He was a strong advocate of use of a fixed battery in neuropsychological assessment, published prolifically, and mentored many students who also became prominent in the field.
Growing up during the Great Depression, Reitan worked to help support his family as he grew up and graduated from the Chicago Central YMCA High School for Boys.
After attending two years of college, Reitan attempted to join the U.S. Marine Corps but was declared medically ineligible.
[3] After receiving his bachelor's degree, Reitan worked as a psychometrist at the Chicago Armed Forces Induction Station, using tests to see whether inductees had basic reading and writing abilities and could therefore be accepted into the army.
[4] Despite a lack of doctoral training, he was recommended from there for a job as a psychologist and began working at the Mayo General Hospital in Galesburg, Illinois, in 1945.
[2] Reitan began giving invited speeches in 1954, often speaking at meetings of the American Psychological Association, and by the 1960s, he was directing three-day workshops on the presentation and analysis of test data.
During his tenure at the Mayo General Hospital, he observed the effects of brain injury on adaptive behavior and wanted a better way to describe patients’ deficits when test results showed that they were technically within normal limits.
[2] Reitan valued evidence-based practice, precise work, transparency in science, and economical communication, and he was still described as “a softie” when speaking about his patients.
[2] The HRB is an example of an entirely fixed battery, requiring that every subtest be administered in a certain order no matter the referral question or the patient's presenting complaint.
[9] At the suggestion of his mentor, Ward Halstead, Reitan would interpret neuropsychological test results while blind to any patient information.
[4] Reitan's work later in his career provided an understanding of psychological outcomes of ailments ranging from substance abuse to hypertension to elevated cholesterol.
Through the last few decades of his life, he continued to be involved in both research and the training of neuropsychologists, including making his opinions known on the Houston Conference and the Clinical Neuropsychology Synarchy.