In memoriam John F. Rittmeister

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

John L. Horn (1928-2006)

John Leonard Horn was born in St. Joseph, Missouri, on September 7, 1928, and he died in Los Angeles, California, on August 18, 2006. John Horn was a world-renowned scholar of immense intellect, and he was highly respected in his time. I believe his major contributions to psychology, as well as his influence on psychologists, will continue to grow. His challenging factor-analytic methods of the 1960s, the important methodological debates of the 1970s and 1980s, and his continuing resistance to faddish trends in psychological research all represent fundamental contributions. Through his research and teaching he forced people to question popular assumptions and to evaluate all the data available. He challenged us to think longer, harder, and better. His work will continue to inspire important research in the fields of multivariate analysis and human cognitive abilities for many decades to come.     

John m. Neale (1943-2011)

Presents an obituary for John M. Neale. Neale died in Hilton Head, South Carolina, on November 19, 2011, after a long illness. He was born on August 31, 1943, in Toronto, Canada. He received his bachelor's degree from the University of Toronto in 1965, where his interest in psychology had been sparked by an introductory course taught by George Mandler. After working at a residential treatment center for emotionally disturbed children, he decided to pursue graduate training in clinical psychology and enrolled at Vanderbilt University. Rue Cromwell served as John's mentor and stimulated his interest in the investigation of perception and cognition in schizophrenia. His doctorate was awarded in 1969, after completion of his internship at the Langley Porter Neuropsychiatric Institute in San Francisco. John was hired in 1969 as an assistant professor in the new and exciting psychology department (founded in 1965) at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. That department remained his academic home for his entire career. Outside of his academic pursuits, John was an avid New York Giants fan, an extensive traveler, an excellent skier and tennis player, a music lover and jukebox collector, an outstanding cook, a terrific dancer, and a devoted dog owner. He continued to pursue these interests throughout his life, taking cooking classes, traveling to exotic locales with his wife Gail, and, when his health precluded more rigorous athletic pursuits, faithfully walking and playing with his dogs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

John I. Lacey (1915-2004)

John I. Lacey died on June 27, 2004. He was one of the pioneers in the integration of psychology and physiology. He worked to establish concepts that cut across disciplines -- eschewing specialization within a cross-disciplinary area. Although a guiding figure in the founding of the Society for Neuroscience, John remained very active in the American Psychological Association (APA) and the Society for Psychophysiological Research until his professional retirement. John's career was characterized by a focused search for specific mechanisms defining how psychological processes interact with physiological processes. John Lacey has left us a legacy of a scientific approach that focuses directly on the relation between psychological concepts and their realization in physiological function. His creativity and breadth of knowledge contributed mightily to the currently burgeoning fields of neuroscience and behavioral medicine. His approach reminds us to continue to include solid psychological science when venturing into these fields.     

The Dr. John Hall story: a case study in putative “Haunted People Syndrome”

ABSTRACT

Research suggests a “Haunted People Syndrome (HP-S)” defined by recurrent and systematic perceptions of anomalous subjective and objective anomalies. Such signs or symptoms are traditionally attributed to “spirits and the supernatural,” but these themes are hypothesised to morph to “surveillance and stalking” in reports of “group-(or gang) stalking,” We tested this premise with a quali-quantitative exercise that mapped group-stalking experiences from a published first-hand account to a Rasch measure of haunt-type anomalies. This comparison found significant agreement in the specific “signs or symptoms” of both phenomena. Meta-patterns likewise showed clear conceptual similarities between the phenomenology of haunts and group-stalking. Findings are consistent with the idea that both anomalous episodes involve the same, or similar, attentional or perceptual processes and thereby support the viability of the HP-S construct.