Edwin Holt

Who was Edwin Holt?

Edwin Bissell Holt was a professor of philosophy and psychology at Harvard from 1901–1918. From 1926–1936 he was a visiting professor of psychology at Princeton University.

Holt was born in Winchester, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard in 1896 and received his Ph.D., also from Harvard, in 1901. His mentors in Harvard were William James, Hugo Münsterberg, and Josiah Royce. After his retirement, Holt moved to Tenants Harbor, Maine, with his long-time male companion, George X. Bernier. Holt died in Rockland, Maine, in 1946, and is buried in Winchester, Massachusetts.

Kuklick has suggested that Holt's retirement from Harvard was due to various causes. First, Holt shared William James' concerns and criticisms of academia, and resented the fact that academic life had by his time turned into a quest for personal glory and prestige, rather than an honest quest for knowledge. Second, members of his intellectual group of friends, which included Robert Yerkes, Herbert S. Langfeld, and Ralph Barton Perry, left Cambridge or withdrew for familial reasons. Heft has also suggested that Holt's homosexuality might have generated some further conflicts in the Cambridge of the beginning of the century. Finally, Kuklick argued that Holt had assumed the care of his aging mother, which decreased his social interactions, and was likely the reason why Holt turned down an academic offer from the University of Manchester. Holt quit Harvard immediately after her death.