James Birren
James E. Birren (April 4, 1918
Personal life
Birren was born on April 4, 1918, in Chicago. With the original intent to study engineering, Birren enrolled in Wright Junior College to study technical subjects. Birren changed his mind due to the Great Depression in America and decided to transfer to Chicago Teachers College to pursue what he thought to be a more practical career. It was there he took his first course in psychology, and he was encouraged by his professors to attend graduate school at Northwestern University.
Birren was strongly influenced by his time as a graduate student studying experimental psychology at Northwestern University. Birren married his wife, Betty, in 1942.
Birren died on January 15, 2016, at the age of 97.
Theories
Birren was known for defining aging as three distinct processes: primary, secondary, and tertiary. Birren was the founding dean of the
Career
Birren was considered "one of the reigning pioneers of gerontology," by the American Society on Aging.[2] He was instrumental in the growth and expansion of the field of gerontology in the 1950s, and his career spanned six decades.
Birren received his PhD from
Birren's early research had an experimental base and he studied cognitive change and aging. Since developing the course Guided Autobiography more than thirty years ago, he has devoted much of his time and energy in the area of autobiographical studies.
Birren was also known for serving as a mentor and founding schools in gerontology to promote research on aging. In 1965, Birren moved to California to pursue a new career with The University of Southern California. There, he became the founding dean of the USC Davis School of gerontology. In this position, Birren flourished as a teacher and a mentor, offering degrees in gerontology at the undergraduate, masters, and PhD levels. Throughout his career, he produced over 200 PhDs in gerontology, and many of his students dedicated their careers to publishing literature in the field of gerontology. He also continued publishing literature in the field of gerontology. While the Davis School of Gerontology flourished and gained international recognition, Birren produced multiple editions of the Handbooks of Aging series, including The Handbook of Mental Health and Aging, The Handbook of Psychology and Aging, and The Handbook of Theories of Aging. These compilations include relevant research on the issues of aging and contributed to the development of gerontology as a science. One of Birren’s lasting contributions to the field is these compilations of research on aging.
When Birren became emeritus of The University of Southern California (USC) at the age of 71 in 1989, he went on to establish another institution of gerontology. Birren developed the Birren Center for Gerontological Research at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He eventually became the associate director of the Center for Aging at UCLA, and he continued publishing until he retired from the position in 2003.
After retiring from UCLA he focused on his Guided Autobiography (GAB) program and in 2003 he founded the Birren Center for Autobiographical Studies with Cheryl Svensson, Ph.D., and a small group of close associates. Dr. Svensson is the director of the Center which has trained 623 Guided Autobiography instructors in 32 countries. It is now a non-profit organisation. GAB is a 6- to 8-week program in which participants write 2 pages each week on 10 different subjects like Family, Money, Death, and Sex. It is about subjects in the writer’s life, not a chronological presentation. Birren described GAB as "therapeutic but not "therapy".
Books
- Telling the Stories of Life Through Guided Autobiography Groups (2001), J.E. Birren & K. Cochran. The Johns Hopkins University Press.
- Guiding Autobiography Groups for Older Adults (1991), J.E. Birren and D. Deutchman. The Johns Hopkins University Press.
- Where to Go From Here (1997), J.E. Birren & L. Feldman. Simon and Schuster.
References
External links
- The University of Southern California Davis School of Gerontology
- https://web.archive.org/web/20061230174842/http://www.tsaofoundation.org/beauty/birren03.html
- https://web.archive.org/web/20061208043033/http://www.geron.org/Default.asp
- http://www.guidedautobiography.com/
- https://web.archive.org/web/20061204085037/http://www.usc.edu/dept/gero/news/2006/news6.shtml
- https://web.archive.org/web/20070819050358/http://www.asaging.org/at/at-254/James_Birren_Surveys.cfm