Orval Hobart Mowrer
Encyclopedia
Orval Hobart Mowrer was an American born psychologist and professor
of psychology
at the University of Illinois
from 1948 to 1975 known for his research on behaviour therapy
. Mowrer practiced psychotherapy
in Champaign-Urbana
and at Galesburg State Research Hospital. In 1954 Mowrer held the position of president of the American Psychological Association
. Mowrer founded Integrity Groups (therapeutic community groups based on principles of honesty
, responsibility
, and emotion
al involvement) and was instrumental in establishing GROW
groups in the United States
.
. His father retired from farming and moved the family to town when Hobart reached school age. The death of the elder Mowrer when Hobart was 13 changed his life radically. A year later he suffered the first in a series of major depressions which would recur throughout his life. Nevertheless, he did well in high school and entered the University of Missouri
in 1925. Having decided on psychology as a career, he became laboratory assistant to the university's first and only psychology professor, Max Friedrich Meyer. Meyer had earned a PhD in physics before emigrating from Germany
in the 1890s and was a rigorous behaviorist. Although Mowrer's initial hope was that psychology would help him to understand himself and his own problems, he readily adapted to Meyer's behavioral approach. Mowrer began his college years as a conservative Christian, but lost his faith as he adopted progressive and scientific views prevalent in academia.
In his senior year, as a project for a sociology course, Mowrer composed a questionnaire to investigate sexual attitudes among students. It was distributed anonymously and the responses were to be returned anonymously. The questionnaire was accompanied by a letter from a non-existent "Bureau of Personnel Research" which began:
There were slight differences in wording between the questionnaires sent to women and those sent to men, but each contained 11 groups of questions requesting the responder's opinions about illicit sexual relations, whether the responder would marry a person who had engaged in sexual relations, how s/he would react to unfaithfulness in marriage, whether s/he had engaged in sex play as a child or sexual relations as an adult, and whether s/he would favor the legal establishment of "trial marriage" or "companionate marriage."
When copies of the questionnaire fell into the hands of conservative parents and alumni, a scandal ensued which went far beyond the walls of the University of Missouri. The fury was directed, not at Mowrer, but at the university and particularly the faculty members who were aware of the questionnaire and allowed it to be distributed, sociology professor Harmon O. DeGraff and psychology professor Max Friedrich Meyer. Ultimately both men lost their jobs, and Meyer never held an academic position again. The American Association of University Professors
censured the University for violation of academic freedom, in the first such action taken by the AAUP.
The scandal had little impact on Mowrer's career. He left the university without a degree in 1929 (the degree was granted a few years later), entering Johns Hopkins University
, where he worked under Knight Dunlap. Mowrer's PhD research involved spatial orientation
as mediated by vision and the vestibular receptors of the inner ear, using pigeons as subjects. During his time at Johns Hopkins he also underwent psychoanalysis
for the first time, in an attempt to resolve another episode of depression. After completing his doctorate in 1932 he continued his work on spatial orientation as a post-doctoral fellow at Northwestern University
and then Princeton University
.
, so in 1934 Mowrer began a Sterling Fellowship at Yale University
researching learning
theory. Yale psychology was then dominated by the stimulus-response approach of Clark Hull. Mowrer's wife, Willie Mae (Molly) had been a fellow student at Hopkins and remained there as an instructor for several years after Mowrer left. When she moved to New Haven, Connecticut
, the couple served as houseparents at a residential home for infants and children. Mowrer used the home as an informal behavioral science laboratory. He and his wife developed the first bedwetting alarm
while working there.
In 1936, Mowrer was hired by the Yale Institute of Human Relations, then a relatively new project funded by the Rockefeller Foundation
, as an instructor. The institute was designed to integrate psychology, psychoanalysis and the social sciences. One product of the institute's unique approach was a detailed study of aggression by sociologist John Dollard with psychologists Mowrer, Leonard Doob, Neal Miller and Robert Sears
. Each of the five contributors had training in psychoanalysis or had been individually psychoanalyzed, but the language of the book reflected the objective behaviorism of the day.
During the late 1930s Mowrer began experimenting with the use of electric shock as a conditioning agent. At the time, most psychologists agreed with William James
that fear
(in this usage, synonymous with anxiety
) was an instinctive response. Mowrer suspected fear was a conditioned response
and designed a way to create fear in the laboratory. The unusually generous funding available at the institute allowed him to use human subjects for the first time. The subjects were attached to galvanic skin response
recorders and to electrodes which could deliver an electric shock. They were then exposed to a light stimulus which was sometimes (randomly) followed by a shock. Mowrer discovered two unexpected phenomena. There was a substantial galvanic stress response to the first presentation of the light stimulus, before any shock had been administered. The anticipation was apparently more aversive than the shock, which would not have been predicted by traditional behavioral theory. Mowrer also noticed that after each shock the subjects experienced a marked degree of relaxation.
Using animals in similar experiments, he found that a cycle could be produced in which the subject became more and more responsive to conditioning. He concluded that anxiety was basically anticipatory in nature and ideally functions to protect the organism from danger. However, because of the circumstances of conditioning, the degree of fear is often disproportionate to the source. Anxiety can be created artificially, and relief of anxiety can be used to condition other behaviors. Mowrer's term for the state of expectancy produced by carefully timed aversive stimuli was the "preparatory set," and it was foundational to his later thinking in both learning theory and clinical psychology.
In 1940 Mowrer became Assistant Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education
. He did not feel challenged by his teaching duties there, but formed a close association with Henry A. Murray and his group at the Harvard Psychological Clinic. Mowrer, Murray, Talcott Parsons
, Gordon Allport
and others formed a group which eventually led to the formation of the Harvard Department of Social Relations
, partially in response to the success of the Yale Institute of Human Relations.
During this time Mowrer's faith in Freudian theory was fading. His primary professional loyalty had always been to learning theory, but he continued to assume that neurotic symptoms and depression were best addressed through analysis. His first psychoanalyst had treated him for only a few months. When his depression returned he underwent a second, much lengthier analysis and felt that he was much improved. His symptoms soon returned, leading him to question Freud's premises. In spite of his doubts he underwent a third analysis during the time he was at Harvard, this time with the prominent Freudian disciple Hans Sachs
.
developing assessment techniques for potential intelligence agents. Mowrer's experience with the laboratory induction of psychological stress, along with the work of other psychologists, was utilized to construct an environment in which recruits could be assessed for their ability to withstand highly stressful situations.
As part of his work there, he participated in a seminar led by Harry Stack Sullivan
. Sullivan's theories on the role of disturbances in interpersonal relationships with "significant others" in the etiology of mental disorders had a profound effect on Mowrer's thinking. When Mowrer returned to Harvard, he began counseling students in addition to his faculty duties. He used the principles he had learned from Sullivan, questioning them about their interpersonal relationships and confronting them when he felt they were being dishonest.
and moved to Urbana, Illinois
with Molly and their three young children. He was now involved with two essentially separate lines of work, learning theory and clinical psychology. Mowrer's primary achievements in learning theory followed from his work with aversive conditioning
or avoidance learning. He formulated a two-factor learning theory, arguing that conditioning (sign learning) is distinct from habit formation (solution learning). This theory was initially described in a 1947 paper. In the 1950s he modified the theory to allow for only one type of learning but two types of reinforcement.
Mowrer's interest in clinical psychology was primarily a hobby during the 1950s, but it would eventually eclipse his work as a learning theorist. He had given up on psychoanalysis after 1944, partially as a result of the failure of his own analysts to cure his problems. Most importantly, Harry Stack Sullivan
had persuaded him that the key to mental health lay in healthy, scrupulously honest human relationships, not in intrapsychic factors. Mower took Sullivan's ideas to heart and confessed to his wife some guilty secrets concerning his adolescent sexual behavior, and that he had had an affair during the marriage. She was upset, but convinced (as was Mowrer) that those secrets might explain his bouts of depression. The depressive symptoms did remain in remission for eight years.
In 1953, at the height of his career and on the eve of accepting the presidency of the American Psychological Association
, he suffered the worst psychological collapse of his life. He was hospitalized for three and a half months with depression complicated by symptoms resembling psychosis. Few effective treatments were available. A few years later, Mowrer was successfully treated with one of the first tricyclic antidepressants.
were similar to traditional religious ideas, but he had arrived at his convictions through a secular process and the religious concepts of guilt and sin did not at first interest him. Freud, in Mowrer's view, had made a fatal error in attributing emotional distress to inappropriate guilt. Mowrer had concluded that mental disorders, including even schizophrenia
, were the result of real, not imagined, guilt. Mowrer did not see this as a religious issue. He had been raised to associate religion with "otherworldly" values, with the relationship of individuals to God, and his own focus was on the relationship of individuals to one another.
In 1955 Mowrer read a religious novel which changed his thinking. His daughter was reading Magnificent Obsession
by Lloyd C. Douglas
and told her father that it might interest him. Mowrer was impressed by Douglas' thesis, expressed through a fictional character, that the Bible
was a superb handbook of human relations. A central theme of the novel is a secret shared by a small group of people who have found great spiritual and material success. It is derived from Jesus' suggestion to "do alms in secret", not letting anyone know. In the book, however, good deeds done in secret invest the characters with almost magical power. Mowrer turned the concept around to place the emphasis on the pathological potential of misdeeds when they are kept secret. He summed it up the phrase, "You are your secrets," sometimes reworded as "You are as sick as your secrets."
After reading other fictional and non-fictional works by Lloyd Douglas, who had left the Congregationalist
ministry to devote himself to writing, Mowrer became a member of the Presbyterian Church. He was soon disappointed. He had condemned psychoanalysis for being soft on sin, and now he found that the church was dominated by similar permissive assumptions. It was not only the modernist influences in churches to which Mowrer objected, however, but some traditional beliefs such as the doctrine of justification by faith. He set out to restore to churches the consciousness of personal sin and guilt he felt they had lost. He was able to acquire funding from the Lilly Endowment
for a fellowship in morality and mental health. The program brought students from seminaries and divinity schools (among others, Jay E. Adams
) to Champaign-Urbana
, where they learned Mowrer's counseling and group techniques.
the prompting of the conscience; and that this causes their symptoms. When Mowrer was counseling someone who could not be induced to confess anything of significance, he would "model" confession for them by disclosing something from his own life. Group therapy was coming into fashion, and although most groups were dominated by the same psychotherapeutic ideas Mowrer had rejected, he saw hope of using groups in a way that would increase the opportunities for confession and emotional involvement.
In a 1972 article detailing the procedures of the groups, Mowrer described the intake interviews as "very unlike a social case-work interview" and "more like those followed in intakes at Synanon
or Daytop." The prospect was first put at ease by "sharing" offered by the interviewers. Committee members would then zero in on some point on which the person seemed to be evasive, inconsistent or defensive. If the person immediately "came clean" to the satisfaction of the committee, s/he would be rewarded with verbal approval and admission to the group. If any resistance was shown, there would be further confrontation, then deliberation by the committee in the presence of the prospective member. According to Mowrer it was rare for someone to be flatly turned down, although they might be asked to seek help elsewhere (with a "psychiatrist of our choice") and come back when they were able to be honest as defined by the group.
Meetings lasted at least three hours. No one could leave before the three hours were up, and anyone who walked out during a "run" (i.e. while the target of group confrontation) was permanently excluded from the group. Any language was acceptable, including profanity and yelling, but no physical violence or threat thereof. Feelings were to be expressed in "gut-level" language and verbal aggression was common. Embraces and physical expressions of affection were also common. All significant details of member's everyday lives were to be shared with the group, and members had contracts detailing steps they would take toward honesty and restitution. These agreements were recorded in a "commitment book" and the member had to answer to the group for any failure to keep a commitment.
Mowrer dropped the term "Integrity Therapy" in favor of "Integrity Groups," to avoid the impression that it was possible to outgrow the need for Group attendance. He considered membership in an Integrity Group to be a life-long commitment (members were shuffled among groups to avoid fixed relationships). Criticism of the Integrity Group concept centered on Mowrer's negativity about human nature, and the questionable value of investing a group with supreme authority over one's life. There was concern that deliberately increasing anxiety in vulnerable people could lead to a psychotic break or suicidal behavior.
When it was suggested that his techniques resembled brain-washing, Mowrer repeated the response of Charles Dederich
(as quoted by Yablonsky) to a similar question: "Yes, that's right, we do engage in a good deal of 'brain-washing.' Most of the people who come here have very dirty brains, and we try to clean them up a bit!" Eugene May noted with respect to this remark that the people entering Synanon generally had severe drug problems and were alienated from family and community, while most participants in Mowrer's community and university groups were leading fairly normal lives.
Hobart Mowrer was an advocate of the idea that mental illness has a substantial biological and genetic basis. In view of his radical belief in the importance of the "pathogenic secret," this may seem somewhat surprising, but like his other ideas it was largely informed by his own experiences. He accepted the importance of biological factors at a time when many people did not, and was in this respect ahead of his time. He regarded his own affliction as in some sense a "gift," the driving force behind his innovative ideas, but also the great misery of his life.
Mowrer had hoped to remain professionally active in retirement, but circumstances forced him to slow down shortly after he retired in 1975. Molly became seriously ill and he developed medical problems of his own. Molly's death in 1979 was a great loss, and also left him with few responsibilities. He had accepted that his periodic depressions would never be entirely "cured," and had long held the opinion that suicide was a reasonable choice in some circumstances. He committed suicide
in 1982 at the age of 75.
Professor
A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...
of psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
at the University of Illinois
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign is a large public research-intensive university in the state of Illinois, United States. It is the flagship campus of the University of Illinois system...
from 1948 to 1975 known for his research on behaviour therapy
Behaviour therapy
Behaviour therapy, or behavior therapy is an approach to psychotherapy based on learning theory which aims to treat psychopathology through techniques designed to reinforce desired and eliminate undesired behaviours.-History:...
. Mowrer practiced psychotherapy
Psychotherapy
Psychotherapy is a general term referring to any form of therapeutic interaction or treatment contracted between a trained professional and a client or patient; family, couple or group...
in Champaign-Urbana
Champaign-Urbana Metropolitan Area
The Champaign-Urbana metropolitan area, also known as Champaign-Urbana, is a metropolitan area in east-central Illinois. It is the 191st largest metropolitan area in the U.S. It is composed of three counties, Champaign, Ford, and Piatt...
and at Galesburg State Research Hospital. In 1954 Mowrer held the position of president of the American Psychological Association
American Psychological Association
The American Psychological Association is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States. It is the world's largest association of psychologists with around 154,000 members including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. The APA...
. Mowrer founded Integrity Groups (therapeutic community groups based on principles of honesty
Honesty
Honesty refers to a facet of moral character and denotes positive, virtuous attributes such as integrity, truthfulness, and straightforwardness along with the absence of lying, cheating, or theft....
, responsibility
Moral responsibility
Moral responsibility usually refers to the idea that a person has moral obligations in certain situations. Disobeying moral obligations, then, becomes grounds for justified punishment. Deciding what justifies punishment, if anything, is a principle concern of ethics.People who have moral...
, and emotion
Emotion
Emotion is a complex psychophysiological experience of an individual's state of mind as interacting with biochemical and environmental influences. In humans, emotion fundamentally involves "physiological arousal, expressive behaviors, and conscious experience." Emotion is associated with mood,...
al involvement) and was instrumental in establishing GROW
GROW
GROW is a peer support and mutual-aid organization for recovery from, and prevention of, serious mental illness. GROW was founded in Sydney, Australia in 1957 by Father Cornelius B. "Con" Keogh, a Roman Catholic priest, and psychiatric patients who sought help with their mental illness in...
groups in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
Early life and education
Mowrer spent his early years on the family farm near Unionville, MissouriUnionville, Missouri
Unionville is a city in Putnam County, Missouri, United States. The population was 2,041 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Putnam County.-Geography:Unionville is located at ....
. His father retired from farming and moved the family to town when Hobart reached school age. The death of the elder Mowrer when Hobart was 13 changed his life radically. A year later he suffered the first in a series of major depressions which would recur throughout his life. Nevertheless, he did well in high school and entered the University of Missouri
University of Missouri
The University of Missouri System is a state university system providing centralized administration for four universities, a health care system, an extension program, five research and technology parks, and a publishing press. More than 64,000 students are currently enrolled at its four campuses...
in 1925. Having decided on psychology as a career, he became laboratory assistant to the university's first and only psychology professor, Max Friedrich Meyer. Meyer had earned a PhD in physics before emigrating from Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
in the 1890s and was a rigorous behaviorist. Although Mowrer's initial hope was that psychology would help him to understand himself and his own problems, he readily adapted to Meyer's behavioral approach. Mowrer began his college years as a conservative Christian, but lost his faith as he adopted progressive and scientific views prevalent in academia.
In his senior year, as a project for a sociology course, Mowrer composed a questionnaire to investigate sexual attitudes among students. It was distributed anonymously and the responses were to be returned anonymously. The questionnaire was accompanied by a letter from a non-existent "Bureau of Personnel Research" which began:
Dear University Student:
During the last several decades it has become increasingly apparent that there is something seriously wrong with the traditional system of marriage in this country. But, unfortunately, the whole matter has been so inextricably bound up with religious dogmas, moral sentiments, and all manner of prudish conventionalities as to make it exceedingly difficult to ascertain with any degree of accuracy the precise reasons for this situation.
There were slight differences in wording between the questionnaires sent to women and those sent to men, but each contained 11 groups of questions requesting the responder's opinions about illicit sexual relations, whether the responder would marry a person who had engaged in sexual relations, how s/he would react to unfaithfulness in marriage, whether s/he had engaged in sex play as a child or sexual relations as an adult, and whether s/he would favor the legal establishment of "trial marriage" or "companionate marriage."
When copies of the questionnaire fell into the hands of conservative parents and alumni, a scandal ensued which went far beyond the walls of the University of Missouri. The fury was directed, not at Mowrer, but at the university and particularly the faculty members who were aware of the questionnaire and allowed it to be distributed, sociology professor Harmon O. DeGraff and psychology professor Max Friedrich Meyer. Ultimately both men lost their jobs, and Meyer never held an academic position again. The American Association of University Professors
American Association of University Professors
The American Association of University Professors is an organization of professors and other academics in the United States. AAUP membership is about 47,000, with over 500 local campus chapters and 39 state organizations...
censured the University for violation of academic freedom, in the first such action taken by the AAUP.
The scandal had little impact on Mowrer's career. He left the university without a degree in 1929 (the degree was granted a few years later), entering Johns Hopkins University
Johns Hopkins University
The Johns Hopkins University, commonly referred to as Johns Hopkins, JHU, or simply Hopkins, is a private research university based in Baltimore, Maryland, United States...
, where he worked under Knight Dunlap. Mowrer's PhD research involved spatial orientation
Vestibular system
The vestibular system, which contributes to balance in most mammals and to the sense of spatial orientation, is the sensory system that provides the leading contribution about movement and sense of balance. Together with the cochlea, a part of the auditory system, it constitutes the labyrinth of...
as mediated by vision and the vestibular receptors of the inner ear, using pigeons as subjects. During his time at Johns Hopkins he also underwent psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...
for the first time, in an attempt to resolve another episode of depression. After completing his doctorate in 1932 he continued his work on spatial orientation as a post-doctoral fellow at Northwestern University
Northwestern University
Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....
and then Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
.
Yale, then Harvard
Academic positions were scarce during the Great DepressionGreat Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
, so in 1934 Mowrer began a Sterling Fellowship at Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
researching learning
Learning
Learning is acquiring new or modifying existing knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, or preferences and may involve synthesizing different types of information. The ability to learn is possessed by humans, animals and some machines. Progress over time tends to follow learning curves.Human learning...
theory. Yale psychology was then dominated by the stimulus-response approach of Clark Hull. Mowrer's wife, Willie Mae (Molly) had been a fellow student at Hopkins and remained there as an instructor for several years after Mowrer left. When she moved to New Haven, Connecticut
New Haven, Connecticut
New Haven is the second-largest city in Connecticut and the sixth-largest in New England. According to the 2010 Census, New Haven's population increased by 5.0% between 2000 and 2010, a rate higher than that of the State of Connecticut, and higher than that of the state's five largest cities, and...
, the couple served as houseparents at a residential home for infants and children. Mowrer used the home as an informal behavioral science laboratory. He and his wife developed the first bedwetting alarm
Bedwetting alarm
A bedwetting alarm is an electronic device used as a treatment option for nocturnal enuresis. The alarm activates when the wearer urinates. Alarms come in several different styles: wearable alarms, wireless alarms, and pad-type alarms...
while working there.
In 1936, Mowrer was hired by the Yale Institute of Human Relations, then a relatively new project funded by the Rockefeller Foundation
Rockefeller Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation is a prominent philanthropic organization and private foundation based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The preeminent institution established by the six-generation Rockefeller family, it was founded by John D. Rockefeller , along with his son John D. Rockefeller, Jr...
, as an instructor. The institute was designed to integrate psychology, psychoanalysis and the social sciences. One product of the institute's unique approach was a detailed study of aggression by sociologist John Dollard with psychologists Mowrer, Leonard Doob, Neal Miller and Robert Sears
Robert Richardson Sears
Dr. Robert Richardson Sears was an eminent American psychologist who specialized in child psychology. He was born in Palo Alto, California to Jesse Brundage Sears, a professor at Stanford University, and Stella Louise Sears...
. Each of the five contributors had training in psychoanalysis or had been individually psychoanalyzed, but the language of the book reflected the objective behaviorism of the day.
During the late 1930s Mowrer began experimenting with the use of electric shock as a conditioning agent. At the time, most psychologists agreed with William James
William James
William James was a pioneering American psychologist and philosopher who was trained as a physician. He wrote influential books on the young science of psychology, educational psychology, psychology of religious experience and mysticism, and on the philosophy of pragmatism...
that fear
Fear
Fear is a distressing negative sensation induced by a perceived threat. It is a basic survival mechanism occurring in response to a specific stimulus, such as pain or the threat of danger...
(in this usage, synonymous with anxiety
Anxiety
Anxiety is a psychological and physiological state characterized by somatic, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral components. The root meaning of the word anxiety is 'to vex or trouble'; in either presence or absence of psychological stress, anxiety can create feelings of fear, worry, uneasiness,...
) was an instinctive response. Mowrer suspected fear was a conditioned response
Classical conditioning
Classical conditioning is a form of conditioning that was first demonstrated by Ivan Pavlov...
and designed a way to create fear in the laboratory. The unusually generous funding available at the institute allowed him to use human subjects for the first time. The subjects were attached to galvanic skin response
Galvanic skin response
Skin conductance, also known as galvanic skin response , electrodermal response , psychogalvanic reflex , skin conductance response or skin conductance level , is a method of measuring the electrical conductance of the skin, which varies with its moisture level...
recorders and to electrodes which could deliver an electric shock. They were then exposed to a light stimulus which was sometimes (randomly) followed by a shock. Mowrer discovered two unexpected phenomena. There was a substantial galvanic stress response to the first presentation of the light stimulus, before any shock had been administered. The anticipation was apparently more aversive than the shock, which would not have been predicted by traditional behavioral theory. Mowrer also noticed that after each shock the subjects experienced a marked degree of relaxation.
Using animals in similar experiments, he found that a cycle could be produced in which the subject became more and more responsive to conditioning. He concluded that anxiety was basically anticipatory in nature and ideally functions to protect the organism from danger. However, because of the circumstances of conditioning, the degree of fear is often disproportionate to the source. Anxiety can be created artificially, and relief of anxiety can be used to condition other behaviors. Mowrer's term for the state of expectancy produced by carefully timed aversive stimuli was the "preparatory set," and it was foundational to his later thinking in both learning theory and clinical psychology.
In 1940 Mowrer became Assistant Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education
Harvard Graduate School of Education
The Harvard Graduate School of Education is one of the graduate schools of Harvard University, and is one of the top schools of education in the United States. It was founded in 1920, the same year it invented the Ed.D...
. He did not feel challenged by his teaching duties there, but formed a close association with Henry A. Murray and his group at the Harvard Psychological Clinic. Mowrer, Murray, Talcott Parsons
Talcott Parsons
Talcott Parsons was an American sociologist who served on the faculty of Harvard University from 1927 to 1973....
, Gordon Allport
Gordon Allport
Gordon Willard Allport 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 personality psychology...
and others formed a group which eventually led to the formation of the Harvard Department of Social Relations
Harvard Department of Social Relations
The Department of Social Relations for Interdisciplinary Social Science Studies, more commonly known as the "Department of Social Relations" was an interdisciplinary collaboration among three of the social science departments at Harvard University beginning in 1946...
, partially in response to the success of the Yale Institute of Human Relations.
During this time Mowrer's faith in Freudian theory was fading. His primary professional loyalty had always been to learning theory, but he continued to assume that neurotic symptoms and depression were best addressed through analysis. His first psychoanalyst had treated him for only a few months. When his depression returned he underwent a second, much lengthier analysis and felt that he was much improved. His symptoms soon returned, leading him to question Freud's premises. In spite of his doubts he underwent a third analysis during the time he was at Harvard, this time with the prominent Freudian disciple Hans Sachs
Hans Sachs
Hans Sachs was a German meistersinger , poet, playwright and shoemaker.-Biography:Hans Sachs was born in Nuremberg . His father was a tailor. He attended Latin school in Nuremberg...
.
War work
In 1944 Mowrer became a psychologist at the Office of Strategic ServicesOffice of Strategic Services
The Office of Strategic Services was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. It was the wartime intelligence agency, and it was a predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency...
developing assessment techniques for potential intelligence agents. Mowrer's experience with the laboratory induction of psychological stress, along with the work of other psychologists, was utilized to construct an environment in which recruits could be assessed for their ability to withstand highly stressful situations.
As part of his work there, he participated in a seminar led by Harry Stack Sullivan
Harry Stack Sullivan
Harry Stack Sullivan was a U.S. psychiatrist whose work in psychoanalysis was based on direct and verifiable observation .-Life and works:Sullivan was a child of Irish immigrants and allegedly grew up in an...
. Sullivan's theories on the role of disturbances in interpersonal relationships with "significant others" in the etiology of mental disorders had a profound effect on Mowrer's thinking. When Mowrer returned to Harvard, he began counseling students in addition to his faculty duties. He used the principles he had learned from Sullivan, questioning them about their interpersonal relationships and confronting them when he felt they were being dishonest.
Move to Illinois
In 1948, Hobart Mowrer accepted a research-only position at the University of IllinoisUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign is a large public research-intensive university in the state of Illinois, United States. It is the flagship campus of the University of Illinois system...
and moved to Urbana, Illinois
Urbana, Illinois
Urbana is the county seat of Champaign County, Illinois, United States. As of the 2010 census, the population was 41,250. Urbana is the tenth-most populous city in Illinois outside of the Chicago metropolitan area....
with Molly and their three young children. He was now involved with two essentially separate lines of work, learning theory and clinical psychology. Mowrer's primary achievements in learning theory followed from his work with aversive conditioning
Aversives
In psychology, aversives are unpleasant stimuli that induce changes in behavior through punishment; by applying an aversive immediately following a behavior, the likelihood of the behavior occurring in the future is reduced. Aversives can vary from being slightly unpleasant or irritating to...
or avoidance learning. He formulated a two-factor learning theory, arguing that conditioning (sign learning) is distinct from habit formation (solution learning). This theory was initially described in a 1947 paper. In the 1950s he modified the theory to allow for only one type of learning but two types of reinforcement.
Mowrer's interest in clinical psychology was primarily a hobby during the 1950s, but it would eventually eclipse his work as a learning theorist. He had given up on psychoanalysis after 1944, partially as a result of the failure of his own analysts to cure his problems. Most importantly, Harry Stack Sullivan
Harry Stack Sullivan
Harry Stack Sullivan was a U.S. psychiatrist whose work in psychoanalysis was based on direct and verifiable observation .-Life and works:Sullivan was a child of Irish immigrants and allegedly grew up in an...
had persuaded him that the key to mental health lay in healthy, scrupulously honest human relationships, not in intrapsychic factors. Mower took Sullivan's ideas to heart and confessed to his wife some guilty secrets concerning his adolescent sexual behavior, and that he had had an affair during the marriage. She was upset, but convinced (as was Mowrer) that those secrets might explain his bouts of depression. The depressive symptoms did remain in remission for eight years.
In 1953, at the height of his career and on the eve of accepting the presidency of the American Psychological Association
American Psychological Association
The American Psychological Association is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States. It is the world's largest association of psychologists with around 154,000 members including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. The APA...
, he suffered the worst psychological collapse of his life. He was hospitalized for three and a half months with depression complicated by symptoms resembling psychosis. Few effective treatments were available. A few years later, Mowrer was successfully treated with one of the first tricyclic antidepressants.
Religious views
During most of Mowrer's adult life he had no involvement with religion. He recognized that his theories about the importance of guiltGuilt
Guilt is the state of being responsible for the commission of an offense. It is also a cognitive or an emotional experience that occurs when a person realizes or believes—accurately or not—that he or she has violated a moral standard, and bears significant responsibility for that...
were similar to traditional religious ideas, but he had arrived at his convictions through a secular process and the religious concepts of guilt and sin did not at first interest him. Freud, in Mowrer's view, had made a fatal error in attributing emotional distress to inappropriate guilt. Mowrer had concluded that mental disorders, including even schizophrenia
Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by a disintegration of thought processes and of emotional responsiveness. It most commonly manifests itself as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it is accompanied by significant social...
, were the result of real, not imagined, guilt. Mowrer did not see this as a religious issue. He had been raised to associate religion with "otherworldly" values, with the relationship of individuals to God, and his own focus was on the relationship of individuals to one another.
In 1955 Mowrer read a religious novel which changed his thinking. His daughter was reading Magnificent Obsession
Magnificent Obsession
Magnificent Obsession is a 1929 novel by Lloyd C. Douglas. It was one of four of his books that were eventually made into blockbuster motion pictures, the other three being The Robe, White Banners and The Big Fisherman.-Plot summary:...
by Lloyd C. Douglas
Lloyd C. Douglas
Lloyd Cassel Douglas born Doya C. Douglas, was an American minister and author.He was born in Columbia City, Indiana, spent part of his boyhood in Monroeville, Indiana, Wilmot, Indiana and Florence, Kentucky, where his father, Alexander Jackson Douglas, was pastor of the Hopeful Lutheran Church...
and told her father that it might interest him. Mowrer was impressed by Douglas' thesis, expressed through a fictional character, that the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
was a superb handbook of human relations. A central theme of the novel is a secret shared by a small group of people who have found great spiritual and material success. It is derived from Jesus' suggestion to "do alms in secret", not letting anyone know. In the book, however, good deeds done in secret invest the characters with almost magical power. Mowrer turned the concept around to place the emphasis on the pathological potential of misdeeds when they are kept secret. He summed it up the phrase, "You are your secrets," sometimes reworded as "You are as sick as your secrets."
After reading other fictional and non-fictional works by Lloyd Douglas, who had left the Congregationalist
United Church of Christ
The United Church of Christ is a mainline Protestant Christian denomination primarily in the Reformed tradition but also historically influenced by Lutheranism. The Evangelical and Reformed Church and the Congregational Christian Churches united in 1957 to form the UCC...
ministry to devote himself to writing, Mowrer became a member of the Presbyterian Church. He was soon disappointed. He had condemned psychoanalysis for being soft on sin, and now he found that the church was dominated by similar permissive assumptions. It was not only the modernist influences in churches to which Mowrer objected, however, but some traditional beliefs such as the doctrine of justification by faith. He set out to restore to churches the consciousness of personal sin and guilt he felt they had lost. He was able to acquire funding from the Lilly Endowment
Lilly Endowment
Lilly Endowment Inc., headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana is one of the world's largest private philanthropic foundations and is among the ten largest such endowments in the United States....
for a fellowship in morality and mental health. The program brought students from seminaries and divinity schools (among others, Jay E. Adams
Jay E. Adams
Jay E. Adams is an American Reformed Christian author who is mostly known for his book, Competent to Counsel, in which he states that any Christian is more competent to counsel than any secular psychologist...
) to Champaign-Urbana
Champaign-Urbana Metropolitan Area
The Champaign-Urbana metropolitan area, also known as Champaign-Urbana, is a metropolitan area in east-central Illinois. It is the 191st largest metropolitan area in the U.S. It is composed of three counties, Champaign, Ford, and Piatt...
, where they learned Mowrer's counseling and group techniques.
Integrity therapy
After Mowrer's positive experiences as a result of his disclosures to his wife in 1945, he began to counsel students using several simple premises: that neurotic people often are being deceptive in some way with people they care about; that they suffer from conscience pangs but resist or repressPsychological repression
Psychological repression, also psychic repression or simply repression, is the psychological attempt by an individual to repel one's own desires and impulses towards pleasurable instincts by excluding the desire from one's consciousness and holding or subduing it in the unconscious...
the prompting of the conscience; and that this causes their symptoms. When Mowrer was counseling someone who could not be induced to confess anything of significance, he would "model" confession for them by disclosing something from his own life. Group therapy was coming into fashion, and although most groups were dominated by the same psychotherapeutic ideas Mowrer had rejected, he saw hope of using groups in a way that would increase the opportunities for confession and emotional involvement.
In a 1972 article detailing the procedures of the groups, Mowrer described the intake interviews as "very unlike a social case-work interview" and "more like those followed in intakes at Synanon
Synanon
The Synanon organization, initially a drug rehabilitation program, was founded by Charles E. "Chuck" Dederich, Sr., in 1958, in Santa Monica, California, United States...
or Daytop." The prospect was first put at ease by "sharing" offered by the interviewers. Committee members would then zero in on some point on which the person seemed to be evasive, inconsistent or defensive. If the person immediately "came clean" to the satisfaction of the committee, s/he would be rewarded with verbal approval and admission to the group. If any resistance was shown, there would be further confrontation, then deliberation by the committee in the presence of the prospective member. According to Mowrer it was rare for someone to be flatly turned down, although they might be asked to seek help elsewhere (with a "psychiatrist of our choice") and come back when they were able to be honest as defined by the group.
Meetings lasted at least three hours. No one could leave before the three hours were up, and anyone who walked out during a "run" (i.e. while the target of group confrontation) was permanently excluded from the group. Any language was acceptable, including profanity and yelling, but no physical violence or threat thereof. Feelings were to be expressed in "gut-level" language and verbal aggression was common. Embraces and physical expressions of affection were also common. All significant details of member's everyday lives were to be shared with the group, and members had contracts detailing steps they would take toward honesty and restitution. These agreements were recorded in a "commitment book" and the member had to answer to the group for any failure to keep a commitment.
Mowrer dropped the term "Integrity Therapy" in favor of "Integrity Groups," to avoid the impression that it was possible to outgrow the need for Group attendance. He considered membership in an Integrity Group to be a life-long commitment (members were shuffled among groups to avoid fixed relationships). Criticism of the Integrity Group concept centered on Mowrer's negativity about human nature, and the questionable value of investing a group with supreme authority over one's life. There was concern that deliberately increasing anxiety in vulnerable people could lead to a psychotic break or suicidal behavior.
When it was suggested that his techniques resembled brain-washing, Mowrer repeated the response of Charles Dederich
Synanon
The Synanon organization, initially a drug rehabilitation program, was founded by Charles E. "Chuck" Dederich, Sr., in 1958, in Santa Monica, California, United States...
(as quoted by Yablonsky) to a similar question: "Yes, that's right, we do engage in a good deal of 'brain-washing.' Most of the people who come here have very dirty brains, and we try to clean them up a bit!" Eugene May noted with respect to this remark that the people entering Synanon generally had severe drug problems and were alienated from family and community, while most participants in Mowrer's community and university groups were leading fairly normal lives.
Later years
The popularity of Integrity Groups faded during the 1970s, and Mowrer never really understood why. His techniques in fact were to have a substantial legacy in the alcohol and drug rehablitation field, but community groups did not last. Mowrer recognized the irony of this. Opposition to professionalism in therapy had been a guiding principal for both Molly and Hobart Mowrer and for years they resisted the temptation to sponsor formal training in I.G. "leadership." Times were changing, however, and it seemed that the only future available for Mowrer's approach was in the hands of paid professionals. He did continue to have some non-professional influence through the Grapevine articles he wrote for Alcoholics Anonymous, an organization he very much admired.Hobart Mowrer was an advocate of the idea that mental illness has a substantial biological and genetic basis. In view of his radical belief in the importance of the "pathogenic secret," this may seem somewhat surprising, but like his other ideas it was largely informed by his own experiences. He accepted the importance of biological factors at a time when many people did not, and was in this respect ahead of his time. He regarded his own affliction as in some sense a "gift," the driving force behind his innovative ideas, but also the great misery of his life.
Mowrer had hoped to remain professionally active in retirement, but circumstances forced him to slow down shortly after he retired in 1975. Molly became seriously ill and he developed medical problems of his own. Molly's death in 1979 was a great loss, and also left him with few responsibilities. He had accepted that his periodic depressions would never be entirely "cured," and had long held the opinion that suicide was a reasonable choice in some circumstances. He committed suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
in 1982 at the age of 75.