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George Albee |
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| Posted by: | Peter Salovey |
| Title/Position: | Dean of Yale College |
| School/Organization: | Yale University |
| Sent to listserv of: | SPSP, SPSSI |
| Date posted: | July 11th, 2006 |
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Dr. George Wilson Albee, Advocate of Prevention
Dr. George Wilson Albee died at home on July 8, 2006, in Longboat Key, Florida, after a brief illness. He was 84 years old.
Dr. Albee was a 12-year resident of Longboat Key, Florida. Before retiring he lived in Burlington, Vermont.
Dr. Albee was Professor Emeritus of Psychology at University of Vermont, where he taught for 21 years, and Courtesy Professor, Florida Mental Health Institute of the University of South Florida.
He played an active role in plotting the direction and independence of psychology. He saw and articulated early the need for an independent profession of psychology, freed from the domination of older professions and older models. Since the 1960s Albee was in a continuing, often acrimonious debate with the field of psychiatry over the inappropriateness of the illness model and medical hegemony in psychopathology.
Albee was recognized for his early advocacy in the area of primary prevention and in other proactive approaches to mental health. His 1959 book "Mental Health Manpower Trends" was a highly influential study about the nation’s labor needs and resources in mental health and was used by President Eisenhower’s Joint Commission on Mental Illness and Health. He served the Carter Presidential Commissions on Mental Health and was president of the American Psychological Association (1969-1970). He was an author and editor, writing over 230 articles and book chapters on the merits of prevention. In 1993 he received the Gold Medal Award for Public Service from the American Psychological Association. In 1997 he was given the Lifetime Achievement Award in Applied Preventive Psychology and in 1998 was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Sterling University in Scotland.
In 1997 Albee chaired a symposium on the Politics of Primary Prevention at the World Federation for Mental Health in Lahti, Finland.
Dr. Albee was born in 1921 in St. Mary’s, Pennsylvania. He attended Bethany College in West Virginia, graduating in 1943. He served for three years in the Air Force during World War II, where he taught radar theory at the U.S. Air Force School in Boca Raton, Florida. While in graduate school at the University of Pittsburgh, he was among the first trainees in the nation appointed to the new Veteran’s Administration Clinical Psychology Program. In 1949 he received his Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh.
In the fall of 1953 Albee went to Finland for a year on a Fulbright Professorship at Helsinki University. He returned to be an Associate Professor at Western Reserve University in Cleveland. He was named professor in 1956, and in 1958 became the George Trumbull Ladd Distinguished Professor of Psychology. Albee spent 16 years at WRU. Albee moved to the University of Vermont in 1971 as Professor of Psychology. He taught at various times at the University of Hawaii, Marquette, Harvard, Helsinki, Hong Kong, and Rome. He retired from University of Vermont in 1992 and moved to Longboat Key, where he continued to write and lecture in the field of psychology and the primary prevention of psychopathology.
Albee continued to write to the end of his life, and not just for academic journals; he was also an accomplished humor writer. His column, Laugh Lines, appeared weekly in the Longboat Observer and enjoyed wide local appeal.
Albee is survived by his wife, Margaret Tong; by four children from his first marriage, to Constance Impallaria: Alec Albee of Plymouth, MN; Luke Albee of Washington, DC; Maud Albee of St. Petersburg, Russia; and Sarah Albee Willson of Watertown, CT; and by ten grandchildren.
A memorial service will be held at a later date in Burlington, Vermont.
In lieu of flowers, donations can be sent to the American Civil Liberties Union or the United Negro College Fund.
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