Seymour B. Sarason

Seymour Bernard Sarason (January 12, 1919, Brownsville, Brooklyn, New York – January 28, 2010, New Haven, Connecticut) was Professor of Psychology Emeritus at Yale University, where he taught from 1945 to 1989. He is the author of over forty books and over sixty articles, and he is considered to be one of the most significant American researchers in education, educational psychology, and community psychology. One primary focus of his work was on education reform in the United States. In the 1950s he and George Mandler initiated the research on test anxiety. He founded the Yale Psycho-Educational Clinic in 1961 and was one of the principal leaders in the community psychology movement. In 1974, he proposed psychological sense of community, a central concept in community psychology. Since then, sense of community has become a well-known and commonly used term both in academic and non-academic settings.

Sarason was born in Brownsville, Brooklyn New York on January 12, 1919. Both of his parents, Maxwell and Anna (Silverlight) Sarason, were Jewish immigrants and his father worked in a children’s clothes factory in the garment district of Manhattan. Sarason grew up with his sister, Mildred, and his brother, Irwin (who also became a psychologist). At the age of six his family moved to Newark, New Jersey. Sarason was a teenager during the Great Depression and he sold frozen treats and handkerchiefs to help support his family.

During his junior year in high school, Sarason was diagnosed with polio and he lost mobility in his right arm. After a successful surgery that was financed by the New Jersey State Rehabilitation Commission, he regained some functionality of his right arm. Due to the physical limitations Sarason experienced as a result of polio, he became more interested in writing as a career (one of the activities he could still do with his right arm). He was especially interested in becoming a playwright, and he credited his interest in creative writing as one factor that drew him to psychology.

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