Hersen, Michel

I was born on a snowy day on January 14, 1940, in Brussels, Belgium. When I was only 16 weeks old, my parents traversed Belgium, France, and Spain, eventually reaching Portugal, to avoid the invading Nazi armies. Finally, in May of 1941, the Hersens (then Herszhowicz) reached New York City, where I had my initial education. Early influences were my parents, who stressed the importance of a broad education, including music, the arts, philosophy, science, and history. Beginning as a classically trained violinist at the Julliard School of Music, I entered Queens College in New York in 1957 and by my sophomore year in college had decided to become a clinical psychologist. This occurred after observing the psychological evaluation of a child with mental retardation. I then marched into Gregory Razran's office (the chair and famous Pavlovian) and announced to him that I was going to become a professor of psychology. After 10 minutes, he stopped laughing.

After obtaining the BA from Queens College in 1961, I received my MA from Hofstra University. There, I was influenced by Julia Vane, who stressed the import of testing, and Harold Yuker, who felt psychologists should be broadly trained. I then started my doctoral work at the State University of New York at Buffalo (affectionately referred to as SUNY, Buffalo) and finished my PhD in February of 1966. My major influence there was B. R. Bugelski, the learning theorist, who always took on a few clinical students. I conducted my first piece of research with him (published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology in 1966), the verbal-conditioning study being run with the able assistance of my now publisher at Taylor and Francis: Dr. George Zimmar. This was a memorable day for many reasons, being November 22, 1963, the day JFK was assassinated.

My only formal training in behavior therapy consisted of attending two lectures by James Geer at Buffalo, who had recently familiarized himself with systematic desensitization. After Buffalo, I moved to Connecticut and did my postdoctoral training in the Yale program at the West Haven VA. This training was primarily existential and psychoanalytic from the theoretical perspectives. At the West Haven VA, I was supervised by Charles Zigun, MD, and he invited me to join his practice in Fairfield, Connecticut. This is where my conversion to behavior therapy took place, after a series of successes in helping school phobic children overcome their fears using carefully orchestrated operant strategies. From 1969 to 1970, I worked at Fairfield State Hospital and was fortunate to have D. A. Begelman as my boss, who further encouraged my interests in behaviorism. While at Fairfield Hills Hospital, I pursued my interests in verbal conditioning and also the study of fear in schizophrenics. All of these studies eventuated in publications.

From 1970 to 1974, I had the pleasure of being associated with Stewart Agras, David Barlow, Edward Blanchard, Gene Abel, Richard Eisler, and Peter Miller, among others, at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, in Jackson, Mississippi. Working with these illustrious colleagues was an eye-opener and further cemented my interests in the application of behavioral strategies to difficult clinical problems. Many complicated single-case studies were conducted and published in a variety of behavioral and psychiatric journals. There too, I wrote my first book with Dave Barlow (Single Case Experimental Designs). With Dick Eisler and Peter Miller, we developed strategies to assess and treat social skill deficits for a variety of populations. We also initiated the yearly and sometimes twice-yearly series, Progress in Behavior Modification. In addition, Peter Miller and I established a new journal, Addictive Behaviors. In Mississippi, I cofounded a behavioral internship training program with Dave Barlow, which still exists.

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