Hans Eysenck

Hans Eysenck (1916-1997), German-born British psychologist, renowned for his detailed research into the human personality, from which he developed a system for classifying personality types. He devised a number of experiments which he used for examining personality and assessing intelligence.

Born on March 4, 1916, in Berlin, Eysenck left Nazi Germany in 1934 and continued his education at the University of London. He worked in London throughout his career, firstly at Mill Hill Emergency Hospital (1942-1945); from 1945, at the University of London Maudsley Hospital as Psychologist, and as Reader and Director of the Psychology Unit at the Institute of Psychiatry (1950-1955). He was Professor of Psychology (1955-1984) and Professor Emeritus until his death.

Eysenck is perhaps best known for his invention of a personality inventory, which became known as Eysenck’s Personality Inventory (EPI). This placed people’s personalities into a hierarchy of divisions rooted in Jungian theory, ranging from habitual reactions and traits at the lower end of the scale, through personality and neuroticism, to, at the top, psychoticism. Eysenck placed great emphasis on the biological determinants of personality and searched for physical factors determining these groups of personality types. His methods of analysis, which are controversial, are rooted in physiology and genetics and have contributed to the burgeoning field of evolutionary psychology. In one of Eysenck’s more contentious studies, he linked people’s racial origins with their IQs, an investigation felt by his critics to be taking biological determinism to the extreme.

Another of Eysenck’s well-known contributions to clinical psychology was that of behaviour therapy, a treatment for those with mental disorders such as neurosis. This method of therapy was rooted in the theory that many psychological problems result from defects in the patient’s learning process. Conditioning is used to teach patients how to re-learn reactions and behaviour. This type of therapy—aversion therapy—can be used to help patients to improve their communication skills, or to discourage socially unacceptable conduct such as violent behaviour. Aversion therapy is a form of behaviour therapy in which sufferers from phobias are repeatedly exposed to the object or situation of which they are afraid, and the fear gradually reduces. However, it has also been used to try to change the sexuality, usually homosexuality, of patients, and has been widely discredited for that particular purpose.

Eysenck wrote over 50 publications, making him one of the most prolific writers on psychology ever. His works include The Scientific Study of Personality (1952), Dimensions of Personality (1947), Race, Intelligence and Education (1971), and his autobiography, Rebel with a Cause (1990). He died on September 4, 1997, aged 81.