The Family Tree

Frank Landy

One way of considering our history is to trace the evolution of our leaders. One way of defining leaders is by identifying those elected to leadership, particularly past Division 14 and SIOP presidents. That is what is portrayed in the accompanying charts. These charts had been originally prepared for an article that I published in the life of Hugo Munsterberg (Landy, 1991) and updated with assistance from Rich Klimoski and George Hallenbeck.

The original and updated charts were developed from archival records (e.g., dissertation signature pages) and discussions with relevant individuals when possible. The charts are not meant to suggest that that other individuals did not influence the past presidents. This is a simple archival linking of past presidents to committee chairs and/or dissertation chairs.

If there is an inference to be drawn from those charts, it is that we seem to be remarkably heterogeneous as a society. There is no clear "royal line." Our presidents came from many different branches of the tree. We might expect that the psychometrician among us would have come from Cattell, or the clinical-social-industrial from James or Witmer or the laboratory research advocate from Titchener. But, in fact, there seems to be no historical ideological influence in presidential evolution. I see this as a good sign. Given the nature of our subdiscipline and the vagaries of societal circumstances, it is best that we not be encumbered by old loyalties.