Lightner Witmer
Lightner Witmer (June 28, 1867 – July 19, 1956) was an American psychologist. He introduced the term "clinical psychology" and is often credited with founding the field that it describes. Witmer created the world's first "psychological clinic" at the University of Pennsylvania in 1896, including the first journal of clinical psychology and the first clinical hospital school in 1907.
Lightner Witmer
Witmer contributed to numerous branches of psychology including school psychology. He contributed to the field of special education.
Little is known about Witmer's life. He is described as an introverted and private person.
Education[edit]
As a young man, Witmer wanted a better future and a better world after the social problems he saw as a result of the Civil War. In 1880, Witmer and his brother Ferree enrolled in the Prep School “Episcopal Academy of Philadelphia”, one of the best schools in America at the time.
Witmer showed his intelligence and reasoning ability at Prep School. Witmer and two other boys were told to build a canoe, each having everything they needed to complete their task. His two schoolmates were arguing over who would build the canoe first, but Witmer thought and told the other children, "I wish to finish last as I will learn from others' mistakes and build the best canoe."[2]
He graduated with high honors at age 17.
In 1884, Witmer enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania to study art, but after a couple of years he transferred to the Finance and Economy department where he obtained a Bachelor's degree in 1888, aged 20.[2] During his freshman year, he was chosen as the class president and earned a reputation as an outstanding student. After a stint as a teacher, Witmer decided to return to the University of Pennsylvania for his graduate studies in political science.[3]
Rugby Academy[edit]
During the fall of 1888, Witmer was offered a job as an instructor at Rugby Academy, a male secondary school. He taught History and English.
While he was teaching at the academy, Witmer noticed that a 14-year-old student who wished to go to college had extreme difficulties in differentiating sounds, as well as other speech problems that might today be called dyslexia. Witmer decided to help him to correct his problem; the child progressed satisfactorily and was able to continue studying, eventually enrolling at the University of Pennsylvania.[4] This success made Witmer believe that children with learning difficulties could satisfactorily engage in education with support, dedication and special education.
The following year, Witmer decided to attend graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania and was accepted into the Philosophy department. He intended to study law and to work towards an advanced degree in political science.
American Psychological Association[edit]
By 1896, Witmer, G. Stanley Hall, William James and James McKeen Cattell decided to create a new association for psychology professionals, during a meeting of the American Psychological Association (APA). Witmer and other experimental colleagues proposed that the APA should accept only psychological papers, be separated from the American Philosophical Association, and have a better selection process for choosing new members. These proposals sparked a debate among APA members because many of the current members did not want the field to separate from philosophy. Their proposals were rejected, so Witmer attempted to start an association with Hall, exclusively for experimental psychologists, but Hall refused. In 1904 Edward B. Titchener accepted Witmer's proposal to separate Psychology from Philosophy, and decided to abandon the APA society and help Witmer create a society solely for experimental psychologists called The Society of Experimental Psychologists (SEP).
Witmer told Titchener that the association should be only for men and that women should be excluded because they were too emotional when discussing scientific issues.[7] He eventually changed his attitude, and decided to teach female students; accepted women to work at his clinic, and later appointed a woman to manage it.
Witmer wrote and published articles for the APA. In one article, "The Organization of Practical Work in Psychology", he expressed his desire to assist children academically and described a plan for organized education. He proposed that schools should become more involved with their students' classes and grades, that schools should have better educational tools, and that faculty members should receive teaching reflecting psychological findings.[8]
Clinical psychology[edit]
In his 1896 APA paper, cited to be the first instance of his use and explanation of the term "Clinical Psychology," Witmer outlined four main goals for his new discipline.[11] Firstly, it was to focus on the investigation of mental and intellectual disability using statistical and clinical methods. Secondly, clinical psychology as a discipline was to establish more psychological clinics and hospitals specifically for children suffering from intellectual disability or physical defects that impact academic progress. The discipline was to focus on providing opportunities for those in other disciplines, such as teaching, medicine and social work to observe and work with children with intellectual disability and normal children. Witmer's fourth goal was to train more psychologists to become experts in working with mentally and/or morally intellectually disabled clients. In this same paper, Witmer outlined the main concern of clinical psychology: that the discipline focus on active clinical intervention for the purpose of the restoration and treatment of mentally or intellectually disabled individuals. According to Witmer, for clinical psychology to actually be of any worth, it needed to help and improve clients' mental health and well-being.
As clinical psychology was the first discipline in psychology that attempted to apply the principles of scientific psychology to diagnostic and therapeutic treatment, it required its own techniques and procedures. Clinical psychology's original methodologies were highly practical and problem-oriented and were developed solely by Witmer.[5] His early work used a hands-on approach to observation and interviews, emphasizing one-on-one interaction between the client and the clinician.[12]
Additionally, emphasis was placed on the ability of the clinician to be able to work with their clients in a professional, yet personal way. Witmer highlighted the concept of treating each client as an individual, and not simply as a physical manifestation of their problem or a phenomenon to be observed and explained. He emphasized examining each client's personal background history, as he believes it would allow clinicians to better and more fully understand their situation. He was one of the first psychologists to recognize that a client's problems could have environmental as well as hereditary factors, and because of this, he emphasized the importance that treatment should not end with returning the client into the environment from which their physical, mental, or moral problem originated unless something had been done to change it.
Although the treatment programs Witmer created for clinical psychology were systematic, they were constantly revised and implemented new treatment methods as the client improved or problems arose. Treatment involved weekly visits to the clinic and would continue until either the problem was resolved, or the client, or the client's parent/guardian, decided to end it. Witmer's treatment programs were not limited to the clinic in which they took place; he emphasized the importance of ongoing remediation both in between treatment sessions and after treatment had officially ended. To this end Witmer made a point to provide direct advice and consultation to both the client and their caregivers on their living environment and other aspects of their lives in order to improve their problems or disabilities. Many of Witmer's original approaches still exist in modern-day clinical psychology.
Other contributions[edit]
Witmer was responsible for major advancements in the field of school psychology and was cited as the founder of this discipline.[12] Witmer was the first psychologist to undertake and focus, on the treatment of those with mental, physical or moral handicaps with the goal of improving their deficits. He ensured that the treatment of children suffering from a deficit impairing their academic success would be a major focus of clinical psychology when he made one of the discipline's main goals the creation of psychological clinics and hospitals to treat impaired children.
Witmer was the first psychologist to realize teachers' integral role and began offering classes at his clinic for teachers. He opened up his clinic to those in medicine and social work and gave them the opportunity to observe and work with normal and impaired children. This allowed those who interacted with children a chance to work with them in a therapeutic environment. By mixing normal and handicapped children, Witmer gave these professionals the chance to directly observe the differences between the two groups for themselves. He offered these professionals courses that demonstrated how to practically apply his clinical methods. This helped the other disciplines to see the importance of working with disabled children.
Final days
By 1917, Witmer joined the Red Cross. His main task was to help to rehabilitate homeless people who were war victims. When he went to the United States in 1920, his mother died, followed a few years later by Titchener, and he stopped publishing.
By 1930, the University of Pennsylvania presented him with a volume called Clinical Psychology: Studies in Honor of Lightner Witmer.
On July 19, 1956, at age 89, Witmer died at the hospital in Bryn Mawr from heart failure.[5]