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Society for Military Psychology
Intelligence Testing in the United States Military
A Brief History of Clinical Psychology and Its
Applications to the Armed Forces
- 1855: United States Goverment Hospital for the Insane, later known as St. Elizabeths, was created to care for military psychiatric patients
- 1890: James McKeen Cattell coined the term "mental tests," promoting need for standardization of procedures, use of norms, and advocated use of statistical analysis to study individual differences
- 1892: American Psychological Association (APA) founded under the leadership of G. Stanley Hall, President of Clark University
- 1896: Lightner Witmer, of University of Pennsylvania, coined the term "clinical psychology" and outline program of training and study, a model still followed today
- 1907: Witmer founded the journal The Psychological Clinic and noted "the methods of clinical psychology are necessarily invoked whenever the status of an individual mind is determined by observation and experiments, and...treatment applied to effect a change, i.e., the develpment of such [an] individual mind."
- 1907: Shepard Ivory Franz, civilian research psychologist at St. Elizabeths Hospital, developed routine psychological screening plan for hospitalized psychiatric patients
- 1909: St. Elizabeths Hospital became known for research and training of psychiatrists and military medical officers, under the leadership of William Alanson White.
- 1911: Heber Butts, Navy medical officer stationed at St. Elizabeths, published the first protocol for psychological screening of Navy recruits based on Franz's work.
The Role of Psychologists in The Wars
Military Intelligence Testing