Edward S. Bordin

Background

Edward S. Bordin was born on November 7, 1913, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Morris Bordin and Jennie Zarovsky Bordin. His early life was connected with Philadelphia's expanding higher-education and professional environment, where he later began his university studies at Temple University.

Bordin served during the Second World War as a personnel technician for the War Department from 1942 to 1945. The wartime personnel system brought psychological assessment and occupational placement into closer connection with government administration, a setting consistent with his later interests in counseling, vocational choice, and personality development.

Education

Bordin received a Bachelor of Science degree from Temple University in 1935 and a Master of Arts degree there in 1937. Temple, founded in Philadelphia in 1884, developed as an urban institution serving students preparing for professional and civic careers. His graduate training at Temple preceded doctoral study in psychology at Ohio State University.

He received a Doctor of Philosophy degree from Ohio State University in 1942. Ohio State was a major public research university whose psychology program formed part of the expanding American university system that supported psychological research, professional training, and wartime personnel work during the early 1940s.

Career

Bordin began his professional career at the University of Minnesota, serving from 1939 to 1942 as an assistant to the coordinator and counselor in the University Testing Bureau. The university, founded in Minneapolis in 1851, had developed broad programs in education, psychology, and student services that connected academic study with vocational guidance. After wartime service with the War Department, he returned to Minnesota as acting director of the bureau from 1945 to 1946.

From 1946 to 1948, Bordin was an associate professor of psychology at Washington State University, then known as Washington State College. The land-grant institution in Pullman combined general education, professional preparation, and applied research, including the practical study of human development and behavior.

Bordin joined the University of Michigan in 1948 as an associate professor of psychology and director of the Counseling Division of the Bureau of Psychological Services. Michigan, founded in Detroit in 1817 and relocated to Ann Arbor in 1837, was one of the leading American public research universities. Bordin became a professor in 1955 and continued at Michigan until his retirement in 1984, directing the counseling division and helping develop the Counseling Center as a setting for student services, clinical training, and psychological research.

His research first examined personality development, vocational choice, and the relationship between developmental experience and occupational decisions. He later became an early investigator of psychotherapeutic processes, studying how therapist and client characteristics, interpretation, warmth, and free association related to counseling outcomes. His 1974 book Research Strategies in Psychotherapy presented a systematic framework for studying how psychotherapy operates, while his work on the therapeutic or working alliance helped establish a concept that became central to psychotherapy research.

Bordin also contributed to the broader organization of the profession. He edited the Journal of Consulting Psychology from 1959 to 1964, served as president of the American Psychological Association's Division of Counseling Psychology in 1955, chaired its Education and Training Board in 1956, and served on its Board of Professional Affairs in 1964. He was president of the Society for Psychotherapy Research in 1980.

Achievements

• Bordin helped advance the study of vocational choice by connecting occupational decisions with personality development, developmental experience, and self-perspective. His research contributed to the development of counseling psychology as a field concerned with both personal development and career choice.

• Bordin was an early investigator of psychotherapeutic processes and helped formulate the therapeutic or working alliance as a central concept for understanding the relationship between client and therapist across different forms of psychotherapy.

• As a professor and counseling-center leader at the University of Michigan, Bordin helped establish an integrated setting for student services, clinical training, psychological research, and professional supervision.

Works

• book

  • Psychological Counseling

    (Bordin's first book presented psychological counseling as...)

    1955
  • Research Strategies in Psychotherapy (Wiley Series on Personality Processes)

    (This book developed a systematic research framework for s...)

• journal article

  • The Generalizability of the Psychoanalytic Concept of the Working Alliance

    (Bordin reviewed and elaborated the working-alliance conce...)

    1979
  • A Working Alliance Based Model of Supervision

    (This article extended the working-alliance model to super...)

    1983
  • Ambiguity as a Therapeutic Variable

    (Bordin examined ambiguity as a variable in the counseling...)

    1955
  • An Articulated Framework for Vocational Development

    (Co-authored with Barbara Nachmann and Stanley J. Segal, t...)

    1963

Views

Bordin's professional outlook joined clinical practice with empirical inquiry. He treated counseling and psychotherapy as processes that could be studied without reducing them to simple mechanical procedures, emphasizing the importance of personality development, interpersonal relationships, client and therapist characteristics, and the quality of their working alliance.

His writings on vocational choice connected occupational decisions with developmental experience, self-perspective, personality, and the meanings people attach to work. In psychotherapy research, he argued that the strength and fit of the working alliance were important dimensions across different therapeutic approaches.

Membership

Bordin belonged to the American Psychological Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Society for Psychotherapy Research. His participation combined professional leadership in counseling psychology with involvement in organizations supporting scientific research and the systematic study of psychotherapy.

• President of the Division of Counseling Psychology in 1955; chair of the Education and Training Board in 1956; member of the Board of Professional Affairs in 1964.

  American Psychological Association , United States

• American Association for the Advancement of Science , United States

• President in 1980 and recipient of the Senior Distinguished Research Career Award in 1985.

  Society for Psychotherapy Research , United States

Personality

Colleagues and former students described Bordin as intellectually stimulating, broad in knowledge, supportive in supervision, and able to balance clinical commitment with scientific skepticism. He was characterized as relatively low-key in manner while engaging students in debate and encouraging them to develop independent research projects.

Quotes from others about the person

• University of Michigan regents described Bordin at his retirement as a mentor whose students benefited from his intellectual stimulation, critical judgment, and example of balancing clinical commitment with scientific skepticism.

Connections

Bordin married Ruth Birgitta Anderson on June 20, 1941. Ruth Bordin became a writer and historian of women at the University of Michigan. They had two daughters, Martha Christine Bordin and Charlotte Anna Bordin; Martha married Steven A. Hillyard, and Charlotte married Sung P. Lin.

Father:

Morris Bordin

Mother:

Jennie Zarovsky Bordin

Wife:

Ruth Birgitta Anderson

Writer and historian of women at the University of Michigan.

Daughter:

Martha Christine Bordin

Married Steven A. Hillyard.

Daughter:

Charlotte Anna Bordin

Married Sung P. Lin.

References

• Edward S. Bordin (1913–1992) M. David Galinsky's American Psychologist obituary describes Bordin's education, career at the University of Michigan, research on vocational choice and psychotherapy, professional leadership, teaching, and influence as a mentor.
  1995
• Professor Edward S. Bordin (1913–1992) An obituary in The Counseling Psychologist documenting Bordin's life and contributions to counseling psychology.
  1993
• Creating the Modern Michigan Psychology Department A history of the University of Michigan psychology department documenting Bordin's arrival in 1948, faculty service, leadership of the Counseling Division, and contribution to psychotherapy research.