Hugh Adam Reyburn (D.Phil, Glasgow) was appointed Professor of Logic here in 1912. He became professor of Logic and Psychology in 1920 and was instrumental in the foundation of the present department of psychology in a building now occupied by the Percy Fitzpatrick Institute of Ornithology. In 1935 he established the Child Guidance Clinic, which was an outgrowth of the International Child Guidance Movement of the 1920s and 1930s. Professor Reyburn headed the psychology department and the clinic until his death, at the age of 64, in 1950.

James G.Taylor (M.A., Aberdeen) was Senior Lecturer in Psychology from 1924 until 1962. He contributed an important work on the study of perception and consciousness from a behaviourist perspective.

After Reyburn, the chair of psychology was vacant until 1955 when Kenneth Hall, formerly of the Psychology Department at Barrow Hospital in Bristol, took up the appointment. Professor Hall became an internationally recognised researcher into primate behaviour, but resigned his post in 1959 out of opposition to the government's newly introduced system of university apartheid. He died tragically, aged 47, in 1965.

   
Kurt Danziger (D.Phil, Oxford) became Professor of Psychology in 1959. He had lectured at Melbourne University Australia, the University of Natal in South Africa, and at Gadja Mada University in Indonesia. At UCT Professor Danziger had a lasting impact on psychology with his interest in social psychology. He testified in political trials on the effects of solitary confinement and took a strong stand against it. Because of these activities he was exiled, under protest, from South Africa in 1965. Kurt Danziger now lives in Canada.

Dr. Vera Grover acted as head of the department until 1967. She served as director of the Child Guidance Clinic from 1952 until her retirement in 1971.

W.D. Radloff was Professor of Psychology and head of the department from 1967 until 1974.