Historical background of

APA
• The American Psychological Association was founded in 1892, in G. Stanley Hall’s parlor, at
Clark University, with 31 members and grew quickly after World War II. In 1899, 125
members, in 1916, 308 members, in 1930, 530 members, in 1940, 664 members and today it
has more than 117,000 members.
• It was emerged at a particular time, in a unique social and institutional environment, and as
the result of actions of specific individuals.
• The organizational, or “preliminary,” meeting of what was to become the American
Psychological Association was convened by G. Stanley Hall at Clark University in Worcester,
Massachusetts, on July 8, 1892. That meeting was the consequence of a number of
developments in American intellectual thought over more than a century. The main goal of
this chapter is to show these developments in terms of some of the intertwining paths of 19th-
century American psychology, in the broader context of higher education, that created a
professional identity conducive to the founding of the American Psychological Association.
• However, When the American Psychological Association was founded the new,
experimental psychology was still in its infancy in America. Most psychology
programs were still housed in departments of philosophy. Only a few laboratories
of psychology existed in America, and these were quite rudimentary compared with
those found in Europe. Only one American journal devoted to the new
experimental psychology existed at the time, the American Journal of Psychology,
itself founded by Hall only five years earlier.
• They were a course of events that led to its establishment: ie, its emerging
university system, the organizational precedents set by other American scientists of
the period, the personal interplay between G. Stanley Hall and his contemporaries.
• These factors did more to shape the course of events surrounding its establishment
and its character during its earliest years.
• By that time, two major significant changes were occurred:
1. Psychology's evolution from a philosophic to a scientific enterprise.
2. The transition of colleges and universities from strictly undergraduate
institutions to organizations including and often centering on graduate
education.
• However, From the start, the APA was explicitly the American
Psychological Association; although its membership always included
Canadians, its character has always reflected its U.S. base.
• By 1892, American universities had established about 20 psychological
laboratories, and at some of them, psychology dominated philosophy.
• These laboratories taught a science that had already begun to adapt to
the new environment in which its practitioners found themselves.
• APA’s first meeting was held in December 1892 at the University of
Pennsylvania. The basic governance of the APA consisted of a council
with an executive committee. This structure has continued to the
beginning of the twenty-first century: Today, APA has a 
Council of Representatives with a Board of Directors.
• G. Stanley Hall (1844-1924) was its first president.
Historical background of SAPA
• The first professional psychology association, the South African
Psychological Association (SAPA) was established in 1948 with 34 members.
• In 1957, a Black psychologist, Josephine Naidoo, applied for membership and
was refused. Simon Biesheuvel, regarded as the doyen of SA psychologists
(International Journal of Psychology, 1991) led the discussions regarding
Black psychologists's membership of SAPA from 1957 to 1962, without the
participation of Black psychologists. When Blacks were eventually admitted
to SAPA in 1962 a number of psychologists resigned to establish the
Psychological Institute of the Republic of South Africa (PIRSA) on 23 June
1962 restricting the membership to Whites. (See Nicholas, 1990 for a
discussion of this issue).
• Ms Naidoo had during this time withdrawn her application for
membership of SAPA, feeling deeply humiliated by the whole
experience and soon after left for Canada where she became a
professor of psychology (Personal communication, Cape Town,
January 1994). Naidoo was Secretary-General of IACCP in the mid-
1990s.