APA Historical Database: Selected Entries

---

On October 6:

1818 — The Charlestown branch of Massachusetts General Hospital, later named the McLean Asylum for the Insane, admitted its first patient, a young man believed by his father to be possessed by a devil. This early facility for people with mental illness also established one of the first American laboratories of experimental psychology and supported an active research program. Rufus Wyman was the first superintendent.

1853 — Johannes von Kries was born. Kries's work in the physiology of vision led to the correct identification of the functions of the rods and cones of the retina. He did some of the first experimental studies of color perception and identified and named the different varieties of color blindness.

1868 — Charles J. Herrick was born. Herrick was a physiologist who studied the structure of the brain and found that the structures of lower animals form the basis of the human brain.

1881 — The preface to the first book devoted specifically to child psychology, Wilhelm T. Preyer's Die Seele des Kindes (The Mind of the Child), was written.

1900 — Margaret Altmann was born. Altmann was a pioneer in the descriptive ethology of large animals and is best known for studies of social behavior of elk in Wyoming.

1968 — The APA Council of Representatives admitted Division 30 (Psychological Hypnosis). Ernest R. Hilgard was the first president of the division.

1968 — The APA Council of Representatives admitted Division 31 (State Psychological Association Affairs).

Choose Another Day
How to Cite This Page in APA Style