Theodore Xenophon Barber (1927–2005) was an American psychologist who researched and wrote on the subject of hypnosis,[1] publishing over 200 articles and eight books on that and related topics.
Born in 1927 to Greek immigrant parents in Martins Ferry, Ohio, Barber graduated early from high school and then attended St. John's College in Maryland.
He earned his doctorate in psychology at American University (1956) in Washington, D.C., and then moved to Boston to complete postdoctoral research in the Department of Social Relations at Harvard with Clyde Kluckhohn and William A.
He held adjunct appointments at Harvard and Boston University and attracted a number of research assistants and associates, postdoctoral fellows, and visiting scholars to Medfield.
A later volume, coauthored with Nicholas P. Spanos and John F. Chaves, Hypnosis, Imagination, and Human Potentialities (1974), brought much of this material to a wider audience.
[3] He argued in this work that hypnosis and related constructs are "unnecessary and misleading and that the phenomena that have been traditionally subsumed under these terms can be better understood by utilizing a different set of concepts that are an integral part of present-day psychology.
[5][6] Psychologist Theodore R. Sarbin noted that the work "demystifies and demythologizes" the subject, "the construction of hypnosis as a special mental state ha[s] no ontological footing.
[15] Barber cited examples of caring, flexibility, language, playing, working, concept building, individuality, cause and effect understanding and musical abilities in birds.
[16] Although hypnosis was the main focus of Barber's research, his other interests included investigator bias, psychical phenomena, and comparative psychology, as reflected in his book The Human Nature of Birds (1993).
The results of this final project, to be published posthumously, argues that consciousness, intelligence, and purposefulness can be found throughout the universe, from cells to planets.