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David Wechsler
Vice President and General Counsel
Few individuals have contributed as much to the development of psychological assessment as David Wechsler. Born in Romania and the youngest of seven children, Wechsler emigrated to New York with his family when he was 6. After receiving his A.B. degree from City College of New York in 1916, Wechsler received his M.A. degree in experimental psychology at Columbia University under Robert S. Woodworth in 1917.
As a psychological examiner in the Army, Wechsler gained practical experience. It also gave him the opportunity to meet psychologists Edward Lee Thorndike and Robert M. Yerkes. The Army transferred him to France in 1919 and then assigned him to study in England at the University of London under noted scientists and statisticians Charles Spearman and Karl Pearson. Upon completion of his military service, Wechsler won a fellowship to the University of Paris in 1920 and studied physiological changes related to emotion with researchers Henri Pieron and Louis Lapique.
Wechsler was a psychologist in New York City's Bureau of Child Guidance from 1922-1924 while working on his doctoral degree at Columbia. His dissertation was based on data he had gathered about psychogalvanic response and emotion. In 1925, after receiving his Ph.D., Wechsler approached James Cattell, one of his former Columbia professors, about working for The Psychological Corporation. Wechsler served as acting secretary for the company until 1927, when he opened a private clinic practice. In 1932, he went to Austria and studied with Anna Freud and others at the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute.
Moving back to New York, Wechsler became chief psychologist at Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital from 1932-1967 and also joined the faculty at New York University's College of Medicine from 1933-1967. He developed the Wechsler-Bellevue Intelligence Scale, which became the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, and introduced deviation scores in intelligence tests. He developed the Wechsler Memory Scale in 1945, Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children in 1949, and the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence in 1967. |