Seymour Bernard Sarason (January 12, 1919, Brownsville, Brooklyn, New York – January 28, 2010, New Haven, Connecticut) was Professor of Psychology Emeritus at Yale University, where he taught from 1945 to 1989. He is the author of over forty books and over sixty articles, and he is considered to be one of the most significant American researchers in education, educational psychology, and community psychology. One primary focus of his work was on education reform in the United States. In the 1950s he and George Mandler initiated the research on test anxiety. He founded the Yale Psycho-Educational Clinic in 1961 and was one of the principal leaders in the community psychology movement. In 1974, he proposed psychological sense of community, a central concept in community psychology. Since then, sense of community has become a well-known and commonly used term both in academic and non-academic settings.

Sarason was born in Brownsville, Brooklyn New York on January 12, 1919. Both of his parents, Maxwell and Anna (Silverlight) Sarason, were Jewish immigrants and his father worked in a children's clothes factory in the garment district of Manhattan. Sarason grew up with his sister, Mildred, and his brother, Irwin (who also became a psychologist). At the age of six his family moved to Newark, New Jersey. Sarason was a teenager during the Great Depression and he sold frozen treats and handkerchiefs to help support his family.

During his junior year in high school, Sarason was diagnosed with polio and he lost mobility in his right arm. After a successful surgery that was financed by the New Jersey State Rehabilitation Commission, he regained some functionality of his right arm. Due to the physical limitations Sarason experienced as a result of polio, he became more interested in writing as a career (one of the activities he could still do with his right arm). He was especially interested in becoming a playwright, and he credited his interest in creative writing as one factor that drew him to psychology.

Sarason attended public schools throughout his childhood. When he was seven years old, he began attending Temple B’Nai Abraham, a Hebrew school in New Jersey, on some afternoons and Sunday mornings. As a result of his polio diagnosis, the New Jersey State Rehabilitation Commission collaborated with Dana College (which was later incorporated into Rutgers University) to provide Sarason with a scholarship loan to attend college. He received a bachelor's degree from Dana College in 1939. He obtained a Master's of Arts (1940) and a Ph.D. (1942) in Clinical Psychology from Clark University. At Clark University his research mentor was Saul Rosenzweig and Sarason was the first student at Clark to obtain practical experience working as an extern at a hospital.

After obtaining a Ph.D. from Clark University in 1942, Sarason served for three years as the chief psychologist at the Southbury Training School, a residential facility for children and adults with intellectual disabilities. Sarason noted that the goal of the Southbury Training School was to train and educate residents, and then help them return to their homes and communities. While at the Southbury Training School, Sarason administered many psychological evaluations and conducted psychotherapy. He developed a humanistic view of people with intellectual disabilities after witnessing their creativity and their rich emotional experiences. Based on his work at the Southbury Training School, he published articles on the use of projective psychological tests with people with intellectual disabilities, the use of creativity in therapy, and conducting psychotherapy with people with intellectual disabilities.

While at the Southbury Training School, Sarason became frustrated with individual-based psychological theories that did not consider social context. He also became frustrated by the organization's growing insensitivity toward the well-being of its residents. Sarason stated that the Southbury Training School developed a bureaucratic structure, began to experience departmental rivalries, and lacked effective leadership. He began to wonder why the Southbury Training School deteriorated and whether he could create a setting that effectively and sustainably pursued its purpose.

In 1945, Carl Hovland, the chair of the Department of Psychology at Yale, offered Sarason an Assistant Clinical Professor Position. In addition to teaching clinical courses and supervising clinical students in psychological testing and report writing, Sarason also published papers on projective techniques during his first few years at Yale. Although Sarason is not well known for his work on projective techniques, he appreciated this work because it gave him insight into how human problem solving adapts based on the specific task at hand.

Based largely on his experiences at the Southbury Training School, Sarason published his first book in 1949: Psychological Problems in Mental Deficiency. This book provided a new approach to intellectual disabilities that emphasized social and cultural factors that affect our understanding of intellectual disability. This book became popular in schools of education, and Sarason became well known in the field of education and, more specifically, special education.