Sarah Carolyn Fisher (1889-1985)

• Published in: The American psychologist 1987-04, Vol.42 (4), p.402-402
• Main Author: Gengerelli, J. A
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Consciousness States; Female; Human; Introspection; Parent Child Relations; Psychologists; Social Behavior
• ISSN: 0003-066X; 1935-990X
• DOI: 10.1037/h0092037

Presents and obituary for Sarah Carolyn Fisher. Fisher attended Lombard College, receiving the AB degree; earned a master's degree at the University of Illinois; and continued her graduate study at Clark University where she received her PhD in psychology. Fisher's first appointment was at Wellesley College, 1913-1914. In 1915 she accepted a position at what was then known as the Los Angeles State Normal School, eventually to become integrated as part of the University of California system and to be known officially as the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She remained at UCLA the rest of her academic life. Fisher's thesis described a systematic experimental approach to involving "introspection under controlled conditions" to describe the conscious processes and their modifications as the observer went about the task of achieving a satisfactory abstraction. This result was achieved when the observer discovered and associated the common features in a set of nonsense figures with the assigned nonsense word. She also investigated relationships in the attitudes of parents and their children to reactions that arise in certain social contacts. An important part of Fisher's life transcended the narrowly academic. She was an intellectual in the broadest sense. Her knowledge of literature, music, and art was impressive. Still another aspect of her person was her civic mindedness in its local, national, and international contexts. Fisher died on September 11, 1985. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)