412 Part V Biological/Evolutionary Theories
authoritarian, rigid, and intolerant of ambiguity (tough-minded) (Eysenck, 1954;
Eysenck & Coulter, 1972).
As a consequence of Nazi tyranny, Eysenck, at age 18, left Germany and even-
tually settled in England, where he tried to enroll in the University of London. As we
saw in the chapter opening vignette, he went into psychology completely by accident.
At that time, the psychology department at the University of London was basically
pro-Freudian, but it also had a strong emphasis on psychometrics, with Charles Spear-
man having just left and with Cyril Burt still presiding. Eysenck received a bachelor’s
degree in 1938, about the same time that he married Margaret Davies, a Canadian
with a degree in mathematics. In 1940, he was awarded a PhD from the University
of London, but by this time England and most European nations were at war.
As a German national, he was considered an enemy alien and not allowed
to enter the Royal Air Force (his first choice) or any other branch of the military.
Instead, with no training as a psychiatrist or as a clinical psychologist, he went to
work at the Mill Hill Emergency Hospital, treating patients who were suffering
from a variety of psychological symptoms, including anxiety, depression, and hys-
teria. Eysenck, however, was not comfortable with most of the traditional clinical
diagnostic categories. Using factor analysis, he found that two major personality
factors—neuroticism/emotional stability and extraversion/introversion—could
account for all the traditional diagnostic groups. These early theoretical ideas led to
the publication of his first book, Dimensions of Personality (Eysenck, 1947).
After the war, he became director of the psychology department at Maudsley
Hospital and later became a reader in psychology at the University of London.
In 1949, he traveled to North America to examine the clinical psychology pro-
grams in the United States and Canada with the idea of setting up a clinical
psychology profession in Great Britain. He obtained a visiting professorship at
the University of Pennsylvania for the year 1949–1950, but he spent much of that
year traveling throughout the United States and Canada looking over clinical psy-
chology programs, which he found to be totally inadequate and unscientific
(Eysenck, 1980, 1997b).
Eysenck and his wife had been growing steadily apart, and his marriage was
not improved when his traveling companion to Philadelphia was Sybil Rostal, a
beautiful quantitative psychologist. On returning to England, Eysenck obtained a
divorce from his first wife and married Sybil. Hans and Sybil Eysenck coauthored
several publications, and their marriage produced three sons and a daughter.
Eysenck’s son from his first marriage, Michael, is a widely published author of
psychology articles and books.
After returning from North America, Eysenck established a clinical psychol-
ogy department at the University of London and in 1955 became professor of
psychology. While in the United States, he had begun The Structure of Human
Personality (1952b), in which he argued for the efficacy of factor analysis as the
best method of representing the known facts of human personality.
Eysenck was perhaps the most prolific writer in the history of psychology,
having published some 800 journal articles or book chapters and more than 75 books.
Several have titles with popular appeal, such as Uses and Abuses of Psychology (1953);
The Psychology of Politics (1954, 1999); Sense and Nonsense in Psychology (1956);
Know Your Own IQ (1962); Fact and Fiction in Psychology (1965); Psychology