David A. Rapaport (September 30, 1911,
Budapest
Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...
,
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary, often referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire,, the Dual Monarchy, or Austria, was a constitutional monarchy and great power in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. It was formed with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of ...
– December 14, 1960,
Stockbridge,
Mass.) was a Hungarian
clinical psychologist
Clinical psychology is an integration of social science, theory, and clinical knowledge for the purpose of understanding, preventing, and relieving psychologically based distress or dysfunction and to promote subjective well-being and persona ...
and psychoanalytic ego psychologist.
Biography
Rapaport was born in
Budapest
Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...
,
Hungary
Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia a ...
on September 30, 1911. A precocious student, he received Bachelor of Science degrees in mathematics and experimental physics in 1935, and a Ph.D. in psychology and philosophy in 1938, all attained at the
Royal Hungarian Petrus Pazmany University in Budapest. During this period he also obtained a Montessori teaching degree. Beginning when Rapaport was a teenager, he participated in a Zionist organization and helped Hungarian Jews escape to Palestine. From 1932-1934, Rapaport lived on a kibbutz in Palestine, where he met and married Elvira Strasser and where his first child, Hanna, was born (Gill, 1961; Knight, 1961).
In December 1938, Rapaport and his family emigrated to the United States, sponsored by the American Psychoanalytic Association’s Emergency Committee on Relief and Immigration. Initially, he worked as psychologist at Mount Sinai Hospital, and then took a similar position at the Osawatomie State Hospital in Kansas (Gill, 1961; Knight, 1961).
From 1940-1948, Rapaport was on the staff of the
Menninger Clinic
The Menninger Foundation was founded in 1919 by the Menninger family in Topeka, Kansas. The Menninger Foundation, known locally as Menninger's, consists of a clinic, a sanatorium, and a school of psychiatry, all of which bear the Menninger name. ...
in Topeka, KS, eventually becoming the chief psychologist and research director. From 1948 until his death, Rapaport was a senior staff member of the
Austen Riggs Center
The Austen Riggs Center is a psychiatric treatment facility in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. It was founded by Austen Fox Riggs in 1913 as the Stockbridge Institute for the Study and Treatment of Psychoneuroses before being renamed in honor of Au ...
, in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Rapaport died from a heart attack on December 14, 1960, at age forty-nine (Gill, 1961; Knight, 1961).
Scholarly contributions
During Rapaport’s career, he became an acknowledged authority on both clinical psychology and psychoanalytic theory. In 1960, he was awarded a Citation for Distinguished Contributions to the Science and Profession of Clinical Psychology from the American Psychological Association. Furthermore, Rapaport was also proposed for honorary membership in the American Psychoanalytic Association. Upon meeting Anna Freud in Worcester, MA in 1950, Ms. Freud stated: “Dr. Rapaport, you know more metapsychology than any of us!” (Knight, 1961, p. 264).
Diagnostic testing
Rapaport’s first notable work was in diagnostic psychological testing. Rather than being a mere psychometrician, Rapaport regarded his work on diagnostic testing as carrying forward the efforts of Kraepelin and Bleuler to identify and describe pathological organizations of thought. Rapaport regarded thought organization as the key to personality dynamics.
Rapaport developed the now standard comprehensive testing battery, which included both cognitive and personality assessment methods. Rapaport also provided a framework for analyzing test results. Rapaport argued that every behavior and test response is derived from the individual’s personality, which offered a means of observing how his or her personality was organized.
Psychoanalytic theory
Rapaport played a prominent role in the development of psychoanalytic
ego psychology
Ego psychology is a school of psychoanalysis rooted in Sigmund Freud's structural id-ego-superego model of the mind.
An individual interacts with the external world as well as responds to internal forces. Many psychoanalysts use a theoretical c ...
and his work likely represented its apex (Wallerstein, 2002). In Rapaport's influential monograph The Structure of Psychoanalytic Theory (1960), he organized ego psychology into an integrated, systematic, and hierarchical theory capable of generating empirically testable hypotheses. According to Rapaport, psychoanalytic theory—as expressed through the principles of ego psychology—was a biologically based general psychology that could explain the entire range of human psychological functioning (e.g., memory, perception, motivation) and behavior (Rapaport, 1960). For Rapaport, this endeavor was fully consistent with Freud's attempts to do the same (e.g., Freud's studies of dreams, jokes, and the "psychopathology of everyday life".)
Influence
Rapaport's approach to psychological testing revolutionized clinical psychology. His first manual was widely used by psychologists during World War II, and in its final form became the two-volume Diagnostic Psychological Testing (1945–46), which remained widely used by psychologists into the 1980s (Fritsch, 2013). Rapaport also brought psychoanalytic theory into the 20th century through his lectures and writing. His lecturing style “was extraordinary and to some intimidating, especially to those accustomed to gentility in scientific discourse. He discussed abstract metapsychology with the fervor of a political orator and the thunder of a Hebrew prophet.” (Gill, 1961, p. 757)
Rapaport exerted a major influence on a generation of clinical psychologists and psychoanalysts, notably
Merton Gill,
Roy Schafer
Roy Schafer (December 14, 1922 - August 5, 2018) was an American psychologist and psychoanalyst, who emphasised a psychoanalytic concept of narrative. For Schafer, an important purpose of the analytic process is that the analysand regains agency o ...
,
George S. Klein, and
Robert R. Holt, in their exploration of such diverse topics as diagnostic testing,
cognitive style
Cognitive style or thinking style is a concept used in cognitive psychology to describe the way individuals think, perceive and remember information. Cognitive style differs from cognitive ability (or level), the latter being measured by aptitude ...
,
subliminal perception
Subliminal stimuli (; the prefix ' literally means "below" or "less than") are any sensory stimuli below an individual's threshold for conscious perception, in contrast to stimuli (above threshold). A 2012 review of functional magnetic resona ...
,
altered states
''Altered States'' is a 1980 American science fiction body horror film directed by Ken Russell and based on the novel of the same name by playwright and screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky. The film was adapted from Chayefsky's 1978 novel and is his f ...
, and ego autonomy. And it was through his work that the Menninger Clinic became known for pioneering advances in clinical psychology and psychoanalysis.
Finally, Rapaport was a founder and first secretary (1946-1949) of the newly formed Division of Clinical and Abnormal Psychology of the American Psychological Association.
References
* Fritsch, R.C. (2013). Roy Schafer's Contributions to Psychological Testing. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 82: 9-21.
* Gill, M.M. (1961). David Rapaport — 1911-1960. Bul. Amer. Psychoanal. Assn., 17:755-759.
* Knight, R.P. (1961). David Rapaport — 1911-1960. Psychoanal. Q., 30:262-264.
* Wallerstein, R.S. (2002). The growth and transformation of American ego psychology. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 50 (1): 136–169.
Major works
* Rapaport, D. (1942). Freudian Mechanisms and Frustration Experiments. Psychoanal Q., 11:503-511.
* Rapaport, D., Gill, M., & Schafer, R. (1945). Diagnostic Psychological Testing, Volume I. Chicago, IL: The Year Book Publishers.
* Rapaport, D., Gill, M., & Schafer, R. (1946). Diagnostic Psychological Testing, Volume II. Chicago, IL: The Year Book Publishers.
* Rapaport, D. (1950). On the Psycho-Analytic Theory of Thinking. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 31:161-170.
* Rapaport, D. (1950). Organization and Pathology of Thought. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
* Rapaport, D. (1953). On the Psycho-Analytic Theory of Affects. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 34:177-198.
* Rapaport, D., Gill, M.M. (1959). The Points of View and Assumptions of Metapsychology. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 40:153-162.
* Rapaport, D. (1960). The structure of psychoanalytic theory: A systematic attempt. International Universities Press, Inc.
* Rapaport, D. (1967). The Collected Papers of David Rapaport
942-1960(Merton M. Gill, editor). New York: Basic Books.
External links
Biography in the International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rapaport, David
1911 births
1960 deaths
Hungarian psychologists
Hungarian psychoanalysts
Jewish psychoanalysts
20th-century American psychologists
American psychoanalysts
Eötvös Loránd University alumni
Hungarian Jews
Hungarian emigrants to the United States
People from Budapest
20th-century psychologists