Maurice K. Temerlin (January 15, 1924 – January 15, 1988), was a
psychologist
A psychologist is a professional who practices psychology and studies mental states, perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and social processes and behavior. Their work often involves the experimentation, observation, and interpretation of how indi ...
and author.
Life
Research
Suggestion Effects of Psychiatric Labels
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Temerlin published a series of articles examining the effect of
diagnostic labels. Temerlin and his colleagues asked clinicians to evaluate and diagnose a man. Before making their diagnosis, they were told that an 'expert' had previously diagnosed the individual as 'psychotic'. The man was in fact a mentally healthy individual who was a confederate of the experimenters. Even though the man did not present with symptoms of psychosis, many clinicians agreed with the 'expert' diagnosis.
Work with Lucy
With his wife Jane W. Temerlin, Temerlin raised a
chimpanzee
The chimpanzee (''Pan troglodytes''), also known as simply the chimp, is a species of great ape native to the forest and savannah of tropical Africa. It has four confirmed subspecies and a fifth proposed subspecies. When its close relative th ...
named
Lucy who was owned by the Institute for Primate Studies at the
University of Oklahoma at
Norman, Oklahoma. Temerlin and his wife raised Lucy in their home as if she were a human child, teaching her to eat with silverware, dress herself, flip through magazines, and sit in a chair at the dinner table. She was taught
American Sign Language
American Sign Language (ASL) is a natural language that serves as the predominant sign language of Deaf communities in the United States of America and most of Anglophone Canadians, Anglophone Canada. ASL is a complete and organized visual lang ...
by primatologist
Roger Fouts
Roger S. Fouts (born June 8, 1943) is a retired American primate researcher. He was co-founder and co-director of the Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute (CHCI) in Washington, and a professor of psychology at the Central Washington Univer ...
as part of an
ape language
Research into great ape language has involved teaching chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans to communicate with humans and with each other using sign language, physical tokens, Yerkish#Lexigram_concept, lexigrams, and mimicking human spee ...
project. Temerlin wrote the book ''Lucy: Growing Up Human: A Chimpanzee Daughter in a Psychotherapist's Family'', analyzing the chimp's behaviour and describing her life.
'Psychotherapy Cults'
Temerlin collaborated academically with his wife on articles, including "Psychotherapy Cults: An Iatrogenic Perversion," which was published in ''Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, and Practice''. The work remains highly regarded, and is cited by numerous academicians, including Robert S. Pepper,
Michael Langone, Guy Fielding and Sue Llewelyn,
David A. Halperin, and
Arnold Markowitz, and Dennis Tourish and Pauline Irving.
[Irving, P., & Tourish, D. (1995). "Group influence and the psychology of cultism within re-evaluation counselling: a critique". ''Counselling Psychology Quarterly'', 8(1), 15-30.]
Publications
Books
*''Lucy: Growing Up Human: A Chimpanzee Daughter in a Psychotherapist's Family'', Temerlin, Maurice. 1976
*''Labelling Madness'', Contributor, "Suggestion Effects in Psychiatric Diagnosis," Thomas J. Scheff, (ed.),
Prentice-Hall
Prentice Hall was an American major educational publisher owned by Savvas Learning Company. Prentice Hall publishes print and digital content for the 6–12 and higher-education market, and distributes its technical titles through the Safari B ...
, Inc.,
Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1975.
*''The Social Psychology of Clinical Diagnosis'',
University of Oklahoma, Dept. of Psychology 1966
Articles
"Some Hazards of the Therapeutic Relationship" Jane W. Temerlin, M. S. W., Maurice K. Temerlin, Ph. D., ''Cultic Studies Journal''
Diagnostic Bias in Community Mental Health ''Community Mental Health Journal'', Volume 6, Number 2 / April, 1970
See also
*
Lucy (chimpanzee)
Lucy (1964–1987) was a chimpanzee owned by the Institute for Primate Studies in Oklahoma, and raised by Maurice K. Temerlin, a psychotherapist and professor at the University of Oklahoma and his wife, Jane.
Background
Temerlin and his wife ra ...
*
List of cult and new religious movement researchers
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Temerlin
20th-century American psychologists
Researchers of new religious movements and cults
1924 births
1988 deaths
Psychotherapists
University of Oklahoma faculty
Scientists from Oklahoma