Max L. Hutt: A Brief Biography

By Henry A. Buchtel, Ph.D.
Former Director of Psychology Training (2002-2016)
Department of Psychiatry
University of Michigan


October 1947

In the 1940s, Max Hutt was a clinical psychologist with the United States Army. Following World War II, he was considered to be one of the leading clinical psychologists in the nation and was hired by Don Marquis in 1946 to join the faculty in the Department of Psychology on central campus as a half-time Associate Professor. As such he was among the first - if not THE first - clinically trained faculty member teaching clinical psychology. Max Hutt was affiliated with the Department of Psychiatry and worked at the Neropsychiatric Institute in the 1950s. Both Jerry Hover, known to many of us as one of the VA psychologists, and who was in the first clinical psychology class in 1946, and our own Marvin Brandwin, who was in the second clinical psychology class, remember Max as an outstanding and charismatic teacher and a "master" of psychodynamic psychotherapy; he also believed he could diagnose many organic brain syndromes using the Bender-Gestalt and the Rorschach - in fact, he believed the Rorschach could do anything. He also had great faith in the ability of the Bender-Gestalt to diagnose brain damage and Max was also a consultant to the Department of Neurology during his affiliation with the medical school. Jerry describes his teacher as physically small but a package of power - a "dynamite guy" in Jerry's words. Max left the University of Michigan in May of 1960 to take a position at the University of Detroit, but he clearly continued to have an affection for this department as manifested by his generous endowment for trainees in the Department of Psychiatry of the University of Michigan.

Last modified, November 2009
Updated 02-13-2022