Lightner Witmer: Little-known founder of clinical psychology.

Abstract

Lightner Witmer inaugurated the first psychological clinic in 1896, and he also took a number of other crucial steps in establishing and defining the field of clinical psychology. Witmer was one of the early group of Americans who took their doctorates under Wilhelm Wundt. He was a charter member of the American Psychological Association and the last to die. Clearly, he is an important figure in the history of psychology, yet relatively little biographical information about him has been available. This article summarizes his life and career, examines the beginnings of his clinic, and evaluates the significance of his contributions.Late in the summer of 1892, Lightner Witmer, then a young man of 25, returned by steamer from Europe, where he had earned a PhD in psychology under Wilhelm Wundt. On the way home he stopped in London to present a paper on his dissertation research at the International Congress of Experimental Psychology. I Witmer was returning to the University of Pennsylvania, where he had been assistant to James McKeen Cattell before going to Leipzig. When, in 1891, Cattell had accepted a position at Columbia, it had been agreed that Witmer would go to Leipzig to work on his doctorate, and, if successful, would then return to take over the Pennsylvania laboratory. Thus, in the fall of 1892 he began a tenure on the Pennsylvania faculty that was to last for 45 years.Witmer's stay at Leipzig followed that of Frank Angell and overlapped with that of Edward B. Titchener. In the same term that Witmer took over the laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania, Angell inaugurated experimental psychology at the newly founded Stanford University, and Titchener replaced Angell at Cornell. That same autumn also saw Miinsterberg begin his tenure at Harvard. American psychology was taking on a shape that it would hold for many years to come.The American Psychological Association (APA) was also founded in 1892, and Witmer, along with such other early figures as G. Stanley Hall, William James, George Ladd and Cattell, was one of its charter members. Its first annual meeting took place at the University of Pennsylvania in December of that year, and Witmer (1894b) read two papers, one on the aesthetics of visual form, his dis-sertation topic, and one on individual differences in reaction time.This, then, was the beginning of Witmer's professional career. His position of eminence in the history of psychology derives, of course, from his central role in the establishment and development of clinical psychology. As is well known, Witmer founded the world's first psychological clinic at the University of Pennsylvania in 1896. This important event was followed by a number of other pioneering contributions to the clinical area. These include the explicit call for the establishment of a new field of psychology that would be devoted to helping people and would be known as clinical psychology, the development of the first curriculum in clinical psychology, and the founding of the first journal devoted exclusively to this new pro...

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