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100 Years of British Military Psychology

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100 Years of British Military Psychology CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by Anglia Ruskin Research Online not as a psychologist but as a soldier, an engineer, ‘or sapper’. As a young man of 22 he fought in the Burmese War of 1885–6 and by the time the Boer War broke out he had reached the rank of Deputy Assistant Adjutant-General. 100 years of British Military When the war ended, he resigned his commission in order to study psychology Psychology (Myers to the MoD) under Wilhelm Wundt at Leipzig Prof Jamie Hacker Hughes CPsychol University in Germany, the first FBPsS experimental psychology department in President (2015-16) the world and, later, taught psychology at London University. He joined the Army British Psychological Society again at the outbreak of the First World War. Introduction This article is based on a talk given to the Charles Samuel Myers CBE FRS 1873- COUPS (Cambridge Open University 1946 Psychology Society) Autumn Conference Charles Myers was born in South London 2014. It is written from the perspective and studied medicine at Cambridge and of a psychologist who was formerly Head Bart’s Hospital. As a young man, he went of Clinical Psychology for the MoD, with a with McDougall, Rivers, Seligman and keen sense of the history of our others on the Torres Straits (the islands profession, and who might describe lying in the seas between Australia and himself as an enthusiastic amateur. The Papua New Guinea) expedition of 1898, author studied at UCL, King’s College described in Ben Shepard’s book, London and Cambridge, all paths well- ‘Headhunters’, and conducted trodden by those whose stories follow musicological research amongst the below, later followed their paths by islanders. working for the Ministry of Defence for a number of years and is now, again, following in many of their footsteps as the British Psychological Society’s 81st President. What follows is a (very brief) synopsis of the development of military psychology in the UK and its influence on the BPS, and psychology in general over the past 100 years, and the individual psychologists, their role(s) and contributions are described in turn. Charles Edward Spearman 1863-1945 The story begins with Charles Spearman Rivers, Seligman & McDougall (famous for Spearman’s Rho, amongst many other things) who began his career After the beginning of the war, Myers volunteered to work in the Duchess of News & Views New Year 2016 Westminster’s Field Hospital in Le part in the 1898 Torres Straits Exhibition, Touquet, was commissioned into the together with Myers, Seligman, Royal Army Medical Corps and was soon McDougall and others, in this case appointed Consultant Psychologist to the carrying out anthropological and British Expeditionary Force, setting up a ethnological research. number of Forward Psychiatry (NYDN – Rivers studied at Cambridge and took Not Yet Diagnosed Neurological) part in nerve conduction experiments Hospitals. He was famous for his 1915 with the famous neurologist, Henry Head. Lancet paper, ‘The Study of Shell Shock’, He became the joint editor and founder but gradually fell from favour with the of the British Journal of Psychology in rise of the neurologists and returned to 1903 and, in 1904, became Lecturer in England to research hydrophones for Experimental Psychology at Cambridge submarine detection at HMS Crystal University. Palace. However, Rivers was probably best known for his work treating British Army Myers refused to participate in the 1922 officers suffering from shell shock in Southborough Commission on Shell World War I at Slateford Military Hospital, Shock, saying that the memories of his Craiglockhart, in Edinburgh (now the wartime experiences were too painful for home of Edinburgh Napier University). him and, instead, founded the NIIP, the His work treating the author Siegfried National Institute for Industrial Sassoon and the poet Wilfred Owen (the Psychology. He served as the first first survived the war but the latter died President of the British Psychological in France the day before the Armistice) Society between 1920-1923, having was described vividly in the Regeneration been a member of the BPS since its trilogy by the author Pat Barker, and in foundation in 1906, and having been the accompanying film of the same Secretary of its predecessor, the name. Tragically, Rivers died in 1922 of Psychological Society (founded in 1901) a strangulated hernia. in 1904. In 1940, he published ‘Shell Shock in France’, a ground breaking William McDougall FRS 1871 - 1939 study of 2,000 cases of shell shock, where he was able to identify several William McDougall began his studies at cases which did not directly involve Owen’s College, Manchester where he explosions and demonstrated that “shell studied for a BSc, then going on to shock” could be treated psychologically. Cambridge where he gained, At the beginning of World War Two, he successively, a BA, MB, BChir and MA. advised the War Office on War Office He then went on to University College, Selection Boards (WOSBs) before his London where he was one of the founder members of the BPS in 1906 and worked death in 1946. with Sully. At the beginning of World War One in 1914, McDougall drove an William Halse Rivers Rivers, FRCP, FRS ambulance on the Western front, but he 1864-1922 was soon commissioned into the RAMC WHR Rivers was another English doctor, as a Major to deal with cases of shell- turned anthropologist, neurologist, shock. ethnologist and psychiatrist, who took 2 OUPS 1974-2016 News & Views New Year 2016 After the War, in 1919, McDougall went Psychology at Birkbeck College, to visit C. G. Jung at Zürich and was, for a University of London. He served as time, also analysed by him. Later, he Senior Principal Psychologist to the Royal went to America to be Professor of Navy between 1940 and 1947. He was Psychology at Harvard University, where described by the Second Lord of the he worked with the celebrated American Admiralty, Admiral Sir Algernon Willis, psychologist, William James. thus: “…the Senior Psychologist and his happy band who, out of the limelight, Sir Frederic have done very valuable work for the Charles Bartlett Navy in putting round pegs into square holes, and in helping to modernise our FRS 1886-1968 hopelessly archaic methods of selecting Frederic Bartlett officers and men into the various was the first branches of the Navy”. Rodger later professor of became the BPS’ Honorary General experimental Secretary between 1957 and 1958. psychology at the University of Cambridge. He John Carlyle Raven 1902 – 1970 later established JC Raven (as he was known) came to the Applied King’s College London in 1939 to study Psychology Unit (APU, now the Cognition psychology under the celebrated Charles and Brain Sciences Unit or CBSU) at Spearman aged 36. When war was Cambridge with Kenneth Craik and then declared toward the end of that year he succeeded Craik as Director in 1945. joined the Mill Hill Emergency Hospital. As a result of his contacts, he was able to initiate research into the ability of his test Philip Vernon 1905 - 1987 to predict success in army training Philip Vernon was recruited by Alec courses, and this has gone down in Rodger (see below), worked with Royal history as the first large-scale Navy HMS Osprey on submarine psychological research project ever detection (SD) and Asdic (Anti-Submarine undertaken by the British army. Detector Equipment) selection during the Second World War. Having not been These studies led to the adoption of his offered the post of Senior Principal (Raven’s) Progressive Matrices as the Psychologist (SP) in succession to Alec first standard psychological test given to Rodger in 1947 he became Professor of all recruits to the army. A derivative, Psychology at the Institute of Education which later formed the basis of the in London and then went on to be Advanced Progressive Matrices (APM), Professor of Psychology and Head of was prepared for use in the War Office Department at University of Calgary, in Officer Selection Boards (WOSB’). It was the validation of the APM that provided Canada. the basis for the claim, subsequently publicised by Raven’s colleague at Mill Alec Rodger 1907 – 1982 Hill, Hans Eysenck, that a single Alec Rodger was Reader in Psychology psychological test could provide as much and then Professor of Occupational information as complex Assessment News & Views New Year 2016 3 Centre procedures. Raven moved to the duties as a navigator/bomb aimer but Crichton Royal to establish the first ever was shot down over the Netherlands, civilian hospital psychology department injuring his arm. After the war, he in 1944 and from there came the worked with Eysenck at Maudsley and beginnings of the first Clinical Psychology established the clinical psychology training course in the United Kingdom. training course and a clinical psychology service at the Bethlem Royal and Maudsley Hospitals in London. He was Alan Clarke 1922-2011 known for his work on early single case- Alan Clark saw wartime service in the studies and in early neuropsychology and Royal Signals (the communications and the M B Shapiro Award is named after telecommunications branch of the Army) him. Despite working for over a quarter and faked messages to deceive the of a century at the Maudsley, Shapiro Germans at the time of the landings on D was never awarded the professorship Day. After the war, he went to Manor which should rightfully have been his. Park Hospital, Epsom where he was responsible for the important book, “Mental Deficiency: The Changing Herbert Phillipson 1911 – 1992 Outlook”. Clark later became the first Herbert Phillipson was initially Professor of Psychology at Hull commissioned into the Royal Artillery University, BPS President and was also, Coastal Defence Unit but was seconded for a time, editor of the British Journal of onto work on WOSBs with Wilfred Bion, Psychology.
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