Birth date/date of death – July 25, 1904/October 22, 2001
Birthplace/nationality – Belleville, IL/American
Education
Born to a doctor and his wife, Hilgard earned his own doctorate in 1930 and, in 1931, married Josephine Rohrs, who also held a doctoral degree. Hilgard went to Yale Divinity School and studied social ethics, turning to psychology for his doctoral studies with a dissertation on conditioning. Yale was where Hilgard met Rohrs – then a budding developmental psychologist who later made her own contributions to the research and writing on hypnosis, including Hypnosis in the Relief of Pain, which was a husband and wife collaboration (Alexander 2001).
Professional Development
Early Career: Hilgard’s post-doctoral work was also done at Yale, where he became an instructor. He joined the Psychology faculty at Stanford University in California in 1933. Hilgard developed a technique for photographically recording eyelid responses, which earned him the...