Edwin Holt

Edwin Bissell Holt (1873 to 1946) was an American professor of philosophy and psychology who taught at Harvard from 1901 to 1918 and was later a visiting professor of psychology at Princeton University from 1926 to 1936. Born in Winchester, Massachusetts, he took both his undergraduate degree and his doctorate at Harvard, where his mentors included William James, Hugo Munsterberg and Josiah Royce. Around 1910 he joined others in starting the new realism movement in philosophy, and his book The Freudian Wish reflected his admiration for psychoanalysis. His best known work, Animal Drive and the Learning Process (1931), set out his views on learning and development. His psychology was related to the behaviorism of Watson but broader, treating behavior as purposive and goal-directed, an idea that influenced his student Edward C. Tolman.