Erich Mittenecker

Erich Mittenecker (born June 26, 1922 in Wiener Neustadt ; † November 18, 2018 ) was an Austrian psychologist and professor of psychology at the University of Graz .

Life

Childhood and youth

Mittenecker came from a working-class family in Burgenland , his father was a telegraph worker, and his mother came from smallholders. As a child he began to read and write at the age of three and a half years. between the central organ of the Social Democrats. He attended the humanistic grammar school in Wiener Neustadt. The annexation to the German Reich was a surprising experience for him : Since his political attitude was known, he had not noticed that about half of his classmates were with the Hitler Youth and only revealed themselves after 1938; Only the children from corresponding parental homes and Jewish classmates were immune to this totalitarian ideology, but they soon had to leave school. He, who himself never had any problems with the subject matter, also experienced how classmates of the so-called lower class were treated unfairly by the teachers; for him an occasion to later advocate an “objective” performance evaluation. Since there were so-called "introductory philosophical lessons" at high schools at that time, he already learned something about psychology at school, e. B. on the Weber-Fechner law . After graduating from high school, Mittenecker decided to study chemistry at the University of Vienna , although he admitted his efforts in laboratory work. In October 1941 he was drafted into the military and joined a Viennese news company. Here he proved to be so talented that he was able to stay with the central radio station in Vienna throughout the war.

Studies and academic background

At the end of May 1945 he resumed studying chemistry with the experiences he had already made. H. Enjoyment of theory and difficulties in “cooking”. First attempts at reorientation petered out because a philosophy lecturer presented a strange and unrealistic psychology. This changed when Hubert Rohracher - coming from Innsbruck - took over psychology and took a clear scientific standpoint. In the first semesters, the students also had to do holiday work, i.e. H. Get the institute's books out of the bomb rubble and clean them. Walter Toman , Rohracher's assistant, organized this work. Mittenecker also attended psychoanalytic courses held in the rooms of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Association by Theodor Scharmann . From 1947 Mittenecker von Rohracher was hired as a half-day research assistant and was supposed to do the first experiments on so-called microvibration . After unsatisfactory attempts at psychology of perception, he received his doctorate with a thesis on the theory of science on the subject of "Experience and Objectivity, an attempt to clarify terms in experiential psychology with special consideration of Schlick's epistemology ". After receiving his doctorate, Mittenecker stayed between 1948 and 1953 as a research assistant at the Institute for Psychology in Vienna. In 1950/1951, a Rockefeller scholarship took him to the USA.

After returning to Vienna, Mittenecker had to deal with statistics, experimental psychological exercises and diagnostics. It was already common practice in Vienna at that time to hold a seminar on English-language literature. The courses on statistics, for which, in Mittenecker's opinion , there was nothing useful with the exception of a work by Paul Lazarsfeld , was the reason to write an introductory textbook on "Planning and Statistical Evaluation of Experiments" in 1952, which for a long time was the only textbook for Psychologists, educators, physicians and biologists in the German-speaking area stayed. The corresponding courses were later taken over by Kurt Pawlik , Klaus Foppa and Gerhard H. Fischer .

Mittenecker's habilitation took place in 1953. He remained as successor to Walter Toman at the assistant position in Vienna until he received an a. o. Received professorship for experimental and applied psychology. Giselher Guttmann later became his successor . In 1965 he was appointed to the University of Tübingen , where he a. a. Helmut Remschmidt became doctoral supervisor . In 1968 Mittenecker took over the chair at the University of Graz, which had been orphaned since Ferdinand Weinhandl's retirement in 1965 . He initiated a scientific turn in the direction of empirical-experimental psychology for Graz. Erich Mittenecker remained head of the institute until 1983, and since October 1, 1990 he has been emeritus.

In the course of his career Mittenecker was honored several times; for example in 2013 with the Great Decoration of Honor for Services to the Republic of Austria .

plant

Mittenecker's work can be assigned to the areas of methodology and statistics, general psychology (psychophysical scaling research), personality psychology (diagnostics and test development) and applied psychology (traffic psychology). He was particularly interested in perseveration tendencies to identify personality differences. With Toman he was the first to develop a German personality and interest test based on the MMPI ; further tests to record perseveration tendencies followed. Since the beginning of his academic career, Mittenecker has dealt with traffic psychological accident research, which also led to consequences for practical traffic training.

Mittenecker's professional activities related to the establishment of a law on psychotherapists in Austria and were also reflected in his many years of work as a board member of the Styrian Society for Psychology (StGP) .

Fonts

• Creation and prevention of dangerous mistakes. In: Safe Work. 3, 1950, pp. 1-4.
• with Walter Toman : The PI test, a combined personality and interest test. Sexl, Vienna 1951.
• VPT - Verbal Perseveration Test. In: Monthly magazine for psychiatry and neurology. 121, 1951, pp. 364-375.
• Planning and statistical evaluation of experiments. An introduction for psychologists, biologists and medical professionals. Deuticke, Vienna 1952.
• Perseveration and Personality. 1st part: Experimental investigations. In: Journal for Experimental and Applied Psychology. 1, 1953, pp. 5-31.
• Perseveration and Personality. Part 2: Theoretical Interpretation. In: Journal for Experimental and Applied Psychology. 1, 1953, pp. 265-284.
• MZV - Mittenecker pointing attempt. In: Journal for Experimental and Applied Psychology. 7, 1960, pp. 392-400.
• About perseverations of various aggregates in the language. In: Journal for Experimental and Applied Psychology. 10, 1963, pp. 80-90.
• Research into the psychological causes of accidents. In: Archive for Accident Research, Dept. Traffic Accident Research. 1, 1964, pp. 305-312.
• with Erich Raab : Information theory for psychologists. Hogrefe, Göttingen 1973.
• with Walter Toman: PIT - personality and interest test. Huber, Bern 1972.
• Psychological causes of accidents and attempts to reduce them. In: Notebooks for trauma medicine. 130, 1978, pp. 121-131.
• Subjective tests to measure personality. In: KJM Groffmann (ed.): Personality diagnostics . Hogrefe, Göttingen 1982, pp. 57-131.
• The mental performance of people in traffic. System reserve or cause of traffic accidents. In: Kuratorium für Verkehrssicherheit (Ed.): Verkehrssicherheitstagung 1982. Kuratorium für Verkehrssicherheit, Vienna 1982, pp. 119–137.
• The effect of learning conditions on the psychophysical scaling of brightness. In: Journal for Experimental and Applied Psychology. 30, 4, 1983, pp. 628-638.
• Video in psychology. Methods and application examples in research and practice. Huber, Bern 1987.
• Psychologist Act and Psychotherapy Act. A comment. In: Psychology in Austria. 3-4, 1990, pp. 7-11.
• The legal situation of psychology in Austria. In: BÖP (Ed.): Psychology in Styria. Leykam, Graz 1993, pp. 11-18.
• The development of psychology at the Karl-Franzens-University Graz. In E. Mittenecker, G. Shoulder (Ed.): 100 Years of Psychology at the University of Graz. 1994, pp. 1-41.

literature

• Erich Raab, Günter shoulder (ed.): Perspektiven psychological research. Contributions to methodology, personality research and applied psychology. Festschrift for Erich Mittenecker's 65th birthday. Deuticke, Vienna 1987.
• Erich Mittenecker. In: E. Wehner (Ed.): Psychology in self-portrayals. Huber, Bern 1992, pp. 203-225.

Honors

• Prize winners - City of Vienna funding awards for science, 1955
• Gold Medal for Services to the Republic of Austria, 2013
• Golden Doctoral Degree of the Faculty of Psychology, 2016
• Honorary member of the Austrian Society for Psychology
• Honorary member of the Austrian Institute for Youth Studies
• Honorary member of the Austrian Society for Behavior Modification and Behavior Therapy
• 1974/1975 Dean of the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Graz

Web links

• Literature by and about Erich Mittenecker in the catalog of the German National Library
• Helmut E. Lück: 100 years of the German Society for Psychology. (PDF; 4.6 MB)
• Doris Griesser: Meinong, Weinhandl & Co. The Institute for Psychology celebrates its centenary in 1994. 1994.
• Gerhard H. Fischer: Half a Century of History of the Institute for Psychology (PDF; 141 kB)
• "PsychAuthors" profile at ZPID (including list of publications)

Individual evidence

1. ^ BÖP honorary member em. o. Univ.-Prof. Dr. Erich Mittenecker passed away , accessed on May 14, 2019
2. ↑ m07dob: Prize Winners - City of Vienna Prize for Science (1951 to 1990). Retrieved December 10, 2019 . 
3. ↑ Prizes and awards in January 2016. Accessed December 10, 2019 .