Home

home button

timeline button

editor's choice button

biographies button

places, things, concepts button

subject browse button

multimedia button

activities button

help button

Poussaint, Alvin

in full Alvin Francis Poussaint

(born May 15, 1934, New York, New York, U.S.) American psychiatrist specializing in child psychiatry and in issues of racial identity and health among African Americans. Poussaint also served as a consultant to popular television programs that featured African American characters.

The son of Haitian immigrants, Poussaint grew up in East Harlem at a time when the neighbourhood included immigrant families from Ireland, Italy, and Puerto Rico. He excelled in literature and music at New York City's prestigious Stuyvesant High School and graduated from Columbia University in 1956. Poussaint went on to study medicine at Cornell University Medical College in New York City, graduating in 1960. Poussaint's youthful observations of drug addiction, racism, and different states of mental health led him toward a career in psychiatry. After working briefly for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in 1965, Poussaint began teaching psychiatry at Tufts University, moving to the Harvard Medical School in 1969. In the 1980s he became a script consultant for The Cosby Show, Bill Cosby's popular situation comedy (1984–92). In hiring Poussaint, the show aimed to eliminate negative stereotypes while projecting honest and positive images of African American life through the fictitious Huxtable family. Poussaint has written on a number of topics, including child-rearing, drug addiction, suicide, and black identity.

Copyright © 1994-2005 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.