by DK
See also: Francis Galton • Alfred Binet • David C. McClelland
NANCY BAYLEY
1899–1994
Nancy Bayley, an eminent American child developmental psychologist, specialized in the measurement of motor and intellectual development. For her doctorate, she measured fear in children by analyzing the sympathetic nervous system via moisture levels in sweat glands. Her Bayley Scales of Mental and Motor Development (1969) remains the worldwide standard measure of mental and physical development in infants from one to 42 months.
See also: Edwin Guthrie • Simon Baron-Cohen
MILTON ERICKSON
1901–1980
Nevada-born Erickson’s trial-and-error observations of hypnosis over many years led him to become a world authority on hypnosis and trance. He is well known for his Ericksonian Handshake that induces a trance by confusing the mind with a moment of “behavioral void” as the flow of the handshake is interrupted. Considered the founder of hypnotherapy treatment, Erickson was also a major influence on the growth of family therapy, solution-focused therapy, systemic therapy, and a number of brief-therapy treatments, including NLP (neuro-linguistic programming).
See also: B.F. Skinner • Stanley Milgram
ALEXANDER LURIA
1902–1977
Born in Kazan, Russia, Luria studied at Moscow’s Institute of Psychology. His work on reaction times and thought processes resulted in his “combined motor method” and the first ever lie-detector machine. He then went to medical school and specialized in neurology. Balancing the physical and the mental, he made breakthroughs in brain damage, memory loss, perception, and aphasia (language disorders). The stories he told in books such as The Man with a Shattered World: The History of a Brain Wound (1972) helped to popularize neurology.
See also: Sigmund Freud • B.F. Skinner • Noam Chomsky
DANIEL LAGACHE
1903–1972
Frenchman Daniel Lagache was inspired to study experimental psychology, psychopathology, and phenomenology by the lectures of Georges Dumas. A forensics and criminology expert, Lagache’s key books included Jealousy (1947) and Pathological Mourning (1956). After being expelled from the International Psychoanalytical Association in 1953 for his criticism of Sacha Nacht’s medical authoritarianism, he set up the breakaway French Society of Psychoanalysis with Jacques Lacan. A Freudian theorist, Lagache also played an important role in promoting psychoanalysis among the general public, particularly by linking it with clinical experience.
See also: Jacques Lacan
ERNEST R. HILGARD
1904–2001
In the 1950s, Ernest Ropiequet “Jack” Hilgard collaborated on his pioneering hypnosis studies at Stanford University with his wife Josephine and, in 1957, they founded the Laboratory of Hypnosis Research. There, with André Muller Weitzenhoffer, he developed the Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scales (1959). His controversial neodissociation theory and the “hidden-observer effect” (1977)—which asserts that under hypnosis several subsystem states of consciousness are regulated by an executive control system—have stood the test of time. His textbooks Conditioning and Learning (with D.G. Marquis, 1940) and Introduction to Psychology (1953) are still studied.
See also: Ivan Pavlov • Leon Festinger • Eleanor E. Maccoby
GEORGE KELLY
1905–1967
Kelly made an important contribution to the psychology of personality through The Psychology of Personal Constructs (1955). His humanistic idea suggests that individuals make their own personalities through their cognitive appraisal of events. From this theory came the “role construct repertory test,” which is used to research and diagnose the nature of personality. Valued in cognitive psychology and counseling, it is also used in organizational behavior and educational studies.
See also: Johann Friedrich Herbart • Carl Rogers • Ulric Neisser
MUZAFER SHERIF
1906–1988
Raised in Turkey, Sherif gained his PhD in the US at Columbia, with a dissertation on how social factors can influence perception. Published as The Psychology of Social Norms (1936), it became known as “the autokinetic effect” experiments. One of Sherif’s legacies was combining successfully experimental methods in the laboratory and the field. He worked with his wife, Carolyn Wood Sherif, notably on the Robbers Cave Experiment (1954). In this, a number of boy campers were divided into two groups. Posing as a janitor, Sherif observed the origins of prejudice, conflict, and stereotype in social groups. His resulting Realistic Conflict theory still underpins our understanding of group behavior. With Carl Havland, he also developed the Social Judgement theory (1961).
See also: Soloman Asch • Philip Zimbardo
NEAL MILLER
1909–2002
American psychologist Miller was a research fellow in Vienna under Anna Freud and Heinz Hartman. After reading K.M. Bykov’s The Cerebral Cortex and the Internal Organs (1954), Miller set out to prove that internal organs and their functions could also be manipulated at will. His findings led to the treatment technique of Biofeedback, which aims to improve patients’ conditions by training them to respond to signals from their own bodies.
See also: Anna Freud • Albert Bandura
ERIC BERNE
1910–1970
Berne, a Canadian psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, developed the theory of transactional analysis, which put verbal communication at the center of psychotherapy. The words of the first speaker, the Agent, were called a Transaction Stimulus; the reply of the Respondant was a Transaction Response. Every personality was split into alter-egos: child, adult, and parent; each stimulus and response was seen as playing one of these “parts.” Exchanges were studied as an “I do something to you, and you do something back” transactional analysis. His Games People Play (1964) suggested that “games,” or behavior patterns, between individuals can indicate hidden feelings or emotions.
See also: Erik Erikson • David C. McClelland
ROGER W. SPERRY
1913–1994
American neurobiologist Sperry’s successful separation of the corpus callosum—the bundles of nerve fibers that transfer signals between left and right brain hemispheres—led to a dramatic breakthrough in the treatment of a certain kind of epilepsy. In 1981, with David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine for his work on his split-brain theory, which showed that the left and right hemispheres had separate specializations.
See also: William James • Simon Baron-Cohen
SERGE LEBOVICI
1915–2000
Lebovici was a French Freudian who specialized in adolescent, child, and infant development, especially the bonding process between baby and mother. He is credited with introducing child psychoanalysis to France. His many books include Psychoanalysis in France (1980) and International Annals of Adolescent Psychiatry (1988).
See also: Sigmund Freud • Anna Freud
MILTON ROKEACH
1918–1988
Rokeach, a Polish-American social psychologist, studied how religious belief affects values and attitudes. He saw values as core motivations and mental transformations of basic psychological needs. His theory of dogmatism examined the cognitive characteristics of closed- and open-mindedness (The Open and Closed Mind, 1960). Rokeach’s Dogmatism Scale, an ideology- and content-free way to measure closed-mindedness, is still used, and the Rokeach Value Survey is viewed as one of the most effective ways of measuring beliefs and values in particular groups. In The Great American Values Test, Rokeach et al. measured changes in opinions to prove that television could alter people’s values.
See also: Leon Festinger • Solomon Asch • Albert Bandura
1918–1997
Diatkine, a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist, was central to the development of dynamic psychiatry. He emphasised emotions and their underlying thought processes, rather than observable behavior. Diatkine was also very active in developing institutional mental health, helping to set up The Association De Santé Mentale in 1958. His book on primal fantasies, Precocious Psychoanalysis (with Janine Simon, 1972), is one of his most enduring works.
See also: Anna Freud • Jacques Lacan
PAUL MEEHL
1920–2003
The work of American Paul Meehl has had a lasting impact on mental health and research methodology. In Clinical Versus Statistical Prediction: A Theoretical Analysis and a Review of the Evidence (1954), he argued that behavioral statistics were better examined using formulaic mathematical methods rather than clinical analysis. In 1962, he found a genetic link to schizophrenia, which until then had been attributed to poor parenting. His studies of determinism and free will focusing on quantum indeterminacy were published as The Determinism-Freedom and Mind-Body Problems (with Herbert Feigl, 1974)
See also: B.F. Skinner • David Rosenhan
HAROLD H. KELLEY
1921–2003
American social psychologist Kelley gained his PhD under Kurt Lewin at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His first major work, Communication and Persuasion (with Hovland & Janis, 1953), split a communication into three parts: “who;” “says what;” and “to whom.” The idea was widely adopted, and it changed the way people such as politicians presented themselves. In 1953, he began working with John Thibaut. Together they wrote The Social Psychology of Groups (1959), followed by Interpersonal Relations: A Theory of Interdependence (1978).
See also: Leon Festinger • Kurt Lewin • Noam Chomsky
STANLEY SCHACHTER
1922–1997
New York-born Schachter is best known for the two-factor theory of emotion (the Schachter-Singer Theory), developed with Jerome Singer. The pair showed that physical sensations are linked to emotions—for example, the way in which people experience increased heartbeat and muscle tension before feeling afraid—and that cognition is affected by an individual’s physiological state.
See also: William James • Leon Festinger
HEINZ HECKHAUSEN
1926–1988
German psychologist Heinz Heckhausen was a world expert on motivational psychology. He completed a postdoctoral dissertation on hopes and fears of success and failure, and his early work on childhood motivational development led to the Advanced Cognitive Model of Motivation (Heckhausen & Rheinberg, 1980). His book Motivation and Action (1980), coauthored with his psychologist daughter, Jutta, has had a lasting influence.
See also: Zing-Yang Kuo • Albert Bandura • Simon Baron-Cohen
ANDRE GREEN
1927—
André Green, an Egyptian-born French psychoanalyst, developed an interest in communications theory and cybernetics while an intern for Jacques Lacan in the 1950s. He later became a harsh critic of Lacan who, he said, put too much emphasis on symbolic and structural form, which invalidated his Freudian claims. In the late 1960s, Green returned to the Freudian roots of analysis with his exploration of the negative. This was most elegantly expressed in his paper, The Dead Mother (1980), in which the mother is psychologically dead to the child, but, as she is still there, confuses and frightens him.
See also: Sigmund Freud • Donald Winnicott • Jacques Lacan • Françoise Dolto
ULRIC NEISSER
1928—
The best-known book by German-American Neisser is Cognitive Psychology (1967), which outlines a psychological approach focused on mental processes. He later criticized cognitive psychology, feeling that its development had neglected the role of perception. His specialism is memory, and in 1995 he chaired the American Psychological Association task force “Intelligence, Knowns and Unknowns,” which examined theories of intelligence testing. His papers were published as the book The Rising Curve: Long-Term Gains in IQ and Related Measures (1998).
See also: George Armitage Miller • Donald Broadbent
JEROME KAGAN
1929—
Kagan, a leading American figure in developmental psychology, believed that physiology had more influence on psychological characteristics than the environment. His work on the biological aspects of childhood development—apprehension and fear-revealed effects on self-consciousness, morality, memory, and symbolism—laid foundations for research on the physiology of temperament. His work influenced studies of behavior in fields far beyond psychology, including crime, education, sociology, and politics.
See also: Sigmund Freud • Jean Piaget
MICHAEL RUTTER
1933—
British psychiatrist Michael Rutter has transformed our understanding of child development issues and behavior problems. In Maternal Deprivation Reassessed (1972), he rejected John Bowlby’s selective attachment theory, showing that multiple attachments in childhood were normal. His later research revealed a split between deprivation (a loss of something) and privation (never having had something), and linked antisocial behavior to family discord rather than maternal deprivation.
See also: John Bowlby • Simon Baron-Cohen
FRIEDEMANN SCHULZ VON THUN
1944—
German psychologist Friedemann Schulz von Thun is famous for his Communication Model, published in the three-volume To Talk With Each Other (1981, 1989, 1998). Von Thun says there are four levels of communication in every part of a conversation: speaking factually; making a statement about ourselves; commenting on our relationship to the other person; or asking the other person to do something. He says that when people speak and listen on different levels, misunderstandings occur.
See also: B.F. Skinner • Kurt Lewin
JOHN D. TEASDALE
1944—
British psychologist Teasdale investigated cognitive approaches to depression. With Zindel Segal and Mark Williams, he developed the technique called Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT). This combines cognitive therapy with mindfulness and Eastern meditation techniques, asking patients with recurrent major depression to engage with negative thoughts intentionally, rather than automatically, and to observe them from a more detached perspective.
See also: Gordon H. Bower • Aaron Beck
GLOSSARY
Anecdotal method The use of observational (often unscientific) reports as research data.
Archetypes In Carl Jung’s theory, the inherited patterns or frameworks within the collective unconscious that act to organize our experiences. Archetypes often feature in myths and narratives.
Association i) A philosophical explanation for the formation of knowledge, stating that it results from the linking or association of simple ideas to form complex ideas. ii) A link between two psychological processes, formed as a result of their pairing in past experience.
Associationism An approach that claims that inborn or acquired neural links bind stimuli and responses together, resulting in distinct patterns of behavior.
Attachment An emotionally important relationship in which one individual seeks proximity to and derives security from the presence of another, particularly infants to parental figures.
Attention A collective term for the processes used in selective, focused perception.
Autism The informal term for autistic spectrum disorder (ASD)—a cluster of mental dysfunctions that is characterized by extreme self-absorption and lack of empathy, repetitive motor activities, and the impairment of language and conceptual skills.
Behavior modification The use of proven behavior change techniques to control or
modify the behavior of individuals or groups.
Behaviorism A psychological approach that insists that only observable behavior should form the object of study, as this can be witnessed, described, and measured in objective terms.
Central traits In Gordon Allport’s theory, the six or so main personality traits that are used to describe a person, such as “shy” or “good natured.” These are the “building blocks” of personality.
Classical conditioning A type of learning in which a neutral stimulus acquires the capacity to trigger a particular response by becoming paired with an unconditional stimulus.
Cognitive To do with mental processes, such as perception, memory, or thinking.
Cognitive dissonance An inconsistency between beliefs or feelings, which leads to a state of tension.
Cognitive psychology A psychological approach that focuses on the mental processes involved in learning and knowing, and how the mind actively organizes experiences.