Eysenck, Hans Jurgen (1916–97) One of the world's leading but also most controversial psychologists. Eysenck was born in Berlin, but fled to France and then England to escape the rise of the Nazis, and spent most of his working life at the University of London. He was made Professor of Psychology in 1955, and directed the successful Psychology Department of the Institute of Psychiatry, at the Maudsley Hospital in London. He wrote numerous articles and some fifty books, including several best-sellers (
Know Your Own IQ, Uses and Abuses of Psychology, Fact and Fiction in Psychology), many of which involved him in fierce disputes, not only with fellow psychologists, but also with an array of other social scientists.
His major contribution to the development of psychology probably lay in his championing of rigorous experimental and
psychometric tests for research into the human
personality. His monographs often deal with such traits as
extroversion and introversion, political attitudes, and abnormal behaviour including mental illness (see, for example,
Scientific Study of Personality, 1952;
Psychology of Politics, 1954
;
Dynamics of Anxiety and Hysteria, 1957
). Eysenck was a leading exponent of
behaviourism although he also proposed that genetic factors play a substantial part in determining the psychological differences between people. Controversially, he was an early supporter of the thesis that there was a unitary
intelligence which could be measured by IQ tests, and concluded that because research showed the average measured intelligence of Blacks was significantly lower than that of Whites the difference must therefore be genetic (although his later work gives greater emphasis to environmental factors, and accepts that the differences between ethnic groups might be changed). He also argued for the importance of genetic factors in explaining criminality. In the 1970s he conducted a series of studies which suggested that the relationship between smoking and cancer was due to personality differences, rather than carcinogens in tobacco, because people who had emotional problems were more likely both to smoke and to succumb to cancer. This work came under heavy criticism when it emerged that the research had received support from funds provided by American tobacco companies. In
The Natural History of Creativity (1995), he argued that creativity stems from the psychopathological characteristics of creative persons and geniuses, rooted in their DNA structures.
Ironically, although Eysenck himself was often accused of manipulating data to produce results favourable to his own theories, he was also an outspoken critic of psychological studies which made claims that could not be supported by empirical evidence. For example, he published critiques of both parapsychology and
psychoanalysis, including the results from an experiment which seemed to show that distressed people who were given psychotherapy recovered no more quickly than did those who did not receive any such treatment. In his autobiography (
Rebel with a Cause, reprinted in 1997), Eysenck describes his career—not inappropriately—as a series of opposition stands, usually against the establishment (including Freudians and those who advocate the use of
projective tests) and in favour of rebel minorities (notably proponents of
behaviour therapy and genetic studies).
