Charles Samuel Myers FRS[1] (13 March 1873 –12 October 1946) was a significant English psychologist, who coined the term shell shock. He was co-founder of the British Psychological Society and the National Institute of Industrial Psychology.
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Myers was born in Kensington, London on 13 March 1873,[2] the eldest son of Wolf Myers, a merchant, and his wife, Esther Eugenie Moses.[3] In the 1881 census he is an 8-year-old scholar living at 27 Arundel Gardens, Kensington, London with his parents, 4 brothers and 4 servants.[4]
In the 1891 census he is a scholar, aged 18 living at 49 Leinster Gardens, Paddington, London, with his parents, 4 brothers, a visitor, and 4 servants (cook, housemaid, parlourmaid, and ladies maid).[5]
He attended the City of London School where he studied sciences. Of this experience he wrote:
| “ | My science master at school knew little biology and less physiology, and in the private tuition which he gave me I used to find him reading my textbook in physiology [Michael Foster’s] so as to keep just ahead of me. I left school in 1890 and joined a year’s course in elementary biology, chemistry, and physics at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. Thus, hurriedly and poorly equipped, I gained an entrance exhibition, and soon after a foundation scholarship at Caius. | ” |
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—C. A. Murchison (ed.), “Charles Samuel Myers”, 1961[6] |
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He attended Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge University, where he took a first in each part of the Natural Sciences tripos (1893 and 1895).[7] He was Arnold Gerstenberg student in 1896. (This fund was set up in 1892 for the promotion of the study of Moral Philosophy and Metaphysics among students of Natural Sciences [8]) He also trained at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London.
In 1898 he joined W. H. R. Rivers and William McDougall on the Cambridge anthropological expedition organised by Alfred Cort Haddon to the Torres Straits and Sarawak. Here he studied ethnic music, carrying out research on rhythm in Borneo.[9]
On his return to England he was appointed house physician at St Bartholomew's. In 1902 he returned to Cambridge to help Rivers teach the physiology of the special senses.
In 1904 Myers married Edith Babette, youngest daughter of Isaac Seligman, a merchant in London; they had three daughters and two sons. Myers remained in Cambridge to become, in succession, demonstrator, lecturer, and, in 1921, reader in experimental psychology. From 1906 to 1909 he was also professor in experimental psychology at london University.
In 1909, when W.H.R. Rivers resigned a part of his Lectureship, Myers became the first lecturer at Cambridge University whose whole duty was to teach experimental psychology. For this he received a stipend of £50 a year. He held this position until 1930.[10][11]
From 1911 Myers co-edited the British Journal of Psychology with Rivers. In 1914 he took over as sole editor, continuing in this post until 1924.
In 1912, Myers used his enthusiasm and ability to raise funds to establish the first English laboratory especially designed for experimental psychology at Cambridge. He be came the laboratory's first Director and held this position until 1930. (The Cambridge Laboratory of Experimental Psychology).[12][13]
In 1915 Myers was given a commission in the Royal Army Medical Corps and in 1916 he was appointed consultant psychologist to the British armies in France with a staff of psychotherapists at Le Touquet.[14] In 1915 Myers coined the term "shell shock" in an article in The Lancet.[15] He tried to save shell-shocked soldiers from execution.[16]
He became frustrated with opposition to his views during his time in the military,[17] particularly the view that shell-shock was a treatable condition. His efforts have been called "a pioneering but frustrating struggle to get psychological evidence and applied psychology accepted" [18] He was so upset by the rejection of his ideas by the military authorities that he refused to give evidence to the Southborough Committee on shell-shock because, as he wrote in 1940, "the recall of my past five years' work proved too painful for me."[19][20]
In the last year of the war he devised tests and supervised their application for the selection of men suited to hydrophone work for detecting enemy submarines.
After the war, Myers returned to his Cambridge position. But here too he was deeply dissatisfied, wanting wider opportunities for the development of his more practical interests, and feeling that official and academic circles showed little genuine interest in psychology. From 1922 he did devote himself to the development of the National Institute of Industrial Psychology (NIIP) which he had founded with Henry John Welch in 1921. He was also involved in what became the industrial health research board.
Later, when the advisory committee on personnel selection was set up by the War Office, he was appointed a member.
He delivered the Bradshaw Lecture at the Royal College of Physicians in 1933 on "A Psychological Regard for Medical Education".[21]
He died in Winsford, near Minehead, Somerset in 1946.
Myers was one of the ten founding members of The Psychological Society in 1901 which would later become the British Psychological Society in 1906. In January 1904, Myers became the first Secretary of the Society. In 1919 Myers suggested that membership should be opened up to "all those interested in various branches of psychology".[22]
He was elected as the first president of the society, following its enlargement in 1920. He held this position between 1920 and 1923.[23]
In 1920, Myers, represented the BPS on the board of management of a new journal, Discovery, which dealt with the recent advances in scientific knowledge.
Dr Myers was also the Society’s representative on the committee formed to consider a memorial to the late Dr W.H.R. Rivers. A fund was raised for the furtherance of the sciences to which Dr Rivers had been interested, in particularly anthropology and psychology.
In 1915 Myers was elected FRS; he was appointed CBE in 1919, and received honorary degrees from the universities of Manchester (DSc, 1927), Calcutta (LLD), and Pennsylvania (DSc). He was a fellow (1919) and later an honorary fellow (1935) of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, a foreign associate of the French Société de Psychologie, twice president of the psychology section of the British Association (1922, 1931), president of the International Congress of Psychology in 1923, and editor of the British Journal of Psychology (1911–24).
Myers was rather above medium height, well built, and remembered for his smile. He made friends readily, but had a tendency to imagine enemies. He enjoyed mountain climbing and lawn tennis, and was a talented violinist. He combined freemasonry with philanthropic activity for the Jewish community. Students and visitors from every part of the world were always welcome at his home. Myers died at his home at Winsford Glebe, near Minehead, Somerset, on 12 October 1946. He was survived by his wife. Myers undertook more laboratory experimental work than his publications would suggest, but his greatest contributions to the emergent science of psychology in Britain were in establishing many of its pioneering institutions, and promoting it internationally.