Albee was born in St. Marys, Pennsylvania, he attended Bethany College and graduated in 1943. He was drafted into the Army Air Force until the end of World War II.
After leaving the forces he attended the University of Pittsburgh where he attained his Masters and Doctorate degrees. Having received his doctorate in 1949 he spent the next two years in a research appointment at Western Psychiatric Institute, later working for the APA as assistant executive secretary.
In 1953 Albee went to Finland for a year as a Fulbright scholar, before returning to the USA to become a Professor at Case Western Reserve University, a post he held for 16 years. In 1971 Albee left Case Western for a position at the University of Vermont. He remained here until his retirement in 1991. During that time, he married Constance Impallaria,and had four children: Alec, Luke, Maud and Sarah. Albee was president of the American Psychological Association for 1969-1970.
During his career Albee was the author of groundbreaking studies in the 50's and 60's, that showed societal factors such as poverty, racism, sexism and
child abuse, were to a large degree responsible for mental illness. He believed the
psychological profession needed to focus more on prevention, rather than one to one treatment.
After his retirement Albee spent time travelling around the world giving lectures on psychology. He also found time to write a humor column for his local newspaper the Longboat Observer.
He was the author of more than 200 articles and book chapters on community approaches to mental illness, as well as writing more than a dozen books.
- Served on Eisenhower's and Carter's Presidential Commissions on mental health.
- From 1969 – 1970 Albee was the President of the American Psychological Association (APA)
- 1973 received the APA Distinguished Professional Contribution Award.
- 1993 awarded the American Psychological Foundation Gold Medal.
- 1997 he received the Lifetime Achievement Award in Applied Preventive Psychology.
Albee spoke widely against the use of
psychiatric medication during a time period when the practice of using psychiatric medication was just becoming widely popular. The use of medication for psychiatric illness only began to be used widely in
psychiatric hospitals in the late 1950s and became popular in the 1960s. Albee believed that especially in the case of
children, psychiatric medication was inappropriate and
inadvisable.
Interview with George Albee (1999):
Q: Tell us a little about prevention and what it means for us.
A: Prevention is the act of stopping or hindering something from happening. True primary prevention deals with people who show no overt signs of having a disorder. You look for people who are high risk, and you do things in advance in order to reduce the probability tat they will develop a particular disorder. It is very similar to immunizations. I am ordered because of my age to get a flu shot every fall. It is not because I have any symptoms of the flu, but because I am in a high risk group. People who are in high risk groups are the targets.
For remainder of Interview see Brown University:
http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Human_Development_Center/pubs/l1georgealbee.html Off-site link
References for George Albee, Ph.D. page:
Copac National, Academic, and Specialist Library Catalogue
http://copac.ac.uk/wzgw?id=7987344&field=au&terms=Albee%2C+George+W%2E
George W. Albee, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus, Department of Psychology. University of Vermont.
American Psychological Association (APA)
http://www.apa.org/pi/wpo/george_photos.html
Photo: George Albee, courtesy of University of Vermont, Psychology Department. http://www.uvm.edu/~galbee/index.html
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