Nevitt Sanford

Recent Developments in Connection with the Investigation of the Authoritarian Personality

1 shall undertake to describe our work* briefly and then to consider it from a distance, as it were, discussing in the light of available criticisms what we should have done differendy, mentioning some trends in research within which our work has a place and making some suggestions for the future. Our work might be described in the most general terms as a study of personal susceptibility to ideological appeals. It offers some documentation of certain ideas of Fromm, Reich, Erikson, Maslow, Chisholm and others. It was carried out at Berkeley, Califwnia during the five years which began early in 1944. The authors df our published volume are T. W. Adomo, D. J. Levinson, Else Frenkel-Brimswik, myself and others. We undertook to measure, by means of Likert-type scales, andSemidsm, ethnocentrism, polidcal-economic conservatism, and finally, potendal fascism in the personality. We studied the interreladons among these measures, and their reladons to factors in the individuals background and history, his personality and his contemporary situadon—pardcularly his membership in groups. Our theoredcal orientadon was mainly Freudian psycho-analydc; we accordingly supposed that persistent social attitudes, like other persistent traits, were somehow organized with the rest rf the personality. Our methodological approach was designed in the light of our theories; an essendal feature was a kind of interlocking of quesdonnaires and clinical procedures, that is to say, intensive interviews and

Self and Society: Social Change and Individual Development.

How does ones social environment change an individual, and why do these changes occur? Can social institutions be shaped and molded profoundly enough to afford each member of a society his maximum potential for happiness, effective functioning, and complete development?

THE FINDINGS OF THE COMMISSION IN PSYCHOLOGY

(1) Introduction. Psychotherapy, historically, has fallen in the realms of religion, philosophy, and education. If a person had a personal problem involving anxiety, conflict, or guilt, with respect to which he wished help, he would have gone, until approximately the time of Freud, to his religious mentor, secular teacher, or philosopher (or whatever the counterpart was for his social level). Thus the writers before Freud who treated most fully of psychology and the kinds of problems that bring most people to psychotherapists today were the philosophical and religious writers, such as Socrates, Augustine, Spinoza, Pascal, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche. Modern psychology has three main sources, one of which is the philosophicalethical tradition mentioned above. During the 18th and 19th centuries, psychology was taught in the departments of philosophy and religion. The carryover into modern psychology of this tradition of philosophical and ethical concern with man’s problems and what to do about them is exemplified in such figures as William James (president of the American Psychological Association in 1894) and John Dewey (president of the same association in 1899). The second source of modern American psychology has been the experimental psychophysiology and psychophysics that developed in Europe, particularly in Germany, after the middle of the last century. During the last decades of the 19th century, American psychologists were moved to declare the independente of their new science from philosophy and ethics. The experimental, objective study of behavior then became a dominant stream of psychology in America. From this source has derived the accent upon research methods and techniques that looms so large in the training and in the professional work of the psychologist. It has been the widely íelt need to establish psychology as a science, perhaps, that has led, in some instances, to a preoccupation with methodology a t the expense of concern with the theoretical significance and practical importance of psychological investigation. The third main source of modern psychology was the hope and the expectation that a scientific approach would be an aid to the solution of problems in child training, education, personal adjustment, and group relations. This led to the development of a usable psychology of personality, major contributions being made by Freud, Jung, and others, who had a medica1 background. Although attempts systematically to apply psychology to practical human problems have been common since the beginning of this century, it is only within the last 15 years that applied psychology, particularly clinical psychology, has become the dominant branch of the whole discipline and that the major steps toward making a profession of the science of psychology havc been taken. Today, American psychologists exernplify, each in differing proportions, a combination of these three major trends. The profession of psychology has