Biographies of Famous Psychologists

Get to know the history and work of famous psychologists! Some men and women marked the history of psychology for their work and research. Below is a list of the main names, together with their production and biography.

In the list you will find, in addition to famous psychologists and psychologists, psychoanalysts, psychiatrists and doctors who were important in the history of our area.

(The list will be constantly updated)
The list is organized alphabetically by last name.

Complete list with authors of all approaches

THE

Alfred Adler is one of the most influential and important thinkers in psychology. Initially a “disciple” of Freud, he was the first to break with psychoanalysis and found his own school, called Individual Psychology. Among the concepts formulated by him, the one that became better known is the inferiority complex.

In the presentation of the book The science of human nature, he says: “This book constitutes an attempt to spread among the people the fundamentals of Individual Psychology. I tried to do so, demonstrating, at the same time, the practical application of its principles to the problem of human relations in society and to the guidance and organization of our personal lives. It is the synthesis of what he said in a series of lectures given at the People’s Institute in Vienna, before an audience of hundreds of men and women of all ages and professions. With this work, I tried to demonstrate how much individual conduct errors harm the harmony of our social and common life, teach the individual to recognize these errors and, finally, show him the way to adapt harmoniously to life. Errors in the domain of business or science are harmful and deplorable, but those of our procedure and conduct generally put our lives at risk. I have devoted this book to the task of clarifying the path that will lead us to a better understanding of human nature” (Alfred Adler)

In the introduction Adler writes:

“We cannot approach the science of human nature with presumption and pride. On the contrary, its knowledge marks those who deal with it with a certain humility. The problem of nature constitutes a gigantic problem whose solution has been, since time immemorial, nothing less than one of the great goals of human knowledge. Nor can such a science be a science that we pursue for the sole purpose of occasionally training specialists. Its true scope can only be to bring knowledge of human nature to all beings.”

Louise Andréas-Salomé is remembered in the history of psychology and psychoanalysis for her indirect influence on men who marked Western culture, among them: the philosopher Nietzsche, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, the psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and Karl Abraham.

Louise Andreas-Salome or lou Andreas-Salomé was born in 1861 in Russia into a wealthy family. Her father was a Russian general with French ancestry and her mother was of Danish-German origin, whose family was of wealthy industrialists. with her personality and not just in the sense of sexuality), she married the orientalist Friedrich Carl Andréas in 1887. In 1912, she began to attend the famous Wednesday sessions of the Psychoanalytic Society in Vienna. In 1921, he began a friendship with Freud’s youngest daughter, Anna Freud, which would last a lifetime. Frau Lou, as she was also called, wrote several novels and texts on Nietzsche and Rilke. posterity the following texts: – Psychosexuality (1915), chapter of the unfinished work O amor do narcissismo;- Open letter to Freud (1931);- Correspondence with Sigmund FreudThe Correspondence with Sigmund Freud is important for those who wish to know more about the history of psychoanalysis and the International Psychoanalytic Society.

The word alzheimer’s is currently associated with alzheimer’s disease. The name was given in honor of its discoverer, the German physician Alois Alzheimer. Although he is not exactly an author in the field of psychology, psychoanalysis or psychiatry, he influenced the way the world saw dementia and, more than that, managed to clinically prove that brain alterations, in the neurofibrillary tangles, were responsible for the cause of the disease.

Aloysius Alzheimer was born on June 14, 1864 in a small town in southern Germany called Markbreit. His father Eduard Alzheimer was a public notary.

Since childhood, Alzheimer’s had great facility for studies, especially in the area of ​​natural sciences. At the age of nineteen, he began his course at the University of Berlin, an important center for the production of knowledge in the medical field. The following year, he decided to move to the University of Würzburg, where he would have the opportunity to specialize in histology and microscopy.

In Tübigen, in 1886 and 1887, he finished his course, where he would present the case whose pioneering spirit would make him internationally known, and whose disease would bear his name.

Cola graduated in medicine in 1888, and in the same year, he already had a medical license to practice. He becomes Associate Professor at the Royal Clinic of Psychiatry in 1908, founding the Laboratory of Neuropathology.

The August D case, which would consecrate it, was presented in 1906 at the 37th Meeting of Psychiatrists of Southeast Germany, completed the following year with the publication in “Allgen Z Psychiatrie Psych – Gerich Méd”. It would be the eminent psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin, head of the clinic where Alzheimer worked, who would name this clinical class as Alzheimer’s disease in the 8th edition of his book: “Psychiatrie: Ein Lehrbuch fur Studierende und Artze” – second volume of his “Clinical Psychiatry” (title in Portuguese) – published on July 15, 1910. It was in this volume that Kraepelin expanded Chapter VII entitled “Pre-Senile and Senile Dementia”, and in the index of such book the name “Alzheimer’s Disease” appears for the first time. .

Although he never published a book of his own, Alzheimer was a collaborator in the treatise “Anatomy of Mental Illnesses”, which, for various reasons, was not completed. Together with With Lewandowsky (1876 – 1918) he was founder of the scientific journal: “Zeitschrift für die gesamte Neurologie und Psychiatrie” (Journal of Neurology and Psychiatry).

The year 1915 marks the beginning of the disease that would lead Aloysius Alzheimer to death, on November 19 in the city of Breslau. Died at the age of 51, as a result of tonsilitis that led to rheumatic fever with endocarditis, glomerulonephritis and finally renal failure, he was buried in Frankfurt.

B

Albert Bandura is known as the forerunner of cognitive psychology. He became a psychologist at age 24 at the University of British Columbia. A few years later, in 1952, he received a Ph.D. from the University of Iowa, where he was influenced by the behaviorist tradition and theories of learning (BOEREE, 2006).

A year later, in 1953, he began teaching at Stanford University and, together with one of his students, Richard Walters, wrote the book Adolescent Aggression in 1959.

It was from this study that he evaluated the behaviorist explanations as insufficient to explain some human learning processes, specifically what he called vicarious learning. From there, he developed the Social Cognitive Theory and broke with behaviorism.

Bandura was elected president of the American Psychological Association in 1973. While president, he focused on trying to create public policies and social practices that had an impact on people’s lives (MERCK, RAMOS & PACKARD, 2006). He received the “APA’s Award of Distinguished Scientific Contributions” in 1980 for his scientific contributions and, currently, at the age of 85, he continues to dedicate himself to research and teaching at Stanford University.

BOEREE, CG (2006). Personality Theories: Albert Bandura. Available at: < http://209.85.62.24/28098/188/0/p373518/en_bandura.pdf >.

MERCK, E.; RAMOS, I. & PACKARD, E. (2006). American Psychological Foundation, 37(7). Available in: 🇧🇷 http://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug06/apf.aspx 🇧🇷

Alfred Binet was a French psychologist who created the first intelligence test, using it on a large scale.

His test influenced the development of intelligence tests applied by psychologists to the present day.

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Raymond Catell was a pioneering researcher in psychology who became known for the concept of multivariate analysis and his 16-factor theory of personality.

Cattell was born in Great Britain in 1905 and died in 1988.

He developed several tests, contributing to several areas of psychology, from personality studies, through the study of emotions and motivation, to group and social behavior patterns.

Carl-Gustav Carus was born in the city of Leipzig, Germany, in 1789. At the age of twenty-one he received a medical degree and specialized in obstetrics and gynecology, but also made important contributions to psychology and psychoanalysis.

He was a professor at the Academy of Medicine in Dresden and also at the Institute for the Training of Midwives from 1815 to 1827. In that year he served as private physician to the King of Saxe.

However, their interests were varied. In addition to works published in his area of ​​expertise, he published books such as Inscriptions from the temples of Delphi and, for psychology and psychoanalysis, the following are of interest:

• Psychology Lectures (1831)
• Psyché, for a genetics of the soul (1846)

Influenced by the German romantic movement, very popular at the time, Carus is an important representative of the so-called Natural Philosophy, Naturphilosophie.

In the book Psyché, for a genetics of the soul, Carus elaborates the theory of the conscious soul, which is, however, influenced by the irrational and creative unconscious. Unaware that it is always dynamically changing.

We see, therefore, that the idea of ​​an unconscious, beyond the conscious sphere, was already being elaborated long before Freud’s psychoanalysis. Freud’s merit was to have managed to demonstrate, with vast clinical material, what Carus already pointed out in a more metaphysical and abstract way.

About Carus, writes CG Jung, in the book The archetypes and the collective unconscious:

“Although several philosophers, such as Leibniz, Kant and Schelling have clearly indicated the problem of the dark soul, it was a doctor who felt compelled to highlight the unconscious as the essential basis of the psyche, based on his scientific and medical experience. We are talking about Carl-Gustav Carus” (JUNG, p. 154)

Carus died on January 28, 1869.

AND

Erik Erikson was born in 1902 in Germany and died in 1994 at the age of 92 in the United States.

His interest in human development started from his childhood experiences, when he suffered at school for being different from his peers (Erikson was tall and blue-eyed due to his Nordic ancestry) and for being Jewish.

He studied with Anna Freud, daughter of Sigmund Freud, who developed an important theory about early childhood. With this, she received the psychoanalyst certificate from the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. He moved to the United States…