what are Jews Good For in Psychology and Philosophy?
My second article in the series What Good are Jews concerns itself with Jewish contributions to the fields of Psychology and Philosophy. I am not writing the complete encyclopedia of Jewish endeavors in these subjects so what follows is a rather brief compendium.
Psychology and Philosophy
- 83% of the major figures in the establishment of Gestalt Psychology were Jews: Max Wertheimer (principal founder), Kurt Koffka, Kurt Lewin, Kurt Goldstein, and Edgar Rubin. JINFO.ORG
- Most of the early proponents of Psychoanalysis, founded by Sigmund Freud, a Jew, were also Jews: Alfred Adler, Erik Erikson, Sandor Ferenczi, Anna Freud, Erich Fromm, Melanie Klein, Otto Rank, and Theodor Reik. JINFO.ORG
- One of the two co-founders of Humanistic Psychology was a Jew: Abraham Maslow. JINFO.ORG
- The major contributors to the development of Cognitive Psychology were Jews: Ulric Neisser, Lev Vygotsky, Jerome Bruner, Herbert Simon, and Noam Chomsky. JINFO.ORG
- 39 of the 100 most eminent psychologists of the 20th century: Jews (1).
- 40% of the most frequently cited researchers in both the professional literature and in introductory psychology textbooks: Jews (2).
- 40% of the current membership of the division of psychology of the US National Academy of Sciences: Jews. JINFO.ORG
- Founder of Objectivism: Jew - Ayn Rand.
- Founder of Phenomenology: Jew - Edmund Husserl.
- Major contributors to philosophic thought in western civilization: short list: Moses Maimonides, Baruch de Spinoza, Karl Marx, Edmund Husserl, Henri Bergson, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Sir Karl Popper - all Jews. One-sixth of the greatest figures in Western philosophical thought: Jews [BBC Great Philosophers Series]
ENDNOTES
(1):
American Psychological Association, Eminent psychologists of the 20th century
July 2002, Vol 33, No. 7
1. B.F. Skinner
2. Jean Piaget
3. Sigmund Freud
4. Albert Bandura
5. Leon Festinger
6. Carl R. Rogers
7. Stanley Schachter
8. Neal E. Miller
9. Edward Thorndike
10. A.H. Maslow
11. Gordon W. Allport
12. Erik H. Erikson
13. Hans J. Eysenck
14. William James
15. David C. McClelland
16. Raymond B. Cattell
17. John B. Watson
18. Kurt Lewin
19. Donald O. Hebb
20. George A. Miller
21. Clark L. Hull
22. Jerome Kagan
23. Carl G. Jung
24. Ivan P. Pavlov
25. Walter Mischel
26. Harry F. Harlow
27. J.P. Guilford
28. Jerome S. Bruner
29. Ernest R. Hilgard
30. Lawrence Kohlberg
31. Martin E.P. Seligman
32. Ulric Neisser
33. Donald T. Campbell
34. Roger Brown
35. R.B. Zajonc
36. Endel Tulving
37. Herbert A. Simon
38. Noam Chomsky
39. Edward E. Jones
40. Charles E. Osgood
41. Solomon E. Asch
42. Gordon H. Bower
43. Harold H. Kelley
44. Roger W. Sperry
45. Edward C. Tolman
46. Stanley Milgram
47. Arthur R. Jensen
48. Lee J. Cronbach
49. John Bowlby
50. Wolfgang Köhler
51. David Wechsler
52. S.S. Stevens
53. Joseph Wolpe
54. D.E. Broadbent
55. Roger N. Shepard
56. Michael I. Posner
57. Theodore M. Newcomb
58. Elizabeth F. Loftus
59. Paul Ekman
60. Robert J. Sternberg
61. Karl S. Lashley
62. Kenneth Spence
63. Morton Deutsch
64. Julian B. Rotter
65. Konrad Lorenz
66. Benton Underwood
67. Alfred Adler
68. Michael Rutter
69. Alexander R. Luria
70. Eleanor E. Maccoby
71. Robert Plomin
72.5.* G. Stanley Hall
72.5. Lewis M. Terman
74.5.* Eleanor J. Gibson
74.5. Paul E. Meehl
76. Leonard Berkowitz
77. William K. Estes
78. Eliot Aronson
79. Irving L. Janis
80. Richard S. Lazarus
81. W. Gary Cannon
82. Allen L. Edwards
83. Lev Semenovich Vygotsky
84. Robert Rosenthal
85. Milton Rokeach
88.5.* John Garcia
88.5. James J. Gibson
88.5. David Rumelhart
88.5. L.L. Thurston
88.5. Margaret Washburn
88.5. Robert Woodworth
93.5.* Edwin G. Boring
93.5. John Dewey
93.5. Amos Tversky
93.5. Wilhelm Wundt
96. Herman A. Witkin
97. Mary D. Ainsworth
98. Orval Hobart Mowrer
99. Anna Freud
*Numbers with .5 indicate a tie in the ranking. In these cases, the mean is listed.
Source: The Review of General Psychology (Vol. 6, No. 2).
(2):
Western Kentucky University, The 100 psychologists most frequently cited in the professional journal literature.
Rank Name Citations 1 Freud S. 13,890 2 Piaget J 8,821 3 Eysenck HJ 6,212 4 Winer BJ 6,206 5 Bandura A. 5,831 6 Siegel S 4,861 7 Cattell RB 4,828 8 Skinner BF 4,339 9 Osgood CE 4,061 10 Guilford JP 4,006 11 Campbell DT 3,969 12 Festinger L 3,536 13 Miller GA 3,394 14 Bruner JS 3,279 15 Cronbach LJ 3,253 16 Erikson EH 3,060 17 Edwards AL 3,007 18 Rotter JB 3,001 19 Byrne D 2,904 20 Kagan J 2,901 21 Wolpe J 2,879 22 Rosenthal R 2,739 23 Underwood BJ 2,686 24 Paivio A 2,678 25 Rokeach M 2,676 26 Berlyne DE 2,673 27 Stevens SS 2,580 28.5 Rogers CR 2,515 28.5 Jensen AR 2,515 30 Brown R 2,469 31 Witkin HA 2,461 32.5 Simon HA 2,446 32.5 Tulving E 2,446 34 McClelland DC 2,388 35 Cohen J 2,376 36 Anderson NH 2,360 37 Maslow AH 2,321 38 Deutsch M 2,244 39 Kohlberg L. 2,224 40 Thorndike EL 2,222 41 Broadbent DE 2,207 42 Berkowitz L 2,193 43 Miller NE 2,170 44 Rutter M 2,117 45 Freud A 2,074 46 Schacter S 2,045 47 Lewin K 2,015 48 Mischel W 2,011 49 Wechsler D 2,000 50 Jung CG 1,994 51 Allport GW 1,987 52 Postman L 1,908 53 Gough HG 1,859 54 Carkhuff RR 1,854 55 Bowlby J 1,852 56 Shepard RN 1,839 57 Jones EE 1,827 58 Hebb DO 1,823 59 Neisser U 1,787 60 Rapoport A 1,740 61 Posner MI 1,714 62 Goffman E 514 63 Schacter DL 457 64 Estes WK 399 65 Atkinson JW 388 66 Spence KW 378 67 Hilgard ER 324 68 Maccoby E 319 69 Campbell A 292 70 Lindquist EE 291 71 Costa PT 271 72 Kelly HH 269 73 Hull CL 267 74 Asch SE 264 75 Hovland CL 255 76 Newcomb MD 254 77 Mowrer OH 252 78 Rosenberg MJ 237 79 Lorge L 236 80.5 Kenny DA 230 80.5 McCrae RR 230 82 Kazdin AE 222 83.5 Higgins ET 221 83.5 Lichtenstein E 221 86 Fromm E 220 86 Plomin R 220 86 Taylor SE 220 88.5 Hays WL 214 88.5 Rushton JP 214 90 Fishbein M 213 91 Beck AT 208 92 Blanchard EB 206 93 Seligman MEF 205 94 Flavell JH 204 95.5 Markus H 199 95.5 Wilson GT 199 97 Matthews KA 197 98 Bentler PM 193 99 Marsh HW 192 100 Harlow HF 190
