Time Capsule

On Sept. 13, dynamite blew a tamping iron through the brain of Phineas P. Gage, a 25-year-old foreman of the Rutland and Burlington Railroad. The incident is often cited in psychology texts because Gage survived the accident but the brain injury radically altered his personality. He became indifferent to others, impulsive and at times grossly profane. Gage died on May 21, 1861.

1887

The American Journal of Psychology was first published on Sept. 30. The publisher and editor was G. Stanley Hall.

1929

Edwin B. Newman, Frederick H. Lewis, and other students founded Psi Chi, the national honor society in psychology, on Sept. 4 at the Ninth International Congress of Psychology. Psi Chi was first named Sigma Pi, then Sigma Pi Sigma until members discovered those were names of a social fraternity and a physics society. Members chose the name Psi Chi in 1930.

1936

Walter Freeman and James Watts performed the first frontal lobotomy in the United States on Sept. 14 at the George Washington University Hospital. Freeman became a nationwide advocate for the procedure. By 1951, an estimated 18,608 lobotomies had been performed in the United States.

1939

On Sept. 21, Sigmund Freud asked his physician Max Schur to administer morphine until Freud died. Until this time Freud had undergone many operations for cancer of the palate and jaw without the use of anesthetics or analgesics. Freud died Sept. 23.

1967

Martin Luther King, Jr., addressed an audience of about 5,000 at APA?s Annual Convention on Sept. 1. His topic was 'The role of the behavioral scientist in the civil rights movement.'

1991

PSY-PUB, an open access Internet account at the U.S.S.R. Institute of Psychology, was launched on Sept. 10, providing international electronic mail access to Soviet psychologists. Alexandra V. Belyaeva, director of the institute?s Vega Laboratory, and Michael Cole, of the University of California, San Diego, were instrumental in inaugurating this communications link.

Source: APA Historical Database, created and maintained by Warren R. Street, Central Washington University, and published as ?A Chronology of Noteworthy Events in American Psychology? (APA, 1994).