PEOPLE KNOWN FOR: psychology
Austrian psychoanalyst
Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis. (Read Sigmund Freud’s 1926 Britannica essay on psychoanalysis.) Freud may justly be called the most influential intellectual...
American psychologist and philosopher
William James was an American philosopher and psychologist, a leader of the philosophical movement of pragmatism and a founder of the psychological movement of functionalism. James was the eldest son of...
American psychologist
Timothy Leary was an American psychologist and author who was a leading advocate for the use of LSD and other psychoactive drugs. Leary, the son of a U.S. Army officer, was raised in a Catholic household...
Swiss psychologist
Jean Piaget was a Swiss psychologist who was the first to make a systematic study of the acquisition of understanding in children. He is thought by many to have been the major figure in 20th-century developmental...
American psychologist
George A. Miller was an American psychologist who was one of the founders of cognitive psychology and of cognitive neuroscience (see cognitive science). He also made significant contributions to psycholinguistics...
German psychoanalyst
Karen Horney was a German-born American psychoanalyst who, departing from some of the basic principles of Sigmund Freud, suggested an environmental and social basis for the personality and its disorders....
American psychologist
Albert Bandura was a Canadian-born American psychologist and originator of social cognitive theory who is probably best known for his modeling study on aggression, referred to as the “Bobo doll” experiment,...
Canadian-American psychologist
Steven Pinker is a Canadian-born American psychologist who advocates evolutionary explanations for the functions of the brain and thus for language and behaviour. Pinker was raised in a largely Jewish...
Czech-born psychologist
Max Wertheimer was a Czech-born psychologist, one of the founders, along with Kurt Koffka and Wolfgang Köhler, of Gestalt psychology (q.v.), which attempts to examine psychological phenomena as structural...
American psychologist
Edward L. Thorndike was an American psychologist whose work on animal behaviour and the learning process led to the theory of connectionism, which states that behavioral responses to specific stimuli are...
Austrian psychologist
Wilhelm Reich was a Viennese psychiatrist who developed a system of psychoanalysis that concentrated on overall character structure rather than on individual neurotic symptoms. His early work on psychoanalytic...
American psychologist
G. Stanley Hall was a psychologist who gave early impetus and direction to the development of psychology in the United States. Frequently regarded as the founder of child psychology and educational psychology,...
French philosopher
Étienne Bonnot de Condillac was a philosopher, psychologist, logician, economist, and the leading advocate in France of the ideas of John Locke (1632–1704). Ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1740, Condillac...
American psychologist
Arnold Gesell was an American psychologist and pediatrician, who pioneered the use of motion-picture cameras to study the physical and mental development of normal infants and children and whose books...
Austrian psychologist
Otto Rank was an Austrian psychologist who extended psychoanalytic theory to the study of legend, myth, art, and creativity and who suggested that the basis of anxiety neurosis is a psychological trauma...
American psychologist
Clark L. Hull was an American psychologist known for his experimental studies on learning and for his attempt to give mathematical expression to psychological theory. He applied a deductive method of reasoning...
American psychologist
Walter Mischel was an American psychologist best known for his groundbreaking study on delayed gratification known as “the marshmallow test.” Mischel was born the younger of two brothers. His father was...
British psychologist
Sir Cyril Burt was a British psychologist known for his development of factor analysis in psychological testing and for his studies of the effect of heredity on intelligence and behaviour. Burt studied...
American sex therapist
Virginia E. Johnson was an American sex researcher and therapist who, with American gynecologist William H. Masters, conducted pioneering research on human sexuality. Together the researchers established...
American psychologist
Phil McGraw is an American psychologist, author, and television personality who gained fame following numerous appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show and with his own daytime talk show, Dr. Phil. McGraw...
American psychologist
Jerome Bruner was an American psychologist and educator who developed theories on perception, learning, memory, and other aspects of cognition in young children that had a strong influence on the American...
American psychologist
B.F. Skinner was an American psychologist and an influential exponent of behaviourism, which views human behaviour in terms of responses to environmental stimuli and favours the controlled, scientific...
American author and pop psychologist
John Gray is an American self-help author and pop psychologist who built a business empire out of his most famous book, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus (1992). As a teenager Gray became involved...
American psychologist
Bruno Bettelheim was an Austrian-born American psychologist known for his work in treating and educating emotionally disturbed children. Bettelheim worked in his family’s lumber business in Vienna, but...
American psychologist and educator
Lillien Jane Martin was an American psychologist who followed up her academic career with an active second career in gerontological psychology. Martin was a precocious child and entered Olean Academy at...
German philosopher
Franz Brentano was a German philosopher generally regarded as the founder of act psychology, or intentionalism, which concerns itself with the acts of the mind rather than with the contents of the mind....
Israeli-born psychologist
Daniel Kahneman was an Israeli-born psychologist and a corecipient of the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2002 for his integration of psychological research into economic science. His pioneering work examined...
American psychologist
L. L. Thurstone was an American psychologist who was instrumental in the development of psychometrics, the science that measures mental functions, and who developed statistical techniques for multiple-factor...
American psychologist
Margaret Floy Washburn was an American psychologist whose work at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie made it a leading institution in undergraduate psychological research and education. Washburn graduated...
American psychologist and philosopher
James J. Gibson was an American psychologist whose theories of visual perception were influential among some schools of psychology and philosophy in the late 20th century. After receiving a Ph.D. in psychology...
American psychologist
William McDougall was a British-born U.S. psychologist influential in establishing experimental and physiological psychology and author of An Introduction to Social Psychology (1908; 30th ed. 1960), which...
American psychologist
John B. Watson was an American psychologist who codified and publicized behaviourism, an approach to psychology that, in his view, was restricted to the objective, experimental study of the relations between...
Austrian-British psychoanalyst
Anna Freud was an Austrian-born British founder of child psychoanalysis and one of its foremost practitioners. She also made fundamental contributions to understanding how the ego, or consciousness, functions...
American psychologist
William K. Estes was an American psychologist who pioneered the application of mathematics to the study of animal learning and human cognition. Estes received B.A. (1940) and Ph.D. (1943) degrees in psychology...
German physiologist and psychologist
Wilhelm Wundt was a German physiologist and psychologist who is generally acknowledged as the founder of experimental psychology. Wundt earned a medical degree at the University of Heidelberg in 1856....
Austrian philosopher and psychologist
Alexius Meinong was an Austrian philosopher and psychologist remembered for his contributions to axiology, or theory of values, and for his Gegenstandstheorie, or theory of objects. After studying under...
American philosopher and psychologist
Mary Whiton Calkins was a philosopher, psychologist, and educator, and the first American woman to attain distinction in these fields of study. Calkins grew up mainly in Buffalo, New York, and moved with...
American psychologist
Carl Rogers was an American psychologist who originated the nondirective, or client-centred, approach to psychotherapy, emphasizing a person-to-person relationship between the therapist and the client...
American psychologist
James McKeen Cattell was a U.S. psychologist who oriented U.S. psychology toward use of objective experimental methods, mental testing, and application of psychology to the fields of education, business,...
American psychologist
William Sheldon was an American psychologist and physician who was best known for his theory associating physique, personality, and delinquency. Sheldon attended the University of Chicago, where he received...
American psychologist
Lewis Terman was an American psychologist who published the individual intelligence test widely used in the United States, the Stanford-Binet test. Terman joined the faculty of Stanford University in 1910,...
psychologist and art historian
Ernst Kris was a psychologist and historian of art, known for his psychoanalytic studies of artistic creation and for combining psychoanalysis and direct observation of infants in child psychology. Kris...
Russian psychiatrist
Vladimir Bekhterev was a Russian neurophysiologist and psychiatrist who studied the formations of the brain and investigated conditioned reflexes. Bekhterev received a doctorate from the Medical-Surgical...
American psychologist
June Etta Downey was an American psychologist and educator whose studies centred on the psychology of aesthetics and related philosophical issues. Downey graduated from the University of Wyoming in 1895....
American psychologist
Karl Lashley was an American psychologist who conducted quantitative investigations of the relation between brain mass and learning ability. While working toward a Ph.D. in genetics at Johns Hopkins University...
Jewish philosopher and psychologist
Moritz Lazarus was a Jewish philosopher and psychologist, a leading opponent of anti-Semitism in his time and a founder of comparative psychology. The son of a rabbinical scholar, Lazarus studied Hebrew...
American psychologist
Eleanor J. Gibson was an American psychologist whose work focused on perceptual learning and reading development. Gibson received a B.A. (1931) and an M.S. (1933) from Smith College and a Ph.D. (1938)...
German philosopher and psychologist
Carl Stumpf was a German philosopher and theoretical psychologist noted for his research on the psychology of music and tone. Stumpf was influenced at the University of Würzburg by the philosopher Franz...
American philosopher and psychologist
James Mark Baldwin was a philosopher and theoretical psychologist who exerted influence on American psychology during its formative period in the 1890s. Concerned with the relation of Darwinian evolution...
French psychologist
Alfred Binet was a French psychologist who played a dominant role in the development of experimental psychology in France and who made fundamental contributions to the measurement of intelligence. Fascinated...
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