Personal Politics: The Rise of Personality Traits in the Century of Eugenics and Psychoanalysis

This dissertation documents personality psychologys development alongside psychoanalysis and eugenics, offering a disciplinary and cultural history of personality across the twentieth century. Using the psychological concepts of neurosis and introversion as an organizational framework, personalitys history is portrayed as one of success: a succession of hereditarianism and its politics of normativity; a successful demarcation of the science of personality from competing forms of expertise; and a successful cleansing of personality psychologys interchanges with unethical researchers and research. Chapter 1 provides background for the dissertation, especially focusing on turn-of-the-century developments in the nascent fields of American psychology and the importation of psychoanalytic ideas. It ends with a look at Francis Galtons eugenicist and statistical contributions that carved a key path for psychological testers to discipline psychoanalytic concepts. Part I details the rise of personality testing in the USA during the interwar years, while also considering the many sexual and gender norms at play. Chapter 2 tracks the varied places in the 1920s that personality tests were developed: from wartime military camps to university laboratories to the offices of corporate advertisers. Chapter 3 takes stock of popular psychoanalytic notions of personality alongside the further psychometric development of personality testing. These developments occurred at a time when American eugenicistsincluding psychologistswere transitioning to a positive form that emphasized marriage and mothering. Part II partially strays from a strict chronicling of the Big Twos development into traitsneuroticism and extraversionto consider the broader histories of personality in the Cold War era and beyond. Chapter 4 considers the opposing legacies of Hans Eysenck and Paul Meehl to explore the development of psychometric tools that countered popular projective techniques. Additionally, it examines the multifarious connections between psychoanalysis and psychologists striving for a science of personality. Chapter 5 closes the dissertation with a look at the psychometric work that led to the Five-Factor Models ascent in the 1990s as perhaps the most widely accepted perspective on personality. Along the way, the conservative politics of heredity and eugenics would capitalize on cries for the academic freedom of racist science while justifying trait psychologys past.

Author dc:creator

• Davidson, Ian James

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Pettit, Michael

• American studies

Statement dc:rights

• Author owns copyright, except where explicitly noted. Please contact the author directly with licensing requests.

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10315/37940

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:yorkspace.library.yorku.ca:10315/37940