Psychology Achievement Timeline, 1960-75

1960

1961

• Stanley Milgram “shock” obedience experiments at Yale; described in 1963 article in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology.

1962

• The Neuroscience Research Program (NRP) is establishes by Francis O. Schmitt that combines the fields of psychology, molecular biology, and nervous system studies.

1963

1964

1965

1966

1967

• Harry Harlow shows that monkeys reared in total isolation have great emotional impairment for the rest of their lives.

1968

• The American Psychological Association publishes DSM-II, adding 76 diagnostic categories to the 106 categories of the DSM-I of 1952.  One hundred years before, the 1840 census listed only one category of mental illness: insanity.

1969

• North American Riding for the Handicapped Association formed as an advisory body to the practitioners of “hippotherapy” to treat a variety of behavioral and psychiatric disorders, as well as neurological and motor diseases.
• Social psychologists Bibb Latane and John M. Darley coin the phrase “bystander effect” in a paper in The American Scientist (Sigma Xi) in response to the 1964 Kitty Genovese murder in Kew Gardens, New York.

1970

1971

1972

1973

• The term “Stockholm Syndrome” coined by Swedish psychiatrist and criminologist Nils Bejerot.
• The American Psychological Association removes homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses.

1974

• Yale University’s Stanley Milgram describes his research from 1961-62 in his book Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View.

1975