Psychologists on the March
Science, Practice, and Professional Identity in America, 1929–1969

Psychologists on the March argues that Second World War had a profound impact on the modern psychological profession in America.

James H. Capshew (Author)

9780521565851, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 13 January 1999

292 pages
22.9 x 15.3 x 2.2 cm, 0.43 kg

"This book will be widely red as the most thorough narrative, in terms of which to compare and argue individual views and experiences. Any psychologist interested in the steps by which the occupation has become such a massive presence in American life will get enormous stimulus and much information from the book." Contemporary APA Review of Books 2000

Psychologists on the March argues that the Second World War had a profound impact on the modern psychological profession in America. Before the war, psychology was viewed largely as an academic discipline, drawing its ideology and personnel from the laboratory. Following the war, it was increasingly seen as a source of theory and practice to deal with mental health issues. With the support of the federal government, the field entered a prolonged period of exponential growth. With this growth came major changes in the institutional structure of the field that spread to include the epistemological foundations of psychology. This book is a sustained study of this important era in American psychology. Moving back and forth between collective and individual levels of analysis, it provides a narrative that weaves together the internal politics and demography of psychology in relation to the cultural environment.

Introduction: the psychologists' war
1. Growing pains: after the Great War
2. Mobilizing for World War II: from national defense to professional unity
3. Home fires: women psychologists and the politics of gender
4. Sorting soldiers' psychology as personnel management
5. Applied human relations: The utility of social psychology
6. From the margins: making the clinical connection
7. Engineering behavior: applied experimental psychology
8. A new order: postwar support for psychology
9. Remodeling the academic home
10. The mirror of practice: towards a reflective science
11. Beyond the laboratory: giving psychology away
Epilogue: science in search of self.

Subject Areas: Psychology [JM], History of ideas [JFCX]