In 2026, the United States begins a year of reflection and celebration. Americans anticipate July 4, 2026, when the nation will commemorate its semiquincentennial—250 years since its founding—amid both pride and uncertainty.
Preceding the founding of the United States by a century and a half, New York City will also mark its 400th anniversary this June. On or about June 24, 1626, the Dutch trader Peter Minuit is traditionally said to have negotiated an agreement with Lenape leaders, securing their cooperation in establishing a Dutch trading post on the island of Manahatta (“hilly land”). That settlement later became New Amsterdam, and following the English conquest, it became New York. New York City itself is in constant transformation. In 2026, Zohran Mamdani, the son of award-winning filmmaker Mira Nair and historian and Columbia professor Mahmood Mamdani, became its new mayor and the first African-Muslim-Socialist-Democratic leader.
In 2026, historians may observe that even as New York City struggled to keep pace with the rapid rise of global metropolises such as Tokyo, Singapore, London, Paris, and Shanghai, and faced mounting internal challenges of cost, inequality, and governance, it nonetheless remained a dominant center of global commerce. New York continued to anchor international politics (the United Nations), finance (Wall Street), fashion (Seventh Avenue), media and entertainment (Madison Ave, Broadway), culture (Juilliard, Lincoln Center), and luxury consumption (Fifth Avenue). Yet its influence was no longer uncontested or singular. Still, among the world’s great cities, few have rivaled New York’s impact on psychology—shaped not only by its universities and institutions, but also by its individual psychologists, intellectual conflicts, migrations, and crises that repeatedly transformed the field.
Although 1626 predates the formal emergence of scientific psychology in Germany in 1879, it nonetheless exerted a profound influence on the development of modern psychology, as discussed below. The city continues to reinvent itself; much of the most compelling history of psychology in New York has yet to be written.
What is beyond dispute is that psychology in New York possesses a rich and compelling history, reaching back to the nineteenth-century “alienists,” when Theodore Roosevelt was the City’s police commissioner. Yet despite its depth, influence, and broader cultural significance, this history remains strikingly underexamined and insufficiently documented.
On January 1, 2026, Margaret Brady-Amoon, Ph.D., assumed the presidency of the New York State Psychological Association. She has identified the exploration and public illumination of this little-known history as a core part of the association’s mission. That work began even before her formal term commenced: on December 7, 2025, she hosted a public forum with professor Philip Yanos, author of Exiles in New York City, which examines how the city historically warehoused its mentally ill.
As the city enters its fifth century in 2026, is this an ideal moment to host public programs that highlight New York’s distinctive history of psychological science and practice? Below are a few facts about psychology in New York.
1. Formed in 1736, Bellevue Hospital is the oldest public hospital in the United States and a leader of mental health care today.
2. Which New York City firm, started in 1858, has been a leader in what is now termed I-O psychology, pioneering evidence-based personal selection and training? The Psychological Corporation.
3. In 1891, which was the first university to start a psychology department in New York City? Columbia University.
4. In 1921, which powerful New York psychology professor was fired for his unpopular views, and went on to help institute a new U.S. tenure system by 1940 to protect all professors? Dr. James McKeen Cattell.
5. In 1970, which New York City psychologist was elected the first black President of the American Psychological Association? Dr. Kenneth B. Clark.
6. In 1987, which illustrious New Yorker was selected as the first U.S. psychologist to receive the annual National Medal of Science in Psychology from President Ronald Reagan at the White House? Dr. Anne Anastasi.
7. In 2015, which eminent New York psychologist celebrated his 100th birthday, after 70 years of teaching at Harvard, Oxford, and NYU Law School? Dr. Jerome Bruner.
8. Which psychologist celebrated her 100th birthday with President Barack Obama in 2015, and her 103rd birthday with APA in 2018? Dr. Olivia J. Hooker.
9. World-renowned New York-based anthropologist, one of the founders of the “Culture and Personality” school, who taught at Fordham and helped found its Division of Social Sciences, and served as a professor and consultant from the late 1960s into the early 1970s, developing the urban studies program and shaping the department. Dr. Margaret Mead.
10. Today, ten of the world’s largest world-class universities have a psychology department on the island of Manhattan. Here are five: Columbia University, New York University, Baruch College, Hunter College, and Fordham University.