author
Morton Prince
1854–1929
A pioneering Boston physician helped bring abnormal psychology into mainstream medical and academic life in the United States. Best known for his work on hypnosis, dissociation, and the famous case study The Dissociation of a Personality, he wrote at a moment when modern psychology was still taking shape.
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About the author
Born in Boston in December 1854, Morton Prince trained at Harvard and Harvard Medical School before building a career as a physician specializing in neurology and what was then called abnormal psychology. He became one of the American figures most closely associated with the early clinical study of subconscious and dissociative mental processes.
His writing often explored hypnosis, multiple personality, and the borderland between neurology and psychology. His best-known book, The Dissociation of a Personality (1905), grew out of a famous case study and helped make dissociation a subject of wide public and professional interest.
Prince also worked to give the field a stronger institutional footing. He founded the Journal of Abnormal Psychology in 1906 and is widely remembered as an important early advocate for treating psychology as both a serious scientific discipline and a clinical practice. He died in Boston on August 31, 1929.