APA Historical Database: Selected Entries

---

On December 10:

1861 — Carl Groos was born. Groos was a German psychologist who studied cognitive development and applied his findings to pedagogy. In his best known work, The Mental Life of the Child (1903), he noted that children's questions are of two types, those dealing with causality and those dealing with discrimination and prediction. Groos also stressed the role of play as preparation for adult life.

1900 — Carl Jung reported for duty at his first professional post at the Burghölzli Mental Hospital in Zurich, Switzerland.

1945 — Otto Fenichel's book The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis was published.

1953 — The first Interamerican Congress of Psychology began in Ciudad Trujillo (now Santo Domingo), Dominican Republic. The congress was opened by Pedro Troncoso Sanchez, the Secretary of Education for the Dominican Republic. Psychologist Andr‚s Avelino of the Dominican Republic was elected president.

1963 — Sir John C. Eccles, Alan L. Hodgkins, and Andrew F. Huxley were awarded the Nobel prize for their studies of the physiology of nervous transmission.

1964 — Sweden honored Ivan Pavlov by issuing a postage stamp with his portrait on this day.

1969 — The state of Wisconsin approved its psychologist licensure law. The law became effective on April 16, 1970.

1973 — Nobel prizes were awarded to Konrad Lorenz, Karl von Frisch, and Nikolaas Tinbergen for their ethological studies of animal behavior.

1977 — The current Alaska Psychological Association was founded at the Hotel Captain Cook, with Ron Ohlson as president. An earlier association began in the late 1960s but dissolved after licensing legislation was approved. A second, short-lived, association was created on April 4, 1971, with Harry H. Post, Jr., as president.

1983 — The Joint Commission for the Accreditation of Hospitals approved new guidelines permitting licensed individual psychology practitioners to become members of the medical staffs of hospitals without restriction.

1990 — The first APA-sponsored Scientific Psychology Forum for science writers and journalists was held at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. Eleven writers attended this first meeting.

Choose Another Day
How to Cite This Page in APA Style