Granville Stanley Hall

1844-1924

Granville Stanley Hall obtained his bachelors' (1867) and masters' degrees (1870) at Williams College. He attended Union Theological Seminary and, in 1868 to 1871 studied in Bonn, Berlin and Heidelberg. In 1872 Hall he became a teacher of English literature and philosophy at Antioch College. From there in 1876, he moved to Harvard, where he was an instructor of English.

Hall then returned to Europe and studied with Wilhelm Wundt in Leipzig Germany, just at the time Wundt was developing his revolutionary experiments and theorizing that was to serve as fundamental to the emergence of the field of psychology. Hall returned to the US and received his Ph.D. in physiology at Harvard in 1878, where he studied with William James. In 1881 became a professor of psychology and pedagogy at Johns Hopkins University. It was at Johns Hopkins in 1882 that he was awarded $1000 to establish a psychology laboratory, considered by some to the first of its kind in America. He was a professor of psychology and pedagogics at Johns Hopkins from 1883 to 1888. In 1888 he assumed the presidency Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts and remained in that position until his retirement in 1920

Hall was an organization man. He saw the need for founding journals and organizations for the newly emerging field of psychology. He founded and edited the American Journal of Psychology(1887) and the Journal of Religious Psychology (1904), and helped to found Journal of Applied Psychology (1917). He also founded the Child Study Association of America in 1888 and became the first president of the American Psychological Association in 1889.

Among Hall's best known contributions to the psychology literature were his studies in the field of developmental psychology, with a specialty in adolescent development. He is also well remembered for his sponsoring a trip of Freud to Clark University in 1909.

Hall was a supporter and contributor to the ideology of Social Darwinism as manifested in the eugenics movement in American in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He believed in a distinction between "higher" and "lower" human races (Hall, 1903) and that "Negroes" represented an early stage of human development (Hall, 1906). In the area of education, Hall became know for his distinction between tow kinds of schools, the scholicentric, where the teachers controlled the curriculum, and the pedocentric where the curriculum was child centered (Hall, 1883).

Hall also had a significant impact on the development of American psychology through the successes of his students. They included Arnold Gesell, James McKeen Cattell, Lewis Madison Terman, Henry Herbert Goddard and John Dewey. Two of Hall's students went on to become leaders in the emerging field of speech science/pathology: Edward Conradi and John Madison Fletcher.

A few of the many writings of G. Stanley Hall, arranged chronologically

Hall, G. S. (1878). The muscular perception of space. Mind, 3, 433-450.

Hall, G. S. (1883). The contents of children's minds. The Princeton Review, 11, 249-272.

Hall, G. S. (1893). The contents of children's minds on entering school. NY: E. L. Kellogg.

Hall, G. S. (1893). Child study: The basis of exact education. Forum, 16, 429-441.

Hall, G. S. (1894). Universities and the training of professors. Forum, 17, (May), 300.

Hall, G. S. (1896). The methods, status, and prospects of the child-study of to-day. Transactions of the Illinois Society for Child Study, 2, (May) 184.

Ellis, A. C. & Hall, G. S. (1896). A study of dolls, Pedagogical Seminary, 4, 129-175.

Hall, G. S. (1903). The relations between higher and lower races. Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 17, 4-13.

Hall, G. S. (1904). Adolescence: Its psychology and its relations to physiology, anthropology, sociology, sex, crime, religion and education. New York: D. Appleton and Co.

Hall, G. S. (1905). The Negro question. Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 19, 95-107.

Hall, G. S. (1905). The Negro in Africa and America. Pedagogical Seminary, 12, 350-368.

Hall, G. S. (1906). Youth. NY: Appleton.

Hall, G. S. (1906). Undeveloped races in contact with civilization. Washington University Association Bulletin, 4, 145-150.

Hall, G. S. (1911). Educational problems. (2 vols). London, New York: D. Appleton and Co.

Hall, G. S. (1911). Eugenics: Its ideals and what it is going to do. Religious Education, 6, 152-159.

Hall, G. S. (1911). The teaching of sex in schools and colleges. American Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis, 2, 1-19.

Hall. G. S. (1911). The problem of dependent races. 29th Annual Mohonk Conference Report.

Hall, G. S. (1912). Founders of modern psychology. New York and London: D. Appleton

Hall, G. S. (1917). Jesus the Christ in the light of psychologie. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Page & Company.

Hall, G. S. (1919). Some possible effects of the war on American psychology. Psychological Bulletin, 16, 48-49.

Hall, G. S. (1922). Senescence: The last half of life. NY: Appleton.

Hall, G. S. (1924). Life and confessions of a psychologist. NY: Appleton.

Writings about G. Stanley Hall

Benjamin, L. T., Jr. (Ed.) (1981). G. Stanley Hall Lecture Series (Vol. 1). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Diehl, L. A. (1988). The paradox of G. Stanley Hall: Foe of coeducation and educator of women. In L. T. Benjamin, Jr. (Ed.). A History of psychology: Original sources and contemporary research. New York: McGraw Hill.

Fisher, Sara Carolyn (1925). The psychological and educational work of Granville Stanley Hall. The American Journal of Psychology, 36, 1-52.

Goodchild, L. F. (1996). G. Stanley Hall and the study of higher education. The Review of Higher Education, 20, 69-99.

Hilgard, E. R. (1987). Psychology in America: A historical survey. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Hothersall, D. (1990). History of psychology (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.

Ross, D. (1972). G. Stanley Hall: The psychologist as prophet. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Strickland, Charles E. & Burgess, Charles (Eds.) Health, growth, and heredity: G. Stanley Hall on natural education. NY: Teachers College, Columbia University.