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G. Stanley Hall, a student of Wilhelm Wundt, establishes first U.S. experimental psychology laboratory at Johns Hopkins University.
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The academic title "professor of psychology" is given to James McKeen Cattell in 1888, the first use of this designation in the United States. A student of Wilhelm Wundt's, Cattell serves as professor of psychology at University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University.
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Using standardized tests, Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon develop a scale of general intelligence on the basis of mental age. Later researchers refine this work into the concept of intelligence quotient; IQ, mental age over physical age. From their beginning, such tests' accuracy and fairness are challenged.
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John B. Watson publishes "Psychology as Behavior," launching behaviorism. In contrast to psychoanalysis, behaviorism focuses on observable and measurable behavior.
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Charles Frederick Menninger and his sons Karl Augustus and William Clair found The Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas.
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Walter Freeman performs first frontal lobotomy in the United States at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
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U.S. President Harry Truman signs the National Mental Health Act, providing generous funding for psychiatric education and research for the first time in U.S. history.
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FDA approves its use in the United States under the name Tofranil.
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The anti-psychotic drug chlorpromazine (known as Thorazine) is tested on a patient in a Paris military hospital.
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Inspired by work in mathematics and other disciplines, psychologists begin to focus on cognitive states and processes.
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U.S. President John F. Kennedy calls for and later signs the Community Mental Health Centers Act
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Neal E. Miller is the first psychologist to be awarded this honor.
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A new brain scanning technique, Positron Emission Tomography (PET), is tested.
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The epidemic of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection presents mental health professionals with challenges ranging from at-risk patients' anxiety and depression to AIDS-related dementia.
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The latest revision of the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is published in a version for personal digital assistants (PDAs). The manual, first published in 1954, outlines prevalence, diagnosis, and treatment of mental disorders. Only 132 pages on first printing, in 2000 it was 980 pages.
