Biography

Birth

Bender was born in Freiburg on February 5, 1907, graduated from high school in 1925 and initially studied law in Lausanne and Paris for a few semesters – “following the family tradition” (Bender’s father was a lawyer in Freiburg).

Study

In 1927, he switched to studying psychology, philosophy and Romance studies: “I studied in Freiburg, Heidelberg and Berlin and from 1929 onwards as a student of E. Rothacker and E. R. Curtius in Bonn. I received significant inspiration from W. Koehler in Berlin and Pierre Janet at the Collège de France”.

Promotion

In 1933, he completed his doctorate under Erich Rothacker, the Bonn philosopher and psychologist, on the subject of psychic automatisms, whose publication (Bender, 1936) bears the subtitle Zur Experimentalpsychologie des Unterbewußten und der außersinnlichen Wahrnehmung. “Under his [Rothacker’s] aegis” – writes Bender in an obituary of his teacher – “(the) first German dissertation was written that came to positive results in an area that had previously been taboo in academia” (Bender, 1966, p. 149). (This episode is also reflected in Rothacker’s memoirs, see Rothacker, 1963, pp. 109-114). “The preface to the work completed in June 1933 contains the program of what then occupied me throughout my life,” says Bender in a conversation with his successor Johannes Mischo published in 1983 (Mischo, 1983, p. 16). During his many years as an assistant at the Bonn Psychological Institute (1935-1941), he studied medicine as a second degree, which he completed with the state examination in Freiburg in 1939.

Medical license to practice medicine

“After my license to practice medicine in September 1939, I worked for six months as a trainee assistant at the Freiburg Psychiatric and Neurological Clinic, where I worked on psychopathological issues with the support of K. Beringer, to whom I owe a great deal. When I returned to Bonn, I was in charge of the experimental work at the Bonn Psychological Institute and also worked as a trainee assistant at the Bonn Medical Clinic.” Bender had already published one of the first experimental psychological papers on the problem of “extrasensory perception” in the Zeitschrift für Psychologie in 1935 (Bender, 1935). “My experimental results in the field of parapsychology led to a collaboration with the then newly founded Parapsychology Laboratory of the American Duke University. I had a stimulating contact with its director, Prof. William McDougall, which prompted me to translate his work The Energies of Men into German” (cf. McDougall, 1937).

Lorem Ipsum

After Bender habilitated at the Faculty of Philosophy in Bonn in 1941 with his thesis Experimental Visions (Bender, 1941), he was appointed to the then Reich University of Strasbourg, where he established an institute for psychology and clinical psychology. He was appointed associate professor in 1942. From November 1944 to July 1945, Bender was interned in the United States.

Foundation of the “Research
community for frontier psychological areas”

After his return to Freiburg, he founded a “Research Association for Psychological Frontier Areas”, which established a “Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health e.V.” with Bender as its director in 1950. (For more details, see section 3.) Between 1946 and 1949, Bender was appointed to the Chair of Psychology and Pedagogy at the University of Freiburg on a deputy basis, held a lectureship from 1949 onwards and was a visiting professor between 1951 and 1954. His lectures and tutorials during these years covered topics in general psychology, social, developmental and clinical psychology. In 1954, he was finally appointed associate professor for frontier areas of psychology. Bender gave his first lecture on parapsychology in the winter semester of 1955/56.

Professorship

The adjunct professorship was converted into a full professorship for psychology and frontier areas of psychology in 1967 and at the same time a “Department for Frontier Areas of Psychology” was attached to the university’s Institute of Psychology, for which the university rented rooms at Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health. Bender combined the dual function of chair holder and director of the private institute until 1975, the year of his retirement, when the two institutions were separated; Bender’s long-time assistant Johannes Mischo was appointed as his successor to the chair, and after Bender’s death on May 7, 1991, he was elected as the new director by the general meeting of the e.V. Institute in December 1991.

Deceased