X‐rays of inner worlds: The mid‐twentieth‐century American Projective Test Movement

During World War II, the U.S. Indian Service conducted social science experiments regarding governance among Japanese Americans imprisoned at the Poston, Arizona, camp. Researchers used an array of techniques culled from anthropological culture and personality studies, psychiatry, psychology, medicine, and public opinion research to probe how the personality traits of the confined Japanese-Americans and camp leaders affected the social interactions within each group and between them. The research drew on prior studies of Indian personality in the US Southwest, Mexico's Native policies, and indirect colonial rule. Researchers asked how democracy functioned in contexts marked by hierarchy and difference. Their goal was to guide future policies toward US "minorities" and foreign races in post-war occupied territories. We show how researchers deployed ideas about race, cultural, and difference across a variety of cases to create a universal, predictive social science, which they combined with a prewar romanticism and cultural relativism. These researchers made ethnic, racial, and cultural difference compatible with predictive laws of science based on notions of fundamental human similarities.

Section: Psyche and Expertisementioning

confidence: 99%

Japanese‐American confinement and scientific democracy: Colonialism, social engineering, and government administration

Rosemblatt

Benmergui

2018

“…Lowenfeld however did enjoy popularity among anthropologists and educational psychologists. These effects were felt internationally, thanks to Mead who adopted some of Lowenfeld's methods (also see Lemov, for a history of projective methods in anthropology).…”

Section: Queer Signs In the Projective Psychologistsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Queer signs: The women of the British projective test movement

Hubbard

2017

As queer history is often hidden, historians must look for "signs" that hint at queer lives and experiences. When psychologists use projective tests, the search for queer signs has historically been more literal, and this was especially true in the homophobic practices of Psychology in the mid-twentieth century. In this paper, I respond to Elizabeth Scarborough's call for more analytic history about the lesser known women in Psychology's history. By focusing on British projective research conducted by lesbian psychologist June Hopkins, I shift perspective and consider, not those who were tested (which has been historically more common), but those who did the testing, and position them as potential queer subjects. After briefly outlining why the projective test movement is ripe for such analysis and the kinds of queer signs that were identified using the Rorschach ink blot test in the mid-twentieth century, I then present June Hopkins' (1969, 1970) research on the "lesbian personality." This work forms a framework upon which I then consider the lives of Margaret Lowenfeld, Ann Kaldegg, and Effie Lillian Hutton, all of whom were involved in the British projective test movement a generation prior to Hopkins. By adopting Hopkins' research to frame their lives, I present the possibility of this ambiguous history being distinctly queer.

“…Rorschach was not the first person to be fascinated by the playful affordances of symmetrical ink blots for the human imagination. Ink blots inspired artists such as Leonardo di Vinci in the fifteenth century and Victor Hugo in the nineteenth century (Tulohin, ; Lemov, ). In 1857, Justinius Kerner published a game called ‘Blotto,’ which prompted players to make poetic associations to ink blots (Erdberg, ).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Rorschach died of appendicitis and peritonitis in 1922 just after the publication of Psychodiagnostik (Morgenthaler, ; Hughes, ). After his death, his test received little positive attention in the German‐speaking world (Ellenberger, ) and some speculated that Rorschach died of heart break due to the failure of his test (Lemov, ).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Blots and All: A History of the Rorschach Ink Blot Test in Britain

Hubbard¹,

Hegarty²

2016

Despite the easily recognizable nature of the Rorschach ink blot test very little is known about the history of the test in Britain. We attend to the oft-ignored history of the Rorschach test in Britain and compare it to its history in the US. Prior to the Second World War, Rorschach testing in Britain had attracted advocates and critiques. Afterward, the British Rorschach Forum, a network with a high proportion of women, developed around the Tavistock Institute in London and The Rorschach Newsletter. In 1968, the International Rorschach Congress was held in London but soon after the group became less exclusive, and fell into decline. A comparative account of the Rorschach in Britain demonstrates how different national institutions invested in the 'projective hypothesis' according to the influence of psychoanalysis, the adoption of a nationalized health system, and the social positioning of 'others' throughout the twentieth century. In comparing and contrasting the history of the Rorschach in Britain and the US, we decentralize and particularize the history of North American Psychology.