Berg, Irwin A. (Irwin August), 1913-2001

Irwin Berg was Head of the Psychology Department and Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Louisiana State University.

Irwin August Berg was born October 9, 1913 in Chicago, Illinois. He received his BA in psychology from Knox College in 1936 and his doctoral degree in physiological psychology from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in 1942.

Berg worked for a brief time at the Western Electric Company during high school and returned to the company after finishing his undergraduate degree. He worked as the cost accounting clerk and was later transferred to the personnel research department to work as a counselor. Berg quit his job at Western Electric in order to attend graduate school and upon earning his PhD accepted a position at the State Prison of Southern Michigan. He remained in this position only a short time before accepting his first academic appointment at the University of Illinois (1942-1947). In 1947 Berg accepted a faculty position at Pomona College in Claremont, California but only remained in the position for a year before accepting an appointment at Northwestern University where he stayed for seven years. In 1955 Berg accepted the position of chair of the Department of Psychology at Louisiana State University in order to assist in furthering the development of the clinical psychology graduate program. In 1965 he became the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Louisiana State University and remained in this position until his retirement in 1978.

In 1959 Berg chaired a committee appointed by the American Psychological Association's (APA) Education and Training Board to research the status of counseling psychology. The committee's final report suggested that APA Division 17 (counseling psychology) and APA Division 12 (clinical psychology) should merge as counseling psychology did not warrant its own division and in fact should not be considered a sub-field of psychology. Members of APA Division 17 protested the committee's report and thus it was never published.

Berg was an active leader in psychology serving as president of the Illinois Psychological Association, the Southwestern Psychological Association, and APA Division 17 (1964). He served three terms on APA's Council of Representatives as well serving as chairman of APA's Convention Committee and program chairman of the National Vocational Guidance Association. He served as the book review co-editor for the Journal of Counseling Psychology and editor of Counseling News and Views. Berg died March 1, 2001 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

* Baker, D.B. (2002). Irwin August Berg (1913-2001). The American Psychologist, 57(9), 723. * Berg, I.A. (1972) A venture in autobiography. In T.S. Krawiec (Ed.), The Psychologists (Vol. 1, pp. 39-66). New York: Oxford University Press.