G. Stanley Hall

Early life

Born in Ashfield, Massachusetts, Hall grew up on a farm with his parents, Granville Bascom Hall, who served on the Massachusetts legislature, and Abigail Beals, who attended school at Albany Female Seminary and went on to become a teacher herself. As an adolescent, Hall experienced frequent nocturnal emissions. He spent much of his time reading and taking advantage of the educational opportunities he could gain from his parents and the local schools. At a young age, he was interested in animals and bodily skills. By the age of 16, he began to teach other students, most of whom were older than he was

Education and early career

Hall attended Williston Seminary and graduated from Williams College in 1867, then studied at the Union Theological Seminary. Inspired by Wilhelm Wundt's Principles of Physiological Psychology, Hall pursued doctoral studies at Harvard University, where he met William James, an adjunct professor who had just taught the nation's first psychology class. In 1878, Hall earned his doctorate in psychology from Harvard, the first psychology doctorate awarded in the United States of America. Afterward, Hall could find no academic jobs available in psychology, so he went to Europe to study at the University of Berlin, and spent a brief time in Wundt's Leipzig laboratory in 1879.

He began his career by teaching English and philosophy at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and then teaching history of philosophy at Williams College in Massachusetts. Following successful lecture series at Harvard and Johns Hopkins University, Hall secured a position in the philosophy department at Johns Hopkins, teaching psychology and pedagogy. He remained at Johns Hopkins from 1882 to 1888 and, in 1883, began the first formal American psychology laboratory. There, Hall objected to the emphasis on teaching traditional subjects, e.g., Latin, mathematics, science and history, in high school, arguing instead that high school should focus more on the education of adolescents than on preparing students for college.

Hall was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1888.

Later career (psychology)

In 1887, Hall founded the American Journal of Psychology, and in 1892 was elected the first president of the American Psychological Association. In 1889 he was named the first president of Clark University, a post he filled until 1920. During his 31 years as president, Hall remained intellectually active. He was instrumental in the development of educational psychology, and attempted to determine the effect adolescence has on education. He was also responsible for inviting Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung to visit and deliver a lecture series in 1909 at the Clark University Vicennial Conference on Psychology and Pedagogy. Hall promised Freud an honorary degree from Clark University in exchange, and the two shared the same beliefs on sex and adolescence. This was Freud's first and only visit to America and the biggest conference held at Clark University. It was also the most controversial conference, given that Freud's research was based on theories that Hall's colleagues criticized as non-scientific.

In 1917, Hall published a book on religious psychology, Jesus the Christ in the Light of Psychology, in which he sought to identify universal psychological trends in the Gospels. This was his least successful work. In 1922, at the age of 78, he published the book Senescence, a book on aging.

Darwin's theory of evolution and Ernst Haeckel's recapitulation theory were large influences on Hall's career. These ideas prompted Hall to examine aspects of childhood development in order to learn about the inheritance of behavior. The subjective character of these studies made their validation impossible. He believed that as children develop, their mental capabilities resemble those of their ancestors and so they develop over a lifetime the same way that species develop over eons. Hall believed that the process of recapitulation could be sped up through education and force children to reach modern standards of mental capabilities in a shorter length of time. His work also delved into controversial portrayals of the differences between women and men, as well as the concept of racial eugenics. While Hall was a proponent of racial eugenics, his views were less severe in terms of creating and keeping distinct separations between races. Hall believed in giving "lower races" a chance to accept and adapt to "superior civilization". Hall even commended high ranking African Americans in society as being "exception to the Negro's diminished evolutionary inheritance". Hall viewed civilization in a similar fashion he viewed biological development. Humans must allow civilization to "run its natural evolution". Hall saw those who did not accept the superior civilization as being primitive "savages". Hall viewed these civilizations in a similar fashion as he viewed children, stating that "their faults and their virtues are those of childhood and youth". Hall believed that men and women should be separated into their own schools during puberty because it allowed them to be able to grow within their own gender. Women could be educated with motherhood in mind and the men could be educated in more hands-on projects, helping them to become leaders of their homes. Hall believed that schools with both sexes limited the way they could learn and softened the boys earlier than they should be. "It is a period of equilibrium, but with the onset of puberty the equilibrium is disturbed and new tendencies arise. Modifications in the reproductive organs take place and bring about secondary sexual characteristics. Extroversion gives way slowly to introversion, and more definitely social instincts begin to play an increasing role."

Hall was heavily influenced by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and his theory of evolution. Hall found the idea of passing on memories from parent to offspring was a plausible mode of inheritance.

Religious views

Hall is listed in the Cambridge Companion to Atheism as having been an atheist. Hall was a pioneer in the school of religious psychology. He was exposed to Christianity by his pious mother as a child. While he attended Williston Seminary School, he joined the college church and instructed adult bible classes. He is quoted as saying, "highest choice of free will is self surrender to the service of God", as well as "love fixed in the highest being, God". He moved on to attend Union Theological Seminary in New York in 1867. Interested in comparative religion, he took a position at the city missionary society and attended multiple types of religious services. After graduation, Hall served at a small church in Pennsylvania for a short while, before leaving to further his studies. Hall promoted religion as the reinstatement of the individual into their true place in the world, a return to health and wholeness. Hall would later teach religious psychology at Johns Hopkins and Clark School of Religious Psychology. He also founded a library department for religious psychology.

Hall was married twice. His first wife was Cornelia Fisher. They were married September 1879 and had two children: Robert Granville Hall, born February 7, 1881; and Julia Fisher Hall, born May 30, 1882.

In 1890, Cornelia and Julia died of accidental asphyxiation. Robert was raised by his father from the age of four. He became a doctor.

Hall's second wife was Florence E Smith; they married in July 1899. Florence was diagnosed with "arteriosclerosis of the brain" and was institutionalized after years of eccentric behaviors.

Hall died on April 24, 1924, in Worcester, Massachusetts.