The Early Days of Experimental Psychology at UA

By Norm Ellis

     If you really want to know about the heritage of the Psychology Department, read Paul Siegel’s 84 page paperback “A Personal History of the Department of Psychology of the University of Alabama,” that was written in 1995 (see link above). I believe you’ll find it interesting. In 1937 A & S first began listing psychology courses in the catalog; the College of Education already listed such courses.   An MA degree was offered in the late 40’s, and the Ph.D in the 1958-59 year.

       I entered the MA program in 1951.  At that time there were 6 or 7 faculty members, including Oliver Lacey (Chair), Paul Siegel, George Passey, Al Peyman, Elliot McGinnes, and Margaret Quayle.  Lacey was a Cornell graduate, and a “brass instrument psychologist” but with a strong interest in statistics.  Siegel and Passey are best described as neobehaviorists.  McGinnes was a Harvard trained social psychologist; Peyman and Quayle were clinicians. Scientific psychology was the main thrust of the department.

Students came away steeped in Pavlov, Thorndike, Titchner, Watson, Hull, Spence, Tolman, and Skinner.  For the MA degree, students completed 48 hours of course work, a thesis, an oral exam, and acquired a reading knowledge in either French or German..  In one year, 30 students were admitted and 5 graduated!  The demanding academic program was made even more daunting by numerous beer parties, all night poker, and sundry other gaieties (Tuscaloosa County was dry at that time; so there were many home brew experts around).  The department was housed in Comer Hall with an animal lab in the basement.  A “computing room” featured one Marchand calculator.  When jammed, a repairman from Birmingham had to be called.  If you were responsible, you’d better wipe away your fingerprints and steal silently away.  Of course a calculator failure was devastating for all of us for we had to compute ANOVAs and other statistics on a regular basis for the Lacey courses.

        Ray Fowler was a classmate in the MA program; we both survived and Ray later became chair of the department.  I went on to LSU to work on a Ph.D and returned to UA in the 1954-55 year as a “temporary acting assistant professor” (I was told the title was better than instructor).  (Mike Dinoff was a student in my physiological class. He later became a faculty member and Clinic Director.)  The department had changed little by this time.  I returned again in 1964 as a full fledged faculty member.  By then, the Ph.D program was offered in clinical and experimental.  The faculty consisted of Earl Brown (Chair), P. Siegel, C. Rickard, K. Melvin, M. Dinoff, A. Peyman (now parttime), S. Kendall, W. Sullins, J. Koehler, B. Hall, and R. Fowler. A. Baumeister, P. Weisberg, and H. Miller came later. Becky Pollitt was office manager for the department when I returned (and when I retired).  She played a strong and much needed role in the department over the years.

    In 1965 a Ph.D in experimental psychology with emphasis on research in mental retardation was introduced.  This program was modeled after one that I had participated in at Peabody College.  An NICHD grant provided funds for fellowships.  In the 1990s we modified the program to include the full range of intelligence, and labeled it cognitive psychology.

     In my early days in the Department, SEPA had not come into being.  We attended the  meetings of the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology and the Alabama Psychological Association.  The SSPP was a strong organization committed to philosophy and academic/scientific psychology.  These were the big social events of the year, attended by both faculty and graduate students. My return to Tuscaloosa was just after the “stand in the schoolhouse door.”  Segregation was much the order of the day—separate drinking fountains in stores, separate seating in the theaters and the presence of the KKK (They dropped leaflets from an airplane into our yard a few days after we arrived).  Morrison’s Cafeteria on the strip, and other establishments in the city, were being picketed.  One of our faculty members was arrested in a protest.  One of my students marched in a protest in Tuscaloosa and was denied service by a downtown shop.  His house was also vandalized.  I digress but, in retrospect, it seems hard to believe.  It was the worst of times.

   Finally, I remember with great pleasure the students who completed the MR/Cognitive Ph.D during my tenure in the department.  A majority of them went on to hold faculty positions in good colleges and universities, and many made substantive contributions to scientific research in psychology.

History and Background of the Clinical Program

By Charlie Rickard

              Paul Siegel was the major force behind the initiation of our clinical program. Frank Shaw was recruited in to direct the program, a process well underway before his untimely death in 1961.  Ray Fowler, who had followed Margaret Qualye as Director of the Psychological Clinic, assumed responsibility also for the fledgling clinical program.  Clinical faculty, recruited in the mid 60’s, included Mike Dinoff, Howard Miller and myself (Charlie).  When Earl Brown, who was chair  left the department, Ray was made chair in 1965.  In 1966, Ray appointed Mike as Director of the Psychological Clinic and me as Coordinator of the Clinical Training Program, positions both held throughout those early years, and beyond.

              From the start, excellent relations existed among our faculty. Both experimental and clinical members served on all PhD committees.  All students took a substantial core of basic experimental content and methodology. The clinical program required an additional core which included diagnostics, psychotherapy/behavior change, and practicum experiences, all supervised by our own clinical faculty. The program was framed in the scientist-practitioner model and the search for new, replicable knowledge was valued.

              Practicum supervision took place predominately in the Department’s Psychological Clinic.  Ray had developed the clinic into a well-staffed, viable training faculty; Mike expanded it in positive directions still visible today.  He insisted upon a model clinic that would prepare students for internship and beyond. Lars Peterson, working at the VA Hospital, and Al Peyman at Bryce were among the community psychologists who provided experiences and financial support concurrent with Departmental training. John McKee and C. J. Rosencrans, prominent Alabama psychologists, provided friendship and wise council as our program developed.

              In those days there was a severe shortage of clinical psychologists to meet developing mental-health needs in various communities.  Clinical faculty members consulted widely around the state, and students participated in what amounted to an intensive tutoring experience.  These consultations, in a number of cases, resulted in the development of community mental-health clinics.  Howard Miller was prominent in the employment of students for those trips, a number of whom were minority students he had helped to recruit.  The take-along-a-student on supervisory field trips became an excellent training strategy.  The ultimate student experience was the Court-Mandated Alabama Prison Classification Project, organized and directed by Ray.  For the clinical faculty and students who participated in this project see Siegel (1995, p. 13; Fowler article, 2006).  Prior to that project, the Department had started the nation’s first PhD program in the training of psychologists to work in prisons and legal settings.  The three core faculty members were Ray, Stan Brodsky and Carl Clements.  

              Early on, the clinical program emphasized the development of specialties embedded in the general program.  Ray, with considerable vision and energy, obtained grants carrying stipends that made possible specialty programs in clinical mental retardation, alcoholism and law/psychology.  Mike Dinoff, a clinician, and Al Baumeister, an experimental psychologist, obtained a training grant that allowed students such as Rex Forehand, Don Gordon and Tom Mulhern to get a PhD. in clinical psychology with specialization in mental retardation.  The first two programs were eventually dropped as funding faded, but the psychology/law specialty, under the inspired direction of Stan Brodsky, remains an important clinical program.  Faculty recruited for specialty programs included Wes Libb, Bill Jansen, Annette Brodsky, Chuck Owens, Carl Clements and Stan Brodsky. 

The child-clinical specialty from its inception drew a large number of Ph.D. applicants.  Camp Ponderosa, a 7-week summer program for emotionally disturbed children, served as a major training experience.  The University of Alabama’s residential and community treatment program for children, known as Brewer-Porch, in large part grew out of the Ponderosa program.  The first Director, Wes Libb, and its later Director, Bob Lyman, were former Ponderosa counselors, as were Carl Clements, Andy Lattel and dozens of other students.

              During that first decade of the Clinical Program, some forty students received clinical Ph.D. degrees.  They were participants in a new program searching for effective training strategies.  For example, we experimented with intermingling clinical and experimental cores, not a common practice in those days.  The students did well in both programs and expressed appreciation for an early clinical emersion.  Available feedback indicates that these early graduates have performed admirably as academicians, institutional psychologists, as private practitioners and in other psychology-related positions. Many thanks, you pioneers.