28 August in the History of Psychology

On August 28:

1749 — Johann von Goethe was born. Although he is best known as an author, Goethe's studies of color vision were some of the first phenomenological studies in the modern scientific tradition. His writing might also have influenced Freud's concept of libido.

1892 — Henry Turner was born. Turner first described the characteristics resulting from a single X chromosome, affecting 1 in 2,000 females. Turner's syndrome is marked by an absence of secondary sex characteristics, stunted growth, and webbing of the neck. Turner's syndrome, first described in 1938, is often cited in introductory psychology texts in discussions of inheritance.

1903 — Bruno Bettelheim was born. Bettelheim was a survivor of Nazi concentration camps whose "milieu therapy" emphasized "structured permissiveness" as a therapeutic environment for psychotic and autistic children.

1941 — Erich Fromm's Escape from Freedom was published. The book applied psychoanalytic methods to the problems of culture and society.

1956 — The Legislative Assembly of Quebec granted a charter to the Corporation of Psychologists of the Province of Quebec, the professional psychology organization of the province.

1959 — J. P. Guilford's article "The Three Faces of Intellect" was published in the American Psychologist. The article summarized Guilford's theory of operations, products, and contents of intelligence.

1963 — The first meeting of the Association for Humanistic Psychology was held in Philadelphia. Abraham Maslow and Anthony Sutich organized the meeting. The organization was originally called the American Association for Humanistic Psychology.

1968 — Roger Kirk's widely used text Experimental Design: Procedures for the Behavioral Sciences was published. By 1979, Kirk's book had been cited in over 1,365 other publications and was featured as a "citation classic" in the journal Current Contents.

1968 — The Committee on Health Insurance, chaired by Nicholas Cummings, held its first meeting of state psychological association insurance chairs. They launched a campaign for "freedom of choice" laws, allowing insurance coverage of psychological services without medical supervision or referral. New Jersey and California passed such laws in 1969, but Governor Reagan vetoed California's law.

1972 — The first doctorates were awarded by the California School of Professional Psychology (CSPP), the nation's first independent professional school of psychology. These graduates had entered CSPP six trimesters earlier with master's degrees, advanced training, and state licensure.

1977 — The APA Council of Representatives voted to cancel annual conventions in states that had not ratified the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Contracts with Atlanta (1979), New Orleans (1980), and Las Vegas (1981) were canceled, despite the advice of the APA Board of Directors and legal staff to apply the resolution only to uncontracted future convention sites.

1978 — Gloria Steinem, prominent author and speaker on women's issues, delivered the invited address to the annual meeting of the APA in Toronto.