What Is The Difference Between Neal Miller And John Dollard

Neal Miller and John Dollard Neal Miller and John Dollard were psychologists who spent much of their professional careers working together. Neal Miller lived from the years 1909 to 2002, outliving his associate John Dollard, who was born in the year 1990 and died in 1980. According to Rolnick and Rickles (2010), the two psychologists dedicated much of their partnered professional time and efforts towards the integration of social learning theories with psychoanalysis. In comparison with the overwhelmingly Freudian based psychoanalysis of the 1930’s and 1940’s, an attempt at integrating social learning with psychoanalysis was an uncommon focus during the time. Freudian psychoanalysis in Miller and Dollard’s time era focused on psychopathy as
Miller earned this title due to the conduction of his unprecedented experiments with autonomic conditioning, ultimately setting the groundwork for future development of his field (Rolnick & Rickles, 2010). Although Miller’s work heavily involved biofeedback, he also conducted research in the field of psychoanalysis. According to Watchtel (2010) in addition to the integration of psychoanalytic theories and social learning theories, Miller also provided extensive insights in how dynamics of personality, psychopathology, and cognitive-behavioral fuse with psychoanalysis. Neal Miller made the decision to pursue the relation between biofeedback and psychoanalysis within the early years of his career when he visited the country of Vienna to be analyzed by Heinz Hartmann (Rolnick & Rickles,
According to Rolnick and Rickles (2010) the pair worked together in writing the books Social Learning and Imitation and Personality and Psychotherapy and in doing so, significantly influenced psychotherapy. Miller and Dollard’s integrative theory translates psychoanalytic concepts into the behavioral terms that were available to them during the time period. The goal of their endeavor in combining behavioral and psychoanalytic concepts and terms was simply to display the various different clinical advantages that arise from combining these perspectives (Rolnick & Rickles,