"The defects of his race": E.G. Boring and antisemitism in American psychology, 1923-1953

From the 1920s to the 1950s, Edwin G. Boring wrote letters of reference for Jewish students and colleagues in which he followed the common practice of identifying them as Jews and assessing whether they showed "objectionable traits" thought to characterize Jews. These practices are discussed in relation to the increasing antisemitism of the interwar period, with specific reference to Abraham A. Roback and Kurt Lewin. In Roback's case, the "defect" of Jewishness was thought to explain his undesirable personality: with Lewin, personal charm mitigated the "defect" of Jewishness. Boring's unsuccessful attempts to place Jewish students, his subsequent pessimism, and his postwar discussions of Jewish identity are examined in relation to the general issue of antisemitism in the history of academic psychology.     

Phenomenology, Bruno Klopfer, and individualized/collaborative assessment

This presentation celebrates commonalities of Bruno Klopfer's philosophical phenomenological approach to the Rorschach and my similarly grounded approach to individualized/collaborative psychological assessment. The article begins with an excerpt from such an assessment to ground what follows. It then addresses what phenomenology is and is not in relation to psychological assessment, and reviews Klopfer's phenomenological approach to the Rorschach. It presents the findings from an empirical phenomenological research study relevant to collaborative assessment. Finally, the article reviews some common inquiries and observations about individualized/colloaborative assessment and closes with some shifts in American psychology that are consonant with this approach to psychological assessment.