Tag Archives: AHAP

Inside the Center for the History of Psychology

As we come to the end of 2010, AHP would like to take a moment to mark a milestone in efforts to preserve psychology’s past. On September 1, 2010 the new Center for the History of Psychology in Akron, Ohio opened its doors. This Center houses both the Archives of the History of American Psychology (AHAP) and a new Museum of Psychology that displays many of AHAP’s most remarkable items. As described by Lizette Royer, Senior Archives Associate for the Center,

The Center includes a self-guided gallery of some of psychology’s most important artifacts including a Bobo Doll that Albert Bandura used during his research on aggression and the Simulated Shock Generator that Stanley Milgram used during his studies on obedience in the 1960s. Visitors can view artifacts from the IQ Zoo, a roadside attraction created by psychologists (and students of BF Skinner) Keller Breland and Marion Breland Bailey. The IQ Zoo featured animals trained using behavioral principles that performed a variety of tasks including a duck that played piano and a chicken that played tic-tac-toe. Also on display are artifacts from Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment and numerous items related to the history of the assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of mental illness and the role psychology has played in the military.

The Center, with its on-site Archives, is a wonderful new resource for scholars working in the field, while also serving as a venue for educating the general public about the history of psychology. To celebrate this development AHP shares with you some images of the new Center.

All images in this post come via the State Library of Ohio Newsletter, The News, article “Center for the History of Psychology at the University of Akron,” by Lizette Royer. Further photographs of the new Center, as well as an audio interview with the Center’s Director, David Baker, can be found here. AHP’s previous posts on the new Center can be found here and here.

Continue reading Inside the Center for the History of Psychology

Akron Archives Moves to New Building

Banner at AHAP's new buildingThe Archives of the History of American Psychology (AHAP) is moving to a new, bigger building. The famous research center, the largest of its kind in the world, has for many years been holed up in the basement of the Polsky Building at the University of Akron, in Ohio. But thanks to the efforts of its director, David Baker, and the contributions of many generous donors, the archives will, this weekend, be moving to a new four-storey building near the UA campus that will house not only its collections, but also offer better facilities to its users and staff, as well as meeting space for workshops and conferences. There will also be a gallery to highlight some of AHAP more notable treasures, such as Stanley Milgram’s simulated shock machine, Albert Bandura’s Bobo Doll, and a door from Philip Zimbardo’s “prison.”

One can find an interview with Dr. Baker about the new facilities here.

AHAP Wallbreaking Photos

Photographs from the wallbreaking ceremony for the new home of the Archives for the History of American Psychology (AHAP) can now be found on Flickr. The first phase of renovations for AHAP’s new home is scheduled to be completed in August.

Located at the University of Akron, Ohio, AHAP is dedicated to preserving psychology’s history by collecting, cataloguing, and making available items of importance to psychology development.

AHAP’s wall breaking was previously discussed on AHP here. Other AHP posts on AHAP can be found here, here, here, here, here, and here.

AHAP Breaks the Wall on New Home

The “wallbreaking” for the new home of the Archives for the History of American Psychology (AHAP) took place last Friday, February 26th. AHAP will move to its new location in August once renovations are complete.

According to the University of Akron’s news item on the wallbreaking,

The phase of the project currently under way, which will be completed by August, includes renovation of the first floor and lower level of the building. This renovation will feature a covered colonnade along College Street, masonry repairs on the exterior, new windows to admit daylight, along with a gallery to display objects from the AHAP collection. Other elements include a reading room, offices, administrative space, and space for handling new acquisitions. Subsequent renovations will occur in stages, as funding becomes available.

“We are pleased to add to the landscape of The University and the city of Akron this incredibly rich cultural resource,” says Dr. David Baker, AHAP director and interim provost. Continue reading AHAP Breaks the Wall on New Home

APA Restores AHAP Funding for 2010

In a meeting of the Council of Representatives of the American Psychological Association, held in Washington over the weekend, the Association’s funding of the Archive for the History of American Psychology (AHAP) for 2010 was restored to previous levels. The change to APA’s funding of AHAP came as the result of a friendly amendment to the 2010 APA budget proposed by James Pate, Council Representative of the Society of the History of Psychology, Division 26 of the APA.

AHP previously covered the APA’s decision to reduce its funding of AHAP from $60,000 to $20,000 a year, as well as the resultant fallout from this decision, which included the resignation of prominent APA member Ludy Benjamin Jr. from the association. This weekend’s budget vote reversed the drop in funding to AHAP, but only for 2010. Efforts to ensure a long term restoration of APA funding for AHAP continue.

In response to news of APA’s increase in 2010 funding for AHAP, David Baker, Director of the Archives of the History of American Psychology, informs AHP that, “We are very pleased that our colleagues on the APA Council of Representatives would rally to the cause of the history of psychology.”

The APA’s decision to cut funding to AHAP, and the resultant fallout, was previously discussed on AHP here, here, and here.

Humanistic Psychology Landmark Site up for Sale

In 1964, the American Humanistic Association of Psychology (AHAP) held its first invitational conference on in Old Saybrook, Connecticut. The conference, popularly known as the “Old Saybrook conference,” was crucial in developing the character of Humanistic Psychology in America. Now the venue for this historical meeting, The Castle Inn, has been listed for sale.

According to the Association for Humanistic Psychology (the current incarnation of AHAP), the 1964 conference was,

an historic gathering that did much to establish the character of the new movement. Attendees included psychologists, among whom were Gordon Allport, J.F.T. Bugental, Charlotte Buhler, Abraham Maslow, Rollo May, Gardner Murphy, Henry Murray and Carl Rogers, as well as humanists from other disciplines, such as Jacques Barzun, Rene Dubos and Floyd Matson. Continue reading Humanistic Psychology Landmark Site up for Sale

SHP Pres’s letter; APA Pres. Bray’s Response

Christopher D. GreenPreviously on AHP: during the American Psychological Association’s (APA) annual convention, held earlier this month in Toronto, the APA Council approved a drastic cut in funding to Archives of the History of American Psychology (AHAP). AHP’s previous coverage of APA’s funding cuts to AHAP, and the fall out thereof, can be found here and here.

Now, Christopher Green, President of the Society for the History of Psychology, Division 26 of the APA, has voiced his opinion on the recent decision to cut funding to AHAP. Green, in a recent letter to APA President James Bray, voiced his disappointment at APA’s decision with respect to AHAP. Both Green’s letter to Bray and Bray’s response follow.

In his letter to President Bray, Green wrote:

I am compelled to register my extreme disappointment with the shabby treatment that the APA has accorded the Archives for the History of American Psychology (AHAP) at the University of Akron. Although the APA’s normal annual contribution to AHAP had already been approved by APA Council earlier in the year, an unelected APA administrator took it upon himself to unilaterally cut the contribution in half, exposing this important research institution — an affiliate of the Smithsonian — to serious operational difficulties in the middle of the year with no advance warning. Continue reading SHP Pres’s letter; APA Pres. Bray’s Response

APA: Ludy Benjamin resigns over AHAP, torture

Ludy Benjamin Jr.Breaking news: Ludy Benjamin Jr. has resigned from the American Psychological Association.

In addition to his well-known and long-standing scholarly involvement in the Society for the History of Psychology, for which he was recognized as a Fellow in 1981, he has also shaped the last quarter-century of several APA divisions: Teaching (Division 2), for which he was recognized as a Fellow in 1982; General Psychology (Div. 1) and Psychology of Women (Div. 35) in 1990; and Experimental Psychology (Div. 3) in 1997. 

His presence will surely be missed.

But the reasons for his resignation run deeper than the recent cuts made to the Archives of the History of American Psychology. In a note sent to the listserv of the Society for the History of Psychology, he explained:

I began thinking about resigning when APA Council began passing resolutions on the involvement of psychologists in torture and interrogations that were opposite to positions taken by other national associations in health care and public welfare. But I stayed in because of the AHAP funding issues. As I indicated in my resignation letter to James Bray, I was not resigning because APA cut funds to the Archives. But I was resigning because the process was, in my opinion, one of subterfuge from the initiation of the cuts in Central Office through what I perceived as the rigged debate on the floor of Council in Toronto.

He will also return his Presidential Citation, awarded for his many contributions to the Association.

I have been a student affiliate member since my senior year in college and a member since 1971. I have been to every APA convention since 1974. In the nearly 40 years of my membership I have held many offices in APA on boards and committees and APA Council, as well as spending two years in APA Central Office as Director of the Office of Educational Affairs. APA has given me much and I have worked hard for the Association in return.

Yet, even as he resigns from the APA, he won’t be leaving History.

Resigning was not an easy decision for me. It is something that until recently I never imagined that I would do. APA has meant much to me and it pains me to leave the Association in this way. However, I feel that my own values do not mesh well with those of the Association’s leadership. I will continue to support the Society for the History of Psychology and maintain my membership there.

To join the Society for the History of Psychology, without first joining the American Psychological Association, find information here.  For information about how to support the Archives of the History of American Psychology (both financially and in terms of donating historical materials), look here.

APA turning its back on history

The American Psychological Association (APA)’s 117th annual convention wrapped up yesterday in Toronto, Canada. The Society for the History of Psychology (SHP), APA’s Division 26, put on a full and engaging program of 39 sessions over the four days which culminated with APA Council bestowing upon Dr. Ludy T. Benjamin, Jr. a presidential citation in recognition of his contributions to the discipline. But a decision by APA council just before noon on Sunday would put a damper on the mood of the whole event: they have decided to cut their annual contribution to the Archives for the History of American Psychology (AHAP) from $60,000 annually to $30,000 this year and $20,000 next year. This decision was made against the recommendations by many on council who stood to speak up against such a significant budget cut to an archives that counts among its collection the papers of many past APA presidents and APA divisions.

These actions by the APA are extremely disappointing. I would go so far as to say that from the point of view of a graduate student in the history of psychology, they are discouraging. AHAP is the only archives dedicated to psychology in North America and serves as a valuable resource to all who are interested in the discipline’s history. I contacted David Baker, director of AHAP, who replied that “It is indeed disappointing that the Executive Management Group and the Board of Directors fail to see the value of our shared past.”

I hope you will join me in (1) writing to APA Council of Representatives in protest of this decision and (2) donating to AHAP to show our support of the work they do for the discipline.

New Assistant Director at AHAP

Cathy Faye, ABD in the History and Theory of Psychology program at York University, has been appointed Assistant Director of the Archives of the History of American Psychology (AHAP) in Akron, Ohio. David Baker remains the director. Faye begins her 2-year term as Assistant Director of the Archives in August.

The Archives of the History of American Psychology was founded in 1965 by Dr. John Popplestone and Dr. Marion White McPherson with the aim “to preserve the historical record of psychology.” Each year more than 300 individuals visit the archives.

Included in the Archive are:

Over 750 Manuscript Collections
Over 20,000 images in the Still Image Collection
Over 6000 films
Over 3000 audio tapes
Continue reading New Assistant Director at AHAP