Bakan, David.

David Bakan, nee Bakanofsy, was born April 23, 1921 in Brooklyn, New York. Bakan received a bachelor's degree from Brooklyn College in 1942, and a master's from Indiana University 1944. He began doctoral studies at the University of Iowa, but later moved to New York and anglicized his name. He worked in education and aviation psychology before entering Ohio State and earning the PhD in 1948.

Bakan taught at the University of Missouri from 1949 to 1961, interrupted in 1956 by a two-year guest visiting lecturer position at Harvard. He joined the faculty at the University of Chicago in 1961 and remained there until 1968. Concerns about the war in Vietnam led Bakan to immigrate to Canada in 1969, where he took a position at York University. He helped to establish historiology as a strength of the psychology department there.

A prolific writer, Bakan published numerous journal articles and several books. He had a wide range of interests, including humanistic psychology, mysticism, dualism, human sexuality, research methodology and quantitative methodology, the history of psychology, and religiosity.

Bakan served as the president of APA divisions 24 (Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology), 26 (History of Psychology), and 32 (Humanistic Psychology).

Bakan died on October 18, 2004 in Toronto, Canada.

From the guide to the David Bakan papers, 1965-1977, 1965-1969, (Center for the History of Psychology)