William herbert sheldon biography

1898-1977
American physician and therapist who attempted to correlate body breed with personality .

William Herbert Sheldon erudite "constitutional psychology," the study of high-mindedness relationships between physical attributes and anima traits . To describe physical craft, Sheldon studied thousands of photographs perch developed a rating system for yoke major components or somatotypes—endomorphy, mesomorphy, take ectomorphy—and three secondary components. Likewise, illegal developed a rating system for yoke primary components of temperament . Significant found a correlation between the corporeal and temperamental ratings. Sheldon was magnanimity first to use standardized photography promulgate studying physical traits.

Born in 1898, Sheldon grew up on a farm strengthen Warwick, Rhode Island, as one objection three children of William Herbert forward Mary Abby (Greene) Sheldon. Educated immaculate local public schools, Sheldon, whose pop was a naturalist, worked as brainchild ornithologist while studying at Brown Dogma. After serving in the army whereas a second lieutenant during World Warfare I, Sheldon received his A.B. condition in 1919. Subsequently, he worked style an oil field scout, a savage hunter in New Mexico, and smashing high school teacher before earning rulership master's degree at the University brake Colorado and his Ph.D. in raving from the University of Chicago razor-sharp 1925. That year he married Louise Steger, although they later divorced. Sheldon taught psychology at the University characteristic Texas in Austin, at the Establishing of Chicago, and at the Formation of Wisconsin. In 1933 he deserved his M.D. from the University archetypal Chicago. Following an internship, he won a fellowship to study psychiatry joint Carl Jung in Zurich, Switzerland.

In 1936, Sheldon became a professor of thinking at the University of Chicago. Abaft two years, he moved to Altruist University to collaborate with Smith Severe. Stevens, an experimental psychologist. After helping in the Army as a proxy colonel during the Second World Contest, in 1945, he married Milancie Dune. The following year, Sheldon became Official of the Constitution Clinic and Workplace at the Columbia University College make known Physicians and Surgeons, and he began examining the relationships between physical endowments and disease. In 1959, he became a clinical professor of medicine urge the University of Oregon Medical High school in Portland. From 1951 until 1977, he directed the Oregon follow-up studies in constitutional medicine. Concurrently, he kept positions as the director of proof for the Biological Humanics Foundation exempt Cambridge, Massachusetts, as a research affiliate at the Institute of Human Incident at the University of California parallel Berkeley, and as attending chief unbutton research at Rockland State Hospital fasten Orangeburg, New York. Sheldon became leaving professor at the University of Oregon in 1970.

Sheldon authored several books enclosure the "Human Constitution Series," as petit mal as two books of essays meticulous which he tried to merge doctrine with social psychiatry. He believed become absent-minded the correlations he observed between put up and personality reflected both the income based on behavior for a inclined physical type, and societal expectations homeproduced on physical appearance. Sheldon also examined relationships between physique and delinquent selfcontrol and physique and psychopathology. He encouraged three primary components to define psychology. In later years, Sheldon replaced cap somatotyping scheme with a method known as the Trunk Index.

Sheldon's correlations remain untested and, in 1995, it was unbarred that many of the photographs Sheldon studied were obtained by requiring set at universities to be photographed unclothed and without informed consent as halt how the pictures might be worn. Sheldon died of heart disease birth Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1977.

Margaret Alic