~ Famous Psychologists ~

[MysteRy]

Kurt Lewin



Kurt Zadek Lewin was a German-American psychologist who is recognized as the father of modern social psychology. Born to a Jewish family in Prussia in 1890, Kurt studied medicine from University of Freiburg and later biology from University of Munich. He enlisted in the German army during the World War I, obtaining an iron cross for his services. He completed his Ph.D. from the University of Berlin. In 1921, he was appointed as a lecturer at the Psychological Institute of the University of Berlin. Lewin attended the International Congress of Psychologist at Yale in 1929 where he presented his work on barriers and field forces. Edwin Boring, Director of Psychological Laboratory at Harvard at that time was so impressed that he recommended Kurt for the post of visiting professor at Stanford. Kurt was one of the many Jewish psychologists who were persecuted by the Nazis and he immigrated to the United States becoming its naturalized citizen in 1940.

Kurt Lewin took a different approach to the nature versus nurture debate. He proposed that nature and nurture both interacted to determine the personality of each person. He came up with the Lewin’s equation for behavior B=f(P, E), which is a heuristic formula rather than a quantifiable value, showing that the behavior is a function of the person and his or her environment. Kurt also worked on Force field analysis, which provides an outline for studying the factors that influence a situation, either driving towards a goal or hindering it. In United States, Lewin started working at Cornell University and Iowa Child Welfare Research Station at University of Iowa. He also became the director of the Center for Group Dynamics at MIT. He conducted trainings to combat racial and religious prejudices, known as the “Change Experiment” or the “Sensitivity Training” which led to the founding of the National Training Laboratories. Lewin developed a model for change which consisted of three stages. The first stage dubbed as the “unfreezing” involved overcoming the momentum and shifting the mindset. The second phase consisted of the actual change which was a period of transition and confusion. The third phase was the “freezing” where people adjust to the change and their confidence in the new system starts to rise. Kurt Lewin also conducted a study to understand the different organizational management styles. He defined the types of leadership as authoritarian, democratic or laissez-faire. Groups of school children were assigned to each leadership style. As predicted, the more rigid and authoritarian the structure, the less innovative and creative the decision making is likely to be. Lewin was the one who came up with the term “group dynamics”. He proposed “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts”. He applied his interactionism formula B=f(P,E) and stated that the behavior of the group was determined by the member’s individual personal traits (P) and the environmental factors of the group (E).

Kurt Lewin died of heart attack at the age of 57. His sensitivity training was considered by many as “perhaps the most significant social invention of this century”. He served as a mentor for many prominent psychologists of the twentieth century.

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Lawrence Kohlberg



Lawrence Kohlberg was a distinguished psychologist. He was well known for developing the theory about the stages of moral development. Born on October 25th, 1927, he graduated from University of Chicago. He identified his area of interest in moral development despite the fact that it was a rare subject to study and research in that era. His area of interest created a new field of psychology known as moral development. He started his career by teaching at Yale University as an assistant professor.

Lawrence Kohlberg major works comprised of the theory of moral development. This theory was developed through an inspiration by the works of Jean Piaget. Kohlberg created this theory while studying at the University of Chicago for his bachelor’s degree. His contribution to the field of psychology took him in the league of the most renowned psychologists that the 20th century has produced. That league comprised of 30 most prominent psychologists of the 20th century. The works of Lawrence Kohlberg were responded and supported by the greatest scholars of his time such as James Rest and Elliot Turiel through their valuable contributions. Kohlberg started off his academic career as an assistant professor with Yale University. He worked there from the time period of 1958 to 1961. After that, he joined the University of Chicage as an assistant in the psychology department. He spent one year working as an assistant and then he was appointed as an associate professor for teaching social psychology and education. He wrote a thesis on his findings for the research on the stages of moral development. This research is entitled as Kohlberg’s stages of moral development. The theories proposed by Lawrence Kohlberg is based on the evolution of moral reasoning. His thesis was inspired by the works by Jean Piaget as well as the behavior dilemmas faced by children. According to the theory of moral development, the purpose of education should be to nurture and develop minds.

Lawrence Kohlberg developed his theory on the basis of the assumption that human beings are internally motivated to learn and broaden their horizons by experiencing through the environment they interact with on a daily basis. This phenomenon is known as social development. According to Kohlberg’s  theory, there are certain common patterns observed in the society that constitutes the general social life of the peer groups, families as well as decision making and cooperation for sustenance and mutual defense. Humans in a particular society maintain the same  cognitive patterns and action based activities to maintain and develop the society individually and collectively. These common patterns of social behavior also play a significant role in maintaining fruitful relations with others in the society. Moreover, the experience of each others in the society also motivates them to accept their roles and function smoothly with the society. Eventually Kohlberg frimly embedded the idea that moral development can be incorporated effectively in the society through moral reasoning. He developed six stages of moral development that addressed to the varying levels of ethical behavior in the society. Kohlberg died on January 19th,1987.

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Leon Festinger



Leon Festinger was a well-known American social psychologist. Born on 8th May, 1919, he was the pioneer of social comparison and cognitive dissonance theory. He has the honor of establishing the experimentation techniques in social psychology to an advanced level. He is also very well-known for developing social theory for the proximity effect. Kurt Lewin influenced Leon Festinger as he studied psychology under his supervision at the University of Iowa. Leon Festinger graduated from there in 1941. However, he developed a keen interest in psychology after becoming a faculty member at the Lewin’s Research Center for Group Dynamics based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1945. Although, he was a scholar of high superiority in social psychology, Festinger switched over to research in visual perception. Despite high accomplishments in social psychology, Leon Festinger left this field to seek intellectual stimulation by pursuing different fields of study including the likes of archeology and history.

Leon Festinger has contributed significantly in the field of social psychology. He gave the idea of propinquity which is regarded as one of the vital factors forming the basis for interpersonal interaction. According to the study conducted by Festinger and his team, Propinquity is the foundation for the theory behind proximity effect. According to the concept behind proximity effect, the physical connection between people living close together determines the bond of relationship ties between them. Leon Festinger and his team observed that people who come in contact regularly by travelling together or living on the same floor of an apartment develop long lasting friendships.

One of Festinger’s most effective works also includes the formulation of social comparison theory. According to social comparison theory, social realities are relied upon to a great extent for evaluating various opinions and attitudes according to the social capabilities of an individual. Festinger developed the postulate that people often analyze their attitudes and behaviors by comparing themselves with others whom they consider of equal status. Festinger also wrote a paper on informal social communication in which he postulated that uniformity present in a group gives way to force start communication. According to his theory, uniformity in a group arises from group locomotion and social reality. Leon Festinger also argued that social reality had a significant impact on the formation of opinions and attitudes in people. This phenomenon is known as subjective validity. The social comparison theory presented by Festinger claimed that people continually compare themselves with their compatible for altering their attitudes and behaviors to the highest level possible.

One of the significant works by Festinger is developing the theory of cognitive dissonance. The theory of cognitive dissonance was developed through studying a series of rumors followed by an earthquake in India in 1934. The hypothesis of cognitive dissonance was that a person will try to achieve consistency or consonance when he faces psychological uncomfort  as in cognitive dissonance. Leon Festinger was a true legend in the field of social psychology. He died on February 11th, 1989 in New York City.

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Lev Vygotsky



Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky was a Russian psychologist who made a great contribution in the fields of child development and cognitive psychology. He was born in Western Russia (present day Belarus) in 1896, same year as another famous psychologist, Jean Piaget. He is often known as the “Mozart of Psychology” because, just like the famous composer, Vygotsky came up with several different theories in a short span of time, demonstrating his ingenuity. However, his life was cut short by tuberculosis and he died at the age of 38 leaving many of his theories incomplete. Vygotsky graduated with a degree in law in 1917 from Moscow State University. There he studied a range of subjects including psychology, sociology and philosophy. Vygotsky formally started his career in psychology when he became a research fellow at the Psychological Institute in Moscow.

To understand Lev Vygotsky’s theories, we need to understand the political situation in Russia at the time. When he began working on his theories, Marxism had just replaced dictatorship. Individuals were expected to sacrifice their personal gains for the greater good of the nation; success of an individual was considered a success for the culture. It was in this environment that Vygotsky came up with the Sociocultural Theory. This theory stressed the fundamental role of social interaction in the development of cognition. He believed that since the development was greatly influenced by the culture, it varied from society to society, contradicting the beliefs of Jean Piaget, who maintained that the elementary steps in cognition development were universal. Two of the main principles of Vygotsky’s theories were the More Knowledgeable Other (MKO) and the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). MKO refers to someone who has a greater understanding or a higher skill level than the learner. This may be an adult or a teacher or it might be the child’s peer. In recent times, MKO can be taken to be a machine or even a software. The concept of More Knowledgeable Other is integrated with the Zone of Proximal Development. There is a difference between what a child can achieve independently, called actual development, and what he can achieve with the guidance of an adult, called the level of potential development. The distance between the two development levels is called ZPD. He realized that what a person could be taught mattered more than what the person actually knew. Furthermore, Lev Vygotsky was the first psychologist to document the importance of self-talk for cognitive development. Although psychologists at the time agreed of its existence, they assigned no cognitive value to private talk, or inner speech as it was known. Vygotsky, however, believed that, through inner speech, a child regulated its activity and these children were more competent socially than those who did not indulge in it.

Lev Vygotsky is considered an influential thinker in psychology, and much of his work is being discovered and translated even today. Though he was a contemporary of Piaget and Freud, he failed to gain prominence partly because of his early death, and because the Communist Party tried to suppress his work, which became accessible to the West only in the 1960s. Still, his work is considered an important contribution in the fields of education and development psychology.

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Margaret Mahler



Hungarian psychoanalyst, Margaret Schonberger Mahler, was born in a Jewish family in 1897. After completing High School, she went to Vaci Utcai Gimnazium in Budapest though it was fairly uncommon for women to continue studies. There a friend introduced her to Sandor Ferenczi, a renowned psychoanalyst, who was responsible for developing Schonberger’s interest in the concept of the unconscious and also encouraged her to read Sigmund Freud. In 1917, Schonberger joined a Medical School in Budapest. After a few semesters, she transferred to University of Munich for clinical trainings. She had to face discrimination due to her religion and her sex and had to transfer from Munich to Jena. She graduated magna cum laude from Jena in 1922. Before her graduation however, Margaret witnessed something that later defined her career. She was working late at a clinic one night when a man brought his son who was terminally ill. The man left his child at the clinic who died later that night. This propelled Margaret to study the symbiotic relationship between children and their parents. This marked her transition from pediatrics to psychoanalysis, and she started training at Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute from where she graduated in 1933.

At the age of 39, she was married to Paul Mahler and to escape the horrors of World War II they moved to England and later, to the United States. There she was invited to the faculty of Philadelphia Psychoanalytic Institute and also offered to be chair of the Child Analytic Program. It was at this time that Margaret Mahler made her most valuable contribution to the field of psychoanalysis and child development: Separation-Individuation Theory. According to this theory, the development of psychological “self” for a healthy infant occurs in three phases:

1. Normal Autistic Phase – This period lasts for first few weeks where the infant is detached and oblivious to the world. Most of its time is spent sleeping.

2. Normal Symbiotic Phase – This phase lasts until about five months when the child recognizes the mother but does not consider itself separate from the mother.

3. Separation – Individuation Phase – The child breaks out of its “autistic shell” and begins to interact with the people around him. This phase can be divided into the following sub-phases:

a. Hatching – The period lasts from 5 to 10 months. Using the mother as a point of orientation, the infant becomes interested in the environment.

b. Practicing – The period lasts from 10 to 16 months. The child starts crawling or walking, and explores the world independent of his mother.

c. Reproachment – The period lasts from 16 to 24 months. The child becomes anxious due to being distant from the mother and tries to bond with her again. However, as the child gains language skills, this phase dies down.

Although Margaret Mahler faced many hurdles in life, she persevered and was able to make a significant contribution to her field. She laid the foundations of Masters Children’s Centre in New York. She received several accolades during her career including Barnard College’s highest honor, the Barnard Medal of Distinction, in 1980. She died at the age of 88 in New York City.

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Martin Seligman



“The defining characteristic of pessimists is that they tend to believe that bad events will last a long time, will undermine everything they do, and are their own fault. The optimists […] tend to believe that defeat is just a temporary setback […] they perceive it as a challenge and try harder.” – Martin Seligman, Learned Optimism, 1991.

This is the crux of the life-long research and study conducted by Martin Seligman, a leading American psychologist, father of positive psychology, motivational speaker and pioneer of the “learned helplessness” theory. Born in Albany, New York in 1942, Seligman graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University in 1964, earning an A.B. degree. He received his Ph.D. in Psychology in 1967 from University of Pennsylvania. He became a part of the faculty at Cornell University as Assistant Professor and later returned to teach at the University of Pennsylvania. During and after his doctorate, he worked on a theory of “learned helplessness” which he explained to be a psychological ailment wherein a person perceives himself powerless in a situation. They usually give up rather than fight for control. This, he found, was the root of depression and his research led to prevention and treatment of depression.

In 1995, Martin Seligman had a chance conversation with his daughter that changed his perspective and the focus of his research. While weeding the lawn, Seligman became irritated and shouted at his daughter. Her daughter told him that she had stopped whining since her fifth birthday, and if she could give it up, he could stop being grumpy. Seligman at that time realized that clinical psychology only focused on treatment of unhappy state of mind. Psychology was also needed for fostering and propagation of healthy minds. He wanted to find out what makes people content and happy. His work with Christopher Peterson led to the founding of Positive Psychology, a field of study that examines healthy traits in a person, positive emotions such as happiness, strength of character and optimism. He gave six basic virtues namely wisdom, valor, kindness, righteousness, temperance, and transcendence whose cultivation in a person boosted mental well-being. At first, it was a very inexact science with few experimental evidence, but his efforts has led to its growth over the past two decades.

Dr. Martin Seligman is the 13th most frequently quoted psychologist in elementary psychology texts. In 1996, Dr. Seligman was selected as President of American Psychological Association by the highest number of popular votes in the history of the organization. Presently, he is Zellerbach Family Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania as well as Director of the Positive Psychology Center. His writings have been translated into more than fifteen languages and have been best sellers both in US and abroad. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Time Magazine, Newsweek, the Reader’s Digest, Parents, Fortune, Family Circle, and many other popular magazines. He has appeared on numerous television and radio shows speaking on topics related to science and practice of psychology. In addition to psychology, he has written articles on such wide-ranging issues as education, violence, and therapy. He has addressed and inspired educators, industrialist, parents, military veterans and mental health professionals around the world.

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Mary Ainsworth



Mary Dinsmore Salter Ainsworth is an American child development psychologist known for her work on emotional attachment of infants to their caregiver using “The Strange Situation” experiment along with her work in development of Attachment Theory.

Born in Glendale, Ohio in 1913, Ainsworth was the eldest of the three daughters of the Salter family. When she was 15, she read William McDougall’s Character and Conduct of Life which stirred her life-long interest in psychology. Ainsworth enrolled in the psychology program at the University of Toronto in 1929 and was one of only five students to be offered admission to the program. She completed her BA in 1935, MA in 1936 and PhD in 1939, all from the same university. Ainsworth started teaching at University of Toronto until 1942 when she decided to join Canadian Women’s Army Corps. After four years in the Army, where she was promoted to the rank of a Major, she returned to University of Toronto as Assistant Professor. There she became emotionally involved with a graduate student, Leonard Ainsworth, whom she later married. Though the marriage lasted only ten years, her subsequent trip to London for Leonard’s doctoral research proved to be monumental in her career.

During her time in England, Mary Ainsworth started study at Tavistock Clinic with psychologist John Bowlby. There she studied the effect of maternal separation on child development. She also went to Africa and conducted a study there to prove that these effects were universal. Bowlby believed that attachment was an all or nothing process. Ainsworth, with her colleagues, was able to prove through “The Strange Situation” experiment that there are individual differences in attachment, offering an explanation for these differences. This experiment was her most significant contribution to the field of child development and paved the way for future research in the field. In this experiment, an infant between one and two years of age is left in a room to explore some toys while their caregiver and a stranger enter and leave the room and tries to communicate with the child. The reaction of the child helped classify him into one of three categories: secure attachment -the child feels safe with the mother and interacts with the stranger only in the presence of the mother, ambivalent attachment – the child cannot decide whether to forgive the mother for leaving him alone with the stranger and avoidant attachment – the child shows no distress when mother leaves or re-enters and does not interact with the stranger. This strength of attachment, according to Ainsworth, correspond to whether the mother is available to meet the child’s needs which gives the child sense of security and confidence about his future needs being met.

Mary Ainsworth taught at the John Hopkins University and later at the University of Virginia. She headed the Society for Research in Child Development from 1977 to 1979 and was a fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA) and the British Psychological Association. She received the Award for Distinguished Professional Contribution to Knowledge and G Stanley Hall Award from APA. She was also awarded the Gold Medal for Scientific Contributions from American Psychological Association in 1998. Mary Ainsworth breathed her last on March 21, 1999 at the ripe age of eighty six years.

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Max Wertheimer



Max Wertheimer was a well-known psychologist. He was born in Prague on April 15th, 1880. He was famous as one of the founding members of Gestalt psychology. He opened his eyes in am extremely intellectual family receiving his early education from home where he took part in educational and political discussions with his parents. His father was an educationist by profession and his mother had received her doctorate degree from University of Wurzburg. Max Wertheimer studied at the Psychological Institute at University of Frankfurt where he made an observation on flashing lights at a railway station to study the illusion created by train movement. He had also worked as a professor at the University of Frankfurt where he taught for several years. He migrated to United States in 1933, where he worked as a professor at the New York School for Social Research in New York City. He taught at the school for a period of ten years. It was due to his remarkable academic skills and efforts that New York schools became one of the top notch schools of psychology in the beginning period of twentieth century.

Max Wertheimer was one of the founding members of Gestalt psychology. According to his theory on Gestalt psychology, “There are wholes, the behavior of which is not determined by that of their individual elements, but where the part-processes are themselves determined by the intrinsic nature of the whole. It is the hope of Gestalt theory to determine the nature of such wholes.” He developed an interest in studying perception at the age of 30 when he viewed a stroboscope at a children’s toy store. This evoked his interest in theories relating to perception. The theory on Gestalt psychology is the basis on which human beings understand and react to the world around them. He wrote one of the best books on psychology entitled as “Productive Thinking.” This book was later published by his son, Micheal Wertheimer, who was an accomplished psychologist, himself.

Max Wertheimer was the pioneer of Gestalt psychology. It is due to this prestige that he exercised huge influence over other facets of psychology involving the theories of perception, sensation and experimental psychology. One of the well-known psychologist Solomon Asch wrote, “thinking of Max Wertheimer has penetrated into nearly every region of psychological inquiry and has left a permanent impress on the minds of psychologists and on their daily work. The consequences have been far-reaching in the work of the last three decades, and are likely to expand in the future.” The formation of Gestalt psychology was due to the reaction towards structuralist school of thought. Structuralism focused on disintegrating mental thoughts and processes into small parts whereas Gestalt psychology focuses on mental processes and thoughts as a whole so the holistic approach was adopted by Gestalt psychology. The Gestalt school of psychology founded by Max Wertheimer gave emergence to Gestalt laws of perceptual organization. These laws explains that how insignificant and small objects are joined together to make larger objects. Max Wertheimer gave the field of psychology one of his best works. He died on October 12th, 1943.

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Melanie Klein



“One of the many interesting and surprising experiences of the beginner in child analysis is to find in even very young children a capacity for insight which is often far greater than that of adults.”- Melanie Klein

Melanie Klein was a true legend in the field of developmental psychology. Born on 30th March, 1882, in Austria she was a psychoanalyst known for devising therapeutic techniques for children. She studied in depth about the relationship between a mother and child in order to devise play therapy technique in the field of developmental psychology. Melanie Klein was also the pioneer of formulating object relations theory.

She spent her early life in Vienna, Austria. She wanted to attend medical school initially, but later she developed an interest in towards the field of psychoanalysis. Her first subjects were her own children in the field of psychoanalysis. She moved to Berlin in 1921, where she studied psychoanalysis under the supervision of Karl Abraham. Karl Abraham also performed psychoanalysis on her. Her impressive work performance in the field of psychoanalysis led him to Ernest Jones who was a British psychoanalyst. He invited her to London to work for him in 1926. She worked there until her death in 1960.

Besides, Karl Abraham, Sigmund Freud also played a significant role as an influencer on Melanie Klein. During the period of her research association with Sigmund Freud and her psychoanalyst daughter, Anna, Klein developed ideas that conflicted with the views of continental analysts. These controversial views forced the British Psychoanalytical society to split into three schools of thought known as Kleinian, Anna Freudian and independent.

Klein was the first psychologist who performed psychoanalysis on children. She was very innovative in applying her versatile techniques in working with children. This also assisted her in formulating theories related to infant development. Klein is also one of the pioneers of object relations theory. This theory depicts the process of establishing a psyche surrounding the growth of an individual as compared to an individual’s surroundings and environment. The foundation of the psyche consists of Eros and Thanatos. Eros denotes the “life instinct”, whereas, “Thanatos” denotes the “death instinct”. According to the theoretical framework developed by Melanie Klein all the living organisms are continually flowing towards an inorganic state. This inorganic state is known as Thanatos or “death instinct”. This also proved that humans are driven towards death. Melanie Klein and Sigmund Freud regarded the forces of Eros and Thanatos as the biomental forces that form the base of the psyche. She observed that children do their emotional communication while playing. After studying and observing numerous children playing with dolls, plasticine, paper and other toys, Klein developed a sense in interpreting the behavioral pattern of children while playing.

Melanie Klein was a thoroughly accomplished psychologist. It was due to the hard work of Melanie Klein that kleinian psychoanalysis became one of the major schools of thought within the field of psychoanalysis. She breathed her last on 22nd September, 1960, in London, England.

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Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi



“Repression is not the way to virtue. When people restrain themselves out of fear, their lives are by necessity diminished. Only through freely chosen discipline can life be enjoyed and still kept within the bounds of reason.”- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Milhay Csikszentmihalyi was a Hungarian psychology professor. He was born on September 29th, 1934 in Fiume, Itlay. When he was 22, he moved to the United States of America. He has a very thriving academic career. Formerly, he served as a chairperson of the psychology department at the University of Chicago. Before that, he had also served at the department of anthropology and sociology at the Lake Forest College. Currently, he is serving at the Claremont Graduate University. He studied from University of Chicago receiving his B.A. and Ph.D. in 1960 and 1965, respectively. He also taught at the University of Chicago from 1969 to 2000. He was honored with the Clifton Strengths Prize in 2009 as well as Széchenyi Prize in Budapest in 2011.

One of the significant works of Milhaly Csikszentmihalyi was on the idea of happiness. He presented his theory on the notion of happiness or satisfaction in his seminal work entitled as Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. He analyzed that people are at their optimum level of happiness when they are in a state of flow. He defined “flow” as a state of complete absorption with the action that the person is occupied with at hand. It can also include a situation rather than an activity. Happiness is a state in which people do not get bothered about what’s happening around them due to the activity or situation they are involved with at the point in time. He depicts the concept of flow as “being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost”. This theory about happiness is related to the fact that he spent a part of his life in a camp where he used to play chess. He found chess so exciting and absorbing that he could not notice what was happening around him. This is how his theory about happiness as a state of flow is related to his experience. His work on the theory of flow has been appreciated by a broad range of people from different fields. Two of the most influential personalities that appreciated his work on his unique theory of happiness are former US president Bill Clinton, as well as, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is also a productive writer. He has published several articles on diverse topics as well as book chapters in the field of psychology. His profound research and writings on the theory and state of joy and happiness and creativity have played a vital role in developing an interest towards the field of positive psychology.

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Milton Erickson



“The best way of learning, to use folk language, is by getting the feel of it. You get the feel of a poem, the feeling of a picture, the feeling of a statue. Feeling is a very meaningful word. We do not just feel with the fingers, but with the heart, the mind. You feel with the learning of the past. You feel with the hopes for the future. You feel the present”.-Milton Erickson

Milton Erickson was an eminent American psychiatrist born on 5th December, 1901. His specializations were family therapy and medical hypnosis. He had the honor of being the founding president of the American Society for clinical hypnosis. He was also the fellow at the American Psychological Association as well as the American Psychopathological Association. Milton’s approach to observing the unconscious mind was very profound and creative. The studies he conducted on the unconscious mind led to a greater degree of problem solving related to the problems of an unconscious mind. Milton Erickson also played a significant role in the field of strategic family therapy, neuro-linguistic programming, solution-focused brief therapy, brief therapy and family systems therapy. Milton Erickson is one of the most significant figures in the field of modern hypnosis as he had a personal history regarding this field. When Milton Erickson was young he suffered from polio. He used the techniques of self-hypnosis to heal his pains and sufferings caused by polio.

According to the study of Milton Erickson, hypnosis is systematic utilization consisting of experiential learning or learning by experiences. Milton Erickson also inferred that hypnosis is not a mystical procedure at all.  Erickson is most popular for his approaches to psychotherapy that are somewhat unconventional. Jay Haley, one of the pioneers of family therapy, acknowledges “Erickson’s unconventional approach” in his book entitled as Uncommon Therapy. This book written by Jay Haley discusses the wide usage of hypnosis to as well as story and therapeutic metaphor. Erickson conceived the term “brief therapy” as a method to address therapeutic change in comparatively few sessions. Milton Erickson had a unique ability to alter a person’s neurotic habit, cultural backgrounds, favorite words and even beliefs to cure the person out of his or her sufferings through the therapy of hypnosis. According to Erickson’s belief, the unconscious mind is always working, even when an individual is in his sleep. He coached to his students that the unconscious mind can be separated from the conscious mind by instilling the very concept. The unconscious mind can develop its own learning, training, responses, interests and awareness by training to separate itself from the conscious mind. According to the teachings imparted by him, an unconscious mind is solution-generating, creative and positive. As a famous and well-learned and experiences hypnotherapist, Erickson discovered that people who are resistant towards going into a state of hypnosis or trance are resistant to adopt change in themselves. Erickson has transferred his knowledge to a lot of eminent persons. He died on 25th March, 1980.

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Nathaniel Branden



“There is overwhelming evidence that higher the level of esteem, the likely one will be to treat others with respect, kindness and generosity.”-Nathaniel Branden

Nathaniel Branden is one of the most well-known psycho-therapist famous for his works in the psychology of self-esteem. Born on 9th April, 1930, in Canada he acquired his BA in psychology from University of California, Los Angeles. After that, he did his MA from New York University. He earned a Ph.D. in psychology from California Graduate Institute.

Nathanial Branden’s close association with Rand developed his interest in her philosophy of objectivism. He worked to propagate her philosophy of objectivism. Ayn Rand was a Russian-American writer who used the concept of objectivism in her novels. This philosophy is based on the fact that the existence of reality is independent of consciousness. Branden founded the Nathanial Branden Institute (NBI) in 1958 to spread the Rand’s concept of objectivism. NBI flourished widely till 1968 offering a wide variety of courses across 80 cities. The institute also established an office in the Empire State building. The association of Rand and Branden did not last long, and Rand split apart from him in 1968. One of the most ground breaking works on the concept of self esteem is done by Nathaniel Brandon. According to his concept of self-esteem it is one of the most significant human psychological needs and the lack of adequate self-esteem results in anxiety, depression, defensiveness as well as difficulty in maintaining relationships. According to his definition of self esteem it is,” “the disposition to experience oneself as competent to cope with the fundamental challenges of life and as worthy of happiness.”

Braden proposed six most important pillars of self-esteem that are living consciously, self-acceptance, self-responsibility, self-assertiveness, living purposefully and personal integrity. Living consciously is one of the most vital aspects of a healthy level of self-esteem. It is the concept of living mindfully, the concept of becoming aware in mind of the things that one is doing in present. Living consciously also means letting go the past and start living and doing things in the present. The other most important part of a healthy self-esteem is self-acceptance. It is the second stage of building up a good level of self-esteem. Self acceptance means being true to oneself in terms of a person’s emotions, thoughts, behaviors as well as respecting oneself in terms of treating oneself kindly and respectfully. Self-responsibility is the third most important aspect of self-esteem. It incorporates taking responsibility for one’s actions, behavior, thoughts as well as outcomes. Self-assertiveness is the fourth factor that contributes to a healthy self-esteem. It is the ability to express oneself in terms of needs and interest in better ways. The fifth foundation for a healthy self-esteem is living purposefully with impressive and massive goals. The last factor is maintaining personal integrity in one’s behavior and actions.

Nathaniel Branden is considered the father of the self-esteem movement. He has also written numerous books on self esteem and other areas of psychology

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Otto Rank



“Life in itself is a mere succession of separations. Beginning with birth, going through several weaning periods and the development of the individual personality, and finally culminating in death – which represents the final separation. At birth, the person experiences the first shock of separation, which throughout his life he strives to overcome.”- Otto Rank

Otto Rank was a renowned Austrian writer, teacher and psychoanalyst.  Born on April 22nd, 1884, in Vienna, he was a very ardent writer on concepts and theories of psychoanalysis. He served as an editor of two of the most significant analytic journals as well as managing director of the publishing house run by Sigmund Freud. Rank was also a creative therapist and theorist.  He was influenced by the likes of Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche,  Henrik Ibsen and Arthur Schopenhauer. He acquired education in the field of psychology from the University of Pennsylvania and University of Vienna. Otto Rank’s association with Sigmund Freud began when he presented a brief manuscript to him on his study entitled as “Artist”. Freud became so impressed with Otto Rank that he invited him to Vienna and offered him work as secretary at the famous Vienna Psychoanalytic Society.  Rank accompanied as Freud’s “right hand man” as well as the first paid associates of the Psychoanalytic movement.

Otto Rank was the first psychoanalyst to view therapy as an experience of learning and unlearning. According to his concept, the relationship formed with a patient during a therapy allows them to learn ways through which they can incorporate creative thinking, making them realize the present.  They also learn to let go of self-destructive thinking and feeling in order to remain in present. Neurosis is a pattern related to self-destruction that denotes thinking in a destructive manner, as opposed to Freud’s assumption related to sexual retreat. Otto Rank’s psychological concepts of creativity have been implemented on action learning to incorporate group problem-solving, leadership development, organizational learning and team building. The aim behind action learning is to inquire fiercely through asking evil and blasphemous questions that will allow patients to let go their negative shells by eradicating their negative beliefs and assumptions. These questions assist the group members in stepping out of their destructive ideologies to see and experience the world in a more positive manner. This process forms new perspectives that allow patients to delve into discovering a different world that no one has ever seen and experienced before. In short action learning is the therapy of learning to unlearn.

Otto Rank played a vital role in creating an impact on the works of different psychologists including Carl Rogers, Rollo May, Jessie Taft, Ernest Becker, Henry Miller, Mathew Fox, Irvin Yalom, Paul Goodman and many others. Otto Rank is regarded as a great pioneer in the fields of existential psychotherapy, transpersonal psychology, gestalt psychology as well as humanistic psychology. He died on 31st October 1939 in New York at the age of 55.

[MysteRy]

Paul Ekman



Paul Ekman is an American Psychologist who was born on February 15, 1934 in Washington DC, however, he grew up in New Jersey, Washington, Oregon and California. He is regarded as one of the best psychologists of  20th century. He was the first person to study human emotions and how it could be related to facial expressions.

Ekman’s research was based on how human traits, emotions and deception developed over time through empirical research. He negated the belief of anthropologists such as Margaret Mead who implied that facial expressions are determined culturally but instead remained forthright on the fact that it is developed universally and is biological in origin. These included expressions such as disgust, fear, anger, shame, surprise, sadness and happiness. Although, there are not much findings on contempt but it can be said that this emotion is universally recognized.

In 1957, his first publication contained all the findings for developing methods for measuring nonverbal behavior. His work gained inspiration from renowned psychologist, Silvan Tomkins. He also used oral signs of lying in his profession. In the Monica Lewinsky scandal, he claimed that Bill Clinton was lying because he used distancing language. Paul Ekman didn’t manage to graduate from high school and at the age of 15, he got admission in the undergraduate program at the University of Chicago. In 1954, he studied at New York University and got his BA. Moreover, in 1958 at the Adelphi University, he received his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology which led him to doing a one year internship at the Langley Porter Neuropsychiatric Institute. His classmates at the University of Chicago included Susan Sontag, Mike Nichols and Elaine May. In 1971, he received a Research Scientist Award from the National Institute of Mental Health which later got renewed in 1976, 1981, 1987, 1991 and 1997.

National Institute of Mental Health supported Paul Ekman’s research through fellowships, grants and awards for over forty years. In 1985, being encouraged by his college friend and teacher Silvan Tomkins, he wrote a very famous book called Telling lies. Ekman teamed up with John Cleese for the BBC documentary series The Human face in 2001. He retired from the post of professor of psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California in 2004. From there onwards, he worked at the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute. He currently serves on the Editorial board of Greater Good magazine which encompasses scientific research in compassion, altruism and peaceful human relationships. On the other hand, he is also working with Computer Vision researcher Dimitris Metaxas on a visual lie detector. In the May 11, 2009 edition of Time magazine, he was named one of the top 100 most influential people.

[MysteRy]

Paul Watzlawick



Paul Watzlawick was an Austrian American psychologist and philosopher born on July 25, 1921. His hometown was Villach, Austria; he graduated from high school in 1939. At the University of Venice, he earned a doctor of philosophy degree in 1949. In 1954, he studied at the Carl Jung University in Zurich and received a degree in analytical psychotherapy. He continued his researching career at the University of El Salvador in 1957.  Paul was one of the most influential and renowned figures at the Mental Research Institute. In 1960, he was invited by Don D Jackson to do research at the Mental Research Institute and apparently in 1967, he started teaching psychiatry at the University of Stanford. Over there, he followed the footsteps of Gregory Bateson and the other research team and introduced the theory of schizophrenia knows as the “double bind” which describes when a person is trapped under mutually exclusive expectations. His other work in 1967 i.e. the Pragmatics of Human Communication based on Bateson’s theory made an indelible mark in the work of communication theory. Many other scientific contributions were made by him such as the radical constructivism, the theory of communication and also family therapy.  His theory had great impact on the work of Friedemann Schulz von Thun and his theory of four side models. Moreover, Paul did extensive research on the effect of communication on families. He defined five axioms in his theory on communication which is known as the Interactional View Theory which is essential so that there is communication between two individuals in a family. As far as theory is concerned, miscommunication can always happen because communicators are not speaking the same language most of the time. Generally, it happens because people hold different perspectives while speaking and therefore the axioms explain how miscommunication occurs if the communicators are not on the same page. If however, the axioms are disturbed then there are likely chances of the communication failing. Much of the axioms are derived from the work of Gregory Bateson collected in “Steps to an Ecology of mind”. Paul Watzlawick has 18 books to his credit in 85 foreign language editions and more than 150 book chapters and articles. Some of his books are Pragmatics of Human Communication (1967), Change (with John Weakland and Richard Fisch) (1974), How Real Is Real? (1976), The Language of Change (1977), Gebrauchsanweisung für Amerika (1978), The Situation Is Hopeless, But Not Serious: The Pursuit of Unhappiness (1983), The Invented Reality: How Do We Know What We Believe We Know? (Contributions to Constructivism) (1984) and Ultra-Solutions, or, How to Fail Most Successfully (1988).  Paul Watzlawick lived and worked in Palo Alto, California, until his death at the age of 85.