Martin Grossack

Martin Meyer Grossack (June 11, 1928 in Boston, Massachusetts – September 28, 2000) was an American psychologist and author.

Grossack was the son of Albert and Rose Grossack, immigrants from Bobruisk, Byelorussia. Albert and his mother, Hannah, had escaped Czarist Russia by smuggling themselves past border guards and ultimately sailing to New York City from Rotterdam. Albert was 14 when he arrived in Boston and worked in the food and beverage wholesale distribution business. Later he opened his own grocery and wine store in the Allston neighborhood of Boston.

Young Martin attended Boston public schools, graduating from Roxbury Memorial High School. He attended Northeastern University and Boston University, where he received a Doctorate in Social Psychology. In the summer of 1951 he married a student at Brandeis University, Judith Trachtenberg, from Dorchester. She was a psychology major, and the daughter of Joseph and Sophie Trachtenberg, also immigrants. A commission was made available for him to join the United States Air Force, which he entered as a lieutenant and served as a psychologist during the Korean War.

After his discharge from the Air Force, Grossack joined the faculty of Philander Smith College, an African-American college in Little Rock, Arkansas. His experiences there during the 1954 desegregation crisis led to his interest in the mental health issues attendant to the racial situation in the South. Grossack was profoundly troubled by the discrimination suffered by his students and fellow faculty members.

Grossack also spent a year on the faculty of the University of Hawaii where his first son, David Grossack was born in 1956. Ultimately family ties led the Grossack family back to Boston, and they settled in the quiet seaside resort community of Hull, near Nantasket Beach. A second son, Richard (Rocky) was born in 1959. Both sons are practicing attorneys in the Boston area.

Grossack's Little Rock experience led to his first book, Mental Health and Segregation, published by Springer in New York in 1963. The research studies in this book gave a complete picture of the African-American condition prior to the Civil Rights Movement. They documented the consequences of segregation on personality, morale, school adjustment, emotional problems, and problems presented to clinical practitioners. The book was well received and helped establish his career in academia.

Grossack taught at Boston State College and Suffolk University, and would soon author You Are Not Alone, a popular self-help psychology book which had numerous printings and editions and was ultimately released by Signet. You Are Not Alone provided guidance for individual mental health problems in the context of what the author labeled a "sick society". Grossack, believing that social conditions contributed to mental health problems, was convinced that changes were needed in society to help each individual fulfill his or her potential and to enjoy better lives.

Major American corporations became interested in Grossack's research on the psychology of advertising. Christopher Publishing House released Understanding Consumer Behavior in 1964; and Grossack became involved with such companies as Pillsbury, Boston Edison, Gillette, Union Carbide and numerous advertising agencies as a consultant. Consumer Psychology For Humanized Bank Marketing was published in 1971, and Grossack became an authority on applied motivational research in banking. A social psychology textbook, which he co-authored with Howard Gardner, Man and Men: Social Psychology as Social Science, was published by International Textbook Company, and was widely used in schools.

In the late 1970s Grossack turned his attention to the founding of a clinic known as the Institute For Rational Living which he founded in Copley Square in Boston. The IRL, as it was called, offered what Grossack called "rational self therapy" to patients, with an emphasis on encounter and group therapies. Classes in Creative Contacts for Singles, Coping with Anxiety and Depression, and Self Hypnosis made the IRL a popular place for learning and personal growth. Moreover, the IRL broke new ground by offering couples counseling to gays and therapy to persons with transgender and sexual identity issues.

Grossack's final book was Love, Sex, and Self Fulfillment, released by Signet in 1978. In his later years Grossack chose to spend time with his family and grandchildren. Illness struck repeatedly and he died of cancer on September 28, 2000 at the age of 72.

References

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