Remembering and honoring Paul Meehl

Remembering and Honoring Paul Meehl�

Albert Ellis

Albert Ellis Institute

The author commemorates Paul Meehl by briefly presenting some ofhis cardinal contributions to clinical psychology, including the MinnesotaMultiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), rational–emotive behaviortherapy, and clinical versus statistical prediction. He also describes a fewof his personal contacts with him. Meehl modeled a way of thinking,and thinking about thinking, that should be useful to all clinicalpsychologists. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Clin Psychol 61: 1231–1232, 2005.

Keywords: Paul E. Meehl; clinical psychology; Minnesota MultiphasicPersonality Inventory; clinical prediction; statistical prediction; constructvalidity; psychopathology; schizophrenia; significance testing

I first came in contact with Paul Meehl in 1946, when I was in graduate student in clinicalpsychology preparing to write my dissertation, “A Study of Direct and Indirect Phrasingin Personality Questionnaires” (Ellis 1947). The first part of my thesis reviewed thehistory of personality tests beginning with the Bernreuter; it was published in The Psy-chological Bulletin under the title of “The Validity of Personality Questionnaires” (Ellis,1946). It caused quite a stir, because my article showed that respondents could easily fakeall the existing tests. Therefore, the scores they received were not to be trusted.

The one personality test that came off remarkably well was Starke Hathaway,J. Charnley McKinley, and Paul Meehl’s Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory(MMPI; Hathaway & McKinley, 1951; Hathaway & Meehl, 1951), so I correspondedwith the authors about that test and got to know them quite well. A little later, Paulbecame the psychology editor for Prentice Hall Publishers and I sent him the manuscriptof my first book on rational emotive behavioral therapy (REBT), which I started toresearch in 1953 and to practice and teach in January 1955.

Paul was enthusiastic about REBT, even though he practiced a liberal, non-Freudiantype of psychoanalysis at that time. Along with my collaborator, Robert A. Harper, he

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to: Albert Ellis, Albert Ellis Institute, 45 East 65thStreet, New York, NY 10021; e-mail: aiellis@aol.com

JOURNAL OF CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY, Vol. 61(10), 1231–1232 (2005) © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/jclp.20178

was one of the first therapists to do REBT, though Harper also eclectically practiced aform of liberal dynamic psychotherapy.

Paul’s acceptance of my book-length manuscript on REBT was finally turned downby the publishers because they thought it was too much like H.I. Phillips book on behav-ior therapy, which they were about to publish. But Paul stuck with REBT until he becameseriously ill and gave up his therapy practice years later. He also referred some clients tome, such as the famous writer Saul Bellow, when they came to New York.

Paul, Starke Hathaway, and Herbert Feigl invited me to the University of Minnesotato discuss the questionable scientific status of psychoanalysis. They were impressed bymy “An Introduction to the Scientific Study of Psychoanalysis,” (Ellis, 1950), whichseriously questioned its clinical and research methods. They, too, had many reservationsabout Orthodox Freudianism (Feigl & Scriven, 1956), and whenever I criticized it, theyseemed to approve.

Meanwhile, Paul published Clinical Versus Statistical Prediction (1954/1996) andhe became outstandingly noted for several incisive papers on the scientific method. Althoughthis is not primarily my bailiwick, I learned much from Paul’s authoritative writings andI steadily congratulated him by mail and by phone.

Paul was one of the most original and independent thinkers in the fields of psychol-ogy and philosophy of science (MacCorquodale & Meehl, 1948; Meehl, 1954/1996).He was never arrogant or offensive, although he said what he had to say most coura-geously and was distinctly different from some of the most respected writers. He did hisbest to calmly and persistently question some of the conventional “truths” of philoso-phy and psychology, and in the process made some pioneering conceptualizations. Manyof his ideas have been, and will continue to be, seriously considered and quoted. Rightlyso! He modeled a way of thinking, and of thinking about thinking, that can do all of usreal service.

Because of his physical ailments in recent years, Paul rarely went to American Psy-chological Association (APA) conventions or traveled from Minneapolis, so I rarely sawhim. A real loss! But we kept corresponding and talking on the phone, and I alwayslearned something new. He was a real addition to my life, and I shall keep missing him.

References

Ellis, A. (1946). The validity of personality questionnaires. Psychological Bulletin, 43, 385– 440.

Ellis, A. (1947). A comparison of the use of indirect phrasing in personality questionnaires. Psy-chological Monographs, 61, 1– 41.

Ellis, A. (1950). An introduction to the principles of scientific psychoanalysis. Genetic Psychologymonographs, 41, 147–212.

Feigl, H., & Scriven, M. (Eds.) (1956). The foundation of science and the concept of psychologyand psychoanalysis. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Hathaway, S., & McKinley, J.C. (1951). The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. MMPImanual. New York: Psychological Corporation.

Hathaway, S.R., & Meehl, P.E. (1951). An atlas for clinical use of the MMPI. Minneapolis: Uni-versity of Minnesota Press.

MacCorquodale, K., & Meehl, P.E. (1948). On the distinction between hypothetical constructs andintervening variables. Psychological Review, 55, 95–107.

Meehl, P.E. (1996). Clinical versus statistical prediction: A theoretical analysis and a review of theevidence (New Preface). Lanham, MD: Rowan & Littlefield/Jason Aronson. (Original workpublished 1954)

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