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J. T. MacCurdy
John Thomson MacCurdy (1886-1947) was a renowned Canadian psychiatrist and University lecturer at Cornell from 1913-1922 and Cambridge from 1923-1947.
Born in Toronto, Canada, he studied biology a...view moreJohn Thomson MacCurdy (1886-1947) was a renowned Canadian psychiatrist and University lecturer at Cornell from 1913-1922 and Cambridge from 1923-1947.
Born in Toronto, Canada, he studied biology at the University of Toronto, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1906. He received his medical degree from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore in 1911 and was elected to a Fellowship in Pathology at Johns Hopkins. He pursued research in neuropathology in Germany and worked for a time in Alzheimer’s laboratory in Munich. In 1913 he was appointed Lecturer in Medical Psychology at Cornell and Assistant to Dr. August Hoch at the Psychiatric Institute of New York. He was a founder of the American Psychoanalytic Association, of which he became President in 1922.
In 1917, as America entered WWI, MacCurdy, now with the rank of Captain, was despatched on a special mission to England to investigate the problems which were about to confront psychiatrists in the American Expeditionary Forces. Working within neurology and psychiatry in the British Army, he learnt about many new psychological conditions in the troops, not seen in previous wars fought by British forces—in particular shell shock, or what is today referred to as post-traumatic stress disorder. He reported his findings in his book, War Neuroses, in 1918, which followed his 1917 work, The Psychology of War, which analysed the traits that lead to wars.
MacCurdy returned to the U.S. in 1919 and continued to practise as a psychiatrist and his work with Hoch on manic-depressive psychoses, publishing his work in 1920 as The Prognosis of Involutional Melancholia. He became a lecturer in psychopathology at Cambridge University in 1923 and continued to write books, including Problems in Dynamic Psychology (1923) and The Psychology of Emotion (1925). In 1926 he was appointed to the position of Psychological Consultant to the Royal Air Force.
MacCurdy continued to write books during his time in Cambridge, including Problems in Dynamic Psychology: A Critique of Psychoanalysis and Suggested Formulations (1922), The Structure of Emotion, Morbid And Normal (1925), Common Principles in Psychology and Physiology (1928), Mind and Money: A Psychologist Looks at the Crisis (1932), and The Structure of Morale (1943).
He died in 1947.view less