Transparency notice: ISSPR.org is an independent editorial project with no organizational link to the original ISSPR, a learned society dissolved since 2002. This page presents a factual reconstruction based on the public archives of the original website, consulted through the Wayback Machine. See also our About page.

A Learned Society Founded in 1984

The International Society for the Study of Personal Relationships (ISSPR) was founded in 1984 to bring together researchers working on the psychology of interpersonal relationships — attachment, couple communication, relationship satisfaction, loneliness. The society published the journal Personal Relationships (see our bibliography of the articles in volumes 1 to 3) and organized biennial conferences.

The ISSPR Bulletin

The society also published a newsletter for its members, the ISSPR Bulletin, described in the archives as appearing twice a year (September and March). According to the archived capture of January 18, 2001, this bulletin offered members information on the life of the society, its conferences and those of other organizations, interviews with well-known researchers, book reviews and updates on ongoing research.

The bulletin was edited by Kelly A. Brennan, of the psychology department at SUNY Brockport (New York State). The site's technical maintenance was handled by Gregory Pierce, as part of the society's computer and website committee.

The Society's Scientific Life Through Its Calls for Papers

The archives preserve several calls for papers sent to members, which give a concrete glimpse of the society's editorial activity in the late 1990s:

  • A call for papers from Mark A. Fine (associate editor of the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, department of human development and family studies, University of Missouri), dated February 2, 1998, for a special issue devoted to social cognition and relationships.
  • A call for papers from Benjamin H. Gottlieb (department of psychology, University of Guelph, Ontario), dated from the same period, for a special issue of the JSPR on relationships as a vehicle for change in community interventions — mentoring, home visits, self-help groups.
  • A mention, dated November 28, 1997, of the statistics website of David Kenny (University of Connecticut), a recognized specialist in the statistical analysis of interpersonal data, recommended to ISSPR members.

What These Archives Teach Us

Beyond the historical anecdote, these traces document an active scientific community, organized around peer-reviewed journals and international exchanges, at a time when the psychology of personal relationships was establishing itself as an autonomous field of research. Several authors published in the society's journal — such as Harry T. Reis, Elaine Hatfield or Patricia Noller — remain today references cited in the scientific literature on relationships, including in our own guides on attachment theory and loneliness and social connection.

The isspr.org domain expired after the society ceased activity around 2002, before being bought back in 2026 for this editorial project of science popularization, with no legal or institutional continuity with the original organization.

Source

Content reconstructed from the Wayback Machine capture of January 18, 2001 of the page isspr.org/issbull.html, consulted and verified on July 24, 2026. See also the archived table of contents of the journal Personal Relationships, volumes 1 to 3 (1994-1996).