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Erik Erikson

Born in Frankfurt, Erik Erikson's lifelong interest in the psychology of identity may be traced to his childhood. He was born on June 15, 1902 as a result of his mother's extramarital affair, and the circumstances of his birth were concealed from him in his childhood. His Danish-born mother, Karla Abrahamsen, came from a prominent Jewish family in Copenhagen, her mother Henrietta died when Karla was only 13.[2][3] Abrahamsen's father, Josef, was a merchant in dried goods. Karla's older brothers Einar, Nicolai, and Axel were active in local Jewish charity and helped maintain a free soup kitchen for indigent Jewish immigrants from Russia.[4] Since Karla Abrahamsen was officially married to Jewish stockbroker Waldemar Isidor Salomonsen at the time, her son, born in Germany, was registered as Erik Salomonsen (Karla had not seen Waldemar Salomonsen for several years before Erikson's birth). [5] There is no more information about his biological father, except that he was a Dane and his given name probably was Erik. It is also suggested that he was married at the time that Erikson was conceived.[citation needed] Following her son's birth, Karla trained to be a nurse, moved to Karlsruhe and in 1904 married a Jewish pediatrician Theodor Homburger. In 1909 Erik Salomonsen became Erik Homburger and in 1911 he was officially adopted by his stepfather. The development of identity seems to have been one of Erikson's greatest concerns in his own life as well as in his theory. During his childhood and early adulthood he was known as Erik Homberger, and his parents kept the details of his birth a secret. He was a tall, blond, blue-eyed boy who was raised in the Jewish religion. At temple school, the kids teased him for being a Nordic; at grammar school, they teased him for being Jewish. [edit] Psychoanalytic experience and training Erikson was a student and teacher of arts. While teaching at a private school in Vienna, he became acquainted with Anna Freud, the daughter of Sigmund Freud. Erikson underwent psychoanalysis, and the experience made him decide to become an analyst himself. He was trained in psychoanalysis at the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute and also studied the Montessori method of education, which focused on child development.

Jean Piaget
ean Piaget (French pronunciation: [ pja]; (9 August 1896 16 September 1980) was a French-speaking Swiss developmental psychologist and philosopher known for his epistemological studies with children. His theory of cognitive development and epistemological view are together called "genetic epistemology". Piaget placed great importance on the education of children. As the Director of the International Bureau of Education, he declared in 1934 that "only education is capable of saving our societies from possible collapse, whether violent, or gradual."[1] Piaget created the International Center for Genetic Epistemology in Geneva in 1955 and directed it until 1980. According to Ernst von Glasersfeld, Jean Piaget is "the great pioneer of the constructivist theory of knowing."[2]

B. F. Skinner
Burrhus Frederic Skinner (March 20, 1904 August 18, 1990) was an American behaviorist, author, inventor, social philosopher[1][2][3] and poet.[4] He was the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard University from 1958 until his retirement in 1974.[5] Skinner invented the operant conditioning chamber, innovated his own philosophy of science called radical behaviorism,[6] and founded his own school of experimental research psychologythe experimental analysis of behavior. His analysis of human behavior culminated in his work Verbal Behavior, which has recently seen enormous increase[citation needed] in interest experimentally and in applied settings.[7] Skinner discovered and advanced the rate of response as a dependent variable in psychological research. He invented the cumulative recorder to measure rate of responding as part of his highly influential work on schedules of reinforcement.[8][9] In a June, 2002 survey, Skinner was listed as the most influential psychologist of the 20th century.[10] He was a prolific author who published 21 books and 180 articles.[11][12]

Albert Bandura
Albert Bandura (born December 4, 1925, in Mundare, Alberta, Canada) is a psychologist and the David Starr Jordan Professor Emeritus of Social Science in Psychology at Stanford University. Over a career spanning almost six decades, Bandura has been responsible for groundbreaking contributions to many fields of psychology, including social cognitive theory, therapy and personality psychology, and was also influential in the transition between behaviorism and cognitive psychology. He is known as the originator of social learning theory and the theory of self-efficacy, and is also responsible for the influential 1961 Bobo Doll experiment. A 2002 survey ranked Bandura as the fourth most-frequently cited psychologist of all time, behind B.F. Skinner, Sigmund Freud, and Jean Piaget, and as the most cited living one.[1] Bandura is widely described as the greatest living psychologist,[2][3][4][5] and as one of the most influential psychologists of all time.[6][7] In 2008 Bandura won the Grawemeyer Award in Psychology.

Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud (German pronunciation: [zikmnt ft]), born Sigismund Schlomo Freud (6 May 1856 23 September 1939), was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis. Freud is best known for his theories of the unconscious mind and the mechanism of repression, and for creating the clinical method of psychoanalysis for investigating the mind and treating psychopathology through dialogue between a patient (or "analysand") and a psychoanalyst. Freud established sexual drives as the primary motivational forces of human life, developed therapeutic techniques such as the use of free association, discovered the phenomenon of transference in the therapeutic relationship and established its central role in the analytic process; he interpreted dreams as sources of insight into unconscious desires. He was an early neurological researcher into cerebral palsy, aphasia and microscopic neuroanatomy, and a prolific essayist, drawing on psychoanalysis to contribute to the history, interpretation and critique of culture.

William James
William James (January 11, 1842 August 26, 1910) was a pioneering American psychologist and philosopher who was trained as a physician. He wrote influential books on the young science of psychology, educational psychology, psychology of religious experience and mysticism, and on the philosophy of pragmatism. He was the brother of novelist Henry James and of diarist Alice James. William James was born at the Astor House in New York City. He was the son of Henry James Sr., an independently wealthy and notoriously eccentric Swedenborgian theologian well acquainted with the literary and intellectual elites of his day. The intellectual brilliance of the James family milieu and the remarkable epistolary talents of several of its members have made them a subject of continuing interest to historians, biographers, and critics. James interacted with a wide array of writers and scholars throughout his life, including his godfather Ralph Waldo Emerson, his godson William James Sidis, as well as Charles Sanders Peirce, Bertrand Russell, Josiah Royce, Ernst Mach, John Dewey, Walter Lippmann, Mark Twain, Horatio Alger, Jr., Henri Bergson and Sigmund Freud.

Carl Rogers
Carl Ransom Rogers (January 8, 1902 February 4, 1987) was an influential American psychologist and among the founders of the humanistic approach to psychology. Rogers is widely considered to be one of the founding fathers of psychotherapy research and was honored for his pioneering research with the Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions by the American Psychological Association in 1956. The person-centered approach, his own unique approach to understanding personality and human relationships, found wide application in various domains such as psychotherapy and counseling (client-centered therapy), education (student-centered learning), organizations, and other group settings. For his professional work he was bestowed the Award for Distinguished Professional Contributions to Psychology by the APA in 1972. Towards the end of his life Carl Rogers was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his work with national intergroup conflict in South Africa and Northern Ireland.[1] In an empirical study by Haggbloom et al. (2002) using six criteria such as citations and recognition, Rogers was found to be the sixth most eminent psychologist of the 20th century and second, among clinicians, only to Sigmund Freud.[2]

John B. Watson
Watson grew up in Travelers Rest, South Carolina and attended Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina. A precocious student, he entered college at the age of 16 (he became a member of the Kappa Alpha Order) and left with a masters degree aged 21. He spent a year as a principal for grade school, then entered the University of Chicago to study philosophy with John Dewey on the recommendation of Furman professor, Gordon Moore, who was a major proponent of the view that life and the behavior of living organisms could be explained entirely by chemistry and physics without recourse to a supposed "vital force". Accordingly, Dewey taught that all behavior was dictated by instinct and learned responses to stimuli. The combined influence of Dewey, Angell, Donaldson and Jacques Loeb led Watson to develop a highly descriptive, objective approach to the analysis of behavior that he would later call "behaviorism." Watson's behaviorism is typically considered[by whom?] a historical descendent of British empiricism, and particularly of the views of John Locke. However, Watson said nothing substantive about these things. Rather, his philosophy of science stems from[citation needed] the history of experimental physiology through the influence of Loeb. The reflex studies of Ivan Mikhailovich Sechenov (18291905) and Vladimir Bekhterev (18571927) were particularly influential. Later, Watson became interested in the work of Ivan Pavlov (18491936), and eventually included a highly simplified version of Pavlov's principles in his popular works. [edit] Dissertation on animal behavior Watson graduated from the University of Chicago in 1903. His dissertation "Animal Education: An Experimental Study on the Psychical Development of the White Rat, Correlated with the Growth of its Nervous System. [citation needed] "Animal Education" described the relationship between brain myelinization and learning ability in rats at different ages. Watson showed that the degree of myelinization was largely unrelated to learning ability. Watson stayed at the University of Chicago for several years doing research on the relationship between sensory input and learning and bird behavior.

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