Granville Stanley Hall (February 1, 1844 – April 24, 1924) was an American psychologist and educator who earned the first doctorate in psychology awarded in the United States of America. His interests focused on human life span development and evolutionary theory. Hall was the first president of the American Psychological Association and the first president of Clark University. A 2002 survey by Review of General Psychology ranked Hall as the 72nd most cited psychologist of the 20th century, in a tie with Lewis Terman.
Biography
Early life Born in Ashfield, Massachusetts, Hall grew up on a farm with his parents, Granville Bascom Hall, who served on the Massachusetts legislature, and Abigail Beals, who attended school at Albany Female Seminary and went on to become a teacher herself. As an adolescent, Hall experienced frequent nocturnal emissions.Moran, J. P. (2000). Teaching sex: The shaping of adolescence in the 20th century. Harvard University Press. He spent much of his time reading and taking advantage of the educational opportunities he could gain from his parents and the local schools. At a young age, he was interested in animals and bodily skills. By the age of 16, he began to teach other students, most of whom were older than he was
Education and early career Hall attended Williston Seminary and graduated from Williams College in 1867, then studied at the Union Theological Seminary. Inspired by Wilhelm Wundt's Principles of Physiological Psychology, Hall pursued doctoral studies at Harvard University, where he met William James, an adjunct professor who had just taught the nation's first psychology class. In 1878, Hall earned his doctorate in psychology from Harvard, the first psychology doctorate awarded in the United States of America.Thorne, B. Michael & Henley, Tracy B. (2001). Connections in the History and Systems of Psychology. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. . Afterward, Hall could find no academic jobs available in psychology, so he went to Europe to study at the University of Berlin, and spent a brief time in Wundt's Leipzig laboratory in 1879.
He began his career by teaching English and philosophy at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and then teaching history of philosophy at Williams College in Massachusetts. Following successful lecture series at Harvard and Johns Hopkins University, Hall secured a position in the philosophy department at Johns Hopkins, teaching psychology and pedagogy. He remained at Johns Hopkins from 1882 to 1888 and, in 1883, began the first formal American psychology laboratory. There, Hall objected to the emphasis on teaching traditional subjects, e.g., Latin, mathematics, science and history, in high school, arguing instead that high school should focus more on the education of adolescents than on preparing students for college.
Hall was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1888.American Antiquarian Society Members Directory
Later career (psychology) In 1887, Hall founded the American Journal of Psychology, and in 1892 was elected the first president of the American Psychological Association. In 1889 he was named the first president of Clark University, a post he filled until 1920. During his 31 years as president, Hall remained intellectually active. He was instrumental in the development of educational psychology, and attempted to determine the effect adolescence has on education. He was also responsible for inviting Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung to visit and deliver a lecture series in 1909 at the Clark University Vicennial Conference on Psychology and Pedagogy. Hall promised Freud an honorary degree from Clark University in exchange, and the two shared the same beliefs on sex and adolescence. This was Freud's first and only visit to America and the biggest conference held at Clark University. It was also the most controversial conference, given that Freud's research was based on theories that Hall's colleagues criticized as non-scientific.
In 1917, Hall published a book on religious psychology, Jesus the Christ in the Light of Psychology, in which he sought to identify universal psychological trends in the Gospels. This was his least successful work. In 1922, at the age of 78, he published the book Senescence, a book on aging.
Darwin's theory of evolution and Ernst Haeckel's recapitulation theory were large influences on Hall's career. These ideas prompted Hall to examine aspects of childhood development in order to learn about the inheritance of behavior. The subjective character of these studies made their validation impossible. He believed that as children develop, their mental capabilities resemble those of their ancestors and so they develop over a lifetime the same way that species develop over eons.^ Wegner, Daniel L. Schacter, Daniel T. Gilbert, Daniel M. (2010). Psychology (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Worth Publishers. . Hall believed that the process of recapitulation could be sped up through education and force children to reach modern standards of mental capabilities in a shorter length of time. His work also delved into controversial portrayals of the differences between women and men, as well as the concept of racial eugenics. While Hall was a proponent of racial eugenics, his views were less severe in terms of creating and keeping distinct separations between races. Hall believed in giving "lower races" a chance to accept and adapt to "superior civilization". Hall even commended high ranking African Americans in society as being "exception to the Negro's diminished evolutionary inheritance". Hall viewed civilization in a similar fashion he viewed biological development. Humans must allow civilization to "run its natural evolution". Hall saw those who did not accept the superior civilization as being primitive "savages". Hall viewed these civilizations in a similar fashion as he viewed children, stating that "their faults and their virtues are those of childhood and youth". Hall believed that men and women should be separated into their own schools during puberty because it allowed them to be able to grow within their own gender. Women could be educated with motherhood in mind and the men could be educated in more hands-on projects, helping them to become leaders of their homes. Hall believed that schools with both sexes limited the way they could learn and softened the boys earlier than they should be. "It is a period of equilibrium, but with the onset of puberty the equilibrium is disturbed and new tendencies arise. Modifications in the reproductive organs take place and bring about secondary sexual characteristics. Extroversion gives way slowly to introversion, and more definitely social instincts begin to play an increasing role."
Hall was heavily influenced by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and his theory of evolution. Hall found the idea of passing on memories from parent to offspring was a plausible mode of inheritance.
Anomalistic psychology Hall was one of the founding members and a vice President of the American Society for Psychical Research.Eugene Taylor. (2009). The Mystery of Personality: A History of Psychodynamic Theories. Springer. p. 30. The early members of the society were skeptical of paranormal phenomena.John Melton. (1996). Psychical Research in Encyclopedia of Occultism & Parapsychology. Gale Group. Hall took a psychological approach to psychical phenomena. By 1890 he had resigned from the society.Wade Pickren, Alexandra Rutherford. (2010). A History of Modern Psychology in Context. Wiley. He became an outspoken critic of parapsychology.Paul Kurtz. A Skeptic's Handbook of Parapsychology. Prometheus Books. p. 551.
Hall was an early psychologist in the field of anomalistic psychology.Leonard Zusne, Warren H. Jones. (1989). Anomalistic Psychology: A Study of Magical Thinking. Psychology Press. p. 10. Hall and his assistant Amy Tanner from Clark University were notable debunkers of spiritualism and carried out psychological and physiological tests on mediums. Tanner published Studies in Spiritism (1910) with an introduction by Hall.Amy Tanner with an introduction by G. Stanley Hall. (1910). Studies in Spiritism. New York and London: D. Appleton and Company The book documented the tests carried out by Hall and Tanner in the séance sittings held with the medium Leonora Piper.David J. Hess. (1993). Science in the New Age: The Paranormal, Its Defenders and Debunkers, and American Culture. University of Wisconsin Press. p. 29. Hall and Tanner had proven by tests that the personalities of Piper were fictitious creations and not discarnate spirits.Rodger Anderson. (2006). Psychics, Sensitives And Somnambules: A Biographical Dictionary With Bibliographies. McFarland & Company. p. 238.
Guiding views
Social views Hall was deeply wedded to the German concept of Volk, an anti-individualist and authoritarian romanticism in which the individual is dissolved into a transcendental collective. Hall believed that humans are by nature non-reasoning and instinct driven, requiring a charismatic leader to manipulate their herd instincts for the well-being of society. He predicted that the American emphasis on individual human right and dignity would lead to a fall that he analogized to the sinking of Atlantis.
Hall was one of the founders of the child-study movement in the 1880s. A national network of study groups called Hall Clubs existed to spread his teaching. He is popularly known today for supervising the 1896 study Of Peculiar and Exceptional Children, which described a series of only child eccentrics as permanent misfits. For decades, academics and advice columnists alike disseminated his conclusion that an only child could not be expected to go through life with the same capacity for adjustment that siblings possessed. "Being an only child is a disease in itself", he claimed.One and Done by Lauren Sandler, Time July 19, 2010, pp. 35-41.
Hall argued that child development recapitulates his highly racialized conception of the history of human evolutionary development. He characterized pre-adolescent children as savages and therefore rationalized that reasoning was a waste of time with children. He believed that children must simply be led to fear God, love country, and develop a strong body. As the child burns out the vestiges of evil in his nature, he needs a good dose of authoritarian discipline, including corporal punishment. He believed that adolescents are characterized by more altruistic natures than pre-adolescents and that high schools should indoctrinate students into selfless ideals of service, patriotism, body culture, military discipline, love of authority, awe of nature, and devotion to the state and the well-being of others. Hall consistently argued against intellectual attainment at all levels of public education. Open discussion and critical opinions were not to be tolerated. Students needed indoctrination to save them from the individualism that was so damaging to the progress of American culture.