Hans Jurgens Eysenck (1916-1997) obituary

Abstract

KEY WORDS: Behavior Therapy, Psychoanalysis, Psychopathology, Personality, Neuroticism, Extraversion, Heredity, Intelligence. When Hans Eysenck arrived in Britain from Nazi Germany in 1934 (via France), British psychology was concerned chiefly with the testing of mental abilities. By 1934, Britain's best-known psychological theorist and writer, William McDougall (1871-1938), was in semi-retirement, having failed to persuade a younger generation in America of the importance of instinctive, purposive, genetic and racial -factors in human mentality. Thus work on mental tests and factor analysis, as by Charles Spearman and Cyril Burt, at London's University College, seemed the only route towards an objective science of human psychology that still dealt with important issues and had practical relevance. The practical aspiration- was that testing would aid selection and counselling in education and the world of work. Safety-first and factorial sophistry seemed to be the watchwords. Thirty years later, Hans Eysenck, though himself no slouch at factor analysis, had changed that. While retaining the emphasis on testing - in his case, by personality questionnaires - and biological factors, Eysenck would get the best out of behaviorism both for differential psychology and for psychology as a whole. Accepting the philosophical empiricism of his adoptive country, he would concern himself [some might say `content himself] with what could be 'proved' in psychology. In particular, after early research into aesthetics, hypnosis, humor, social attitudes and projective tests, Eysenck would be dismissive of psychoanalytic thinking and reluctant to be drawn into the thankless task of measuring particular human motivations. Instead, after the War, Eysenck was prepared to accept the broad thrust of Russian and American behaviorism, to move psychology towards therapeutic intervention (behavior therapy) and to demand and use experimental evidence (even if such evidence had to come chiefly from animals). While accepting the importance of psychometrics and the genetic basis of some of the most important human psychological differences, Eysenck became, with B. F. Skinner, joint leader of a movement that would massively expand the profession of clinical psychology. Such psychologists would have something to offer patients whose intelligence was limited (including in psychosis) and whose behavioral problems thus required re-conditioning procedures. Suitably, Hans Eysenck's Chair in London University was held at the Maudsley Hospital - London's former 'Bedlam' asylum. His 'progressive', optimistic, best-selling Penguin books of around 1960 made him the star of British psychology; and his pre-eminence among experts in habit-breaking was attested by his editorship of his first academic journal, the quickly prestigious Behavior Research and Therapy. Eysenck's most loyal followers (of the London School, deriving its intellectual ancestry from Sir Francis Galton) were undoubtedly those who appreciated his continuing recognition of genetic factors; and this recognition was ever more courageous (especially with regard to racial differences) as crass environmentalism took hold not just of the social sciences but of the media and the soap-opera-viewing public. But a much wider range of psychologists owed Eysenck a debt of gratitude for his stress on conditioning and practical therapy. While retaining the Cartesian concern that psychology be scientific and numerate, Eysenck simultaneously succeeded in maintaining therapeutic optimism. Even his 1960's recommendation of amphetamine as an arousal-increasing cure for excessive extroversion and crime could be taken by psychology's many would-be psycho-social engineers as showing that his heart was in the right place. In the 1980's, at the same time as assisting in tracing IQ differences to biological and genetic roots, he also became keenly involved in high-profile efforts to raise IQ by vitamin and mineral supplementation. …