Morton Henry Prince (December 22, 1854 – August 31, 1929) was an American

physician A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through th ...

who specialized in

neurology Neurology (from el, νεῦρον (neûron), "string, nerve" and the suffix -logia, "study of") is the branch of medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of conditions and disease involving the brain, the spinal ...

and

abnormal psychology Abnormal psychology is the branch of psychology that studies unusual patterns of behavior, emotion, and thought, which could possibly be understood as a mental disorder. Although many behaviors could be considered as abnormal, this branch of psyc ...

, and was a leading force in establishing

psychology Psychology is the science, scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immens ...

as a clinical and academic discipline. He was part of a handful of men who disseminated European ideas about

psychopathology Psychopathology is the study of abnormal cognition, behaviour, and experiences which differs according to social norms and rests upon a number of constructs that are deemed to be the social norm at any particular era. Biological psychopathol ...

, especially in understanding

dissociative Dissociatives, colloquially dissos, are a subclass of hallucinogens which distort perception of sight and sound and produce feelings of detachment – dissociation – from the environment and/or self. Although many kinds of drugs are capable of ...

phenomenon; and helped found the

Journal of Abnormal Psychology The ''Journal of Abnormal Psychology'' (formerly ''Journal of Abnormal Psychology and Social Psychology'' and ''Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology'') is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the American Psychological Association (A ...

in 1906, which he edited until his death.

Early life and marriage

Morton Prince came from a wealthy

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

family and was involved in the social and intellectual life of that city. Prince later in life learned that part of his family were descended from early American Sephardic Jews, and became interested in philanthropy and concerns of his ancestral community. He went to private schools and then to

Harvard College Harvard College is the undergraduate college of Harvard University, an Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636, Harvard College is the original school of Harvard University, the oldest institution of higher ...

. He obtained his medical degree from

Harvard Medical School Harvard Medical School (HMS) is the graduate medical school of Harvard University and is located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1782, HMS is one of the oldest medical schools in the United States and is cons ...

in 1879. After Harvard, he took a "

Grand Tour The Grand Tour was the principally 17th- to early 19th-century custom of a traditional trip through Europe, with Italy as a key destination, undertaken by upper-class young European men of sufficient means and rank (typically accompanied by a tut ...

" of Europe, a near requirement for upper-class Americans at that time. Prince hoped to gain more clinical instruction at Vienna and Strasbourg. It was in Paris that he visited Jean Martin Charcot at the Salpêtrière. He was quite impressed with Charcot's theories but returned to Boston to set up an

otolaryngology Otorhinolaryngology ( , abbreviated ORL and also known as otolaryngology, otolaryngology–head and neck surgery (ORL–H&N or OHNS), or ear, nose, and throat (ENT)) is a surgical subspeciality within medicine that deals with the surgical a ...

practice. However, the spell of the charismatic Charcot was strong and he quickly switched his practice to

, and even adopted Charcot's showmanship for teaching his classes. Morton Prince by William Notman c1875

He married Fannie Lithgow Payson, daughter of Arthur Lithgow Payson and Claire Endicott Peabody. They had at least two children, Claire Morton Prince, born about 1885, and Morton Peabody Prince, born August 6, 1888. During the First World War at Hotel Lotti, Paris, France, Dr Prince was the director of an information bureau and home intended for soldiers and sailors from Massachusetts.

Professional Accomplishments

Prince became interested in abnormal psychology and neurology because both his wife and mother had psychogenic symptoms including depression and anxiety. He became a devotee and avid proponent in the use of

suggestion Suggestion is the psychological process by which a person guides their own or another person's desired thoughts, feelings, and behaviors by presenting stimuli that may elicit them as reflexes instead of relying on conscious effort. Nineteenth-c ...

in treating mental illnesses in the United States and drew around him all the important practitioners in the burgeoning field of abnormal psychology of that time:

Boris Sidis Boris Sidis (; October 12, 1867 – October 24, 1923) was a Ukrainian-American psychologist, physician, psychiatrist, and philosopher of education. Sidis founded the New York State Psychopathic Institute and the ''Journal of Abnormal Psychology' ...

James Jackson Putnam James Jackson Putnam (October 3, 1846 – November 4, 1918) was an American neurologist. Biography Born in Boston, Massachusetts and graduated from Harvard College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1866, Putnam went to Europe to study in the co ...

William James William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher, historian, and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States. James is considered to be a leading thinker of the lat ...

, G. Stanley Hall, to name but a few. He became the American expert in

dissociative disorders Dissociative disorders (DD) are conditions that involve disruptions or breakdowns of memory, awareness, identity, or perception. People with dissociative disorders use dissociation as a defense mechanism, pathologically and involuntarily. The in ...

, which he also called multiple personality disorder. Prince created the ''Journal of Abnormal (and Social) Psychology'' with the help from psychologist Boris Sidis. Prince published a few of his articles in this journal including ''The Dissociation of a Personality'' in 1906, ''The Unconscious'' in 1914, and ''Clinical and Experimental Studies in Personality'' in 1929. This journal served as an outlet especially for those who were interested in neurotic disorders. Prince edited the ''Journal of Abnormal (and Social) Psychology'' up until his death in 1929. This journal was eventually turned over to the American Psychological Association. Overall, Prince had six of his books published and had written over 100 scientific papers that included information on general medicine, philosophy, neurology, and psychopathology. He published numerous accounts of cases, both in the academic press and the popular press. His most famous case was that of Christine Beauchamp, detailed in ''The Dissociation of a Personality'' (1906), which caused some consternation, due both to the sensational nature of the cases presented and to the convoluted prose style: "There was over her spine a 'hypnogenetic point', pressure upon which always caused a thrill to run through her that weakened her will and induced hypnotic sleep". Morton Prince held many different academic and political positions throughout his lifetime. He not only was an American physician and psychologist, but was also a respected mayor of Boston for three terms, a candidate for governor, and was the Secretary of the Democratic National Committee for several years. Not only was Morton Prince the founder of the ''Journal of Abnormal (and Social) Psychology'', but he was also the founder of the American Psychopathological Association, and of the Harvard Psychological Clinic. Prince maintained an active academic and professional life, not only with his psychopathologic studies but as practicing physician as well. He served from 1902 to 1912 as the second chairman of both the departments of psychiatry and neurology at Tufts University School of Medicine. He was a prolific writer, publishing some 14 books and numerous essays. He wrote mostly on dissociation and abnormal psychology but also applied his understanding of the unconscious to the politics of his day. Though his psychological ideas never took hold, he remained an eminent figure,

Carl Jung Carl Gustav Jung ( ; ; 26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. Jung's work has been influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, ph ...

for example contributing to his ''festschrift'' of 1925, ''Problems of Personality: Studies Presented to Dr. Morton Prince''. Prince founded the

Harvard Psychological Clinic Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

in 1927, only two years before his death. That clinic established a major American stronghold for wide-ranging psychological researches into personality that included a number of the luminaries of that field (

Henry Murray Henry Alexander Murray (May 13, 1893 – June 23, 1988) was an American psychologist at Harvard University, where from 1959 to 1962 he conducted a series of psychologically damaging and purposefully abusive experiments on minors and unde ...

Gordon Allport Gordon Willard Allport (November 11, 1897 – October 9, 1967) was an American psychologist. Allport was one of the first psychologists to focus on the study of the personality, and is often referred to as one of the founding figures of personali ...

, and Robert W. White), who all became famous extending the ideas that Prince first taught them. Prince was like many prominent men of psychological science at the turn of the 20th century who have become obscure. They were captivated by the new science of mental life that attempted to wrestle psychopathology from the clutches of moralism that deemed it a degeneracy or from medicine that saw a heredity degeneracy, but had not yet developed an overarching theory. Prince stressed the importance of the subconscious to hysterical symptoms at the same time as

Freud Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies explained as originating in conflicts i ...

, but he was critical of

psychoanalysis PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might ...

- arguing to Putnam for example that "You are raising a cult not a science" - and preferred to outline his idiosyncratic position that never became popular. His groundbreaking work on personality became famous via Henry Murray, who took over as director of the Clinic and worked on elaborating it into a more systematic and approachable manner.

Skepticism

Prince was skeptical of

paranormal Paranormal events are purported phenomena described in popular culture, folk, and other non-scientific bodies of knowledge, whose existence within these contexts is described as being beyond the scope of normal scientific understanding. Not ...

claims and believed such experiences could be explained psychologically (see

anomalistic psychology In psychology, anomalistic psychology is the study of human behaviour and experience connected with what is often called the paranormal, with few assumptions made about the validity (or otherwise) of the reported phenomena. Early history Accord ...

). He was an early member of the

American Society for Psychical Research The American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR) is the oldest psychical research organization in the United States dedicated to parapsychology. It maintains offices and a library, in New York City, which are open to both members and the gen ...

and a long-standing member of the

Society for Psychical Research The Society for Psychical Research (SPR) is a nonprofit organisation in the United Kingdom. Its stated purpose is to understand events and abilities commonly described as psychic or paranormal. It describes itself as the "first society to co ...

. He was one of the first researchers to make a scientific study of

crystal gazing Crystal-gazing (also known as crystal-seeing, crystallism, crystallomancy, and spheromancy) is a method for seeing visions achieved through trance induction by means of gazing at a crystal. Traditionally, it has been seen as a form of divinatio ...

.Zusne, Leonard; Jones, Warren H. (1989). ''Anomalistic Psychology: A Study of Magical Thinking''. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. p. 116. "Morton Prince (1898, 1922) was an early investigator of crystal gazing and one of the few to ever subject it to scientific scrutiny. He found that the images may be forgotten memory images, that with susceptible subjects the crystal ball could be dispensed with, and that scrying seemed to occur against a background of psychopathology."

Selected publications

*Prince, M. (1885)
''The Nature of Mind and Human Automatism''
Philadelphia, Lippincott. *Prince, M. (1906)
''The Dissociation of a Personality
'. New York: Longmans, Green, & Co. Second edition (1908) *Prince, M. (1909)
''Psychotherapeutics: A Symposium''
Boston: R. G. Badge. *Prince, M. (1909)
''My Life as a Dissociated Personality
' Prince, M (Ed.). Boston: R. G. Badger. *Prince, M. (1915)
''The Psychology of the Kaiser: A Study of his Sentiments and his Obsessions
' London: Unwin Ltd. *Prince, M. (1915).
''The Unconscious: The Fundamentals of Human Personality, Normal and Abnormal
'. New York, Macmillan. *Prince, M. (1929)
''Clinical and Experimental Studies in Personality
'. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Sci-Art. *Prince, M. (1975). ''Psychotherapy and Multiple Personality: Selected Essays.'' Hale, Jr., N. G. (Ed.). Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

References

External links

The dissociation of a personality; a biographical study in abnormal psychology (1906)
on the Internet Archive.
American Kaleidoscope
article by George Prochnik on Prince, including comprehensive links to all his public domain online works. * Morton Prince by

John Singer Sargent John Singer Sargent (; January 12, 1856 – April 14, 1925) was an American expatriate artist, considered the "leading portrait painter of his generation" for his evocations of Edwardian-era luxury. He created roughly 900 oil paintings and more ...

(in public domain) courtesy o
John Singer Sargent Virtual Gallery
{{DEFAULTSORT:Prince, Morton 1854 births 1929 deaths American neurologists American psychologists American skeptics Anomalistic psychology Harvard Medical School alumni Harvard University faculty