Zangwill O. L. papers

Offprints from various publications written by O. L. Zangwill:

Experimentally Induced Visual Paramnesias with H.Banister from The British Journal of Psychology (General Section) Vol.XXXII, Part 1, July 1941.

Experimentally Induced Olfactory Paramnesias with H. Banister from The British Journal of Psychology (General Section) Vol.XXXII, Part 2, October 1941.

A Case of Paramnesia in Nathaniel Hawthorne from Character and Personality Vol.XIII No.3 March-June 1945.

Oliver Louis Zangwill was the second son and youngest of three children in the family of Israel Zangwill (1864-1926) the literary and political figure, and his wife, Edith Ayrton (1875-1945) who was active in the establishment of the League of Nations.

Zangwill was educated at University College School, London (1928-1931) and at King's College Cambridge, where he obtained a second class in part one of the natural sciences tripos (1934) and a first in part two of the moral sciences tripos (1935). At Cambridge, Zangwill was influenced by Frederick Bartlett (1886-1969) while carrying out experiments on recognition and memory. With his lifelong friend R.C.Oldfield, he wrote a critique of the celebrated concept of mental schema put forward by Sir Henry Head (1861-1940) and Bartlett.

Zangwill became a research psychologist at the brain injuries unit in Edinburgh (1940-1945), which was directed by Norman Dott. There he did original, influential work on the psychological effects of penetrating wounds to the brain. His studies of cases of parietal lobe injury, with Andrew Patterson, led to his interest in hemispheric specialization and the complexities of right/left-handedness. His central aim was to use clinical abnormalities, especially symptoms of localized brain damage, to suggest how the normal brain functions.

As assistant director of the Institute of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford (1945-1952), Zangwill promoted the teaching of Psychology at a time when it was not considered a major subject. By establishing connections with the National Institute of Neurology in Queen Square, London and with the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford he introduced a generation of psychologists to the study of neurological patients.

Zangwill took a major part in setting up the Experimental Psychology Group in 1946. In 1958, it became the Experimental Psychology Society, with a quarterly journal, edited by Zangwill from 1958 to 1966.

Zangwill became President of the British Psychological Society in 1974, and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1977 He held honorary degrees from Stirling (1979) and St Andrews (1980). Fom 1947-1979 he held the honorary post of visiting psychologist at the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases.

Zangwill's paper "Amnesia and the generic image" remains significant in the study of whether semantic memory remains intact in amnesia.