George Herbert Mead

George Herbert Mead (1863 to 1931) was an American philosopher, sociologist and psychologist, mainly affiliated with the University of Chicago. He was one of the key figures in the development of pragmatism and is regarded as one of the founders of symbolic interactionism and an influence on the Chicago School of Sociology. Born in South Hadley, Massachusetts, he graduated from Oberlin College in 1883 and, despite never finishing his dissertation, won a post at the University of Michigan in 1891, where he met Charles Horton Cooley and John Dewey. He moved with Dewey to Chicago in 1894 and taught there until his death. His thinking developed into his psychological theories of mind, self and society, built on pragmatism and what he called social behaviorism, and he was a critic of John B. Watson behaviorism. He held that the individual mind can exist only in relation to other minds with shared meanings.