Hans Eysenck is the greatest psychologist you may or may not know. He published thousands of papers and was generally seen as the most influential leader in professional psychology in the UK in the mid 20th century, if not Europe and most of the world. He was a leader in founding the field of cognitive-behavioral psychology, a leader in applying genetics to psychology, a leader in personality research (creating the basic structure of the famed NEO system), a leader in political psychology, and he was the most strident anti-Freudian psychologist of his era. Any of these achievements would have been impressive, but he had them all.
Eysenck had many enemies, and still does, and his career was blighted by some later evidence of plagiarism, and his later association with the tobacco industry in its attempts to claim less harm than really existed with cigarettes. I point out his limitations just to acknowledge them, and to accept that he had weaknesses as well as strengths. But he had strengths, and made important contributions to psychology and psychiatry. And I think it is important to take his ideas seriously.
So don’t limit yourself to his wikipedia page. He literally wrote dozens of books. Read some of them, if you want to better understand not just the history of psychology and psychiatry, but its content.
I met him when I was a visiting medical student in London in 1990. I was introduced by my research mentor in Virginia, Lindon Eaves, a behavior geneticist, who had been mentored by Eysenck and was a close collabortor in behavior genetic research.
I went to the Maudsley Hospital and was directed to Eysenck’s offices, where he met me and took me to the cafeteria. There we drank coffee and talked for an hour.
I found him to be open-minded and kind-spirited. And, perhaps most impressively, independent-minded. Here’s a snippet of our conversation. He said:
“Once I asked [B. F.] Skinner [a leader in behaviorism] why he had ignored the role of genetics and neurophysiology, and emphasized only environment in his theory of psychology. He replied that his followers wouldn’t stand for it.”
He lamented the decline of great leaders in psychology and psychiatry: “Most scientists aren’t scientists.” He gave me some unsolicited advice for my future as a psychiatrist:
“Young man, let me tell you: Most psychiatrists are neurotic. They have their own problems. Remember that. And don’t go in for a pill-pushing life. Despite financial needs, you can always do small-scale academic research. Do whatever research you can, and don’t waste much time in the rat-race of getting grants. Too many people today spend more time on grant proposals than on actual research. Academics has become a business, and this wasn’t the case when I was young. Most scientists now aren’t scientists; they’re 9 to 5 technicians. I’ve often wondered why there seems to be such a wasteland of scientific leaders in psychology. When I first entered the field, there was Hull, McDougall, Thorndike, Watson, Skinner – so many leaders! But now there’s none. Where did they go? I think it’s because science has lost its independence, and just become a place for technicians.”
Over three decades later, I would interpret his comments, based on a career of work in clinical treatment and in research, this way:
First, clinicians do themselves and their patients an injustice by just treating people. They don’t record their observations, publish them, expose themselves to the larger world, defend what they think, risk being disproven. In short, they don’t advance knowledge at all, and they simply enact their beliefs, as opposed to ever knowing whether those beliefs are true or false. That’s why years of “clinical experience” often means nothing. And research, separated from the world of clinical work, is so limited and often irrelevant that it’s a waste of time and money, serving one real purpose: promotion of researchers and funding academic institutions. The professed goal, helping patients, often is hardly affected.
Second, the clinical and research worlds in psychiatry suffer deeply from groupthink. Everyone wants to go along with everyone else. The latest wishes - ketamine, psychedelic “assisted” therapy, everyone having ADD, the glories of amphetamines - are accepted true until proven false, instead of the reverse (and no one really tries to prove them false). Remember Eysenck the next time someone says, in response to any critique of a mainstream belief: “Most people (or experts or clinicians) don’t agree with you.” The majority viewpoint may be fine for election of politicians, but it’s a terrible way to decide scientific truth.
Not sure where to post this, as I am a Substack novice, but it is theoretically related to the comment re: psychedelics. I’ve been reading “buzz” about GLP-1 agonists (Wegovy, etc.) being another “breakthrough” class for treatment of depression and anxiety and am really looking forward to reading PL’s take on this.