Silbereisen, Rainer K.

Academic Background and Early Career

Silbereisen's academic career began at the University of Muenster, in Westphalia. From there, he moved to the Technical University of Berlin, where he obtained his MA degree in psychology in 1972, with distinction. He continued his studies in Berlin, earning his PhD degree (magna cum laude) in psychology, with minors in education and the economics of education. The move to Berlin was motivated by the attraction of a newly founded psychology department at one of Germany's best centers for technological research but also by his engagement in the political movement of students in the late 1960s, which was concentrated in Berlin. He remained at the Technical University until 1977, as a research associate, working with a group of methodologists under the leadership of Juergen Bortz, the author of a series of German textbooks on methodology and statistics in psychology that left its imprint on generations of students. From Berlin, Silbereisen moved on to a postdoctoral appointment at the University of the Saarland and a year as visiting professor of educational psychology at the Technical University of Darmstadt. Finally, in 1978, he returned to his alma mater, the Technical University of Berlin, to begin an 8-year term as professor of educational psychology and human development. During this period, he began the first of several major administrative assignments, which have punctuated his academic career, serving as dean of the College of Social Sciences and Planning from 1982 to 1986. During this period, together with his former mentor Klaus Eyferth, an experimental psychologist with a long tradition of social engagement, he built a research group that investigated the lives of very young heroin addicts and in particular looked at the developmental roots of their addiction behaviors. What he found was a mixture of maladaptive and adaptive developmental processes, and he was particularly intrigued by the discovery that minute differences early in development could result in dramatic differences across the life span. These observations turned out to be decisive for his lasting interest in ecological models of positive human development, on one hand, and developmental psychopathology, on the other.

Providing National and International Leadership

From 1986 to 1992, Silbereisen served as professor of developmental psychology, including a period as dean of the College of Psychology at the Justus Liebig University of Giessen. It was during that period that he developed his association with The Pennsylvania State University, with an appointment as visiting professor of human development and visiting fellow of the Center for the Study of Child and Adolescent Development for the academic year 1987 to 1988. He returned to The Pennsylvania State University in 1992, as professor of human development and family studies. Silbereisen remained in the United States until he received a call in 1994 to be professor and head of developmental psychology at the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, in Germany. Over the next decade, he served his university and colleagues as dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences and as member of various review boards of the German Research Council and other scientific foundations.

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