Alfred A. Strauss

1897-1957

Alfred Strauss, along with his colleagues Laura Lehtinen and Newell Kephart, created the diagnostic category of minimal brain damage in children. He presumed that children with learning difficulties, who were not mentally retarded, hearing impaired, or emotionally disturbed, had minimal brain damage. He developed a number of qualitative diagnostic measures of brain injury in children. The syndrome of behaviors associated with minimally brain damaged children which Strauss differentiated from familial mental retardation, came to be called by some "Strauss Syndrome."

Strauss was the founder and director of Cove School in Racine Wisconsin, a residential school for brain-injured children, and the Evanston day unit for these children in Evanston, Illinois.

Born in Karlsruhe, Germany on May 29, 1987.

Medical degree, University of Heidelberg, 1922.

Private practice in Germany.

Research associate at the University of Heidelberg Psychiatric Clinic.

Director of outpatient department at Univ. of Heidelberg Clinic.

1933 left Germany

Visiting Professor at University of Barcelona-helped to establish Barcelona's first municipal child guidance clinic and first private guidance clinic.

1937 to USA where served as research psychiatrist at the Wayne County School at Northville Michigan-1943. In 1946 he became director of child care there.

Founded Cove School, Racine Wisconsin, in 1949-a residential school for brain injured children. Was president of the school until his death in 1957.

References

Gardiner, R. (1958). Alfred A. Strauss, 1897-1957,. Exceptional Children, 24, 373-374.

Lehtinen, L., & Strauss, A. (1944a). Arithmetic fundamentals for the brain-crippled child. American Journal of Mental Deficiency, 49, 149-154.

Lehtinen, L., & Strauss, A. (1944b). A new approach in educational methods for brain-crippled deficient children. American Journal of Mental Deficiency, 48, 283-288.

Strauss, A. (1939). Typology in mental deficiency. Proceedings of the American Association of Mental Deficiency, 44, 85-90.

Strauss, A. (1943). Diagnosis and education of the cripple-brained deficient child. Journal of Exceptional Children, 9, 163-168.

Strauss, A. (1944). Ways of thinking in brain-crippled deficient children. American Journal of Psychiatry, 100, 639-647.

Strauss, A. (1947). Therapeutic pedagogy, a neuropsychiatric approach to special education. American Journal of Psychiatry, 104, 60-63.

Strauss, A., & Kephart, N. (1955). Psychopathology and education of the brain injured child. NY: Grune & Stratton.

Strauss, A., & Lehtinen, L. (1947). Psychopathology and education of the brain injured child. NY: Grune & Stratton.

Strauss, A., & McCarus, E. (1958). A linguist looks at aphasia in children. J Speech and Hearing Disorders, 23, 54-58.

Strauss, A., & Werner, H. (1938). Deficiency in the finger schema in relation to arithmetic disability. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 8, 719-724.

Strauss, A., & Werner, H. (1940). Qualitative analysis of the Binet test. American Journal of Mental Deficiency, 45, 50-55.

Strauss, A., & Werner, H. (1941). The mental organization of the brain-injured mentally defective child. American Journal of Psychiatry, 97, 1194-1202.

Strauss, A., & Werner, H. (1942). Disorders of conceptual thinking in the brain-injured child. J. Nerv. Ment. Dis., 96, 153-172.

Strauss, A., & Werner, H. (1943). Comparative psychopathology of the brain-injured child and the traumatic brain-injured adult. American J. of Psychiatry, 99, 835.

Strauss, A. A. (1954). Aphasia in children. American Journal of Physical Medicine, 33, 93-99.

Werner, H., & Strauss, A. (1939). Problems and methods of functional analysis in mentally deficient children. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 34, 37-62.

Werner, H., & Strauss, A. (1940). Causal factors in low performance. American Journal of Mental Deficiency, 45, 213-218.

Werner, H., & Strauss, A. (1941). Pathology of figure ground relation in the child. J. Abnorm. Soc. Psychol., 36, 236-248.