Stanley David Porteus received his early education in rural Victoria, then attended the Melbourne Education Institute where he trained as a schoolteacher. He was Victorian Superintendent of special schools from 1912 to 1916, after which he began research in the department of anatomy, and lectured on experimental education, at the University of Melbourne. He left Australia in 1919 to do research at the Vineland Training School in the United States of America, then became a Professor of clinical psychology and Director of the Psychological and Psychopathic Clinic at the University of Hawaii. In 1932 he became an American citizen. In the Preface to Providence Ponds (1951), he mentions 'successive visits to Australia' after emigrating. Porteus also wrote numerous works of psychology and anthropology, including Studies in Mental Deviations (1922), The Psychology of a Primitive People : A Study of the Australian Aborigine (1931), The Practice of Clinical Psychology (1941) and A Century of Social Thinking in Hawaii (1962).
