Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction: The Psychologists' War
- Interlude I
- 1 Growing Pains: After the Great War
- 2 Mobilizing for World War II: From National Defense to Professional Unity
- 3 Home Fires: Female Psychologists and the Politics of Gender
- Interlude II
- 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
- Interlude III
- 8 A New Order: Postwar Support for Psychology
- 9 Remodeling the Academic Home
- Interlude IV
- 10 The Mirror of Practice: Toward a Reflexive Science
- 11 Beyond the Laboratory: Giving Psychology Away
- Interlude V
- Epilogue: Science in Search of Self
- Index
2 - Mobilizing for World War II: From National Defense to Professional Unity
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction: The Psychologists' War
- Interlude I
- 1 Growing Pains: After the Great War
- 2 Mobilizing for World War II: From National Defense to Professional Unity
- 3 Home Fires: Female Psychologists and the Politics of Gender
- Interlude II
- 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
- Interlude III
- 8 A New Order: Postwar Support for Psychology
- 9 Remodeling the Academic Home
- Interlude IV
- 10 The Mirror of Practice: Toward a Reflexive Science
- 11 Beyond the Laboratory: Giving Psychology Away
- Interlude V
- Epilogue: Science in Search of Self
- Index
Summary
In May 1939 about fifty psychologists attended a reunion in New York City to reminisce about their service in the First World War. Many prominent psychologists were on the guest list, including James Angell, Walter V. Bingham, Truman Kelley, Beardsley Ruml, Walter Dill Scott, Edward Thorndike, Leonard Thurstone, John B. Watson, and Robert Yerkes. They gathered to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of their demobilization as members of the Committee on Classification of Personnel, which had directed the army's personnel system during the war, and to congratulate their former commanding officer, Colonel Walter Dill Scott, who was retiring after two decades as president of Northwestern University.
The event was organized by Walter Bingham, the former executive secretary of the committee who was currently serving as president of the New York State Association for Applied Psychology. Bingham had been a vigorous proselytizer on behalf of applied psychology since the Great War. No doubt aware of the increasingly ominous political situation in Europe, he used the reunion to start rebuilding the military psychology network. One colleague had suggested that a military representative be invited so that “a new tie can be forged which will be the [start] of putting the services of some of the old crowd at the disposal of the country, should the emergency arise.” Bingham followed up, and the army sent a lieutenant colonel from the Adjutant General's Office to the gathering.
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- Psychologists on the MarchScience, Practice, and Professional Identity in America, 1929–1969, pp. 39 - 70Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999