Today's History Influence in Psychology

On April 16:

1912 — Christian Ruckmick described the status of early experimental psychology in a presentation to the Society of Experimental Psychologists. He reported that the average annual salary of a full professor was $2,500 and that the wealthiest psychology department was that of Columbia University, with a total salary and operating budget of $13,549.

1913 — The Henry Phipps Psychiatric Clinic, one of the divisions of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, was opened. Adolph Meyer was the first director of the clinic.

1943 — Albert Hofmann, a research chemist at the Sandoz Laboratories (now Novartis Pharmaceuticals) in Basel, Switzerland, left work due to "a remarkable restlessness" and "dizziness." Later, he experienced a "stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes" and "intense...colors." Dermal absorption of LSD-25, a substance he was working with, was the suspected cause. Although unintentional, this was the first LSD-induced psychedelic experience.

1959 — The antidepressant drug Tofranil (imipramine; Rorer and Geigy) was approved for use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Imipramine was the first tricyclic antidepressant. It probably enhances neurotransmission by blocking reuptake of the neurotransmitter norepinephrine. Janimine (Abbott Laboratories) is also imipramine and was approved by the FDA on April 8, 1977.

On July 22:

1784 — Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel was born. Bessel was an astronomer made curious by the circumstances of David Kinnebrook's dismissal at the Greenwich Observatory. He found that Kinnebrook's errors were caused by differences in individual reaction times. This began the search for the "personal equation" and the study of individual differences.

1822 — Gregor Johann Mendel was born. Mendel founded modern genetics, providing psychology with a mechanism to explain and predict the biological transmission of physical characteristics affecting behavior.

1852 — Henry R. Marshall was born. Marshall was an architect by profession but his work in aesthetics, emotion, consciousness, and instinct allied him to early American psychologists. APA President, 1907.

1881 — Augusta Fox Bronner was born. Bronner and her husband, William Healy, were instrumental in founding the first child guidance clinic, the Juvenile Psychopathic Institute, in Chicago in 1909.

1893 — Karl A. Menninger was born. Menninger, with his father and brother, founded the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas. The clinic pioneered the use of psychologists in multidisciplinary psychiatric teams, and Menninger was a strong advocate for the independent professional standing of psychologists. He also developed a standardized battery of psychological assessment instruments.

1904 — Donald Olding Hebb was born. Hebb's book The Organization of Behavior constructed a system of behavior that was based on the physiology of the organism but extended to learning, motivation, perception, affect, and cognition. Hebb, a Canadian, was the only APA President (1960) who was not a citizen of the United States. APA Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award, 1961.

1912 — Clyde H. Coombs was born. Coombs's research resulted in the development of the field of nonmetric scaling. His work has greatly influenced progress in mathematical psychology. APA Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award, 1985.

1918 — Max Siegel was born. Siegel's career in private practice as a clinical psychologist was accompanied by highly respected teaching and administration in clinical psychology and school psychology. His concern for professional standards of licensure and confidentiality led to political activism. APA President, 1983.

1919 — Beatrice Cates Lacey was born. Lacey's research, with John I. Lacey, has integrated neurophysiological and psychophysiological events and theories. The relation between cardiovascular activity, attention, and sensorimotor activity has been the proving ground of their theories. APA Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award, 1976; American Psychological Foundation Psychological Science Gold Medal, 1985.

1924 — Frank A. Logan was born. Logan has done extensive work in learning, focusing on discrimination learning and the effects of variable amounts of reinforcement on response choice and strength.

1936 — B. F. Skinner met his future wife, Yvonne Blue, on this day.

1938 — Robert S. Woodworth wrote the foreword to the first edition of his classic text, Experimental Psychology.

1973 — Oregon's Governor Tom McCall signed into law Senate Bill 275, instituting the state's current licensure form of psychologist regulation. The law replaced regulation by credential which protected the use of the title psychologist, but did not regulate the practice itself.

1987 — President Reagan signed the Stewart B. McKinney Homeless Assistance Act into law. The McKinney Act provided the first comprehensive program to aid homeless people in the United States. Psychological studies of homelessness and its relation to mental illness, substance abuse, disrupted families, and child development both influenced and resulted from the act.

On March 11

1843 — Harald Höffding was born. Höffding maintained that all mental events are physical in nature, to be studied through introspection. He identified the recognition of similar elements as the determinant of transfer of training. Höffding wrote the first Danish psychology text in 1882.

1861 — The first public mental hospital in Texas, the State Lunatic Asylum in Austin, was formally opened. The institution was supported by proceeds from 100,000 acres of public land. The hospital is now named Austin State Hospital.

1893 — Lipot Szondi was born. Szondi developed a theory of the genetic origin of personality. His projective test of personality was based on the proposition that one would be attracted to the face of a person whose genetic type and, therefore, personality was similar to one's own.

1901 — Willard S. Small's article "Experimental Study of the Mental Processes of the Rat II" was published in the American Journal of Psychology. This was the first article to report a study of maze learning in the rat and to use the term psychobiology. Other articles in the series reported physical development and exploratory behavior in the rat.

1904 — Hilde Bruch was born. Bruch was a psychiatrist whose specialty was studies of eating disorders, especially anorexia and obesity.

1938 — The American Association on Mental Deficiency was incorporated in Pennsylvania.

1959 — Donald T. Campbell and Donald W. Fiske's article "Convergent and Discriminant Validation by the Multitrait-Multimethod Matrix" was published in Psychological Bulletin. When a citation count was done in 1992, this article was found to be the most often cited article published in Psychological Bulletin in the past 40 years. It had been cited over 2,000 times.

1968 — The first meeting of the founding board of the California School of Professional Psychology, the nation's first independent professional school of psychology, was convened by Nicholas Cummings.

1968 — The antiepileptic drug Tegratol (carbamazepine; Geigy Pharmaceutical) was approved for use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The physiological action of carbamazepine remains unknown.

1989 — The Pennsylvania Psychological Association dedicated its own headquarters building, the first state association to do so. The building was located at 416 Foster Street, in Harrisburg.

Copyright © 1995, American Psychological Association. Web version by permission. Source: Street, W. R. (1994). A Chronology of Noteworthy Events in American Psychology. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. The American Psychological Association and Central Washington University have supported the development of the APA Historical Database.