I/O PSYCHOLOGY IN CANADA: FROM BIRTH TO COUCHICHING

Neither the journal literature nor the CPA Archives describes the 1928 birth of Canadian Personnel/Vocational/Industrial Psychology and its transformation into I/O Psychology by the mid-'sixties. The story prior to World War II is that of a half-dozen individual practitioners in Ontario and Quebec. They faced problems of IDENTITY, ROLE, and TRAINING which had not been satisfactorily resolved when this history ends with the 1965 Couchiching Conference on Professional Psychology. The war created a demand for psychologists in industry and excellent former personnel officers sought graduate degrees in order to meet the demand. Unfortunately few Departments of Psychology were interested and consequently CPA was, at best, indifferent to this area of specialization which by 1965 was becoming incorporated within MBA programs.