Early Life
Born in Easton, Pennsylvania in 1860, Cattell grew up the eldest child of a wealthy and prominent family. His father, William Cassady Cattell, a Presbyterian minister, became president of Lafayette College in Easton shortly after James' birth. William Cattell could easily provide for his children, as he had married Elizabeth "Lizzie" McKeen in 1859; together they shared Lizzie's substantial inheritance. To this picture of the family's success one could add political power as well, as James' uncle Alexander Gilmore Cattell represented New Jersey in the United States Senate.
Cattell entered Lafayette College in 1876 at the age of sixteen, and graduated in four years with the highest honors. In 1883 the faculty at Lafayette awarded him an M.A., again with highest honors. Despite his later renown as a scientist, he spent most of his time devouring English literature, although he showed a remarkable gift for mathematics as well. Cattell said Francis Andrew March, a philologist, was a great influence during his time at Lafayette.
Cattell did not find his calling until after he arrived in Germany for graduate studies, where he met Wilhelm Wundt at the University of Leipzig. He also studied under Hermann Lotze at the University of Göttingen, and an essay on Lotze won him a fellowship at Johns Hopkins University, where he left Germany to study in October 1882. The fellowship was not renewed, and he returned to Leipzig the next year as Wundt's assistant.
The partnership between Wundt and Cattell proved highly productive, as the two helped to establish the formal study of intelligence. Under Wundt, Cattell became the first American to publish a dissertation in the field of psychology. The title of his German dissertation was Psychometrische Untersuchungen (Psychometric Investigation). The dissertation was accepted by the University of Leipzig in 1886. More controversially, Cattell tried to explore the interiors of his own mind through the consumption of the then-legal drug hashish. Under the influence of this drug, Cattell once compared the whistling of a schoolboy to a symphony orchestra. While recreational drug use was not uncommon among early psychologists, including Freud, Cattell's experimentation with hashish reflected a willingness to go against conventional opinion and morality.
The main street in the College Hill Neighborhood of Easton, Pennsylvania, home to Lafayette College, is named after Cattell.
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