parents, the child and the group as a whole to be seen from multiple viewpoints and through the lens of professionals with different experience and expertise. A typical interdisciplinary team as used in Macgregor’s studies at the University of Texas consisted of a psychologist, an associate therapist, a social worker, a nurse, and a member of the family’s community or inpatient clinic, however, other researchers have used up to 9 therapists in a single session. By including the community or inpatient staff member in MIT, trust and respect with the child’s parents increases.

Fifty-five additional families were seen between 1958 and 1962 when MacGregor first published his findings on MIT. Within the fifty-five families, only seven were considered unsuccessful cases. Despite the apparent success of MIT, two major drawbacks, the relative efficiency of the programme and conflict between the interdisciplinary team, were noted.

On This Day … 25 January

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People (Births)

  • 1923 – Shirley Ardell Mason, American psychiatric patient (d. 1998).

Shirley Ardell Mason

Shirley Ardell Mason (25 January 1923 to 26 February 1998) was an American art teacher who was reputed to have dissociative identity disorder (previously known as multiple personality disorder).

Her life was purportedly described, with adaptations to protect her anonymity, in 1973 in the book Sybil, subtitled The True Story of a Woman Possessed by 16 Separate Personalities. Two films of the same name were made, one released in 1976 and the other in 2007. Both the book and the films used the name Sybil Isabel Dorsett to protect Mason’s identity, though the 2007 remake stated Mason’s name at its conclusion.

Mason’s diagnosis and treatment under Cornelia B. Wilbur have been criticised, with allegations that Wilbur manipulated or possibly misdiagnosed Mason.

Biography

Mason was born and raised in Dodge Centre, Minnesota, the only surviving child of Walter Wingfield Mason (a carpenter and architect) and Martha Alice “Mattie” Atkinson. In regard to Mason’s mother: “…many people in Dodge Centre say Mattie” – “Hattie” in the book – “was bizarre,” according to Bettie Borst Christensen, who grew up across the street. “She had a witch-like laugh….She didn’t laugh much, but when she did, it was like a screech.” Christensen remembers Mason’s mother walking around after dark, looking in the neighbours’ windows. At one point, Martha Mason was reportedly diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Mason graduated from Dodge Centre High School in 1941 and became an art student at Mankato State College, now Minnesota State University, Mankato. In the early 1950s, Mason was a substitute teacher and a student at Columbia University. She had long suffered from blackouts and emotional breakdowns, and finally entered psychotherapy with Cornelia B. Wilbur, a Freudian psychiatrist. Their sessions together are the basis of the book. From 1970-1971, she taught art at Rio Grande College in Rio Grande, Ohio (now the University of Rio Grande).

Some people in Mason’s home town, reading the book, recognised Mason as Sybil. By that time, Mason had severed nearly all ties with her past and was living in West Virginia. She later moved to Lexington, Kentucky, where she lived near Wilbur. She taught art classes at a community college and ran an art gallery out of her home for many years.

Wilbur diagnosed Mason with breast cancer in 1990, and she declined treatment; it later went into remission. The following year, Wilbur developed Parkinson’s disease, and Mason moved into Wilbur’s house to take care of her until Wilbur’s death in 1992. Mason was a devout Seventh-day Adventist. When her breast cancer returned Mason gave away her books and paintings to friends. She left the rest of her estate to a Seventh-day Adventist TV minister. Mason died on 26 February 1998.

Over one hundred paintings were found locked in a closet in Mason’s Lexington home when it was being emptied after her estate sale. These paintings, often referred to as the “Hidden Paintings”, span the years 1943, eleven years before starting psychotherapy with Dr. Wilbur, to 1965, the year of her successful integration. Several of the paintings were signed by Shirley. However, many remained unsigned, and include examples of some of the artwork presumably created by, and signed by the alternate personalities.

Sybil

Flora Rheta Schreiber’s non-fiction book Sybil: The True Story of a Woman Possessed by 16 Separate Personalities told a version of Mason’s story with names and details changed to protect her anonymity. The book, whose veracity was challenged (e.g. Sybil Exposed by Debbie Nathan), stated that Mason had multiple personalities as a result of severe child sexual abuse at the hands of her mother, who, Wilbur believed, had schizophrenia.

The book was made into a highly acclaimed TV movie starring Sally Field and Joanne Woodward, in 1976. The TV movie was remade in 2007 with Tammy Blanchard and Jessica Lange.

Controversy

Mason’s diagnosis had been challenged. Psychiatrist Herbert Spiegel saw Mason for several sessions while Wilbur was on vacation and felt that Wilbur was manipulating Mason into behaving as though she had multiple personalities when she did not. Spiegel suspected Wilbur of having publicised Mason’s case for financial gain. According to Spiegel, Wilbur’s client was a hysteric but did not show signs of multiple personalities; in fact, he later stated that Mason denied to him that she was “multiple” but claimed that Wilbur wanted her to exhibit other personalities. Spiegel confronted Wilbur, who responded that the publisher would not publish the book unless it was what she said it was.

Spiegel revealed that he possessed audio tapes in which Wilbur tells Mason about some of the other personalities she has already seen in prior sessions. Spiegel believes these tapes are the “smoking gun” proving that Wilbur induced her client to believe she was multiple. Spiegel made these claims 24 years later, after Schreiber, Wilbur and Mason had all died and he was finally asked about the topic.

In August 1998, psychologist Robert Rieber of John Jay College of Criminal Justice stated that the tapes belonged to him and that Wilbur had given them to him decades earlier. He cited the tapes to challenge Mason’s diagnosis. Rieber had never interviewed or treated Mason but asserted that she was an “extremely suggestible hysteric.” He claimed Wilbur had manipulated Mason in order to secure a book deal.

In a review of Rieber’s book, psychiatrist Mark Lawrence asserts that Rieber repeatedly distorted the evidence and left out a number of important facts about Mason’s case to advance his case against the validity of the diagnosis.

Debbie Nathan’s Sybil Exposed draws upon an archive of Schreiber’s papers stored at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and other first-hand sources. Nathan claims that Wilbur, Mason, and Schreiber knowingly perpetrated a fraud and describes the purported manipulation of Wilbur by Mason and vice versa and that the case created an “industry” of repressed memory. Nathan hypothesizes that Mason’s physical and sensory issues may have been due to untreated pernicious anaemia, the symptoms of which were mistaken at the time for psychogenic issues. She notes that after Mason was treated with calf’s-liver supplements for chronic blood disorders as a child and young woman, her psychological symptoms likewise went into remission for years at a time, and that Wilbur herself noted that “Sybil” suffered from pernicious anaemia later in life. Nathan’s writing and her research methods have been publicly criticised by Mason’s family and by Dr. Patrick Suraci, who was personally acquainted with Shirley Mason.

In addition, Suraci claims that Spiegel behaved unethically in withholding tapes which supposedly proved Wilbur had induced Mason to believe she had multiple personalities. Spiegel also claimed to have made films of himself hypnotising Mason, supposedly proving that Wilbur had “implanted false memories” in her mind, but when Suraci asked to see the films Spiegel said he had lost them. Although Wilbur’s papers were destroyed, copies and excerpts within Flora Rheta Schreiber’s papers at the Lloyd Sealy Library of John Jay College were unsealed in 1998.

In 2013, Nancy Preston published After Sybil, a personal memoir which includes facsimile reproductions of Mason’s personal letters to her, along with colour plates of her paintings. According to Preston, Mason taught art at Ohio’s Rio Grande College, where Preston was a student. The two became close friends and corresponded until a few days before Mason’s death. In the letters, Mason claimed that she had had multiple personalities.

On This Day … 24 January

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People (Births)

  • 1850 – Hermann Ebbinghaus, German psychologist (d. 1909).
  • 1853 – Sigbert Josef Maria Ganser, German psychiatrist (d. 1931).

Hermann Ebbinghaus

Hermann Ebbinghaus (24 January 1850 to 26 February 1909) was a German psychologist who pioneered the experimental study of memory, and is known for his discovery of the forgetting curve and the spacing effect. He was also the first person to describe the learning curve. He was the father of the neo-Kantian philosopher Julius Ebbinghaus.

Early Life

Ebbinghaus was born in Barmen, in the Rhine Province of the Kingdom of Prussia, as the son of a wealthy merchant, Carl Ebbinghaus. Little is known about his infancy except that he was brought up in the Lutheran faith and was a pupil at the town Gymnasium. At the age of 17 (1867), he began attending the University of Bonn, where he had planned to study history and philology. However, during his time there he developed an interest in philosophy. In 1870, his studies were interrupted when he served with the Prussian Army in the Franco-Prussian War. Following this short stint in the military, Ebbinghaus finished his dissertation on Eduard von Hartmann’s Philosophie des Unbewussten (philosophy of the unconscious) and received his doctorate on 16 August 1873, when he was 23 years old. During the next three years, he spent time at Halle and Berlin.

Professional Career

After acquiring his PhD, Ebbinghaus moved around England and France, tutoring students to support himself. In England, he may have taught in two small schools in the south of the country (Gorfein, 1885). In London, in a used bookstore, he came across Gustav Fechner’s book Elemente der Psychophysik (Elements of Psychophysics), which spurred him to conduct his famous memory experiments. After beginning his studies at the University of Berlin, he founded the third psychological testing lab in Germany (third to Wilhelm Wundt and Georg Elias Müller). He began his memory studies here in 1879. In 1885 – the same year that he published his monumental work, Über das Gedächtnis. Untersuchungen zur experimentellen Psychologie, later published in English under the title Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology – he was made a professor at the University of Berlin, most likely in recognition of this publication. In 1890, along with Arthur König, he founded the psychological journal Zeitschrift für Physiologie und Psychologie der Sinnesorgane (“The Psychology and Physiology of the Sense Organs'”).

In 1894, he was passed over for promotion to head of the philosophy department at Berlin, most likely due to his lack of publications. Instead, Carl Stumpf received the promotion. As a result of this, Ebbinghaus left to join the University of Breslau (now Wrocław, Poland), in a chair left open by Theodor Lipps (who took over Stumpf’s position when he moved to Berlin). While in Breslau, he worked on a commission that studied how children’s mental ability declined during the school day. While the specifics on how these mental abilities were measured have been lost, the successes achieved by the commission laid the groundwork for future intelligence testing. At Breslau, he again founded a psychological testing laboratory.

In 1902, Ebbinghaus published his next piece of writing entitled Die Grundzüge der Psychologie (Fundamentals of Psychology). It was an instant success and continued to be long after his death. In 1904, he moved to Halle where he spent the last few years of his life. His last published work, Abriss der Psychologie (Outline of Psychology) was published six years later, in 1908. This, too, continued to be a success, being re-released in eight different editions. Shortly after this publication, on 26 February 1909, Ebbinghaus died from pneumonia at the age of 59.

Sigbert Ganser

Sigbert Josef Maria Ganser (24 January 1853 to 04 January 1931) was a German psychiatrist born in Rhaunen.

He earned his medical doctorate in 1876 from the University of Munich. Afterwards he worked briefly at a psychiatric clinic in Würzburg, and later as an assistant to neuroanatomist Bernhard von Gudden (1824-1886) in Munich. In 1886, he became head of the psychiatric department at Dresden General Hospital. Among his students was neurologist Hans Queckenstedt (1876-1918).

Sigbert Ganser is remembered for a hysterical disorder that he first described in 1898. He identified the disorder in three prisoners while working at a prison in Halle. The features included approximate or nonsensical answers to simple questions, perceptual abnormalities, and clouding of consciousness. Ganser believed that these symptoms were an associative reaction caused by an unconscious attempt by the patient to escape from an intolerable mental situation. The disorder was to become known as Ganser syndrome.