G. Stanley Hall

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Lore & Background

Born in Ashfield, Massachusetts, Hall grew up on a farm with his parents, Granville Bascom Hall, who served on the Massachusetts legislature, and Abigail Beals, a former teacher. As an adolescent, Hall experienced frequent nocturnal emissions. He attended Williston Seminary and graduated from Williams College in 1867, then studied at the Union Theological Seminary. Inspired by Wilhelm Wundt's Principles of Physiological Psychology, Hall pursued doctoral studies at Harvard University, where he met William James, an adjunct professor who had just taught the nation's first psychology class. In 1878, Hall earned his doctorate in psychology from Harvard, the first psychology doctorate awarded in the United States. Afterward, he studied at the University of Berlin and spent a brief time in Wundt's Leipzig laboratory in 1879. He began his career teaching English and philosophy at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and then teaching history of philosophy at Williams College. Following successful lecture series at Harvard and Johns Hopkins University, Hall secured a position in the philosophy department at Johns Hopkins, teaching psychology and pedagogy. He remained at Johns Hopkins from 1882 to 1888 and, in 1883, began the first formal American psychology laboratory. Hall was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1888.

Reader's Guide

Hall's significance in American psychology is foundational. In 1887, he founded the American Journal of Psychology, and in 1892 was elected the first president of the American Psychological Association. In 1889 he was named the first president of Clark University, a post he filled until 1920. He was instrumental in the development of educational psychology and attempted to determine the effect adolescence has on education. He invited Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung to deliver a lecture series in 1909 at the Clark University Vicennial Conference on Psychology and Pedagogy, Freud's first and only visit to America. Darwin's theory of evolution and Ernst Haeckel's recapitulation theory were large influences on Hall's career. He believed that as children develop, their mental capabilities resemble those of their ancestors and so they develop over a lifetime the same way that species develop over eons. Hall was also one of the founding members and a vice president of the American Society for Psychical Research, but became an outspoken critic of parapsychology. He and his assistant Amy Tanner debunked spiritualist mediums, documenting tests with Leonora Piper in Tanner's 1910 book Studies in Spiritism. Hall was heavily influenced by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and his theory of evolution, finding the idea of passing on memories from parent to offspring a plausible mode of inheritance. In 1917, he published Jesus the Christ in the Light of Psychology, his least successful work, and in 1922, at age 78, published Senescence, a book on aging.

Did You Know?

• Hall earned the first doctorate in psychology awarded in the United States of America, from Harvard in 1878.
• He was the first president of both the American Psychological Association (1892) and Clark University (1889–1920).
• Hall invited Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung to Clark University in 1909 for Freud's first and only visit to America.
• He founded the American Journal of Psychology in 1887 and began the first formal American psychology laboratory in 1883 at Johns Hopkins.
• Hall and his assistant Amy Tanner debunked the medium Leonora Piper, proving her personalities were fictitious creations, not discarnate spirits.