lit a candle 3h agoNever read his stuff for fun, but the Freiburg Personality Inventory was on every stats syllabus I saw in grad school. Give him that.
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Jochen Fahrenberg, a German psychologist who shaped personality research, psychophysiology and ambulatory assessment at the University of Freiburg, died on 21 September 2026. He was 89. He was born in Berlin on 18 September 1937. He studied psychology, sociology and philosophy in Freiburg, London and Hamburg, then completed a PhD…
Jochen Fahrenberg, a German psychologist who shaped personality research, psychophysiology and ambulatory assessment at the University of Freiburg, died on 21 September 2026. He was 89.
He was born in Berlin on 18 September 1937. He studied psychology, sociology and philosophy in Freiburg, London and Hamburg, then completed a PhD at the University of Freiburg based on an experimental investigation and factor analysis of writing movement parameters, known as graphometry. After working as a research assistant to cardiologist Ludwig Delius in Bad Oeynhausen, he completed his habilitation on psychophysiological personality research in Freiburg in 1966.
Together with Michael Myrtek he founded the Freiburg Psychophysiology Research Group in 1970 with funding from the Volkswagen Foundation. In 1973 he was offered the chair at the Psychology Department previously held by his academic teacher Robert Heiß. Over the following decades he helped expand the institute and took part in academic reform. In 2002, as professor emeritus, he retired as head of the Personality Research section and co-director of the Psychophysiology Research Group at Albert Ludwigs University in Freiburg.
During its long history the research group became a centre for multivariate psychophysiological work on personality, cardiovascular rehabilitation, illness behaviour and life satisfaction. The laboratory developed and promoted ambulatory monitoring methods for behavioural research in everyday settings. Among the tests and scales associated with the group, the Freiburg Personality Inventory (FPI) became one of the most frequently used personality questionnaires in German-speaking countries. Fahrenberg also critically tested Hans Eysenck's theory of emotionality against experimental and clinical findings on autonomic reactivity.
His later writing turned to psychological anthropology, philosophy of science, methodology and theoretical psychology, and to a series of books and articles on Wilhelm Wundt, completed around the centenary of Wundt's death. He initiated the Workshop for Psychophysiological Methods in 1972, which became the German Society for Psychophysiology and its Application in 1982, and workshops in Freiburg later helped found the international Society for Ambulatory Assessment in 2009. He was an honorary member of the German Society for Psychology and of the DGPA, and received the Psychological Anthropology Award of the Dr. Margrit Egnér Foundation in Zürich in 2011.
According to the Badische Zeitung memorial notice, Fahrenberg died on 21 September 2026. Surviving family named in that notice included Anne Fahrenberg (née Hase) and Dr. Jens and Astrid Fahrenberg with Fabian and Jonathan. At his wish, burial took place in the closest family circle at the cemetery in Hamburg-Oejendorf. No public cause of death was given.
Biography adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0); Badische Zeitung / BZ Trauer memorial notice (published 26 Sep 2026); jochen-fahrenberg.de impressum.
