Edmund Jacobson

Who was Edmund Jacobson?

Edmund Jacobson was an American physician in internal medicine and psychiatry and a physiologist. He was the founder of the Progressive Muscle Relaxation and of Biofeedback.

He was the son of Morris Jacobson, a realtor in Chicago, born in Strasbourg, and his wife Fannie, born in Iowa.

After a B.S. degree from Northwestern University in 1908, Jacobson received M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University and then returned to Chicago as an assistant in physiology. Here he obtained his M.D. degree in 1915.

He began his physiological investigations at Harvard University in 1908. In 1921, he introduced the application of psychological principles to medical practice which was later called psychosomatic medicine. Employing low microvoltage apparatus, Jacobson also made the first accurate electrical measurement of muscular tonus, nerve impulses and mental activities in neuromuscular sites in living men.

Jacobson was able to prove the connection between excessive muscular tension and different disorders of body and psyche.