November 24 in Psychology

APA Historical Database: Selected Entries

On November 24:

1632 — Baruch de Spinoza was born. Spinoza's philosophy proposed a parallelism of mind and body, that is, that both mental and physical phenomena are expressions of the same divine source. His view was also completely deterministic, positing that free will is an illusion created when one thinks of the determined course of action.

1859 — Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection was published. All 1,250 copies of the first printing were sold on the first day of sale.

1869 — A special Committee of Investigations began 11 days of investigation of Charles H. Nichols, the first superintendent of the Government Hospital for the Insane in Washington, DC, later named St. Elizabeth's Hospital. Among the charges was that of "rebel proclivities." Nichols served in his post from 1852 to 1877.

1892 — Franklin Fearing was born. Fearing was a physiological psychologist interested in the vestibular senses. His later teaching and writing focused on the social psychology of mass communication.

1936 — Bonnie R. Strickland was born. Strickland may be best known for studies of locus of control of reinforcement, but her work has covered a range of social and personality variables. She helped develop the Nowicki-Strickland Children's Locus of Control Scale. She has served psychological organizations in many capacities. APA President, 1987.

1942 — The James McKeen Cattell Fund was begun. The Cattell Fund, established with a gift of 600 shares of Psychological Corporation stock, is currently used to supplement the sabbatical stipends of five or six recipients each year. Paul Achilles was the first managing trustee of the fund.

1967 — Alvin M. Liberman, Franklin Cooper, Donald Shankweiler and Michael Studdert-Kennedy's article "Perception of the Speech Code" was published in Psychological Review. In 1980, the journal Current Contents featured this article as a "citation classic."

1978 — The APA Monitor published APA Division 17's (Counseling Psychology) "Principles Concerning the Counseling and Therapy of Women."

1987 — The first issue of the journal Neuropsychopharmacology was published.

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.

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