04 November in the History of Psychology

On November 4:

1834 — In his annual address to the state legislature, Governor Wilson Lumpkin of Georgia suggested establishing a state mental hospital. No action was taken until 1837, when a building appropriation was passed. The state's first mental hospital, the Georgia State Sanatarium at Milledgeville, was opened in December 1842. The hospital was later named Milledgeville State Hospital and is now Central State Hospital.

1899 — Sigmund Freud's book Interpretation of Dreams was first published. Six hundred copies were printed, and it took 8 years to sell them.

1904 — Horace Mann Bond was born. Bond was an educational researcher and administrator whose studies of racial biases in testing and education were among the first empirical approaches to those topics. Bond's son Julian has been a prominent Georgia politician and civil rights activist.

1906 — S. Smith Stevens was born. Stevens formulated the power law of psychophysics, devised direct scaling methods, extensively studied auditory perception, conveyed the philosophy of operationism to American psychology, and wrote many influential articles and books, notably the Handbook of Experimental Psychology (1951). APA Award for Distinguished Scientific Contribution, 1960.

1906 — German psychiatrist Alois Alzheimer presented "On a peculiar disorder of the cerebral cortex" to the 37th Conference of Southwest German Psychiatrists in Tübingen. This was the first report of a case of the the syndrome of behavioral and physical degeneration in aging adults that now bears Alzheimer's name. The report described the case of "Auguste D," a patient first seen by Alzheimer in 1901. After Auguste D died,on April 8, 1908, Alzheimer identified amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles in her brain, typical of the disease. The name for the disorder was first used by Alzheimer's colleague, Emil Kraepelin, in 1910.

1915 — Herman Feifel was born. Feifel has focused on the psychology of death, dying, and bereavement. His 1959 book The Meaning of Death was a pivotal publication in the founding of his specialty, now called thanatology. APA Award for Distinguished Professional Contributions, 1988.

1970 — A 13-year-old "wild child," who had been raised in isolation for most of her life, was discovered by child welfare authorities in Arcadia, California. Named "Genie," the child's physical, social, and linguistic development was studied for four years by a University of California, Los Angeles research team headed by David Rigler. In 1994, Genie was the subject of a broadcast on NOVA, the public television science series.

1982 — The petition to create the APA's Division 43 (Family Psychology) was submitted. Richard Mikesell headed the petitioning group. Because of an APA moratorium on new divisions, Division 43 was not approved until August 26, 1984.