Hall, G. Stanley

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Hall, G. Stanley

G. Stanley Hall (1844–1924), American psychologist and educator, was born in the rural hamlet of Ashfield, Massachusetts. In 1863 he enrolled at Williams College, where he studied with Mark Hopkins. After graduation, although he was with out a strong sense of vocation, he enrolled at the Union Theological Seminary in New York City. He spent a year there, more intent on absorbing the various facets of city life than on theological study. He then sought and received from Henry Ward Beecher a loan of $500 for foreign study. He went to Bonn, where he concentrated on philosophy and theology, but afterward, at Berlin, his interests broadened to include physiology, physics, and work in a clinic for mental diseases. He also enjoyed the lighter side of Berlin, its beer gardens and theaters. In 1871, heavily in debt and without a degree, he returned home. Failing to receive an appointment at a midwestern university, he accepted a position as tutor to the children of a New York City banker and remained for more than a year in this post.

A charming, enthusiastic person, Hall had a lively interest in many of the intellectual issues and writers of the day, from associationism to evolutionism, and from John Stuart Mill to Thomas Carlyle. His religious leanings, which had never been strong, disappeared and were replaced by a mild skepticism. University teaching became his professional goal.

He was offered a post at Antioch College, the midwestern outpost of Unitarianism, where for three years he taught English literature, French and German language and literature, and philosophy, as well as serving as librarian, choirmaster, and even occasionally as preacher. He read Wilhelm Wundt’s Principles of Physiological Psychology when it first appeared and immediately decided to return to Germany to study psychology. But he got only as far as Cambridge, Massachusetts, when an offer of an instructorship in English at Harvard diverted him from his plan. Although the grading of sophomore English themes consumed much of his time, he also carried on research in the Medical School laboratory of Henry P. Bowditch. This physiological research and some study with William James were accepted by the department of philosophy as fulfilling the requirements of a ph.d. degree in psychology. Hall was the first in the United States to receive this degree.

Immediately thereafter he left for Europe. He did work in physiology at Berlin and then went to Leipzig where he was the first of Wundt’s many American students. Yet the enthusiasm engendered by his reading of Wundt’s work did not survive direct contact: although he attended Wundt’s lectures and served as a subject in his psychological experi ments, he apparently did not carry on any research of his own.

On returning to Boston he was without a job or even any prospects of one. A providential offer from President Eliot of Harvard to sponsor him in a series of extension lectures on education saved the day financially and, what is more important, brought him to the attention of Daniel C. Gilman, president of the then recently founded Johns Hopkins University, an institution already celebrated for its pioneer graduate program, organized after the plan of the German universities. In 1882 Hall arrived in Baltimore, and in 1884 he was made professor of psychology and pedagogics.

To further scientific psychology, in 1883 Hall set up a laboratory in a private house adjacent to the campus. The following year he opened the first university psychology laboratory to win formal acceptance in the United States. While at Johns Hopkins he and his students published papers on optical illusions, skin sensitivity, the perception of space, and the time sense. John Dewey completed a dissertation on the psychology of Kant, William Burnham published on memory, and James Mc-Keen Cattell (1890) wrote papers on reaction time and speed of association, as well as his famous “Mental Tests and Measurements,” which intro duced the term mental test.

Hall had for some time dreamed of the possi bility of establishing a journal devoted to psychol ogy. One day a stranger walked into his office and offered him $500 to help found a journal. Although the gift was apparently based on a misunderstanding—the benefactor discontinued his subscription after the second year when he discovered that the journal did not intend to foster psychic research (spiritualism)—it did result in the appearance, in 1887, of the American Journal of Psychology, the first psychological journal in this country.

Meanwhile, Hall was preparing to leave for Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, to become its first president. The school was being financed by Jonas G. Clark, a wealthy, retired merchant who wished to endow an educational institution in his home town. After what eventually turned out to be too sketchy an understanding with Clark, Hall departed for a tour of European educational centers to inspect possible models for the new uni versity and to find likely prospects for professional appointments (Rush 1948). He had visions of a graduate school modeled on the German univer sities and perhaps even superior to Johns Hopkins. Research was to be paramount, teaching secondary.

In 1889 Clark University opened its doors with only a few departments staffed and with no pretense at covering all academic fields. Mr. Clark, a reticent man, had different ideas from those of the eager Hall and proved to be secretive about his financial plans for the university. The amount of money he advanced was small, very much smaller than Hall had been led to expect. Hall did not disclose this discrepancy to the faculty, who blamed him for the less than expected equipment, salaries, and assistantships. “Calls” from the University of Chicago, then being founded—and supported by the Rockefeller millions—decimated the Clark faculty. Over the next few years, those who remained made the necessary adjustments, some more money was raised, and toward the end of the century, the bulk of the Clark estate did come to the university. It was divided among the library, the graduate school, and a new undergraduate college. Although Clark’s will stipulated that he was to have no connection with the college, Hall continued as president.

Hall, fortunately, had appointed himself professor of psychology and all through these hectic years taught in the graduate school; it was his most brilliant and productive period. From Johns Hopkins he had brought along Edmund C. Sanford to head the laboratory and W. H. Burnham to teach pedagogy, which was interpreted to mean educational psychology and mental hygiene. Adolf Meyer, then with the Worcester State Hospital and destined to become the leading psychiatrist of his day, gave lectures in abnormal psychology.

Hall was an inspiring teacher to a majority of the first generation of American-trained psychologists. By 1893, 11 of 14 and by 1898, 30 of 54 of the ph.d.s granted in psychology were awarded to his students (Harper 1949). Among them were Lewis M. Terman, who developed the Stanford-Binet Scales of Intelligence, Henry H. Goddard, who was a pioneer student of the mentally re tarded, and Arnold Gesell, who did so much pains taking research on the mental and physical development of children.

Their work indicated that Hall’s own interest had shifted from experimental to developmental psychology, although he continued eloquently to defend laboratory work of all sorts. While at Hop kins he had published a paper entitled “Content of Children’s Minds” (1883). With the aid of a questionnaire technique, which he was the first to apply in the United States, he unearthed a variety of information about the thinking of children. He questioned them about such matters as the sense of self, religious experience, fears, and favorite foods. This approach generated great public en thusiasm and before long led to the so-called child study movement. Large numbers of parents and teachers, outside of Hall’s personal sway, uncriti cally and dogmatically used his technique to secure information about children. Hall lost interest in the technique and not long afterward a reaction, both within psychology and from the public itself, set in and the movement disappeared. It did have the salutary effect of bringing to the public some awareness of the importance of child study and, by its very excesses, created a more critical attitude toward research in child psychology (Bradbury 1937).

Hall had a more sustained interest in adoles cence. His monumental and influential work, Ado lescence (1904), contained the most complete statement of his particular theory of recapitulation in development. The individual child was seen as repeating the life history of the race: when a child played at cowboys and Indians, for example, he was seen as behaving at the level of primitive man. In his old age Hall returned to the problem of development and published a volume entitled Senescence (1922).

Along with his research, writing, teaching, and administrative duties, Hall was concerned with Psychology on the national scene. In July 1892 he called the meeting which resulted in the founding of the American Psychological Association (Dennis & Boring 1952). Almost as a matter of course he was elected its first president. The scientific pur pose of this organization was firmly established un der his guidance. He founded and edited still other journals: in 1891 the Pedagogical Seminary (now the Journal of Genetic Psychology), in 1904 the Journal of Religious Psychology, and in 1917 the Journal of Applied Psychology.

Hall was one of the first Americans to arrange for a hearing of Freud’s views and to teach his theories. Indeed, Freud’s only visit to the United States was at Hall’s invitation to the twentieth anniversary celebration of Clark University in 1909. In view of the suspicion and dislike that the psy choanalytic movement raised at this time, the invitation showed courage on Hall’s part.

Hall’s administrative-organizational efforts continue to live on: the American Psychological As sociation that he founded had 24,000 members by 1966; Johns Hopkins and Clark University depart ments of psychology each went through a series of unsettling experiences but at present are among the strong graduate departments; the journals he founded, in all but one instance, continue to flourish. He was very modern in his stress on de velopment despite the fact that his way of using Haeckel’s discredited biogenetic principle has disappeared without a trace. He has had little direct effect upon current intellectual traditions, but his enthusiasms, his broad convictions, and his emphasis on developmental issues were transmitted to his students, many of whose formulations are very much part of the current scene.

Robert I. Watson

[Other relevant material may be found inAdolescence; Aging, article onpsychological aspects; Developmental psychology; Intellectual de velopment; and in the biographies ofBaldwin;Cattell; Gesell; Seashore; Terman; Wundt.]