Calvin S. Hall

Calvin Springer Hall (born January 18, 1909 in Seattle , Washington , † April 4, 1985 in Santa Cruz , California ) was an American depth psychologist and dream scientist . He was the son of the federal judge of the same name, Calvin S. Hall.

Education

Hall first completed his studies in psychology in Washington with the well-known behavioral scientist Edwin Guthrie . Since he refused a compulsory ROTC course in Washington, he was forced to transfer to Berkeley University in California, where he graduated from the behaviorist Edward Tolman in 1930. After another three years of study with Tolman and Robert Tryon , he graduated with a Ph.D.

Until then, Hall had mainly dealt with behavioral experiments on rats. He succeeded in proving that with the same genetic starting material, different circumstances could lead to different behavioral habits and learning abilities.

Studies in psychology and dream interpretation

Hall was one of the most creative psychologists in America from 1935 to 1975. From the 1940s onwards, his most important life's work was the interpretation of dreams , which he brought from the clinic to a normal, domestic atmosphere, as he recognized that people had completely different dreams at home than in the clinic or in a sleep laboratory . Hall started out dreaming about fellow students and by the end of his life had compiled over 50,000 dream reports.

Hall's empirical studies indicate that the dreams of different peoples around the world are more similar than different, barring variations that result from cultural differences. At the same time he found great individual differences in the frequency of the dream elements. According to Hall, these differences are related to circumstances of daily life, to emotional occupation and interests. Hall suggested that this factor be called the “continuity” between dream content and waking thoughts .

His work with dream diaries , which he kept for several years, or which were kept by a few other people even for decades, showed an astonishing consistency with regard to the dream content , even if there were undisputed changes in the real life of the dreaming persons.

Hall's theoretical, methodological, and empirical studies of dreams outside the clinic have been authoritative worldwide. Based on his empirical dream studies, Hall developed a dream theory with the following main points:

• Dreams express “conceptions” of self, about family members, about friends, and about the social environment.
• Dreams reveal states of weakness, assertiveness, not being loved, dominance, and hostility.
• Hall also discovered a theory of parable dream symbolism that occurs in both average society and poetry.

In addition to his many scientific dream publications, Hall wrote two popular books , Traumdeutungen (orig. Meaning of Dreams , 1953) and Das Individual und seine Träume (orig. The Individual and His Dreams , 1972). Both became bestsellers.

Teaching at universities and further education

Hall spent most of his teaching at Case Western Reserve University (Cleveland, Ohio), also at Syracuse University (1957–59), at the University of Miami (1959–60), and at the Catholic University of Nijmegen ( Netherlands) as part of the Fulbright program (1960–61).

From 1961 to 1965, Hall studied dreams from sleep laboratories at the Dream Research Institute in Miami, noting that the dreams of the night were similar in content. During this time, Hall and Robert Van de Castle revolutionized the objective study of dream content with their comprehensive new code system.

In 1966, Hall was semi- retired in Santa Cruz, Calif., While continuing his dream research and giving seminars from time to time at the local university. He was the co-author of books about the dreams of Franz Kafka and a sex offender . He continued to pursue his love of great literature, classical music and opera, took daily walks and bike rides along the sea, and tended his flower garden. His wife, Irene Hannah Sanborn , whom he married in 1932 and from whom he lived separated from 1959, died before him. He had a son, Dovre Hall Busch.

Fonts

• Manual of Experimental Psychology. (orig .: Handbook of Experimental Psychology. 1951)
• Dream interpretations. (orig .: Meaning of Dreams. 1953)
• Handbook on Freudian Psychology. (orig .: A Primer of Freudian Psychology. 1954)
• Personality theories. (orig .: Theories of Personality. 1957)
• Calvin S. Hall, Robert Van de Castle: Dream Analysis. (orig .: The Content Analysis of Dreams. 1966)
• The individual and his dreams. (orig .: The Individual and His Dreams. 1972).
• Handbook of Jungian Psychology. (orig .: A Primer of Jungian Psychology. 1973)

literature

• Ann Faraday : Positive Power of Dreams. , 1996 (orig .: Dream Power. 1972)

Web links

• Calvin S. Hall. Short biography on psych.ucsc.edu (English)
• Literature by and about Calvin S. Hall in the catalog of the German National Library