Orval Hobart Mowrer (January 23, 1907 – June 20, 1982) was an American psychologist and professor of psychology at the University of Illinois from 1948 to 1975 known for his research on behaviour therapy.
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.
[6] Mowrer began his college years as a conservative Christian, but lost his faith as he adopted progressive and scientific views prevalent in academia.
[7] In his senior year, as a project for a sociology course, Mowrer composed a questionnaire to investigate sexual attitudes among students.
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.
Mowrer's PhD research involved spatial orientation as mediated by vision and the vestibular receptors of the inner ear, using pigeons as subjects.
[6] Academic positions were scarce during the Great Depression, so in 1934 Mowrer began a Sterling Fellowship at Yale University researching learning theory.
[6] 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.
[10] 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.
At the time, most psychologists agreed with William James that fear (in this usage, synonymous with anxiety) was an instinctive response.
[14] 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.
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.
[9] In 1944 Mowrer became a psychologist at the Office of Strategic Services developing assessment techniques for potential intelligence agents.
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.
[6] Mowrer's interest in clinical psychology was primarily a hobby during the 1950s, but it would eventually eclipse his work as a learning theorist.
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.
Freud, in Mowrer's view, had made a fatal error in attributing emotional distress to inappropriate guilt.
Mowrer was impressed by Douglas' thesis, expressed through a fictional character, that the Bible was a superb handbook of human relations.
[18] A central theme of the novel is a secret shared by a small group of people who have found great spiritual and material success.
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.
The program brought students from seminaries and divinity schools (among others, Jay E. Adams[19]) to Champaign-Urbana, where they learned Mowrer's counseling and group techniques.
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.
[21] 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.'
[6] Mowrer's techniques in fact were to have a substantial legacy in the alcohol and drug rehabilitation field,[3] but community groups did not last.
Opposition to professionalism in therapy had been a guiding principle for both Molly and Hobart Mowrer and for years they resisted the temptation to sponsor formal training in I.G.
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.
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.