Lightner Witmer

Lightner Witmer (1867 to 1956) was an American psychologist who introduced the term clinical psychology and is often credited with founding the field it describes. Born in Philadelphia as David L. Witmer Jr., he studied at the University of Pennsylvania, taught history and English at Rugby Academy, and came to psychology through the experimental psychologist James McKeen Cattell, whose laboratory at Pennsylvania he helped found, before working as an assistant to Wilhelm Wundt at Leipzig University in 1891. Early in his teaching career he helped a fourteen-year-old pupil with severe difficulty telling sounds apart, an experience that convinced him that children with learning difficulties could succeed with support. In 1896 he created the first psychological clinic at the University of Pennsylvania, with the first journal of clinical psychology, and in 1907 the first clinical hospital school. He also contributed to school psychology and to special education.