Hans Eysenck - Life

Life

Eysenck was born in Berlin, Germany. His mother was Silesian-born film star Helga Molander, and his father, Eduard Anton Eysenck, was a nightclub entertainer who was once voted "handsomest man on the Baltic coast". (pp. 8–11). Eysenck was brought up by his maternal grandmother (his grandmother was a fervent Lutheran; after her death in a concentration camp, Eysenck found out that she "apparently" was from a Jewish family). (p. 80). An initial move to England in the 1930s became permanent because of his opposition to the Nazi party. "My hatred of Hitler and the Nazis, and all they stood for, was so overwhelming that no argument could counter it."(p. 40) Because of his German citizenship, he was initially unable to gain employment, and was almost interned during the war. He received his PhD in 1940 from University College, London (UCL) working in the Department of Psychology under the supervision of Professor Sir Cyril Burt, with whom he had a tumultuous professional relationship throughout his working life. (pp. 118–119).

Eysenck was Professor of Psychology at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College, London (a constituent college of the federal University of London), from 1955 to 1983. He was a major contributor to the modern scientific theory of personality and a brilliant teacher who helped found treatment for mental illnesses. Eysenck also created and developed distinctive dimensional model of personality based on factor-analytic summaries, bravely attempting to anchor these summaries in biogenetic variation. He was the founding editor of the journal Personality and Individual Differences, and authored about 80 books and more than 1600 journal articles. His son Michael Eysenck is also a noted psychology professor. Hans Eysenck died of a brain tumour in a London hospice in 1997.