Neal Elgar Miller (August 3, 1909 – March
23, 2002) was an American experimental psychologist.
Described as an energetic man with a variety
of interests, including physics, biology and
writing, Miller entered the field of psychology
to pursue these.
With a background training in the sciences,
he was inspired by professors and leading
psychologists at the time to work on various
areas in behavioral psychology and physiological
psychology, specifically, relating visceral
responses to behavior.
Miller's career in psychology started with
research on "fear as a learned drive and its
role in conflict".
Work in behavioral medicine led him to his
most notable work on biofeedback.
Over his lifetime he lectured at Yale University,
Rockefeller University, and Cornell University
Medical College and was one of the youngest
members of Yale's Institute of Human Relations.
His accomplishments led to the establishment
of two awards: the New Investigator Award
from the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research
and an award for distinguished lectureship
from the American Psychological Association.
A Review of General Psychology survey, published
in 2002, ranked Miller as the eighth most
cited psychologist of the 20th century.
== Life and education ==
Miller was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in
1909.
He grew up in the Pacific Northwest.
His father, Irving Miller, worked at Western
Washington University as Chair of the Department
of Education and Psychology.
His father's position in Neal Miller's words,
"may have had something to do with" his interest
in psychology.
Originally having a curiosity for science,
Miller entered the University of Washington
(1931), where he studied biology, physics
and also had an interest in writing.
His senior year he decided that psychology
would allow him to pursue his wide variety
of interests.
He graduated from the University of Washington
with a B.S. and a piqued interest in behavioral
psychology.
Afterwards he studied at Stanford University
(1932) where he received his M.S. and an interest
in psychology of personality.
At Stanford he accompanied his professor,
Walter Miles, to the Institute of Human Relations
at Yale University as a research assistant.
There he was encouraged by another professor
to further study psychoanalysis.
He received his Ph.D. degree in Psychology
from Yale University in 1935, and that same
year he became a social science research fellow
at the Institute of Psychoanalysis in Vienna
for one year before returning to Yale as a
faculty member in 1936.
He spent a total of 30 years at Yale University
(1936–1966), and in 1950 he was appointed
professor at Yale, a position he held until
1966.
In 1966 he began teaching at Rockefeller University
and afterwards spent the early 1970s teaching
at Cornell University Medical College.
In 1985 he returned to Yale as a research
associate.
== Career ==
Miller's early work focused on experimenting
with Freudian ideas on behavior in real-life
situations.
His most notable topic was fear.
Miller came to the conclusion that fear could
be learned through conditioning.
Miller then decided to extend his research
to other autonomic drives, such as hunger,
to see if they worked in the same way.
His unique ideas and experimental techniques
to study these autonomic drives resulted in
findings that changed ideas about motivations
and behavior.
Miller was also one of the founding fathers
behind the idea of biofeedback.
Today, many of his ideas have been expanded
and added to, but Miller has been credited
with coming up with most of the basic ideas
behind biofeedback.
Miller was doing experimentation on conditioning
and rats when he discovered biofeedback.Neal
Miller, along with John Dollard and O. Hobart
Mowrer, helped to integrate behavioral and
psychoanalytic concepts.
They were able to translate psychological
analytic concepts into behavioral terms that
would be more easily understood.
Specifically, they focused on the stimulus-response
theory.
These three men also recognized Sigmund Freud's
understanding of anxiety as a "signal of danger"
and that some things in Freud's work could
be altered to fix this.
Miller, Dollard and Mowrer believed that a
person who was relieved of high anxiety levels
would experience what is called "anxiety relief".
Together with fellow psychologist O. Hobart
Mowrer, Miller gives his name to the "Miller-Mowrer
Shuttlebox" apparatus.Over the course of his
career, Miller wrote eight books and 276 papers
and articles.
Neal Miller worked with John Dollard and together
they wrote the book Personality and Psychotherapy
(1950) concerning neurosis and psychological
learning concepts.
== Controversy ==
Miller's regular use of laboratory animals,
over many years, aroused criticism from animal
rights groups, but he was a forthright defender
of the practice.
He once argued that if people had no right
to use animals in research, then they had
no right to kill them for food or clothing.
Even so, Miller acknowledged that the issue
was complex, saying: "There is sacredness
of all life.
But where do we draw the line?
That's the problem.
Cats kill birds and mice.
Dogs exploit other animals by killing and
eating them.
Humans have to draw the line somewhere in
animal rights, or we're dead."
== 
Honours ==
Miller served as President of the American
Psychological Association from 1960–61,
and received the APA Distinguished Scientific
Contribution Award in 1959 and the APA Citation
for Outstanding Lifetime Contribution to Psychology
in 1991.
In 1964 he received the National Medal of
Science from President Johnson, the first
psychologist to receive this honor.He was
also President of the Society for Neurosciences,
the Biofeedback Society of America and the
Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research.
== Major works ==
=== Books ===
Dollard, John; Doob, Leonard William; Miller,
Neal E.; Mowrer, Orval Hobart; Sears, Robert
R. (1939).
Frustration and aggression.
New Haven: Published for the Institute of
Human Relations by Yale University Press.
OCLC 256003.
Miller, Neal E; Dollard, John (1941).
Social learning and imitation.
New Haven: Published for the Institute of
Human Relations by Yale University Press.
OCLC 180843.
Miller, Neal E. (1947).
Psychological research on pilot training.
Aviation psychology program research reports.
8.
Washington, DC: U.S.
Government Printing Office.
OCLC 1473614.
Dollard, John; Miller, Neal E. (1950).
Personality and psychotherapy: an analysis
in terms of learning, thinking, and culture.
McGraw-Hill publications in psychology.
New York: McGraw-Hill.
OCLC 964374.
Miller, Neal E. (1957).
Graphic communication and the crisis in education.
Washington, DC: Department of Audio-Visual
Instruction, National Education Association.
OCLC 242913.
Miller, Neal E. (1971).
Neal E. Miller: selected papers.
Psychonomic perspectives.
Chicago: Aldine, Atherton.
ISBN 0202250342.
OCLC 133865.
Republished as:
Miller, Neal E. (2007) [1971].
Learning, motivation, and their physiological
mechanisms.
New Brunswick, NJ.: AldineTransaction.
ISBN 9780202361437.
OCLC 144328310.
Miller, Neal E. (2008) [1971].
Conflict, displacement, learned drives, and
theory.
New Brunswick, NJ: AldineTransaction.
ISBN 9780202361420.
OCLC 156810019.
Richter-Heinrich, Elisabeth; Miller, Neal
E., eds. (1982).
Biofeedback: basic problems and clinical applications.
Selected revised papers presented at the XXIInd
International Congress of Psychology, Leipzig,
GDR, July 6–12, 1980.
Amsterdam: North-Holland.
ISBN 0444863451.
OCLC 10751840.
=== Selected articles ===
Sears, Robin R.; Hovland, Carl I.; Miller,
Neal E. (1940).
"Minor studies of aggression: I. Measurement
of aggressive behavior".
The Journal of Psychology: Interdisciplinary
and Applied.
9: 275–294.
doi:10.1080/00223980.1940.9917694.
Miller, Neal E.; Bugelski, Richard (1948).
"Minor studies of aggression: II.
The influence of frustrations imposed by the
in-group on attitudes expressed toward out-groups".
The Journal of Psychology: Interdisciplinary
and Applied.
25: 437–442.
doi:10.1080/00223980.1948.9917387.
PMID 18907295.
Miller, Neal E. (February 1948).
"Studies of fear as an acquirable drive: I.
Fear as motivation and fear-reduction as reinforcement
in the learning of new responses".
Journal of Experimental Psychology.
38 (1): 89–101.
doi:10.1037/h0058455.
PMID 18910262.
Miller, Neal E. (September 1951).
"Comments on theoretical models: illustrated
by the development of a theory of conflict
behavior".
Journal of Personality.
20 (1): 82–100.
doi:10.1111/j.1467-6494.1951.tb01514.x. PMID
14898432.
Miller, Neal E. (20 December 1957).
"Experiments on motivation: studies combining
psychological, physiological, and pharmacological
techniques".
Science.
126 (3286): 1271–1278.
doi:10.1126/science.126.3286.1271.
PMID 13495454.
Miller, Neal E. (16 April 1965).
"Chemical coding of behavior in the brain".
Science.
148 (3668): 328–338.
doi:10.1126/science.148.3668.328.
PMID 14261527.
Miller, Neal E. (31 January 1969).
"Learning of visceral and glandular responses".
Science.
163 (3866): 434–445.
doi:10.1126/science.163.3866.434.
PMID 5812527.
Weiss, Jay M.; Glazer, Howard I.; Pohorecky,
Larissa A.; Brick, John; Miller, Neal E. (December
1975).
"Effects of chronic exposure to stressors
on avoidance-escape behavior and on brain
norepinephrine".
Psychosomatic Medicine.
37 (6): 522–534.
PMID 711.
Miller, Neal E. (1978).
"Biofeedback and visceral learning".
Annual Review 
of Psychology.
29: 373–404.
doi:10.1146/annurev.ps.29.020178.002105.
PMID 341785.
Miller, Neal E. (April 1985).
"The value of behavioral research on animals".
American Psychologist.
40 (4): 423–440.
doi:10.1037/0003-066X.40.4.423.
PMID 3890636.
Taub, Edward; Crago, Jean E.; Burgio, Louis
D.; Groomes, Thomas E.; Cook, Edwin W.; DeLuca,
Stephanie C.; Miller, Neal E. (March 1994).
"An operant approach to rehabilitation medicine:
overcoming learned nonuse by shaping".
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior.
61 (2): 281–293.
doi:10.1901/jeab.1994.61-281.
PMC 1334416.
PMID 8169577.
== References ==
== Further reading ==
"Neal Miller: 100 year anniversary".
nealmiller.org.
Retrieved 2016-08-18.
"Noted psychologist Neal E. Miller, pioneer
in research on brain and behavior, dies".
Yale Bulletin & Calendar.
30 (25).
12 April 2002.
Ellis, Albert; Abrams, Mike; Abrams, Lidia
(2009).
"John Dollard and Neal E. Miller".
Personality theories: critical perspectives.
Los Angeles: Sage Publications.
pp. 275–284.
ISBN 9781412914222.
OCLC 213384841.
Jonas, Gerald (1973).
Visceral learning: toward a science of self-control.
New York: Viking Press.
ISBN 0670747033.
OCLC 1258212.
Miller, Neal E. Neal E. Miller papers, 1926–2000
(inclusive).
New Haven: Sterling Memorial Library, Yale
University Library.
OCLC 702163473.
