Norman Garmezy

Norman Garmezy (June 18, 1918 – November 21, 2009) was a professor of psychology who is known for his work in developmental psychopathology. After receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Iowa in 1950, Garmezy held appointments at Duke University (1950–1961) and the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota (1961–1989).

Education and military service Garmezy was accepted to the City College of New York for his undergraduate studies in the Business Administration School. His major course of study was in economics, but he was required to take a psychology course, which captured his attention, and his interest in human behavior began to evolve during his time there. When he graduated in 1939, he decided to pursue psychology further and completed a master's in counseling at Columbia University. Following his graduation in 1940, he took a job at the Jewish Vocational Service in Cleveland. Due to antisemitism at the time, there were few other jobs that were available to him. Shortly after beginning his job there, he was drafted to serve in World War II. Garmezy was initially placed in the infantry, but wished to change positions, so he sought reassignment. By chance, he was offered a position that required him to study psychology at the University of Iowa for six months to learn about army personnel management. Garmezy attributed that instance to changing the course of his life.

Late life and death Garmezy was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, and he gradually declined over the last twenty years of his life. He died in Nashville, Tennessee, on November 21, 2009. Findings from this project suggested that there were many dimensions to competence, that they variably continued and changed over time, and that they predicted success in adulthood. They found that children who were more competent in social, cognitive, and academic domains, were less likely to experience negative outcomes later on and that children who faced adversity in childhood but possessed these competencies looked much more like their peers who had not faced adversity in childhood. Garmezy and his students also pioneered innovative methods for studying these factors that are still used today. For example, the basis for the Revised Class Play, a method of having children in a classroom nominate their peers for different social roles, was developed for use in the PCLS.

Representative publications Garmezy, N. (1985). Stress-resistant children: The search for protective factors. Recent research in developmental psychopathology, 4, 213–233. Garmezy, N. (1991). Resiliency and vulnerability to adverse developmental outcomes associated with poverty. American behavioral scientist, 34(4), 416–430. Garmezy, N. (1993). Children in poverty: Resilience despite risk. Psychiatry, 56(1), 127–136. Garmezy, N., Masten, A., & Tellegen, A. (1984). The Study of Stress and Competence in Children: A Building Block for Developmental Psychopathology. Child Development, 55(1), 97–111. Garmezy, N. E., & Rutter, M. E. (1983). Stress, coping, and development in children. In Seminar on Stress and Coping in Children, 1979, Ctr for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, CA, US. Johns Hopkins University Press.