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Heinrich Klüver
Born	(1897-05-25)May 25, 1897 Province of Schleswig-Holstein
Died	February 8, 1979(1979-02-08) (aged 81) Oak Lawn, Illinois
Parent(s)	Wilhelm Klüver (father) Dorothes (Wübbers) Klüver (mother)
Scientific career
Fields	Psychology Philosophy
Institutions	University of Chicago
Signature

Heinrich Klüver (/ˈkluːvər/; May 25, 1897 – February 8, 1979) was a German-American biological psychologist and philosopher born in Holstein.

After having served in the Imperial German Army during World War I, he studied at both the University of Hamburg and the University of Berlin from 1920 to 1923. In the latter year, he arrived in the United States to attend Stanford University. He received his Ph.D. in physiological psychology from Stanford University. In 1927 he married Cessa Feyerabend and settled in the United States permanently, becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1934. Klüver was a member of the 'core group' of cybernetics pioneers that participated in the Macy Conferences of the 1940s and 1950s. He collaborated most often and fruitfully with Paul Bucy and made various contributions to neuroanatomy throughout his career among others the Klüver–Bucy syndrome.

His expositions of and experiments with mescaline were also groundbreaking at the time. He coined the term "cobweb figure" in the 1920s to describe one of the four form constant geometric visual hallucinations experienced in the early stage of a mescaline trip: "Colored threads running together in a revolving center, the whole similar to a cobweb". The other three are the chessboard design, tunnel, and spiral. Klüver wrote that "many 'atypical' visions are upon close inspection nothing but variations of these form-constants."

Klüver was an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the United States National Academy of Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society.

Selected publications

• An Experimental Study of the Eidetic Type. Worcester, Mass.: Genetic Psychology Monographs, vol. 1, no. 2 (1926); New York: Arno Press (1975).
• Mescal: The 'Divine' Plant and it's Psychological Effects. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. (1928). Introduction by Macdonald Critchley.
• Mechanism of Hallucinations In: Studies in Personality, by Q. McNemar and M. A. Merrill (1942).
• Behavior Mechanisms in Monkeys. Chicago: Phoenix Books (1966). Introduction by Karl Spencer Lashley.
• Mescal, and Mechanism of Hallucinations. Chicago: Phoenix Books (1966).

See also

• Klüver–Bucy syndrome
• Form constant

References

1. Blom, Jan Dirk (2010). A Dictionary of Hallucinations. New York: Springer-Verlag. p. 102. ISBN 978-1441912220.
2. "Heinrich Kluver." In: Member Directory. American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Accessed Oct. 4, 2022.
3. "Heinrich Kluver." In: Member Directory. National Academy of Sciences. Accessed Oct. 4, 2022.
4. "Heinrich Kluver." In: APS Member History. American Philosophical Society. Accessed Oct. 4, 2022.

Sources

• Hunt, William A. (Mar. 1980). "Heinrich Klüver: 1897-1979" (obituary). American Journal of Psychology, vol. 93, no. 1, pp. 159–161. JSTOR 1422112.
• Nahm, Frederick K. D., and Karl H. Pribram (1998). "Heinrich Klüver" (Chapter 16). In: National Academy of Sciences (1998). Biographical Memoirs: Volume 73. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press. pp. 288-305. doi:10.17226/9650.

An in-depth biography of Heinrich Klüver.

External links

• Guide to the Heinrich Klüver Papers, 1912-1978 at the University of Chicago Library

• 1897 births
• 1979 deaths
• People from the Province of Schleswig-Holstein
• University of Hamburg alumni
• Humboldt University of Berlin alumni
• Stanford University alumni
• German emigrants to the United States
• German Army personnel of World War I
• German psychologists
• Naturalized citizens of the United States
• 20th-century American psychologists
• Members of the American Philosophical Society