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

physician A physician, medical practitioner (British English), medical doctor, or simply doctor is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through the Medical education, study, Med ...

who specialized in

neurology Neurology (from , "string, nerve" and the suffix wikt:-logia, -logia, "study of") is the branch of specialty (medicine) , medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of conditions and disease involving the nervous syst ...

and abnormal psychology, and was a leading force in establishing

psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans, both consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such as thoughts, feel ...

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 mental illness. It includes the signs and symptoms of all mental disorders. The field includes Abnormal psychology, abnormal cognition, maladaptive behavior, and experiences which differ according to social norms ...

, especially in understanding dissociative phenomenon; and helped found the Journal of Abnormal Psychology in 1906, which he edited until his death.

Early life and marriage

Morton Prince came from a wealthy

Boston Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...

family and was involved in the social and intellectual life of that city. He was born to Frederick O. Prince, a state senator and future Boston mayor and Helen Susan Prince (née Henry). 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 the

Boston Latin School The Boston Latin School is a Magnet school, magnet Latin schools, Latin Grammar schools, grammar State school, state school in Boston, Massachusetts. It has been in continuous operation since it was established on April 23, 1635. It is the old ...

and then to

Harvard College Harvard College is the undergraduate education, undergraduate college of Harvard University, a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Part of the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Scienc ...

. He obtained his medical degree from

Harvard Medical School Harvard Medical School (HMS) is the medical school of Harvard University and is located in the Longwood Medical and Academic Area, Longwood Medical Area in Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1782, HMS is the third oldest medical school in the Un ...

in 1879. After Harvard, he took a Grand Tour 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 subspecialty within medicine that deals with the surgical an ...

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 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, James Jackson Putnam,

William James William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher and psychologist. The first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States, he is considered to be one of the leading thinkers of the late 19th c ...

G. Stanley Hall Granville Stanley Hall (February 1, 1844 – April 24, 1924) was an American psychologist and educator who earned the first doctorate in psychology awarded in the United States of America at Harvard University in the nineteenth century. His ...

, to name but a few. He became the American expert in dissociative disorders, 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". 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 The Tufts University School of Medicine is the medical school of Tufts University, a Private university, private research university in Massachusetts. It was established in 1893 and is located on the university's health sciences campus in down ...

. 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, psychotherapist, and psychologist who founded the school of analytical psychology. A prolific author of Carl Jung publications, over 20 books, illustrator, and corr ...

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

Gordon Allport Gordon William 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, but he was critical of

psychoanalysis PsychoanalysisFrom Greek language, Greek: and is a set of theories and techniques of research to discover unconscious mind, unconscious processes and their influence on conscious mind, conscious thought, emotion and behaviour. Based on The Inte ...

- 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). He was an early member of the American Society for Psychical Research 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 condu ...

. He was one of the first researchers to make a scientific study of crystal gazing.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 15, 1925) was an American expatriate artist, considered the "leading portrait painter of his generation" for his evocations of Edwardian era, Edwardian-era luxury. He created roughly 900 oil ...

(in public domain) courtesy o
John Singer Sargent Virtual Gallery
{{DEFAULTSORT:Prince, Morton 1854 births 1929 deaths American neurologists 20th-century American psychologists American skeptics Anomalistic psychology Harvard Medical School alumni Harvard University Department of Psychology faculty