Molly Harrower (born Mary Rachel Harrower; January 25, 1906 – February 20, 1999) was an American
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 ...
. During the Second World War she created a large-scale multiple choice
Rorschach test
The Rorschach test is a projective psychological test in which subjects' perceptions of inkblots are recorded and then analyzed using psychological interpretation, complex algorithms, or both. Some psychologists use this test to examine a pe ...
. She was one of the first clinical psychologists to open a private practice. Specializing in diagnostics, Harrower developed a scale allowing practitioners to predict which patients would profit from
psychotherapy
Psychotherapy (also psychological therapy, talk therapy, or talking therapy) is the use of psychological methods, particularly when based on regular personal interaction, to help a person change behavior, increase happiness, and overcome pro ...
.
Family and early life
Molly Harrower was born in
Johannesburg, South Africa, the daughter of James, a banker, and Ina (née White) Harrower.
Her Scottish-born parents were visiting South Africa when she was born and the family returned to the United Kingdom while she was an infant.
Their home was in
Cheam, a village south of London.
Molly Harrower had one brother, who was three years younger. From the age of ten she attended the
Godolphin School
Godolphin School is an independent boarding and day school for girls in Salisbury, England, which was founded in 1726 and opened in 1784. The school educates girls between the ages of three and eighteen.
History
Godolphin was founded by Eliz ...
in
Salisbury where she excelled at sports, particularly
cricket
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striki ...
.
Education
After leaving the Godolphin School Harrower was sent to a
finishing school
A finishing school focuses on teaching young women social graces and upper-class cultural rites as a preparation for entry into society. The name reflects that it follows on from ordinary school and is intended to complete the education, wit ...
in Paris. She was unhappy with the school environment so her parents sent her to live with a family while learning French in Switzerland for a year.
In 1925, with the help of a family friend, she was admitted to
Bedford College's
journalism program despite having no academic qualifications. After auditing a psychology course taught by
Beatrice Edgell, who became a mentor to her, Harrower switched to a program leading to an academic diploma in psychology. She did not complete the three-year program, being forced to leave after two years because of her family's financial difficulties.
She then spent four months in France on a scholarship to study painting and dancing before returning to England, where she worked as an assistant to
C.K. Ogden
Charles Kay Ogden (; 1 June 1889 – 20 March 1957) was an English linguist, philosopher, and writer. Described as a polymath but also an eccentric and outsider, he took part in many ventures related to literature, politics, the arts, and philo ...
, mainly in his capacity as a book dealer in
Cambridge.
Ogden recommended her to his friend the
Gestalt psychologist Kurt Koffka, who directed the psychology laboratory at
Smith College
Smith College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts Women's colleges in the United States, women's college in Northampton, Massachusetts. It was chartered in 1871 by Sophia Smith (Smith College ...
in
Massachusetts.
Smith College granted her a fellowship and she began working with Koffka in 1928.
On the invitation of Beatrice Edgell she returned to Bedford College in 1932 as a temporary senior lecturer, filling in for one year after the accidental death of her former teacher Victoria Hazlitt. Under Koffka's supervision she earned a
PhD PHD or PhD may refer to:
* Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification
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* '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series
* ''Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic
* Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group
** Ph.D. (Ph.D. albu ...
in 1934 for a
dissertation entitled ''Organization in Higher Mental Processes''. Hers was the first psychology doctorate awarded by Smith College.
The external examiners were
George Humphrey,
Edwin Boring
Edwin Garrigues (Garry) Boring (23 October 1886 – 1 July 1968) was an American experimental psychologist, Professor of Psychology at Clark University and at Harvard University, who later became one of the first historians of psychology. A ''Rev ...
, and
Arnold Gesell
Arnold Lucius Gesell (21 June 1880 – 29 May 1961) was an American psychologist, pediatrician and professor at Yale University known for his research and contributions to the fields of child hygiene and child development.Harris, B. (2011). Arn ...
.
Career
Research
Harrower became interested in clinical psychology when she observed major changes in a friend's personality after surgery.
The
Rockefeller Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation is an American private foundation and philanthropic medical research and arts funding organization based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The second-oldest major philanthropic institution in America, after the Carneg ...
granted her a three-year post-doctoral fellowship, which she took up in 1937, to study "the psychological effects of surgical operations, the impact of surgical shock" at the
Montreal Neurological Institute (MNI). In order to become familiar with the hospital setting she first spent six months working with
Kurt Goldstein at the
Montefiore Hospital in New York.
At the MNI she worked with
Wilder Penfield, and was involved as a psychologist in the pioneering
neural stimulation studies that led to the development of the
Montreal procedure
Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the second-most populous city in Canada and most populous city in the Canadian province of Quebec. Founded in 1642 as '' Ville-Marie'', or "City of Mary", it is named after Mount Royal, the triple-pea ...
for treating epilepsy.
Early in the Second World War, Harrower received a grant from the Canadian
National Research Council to develop a large-scale
Rorschach test
The Rorschach test is a projective psychological test in which subjects' perceptions of inkblots are recorded and then analyzed using psychological interpretation, complex algorithms, or both. Some psychologists use this test to examine a pe ...
.
The group test was used to screen military recruits based on their responses when shown a standard series of inkblot designs. The subjects were given a list of possible interpretations from which to choose and a high number of "neurotic" choices was seen as necessitating a "psychiatric check-up".
This allowed the Rorschach to be given to large groups in as little as 15 minutes, in comparison to the normally administered Rorschach that could take an hour per individual. The Multiple Choice Rorschach attracted a flurry of attention in the few years after. The test was ultimately found to be of little value, though.
In 1941 Harrower moved from Montreal to
Madison, Wisconsin where her husband, neurosurgeon Theodore Erickson, had obtained a position at the
University of Wisconsin–Madison medical school.
She received funding from the
Macy Foundation to continue developing and training psychologists in the use of large-scale Rorschach tests. She also worked as a consultant to the United States Army and Air Force as well as the
United States Department of State.
Harrower was a founding core member of the series of
Macy conferences on
cybernetics
Cybernetics is a wide-ranging field concerned with circular causality, such as feedback, in regulatory and purposive systems. Cybernetics is named after an example of circular causal feedback, that of steering a ship, where the helmsperson m ...
, attending the first five meetings until her resignation in 1949.
Clinical practice
Harrower opened a private practice in New York City in 1945, one of the first clinical psychologists to do so. She specialized in psychodiagnostic testing of medical patients referred to her by psychiatrists, neurologists and other physicians, using the Rorschach test as her primary tool.
During the course of her practice she used her diagnostic techniques on over 1,600 patients, keeping records of each consultation, and followed up with the treating therapists to develop a scale predicting the likelihood of successful therapy. The result was published in 1965 in ''Psychodiagnostic Testing: An Empirical Approach''.
After undergoing psychoanalysis herself from 1944 to 1946 she extended her practice to include psychotherapy.
Among her innovative techniques was poetry therapy, about which she published a book, ''The Therapy of Poetry'', in 1972.
She also did consulting work for organizations such as the Children’s Court of Manhattan, the
National Multiple Sclerosis Society, and the
Unitarian-Universalist Church.
She taught at the
New School for Social Research
The New School for Social Research (NSSR) is a graduate-level educational institution that is one of the divisions of The New School in New York City, United States. The university was founded in 1919 as a home for progressive era thinkers. NSSR ...
from 1963 to 1968.
Harrower was president of the New York Society of Clinical Psychologists in 1952-53.
She worked on the development of a certification program for New York State psychologists.
University of Florida
Harrower left New York and joined the faculty of the
University of Florida in
Gainesville in 1967, teaching clinical psychology. She retired at the age of 70 and was named an emeritus professor in 1975.
In 1972 she was awarded the
Bruno Klopfer Award The Bruno Klopfer Award is an award for lifetime achievement in personality psychology managed by the Society for Personality Assessment. It is the Society's most prestigious award and is named after the Society's founder Bruno Klopfer.
It was fi ...
by the
Society for Personality Assessment Society for Personality Assessment (SPA) is the largest psychological society focused on personality assessment. It was founded in 1937 by Bruno Klopfer as the Rorschach Institute, renamed as The Society for Projective Tests and the Rorschach Instit ...
.
The University of Florida made her an honorary
Doctor of Humane Letters in March 1981.
She established the Molly Harrower Women's Golf Endowment at the University of Florida.
Publications
Harrower's publications include 20 books and more than 100 articles and book chapters.
Among these were four books of poetry, the first of which, ''Plain Jane'', was a book of children's poems published in 1929.
In 1983 she published a selection of her correspondence with Kurt Koffka dating from 1930 until his death in 1941.
In 1976 Harrower published a notable article based on the examination of records of Rorschach tests administered to Nazi war criminals immediately after the Second World War. She found that they did not show any common personality type, and that some appeared to be psychologically normal. Based on this conclusion, she cautioned that "well-integrated, productive and secure personalities are no protection against being sucked into a vortex of myth and deception, which may ultimately erupt into the commitment of horror on a grand scale".
This research led to her collaboration on a book published in 1995 entitled ''The Quest for the Nazi Personality: A Psychological Investigation of Nazi War Criminals''.
Personal life
Molly Harrower was married twice and had no children. Her first husband was Theodore Erickson, a neurosurgeon whom she met while working at the Montreal Neurological Institute. They were married in 1938 and were divorced in 1944. During their marriage she published under the name Harrower-Erickson. She married Mortimer Lahm, a businessman, in 1955. Lahm died in 1967.
After her retirement Harrower continued to live in Gainesville. She died at home on 20 February 1999.
Partial bibliography
As sole author
* 1928 "I Don't Mix Much With Fairies"
* 1933 "Spiral: and other poems"
* 1946, "Time to squander, time to reap" New Bedford, MA: Reynolds Publishing.
* 1952, "Appraising Personality"
* 1958, ''Personality Change and Development''
* 1962, ''The Practice of Clinical Psychology''
* 1965, "Psychodiagnostic testing: An empirical approach.", Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas.
* 1971 Rev., ''The Psychologist at Work''
* 1972, "The Therapy of Poetry" Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas.
* 1978, "Changing horses in mid-stream: An experimentalist becomes a clinician." In T. S. Krawiec (Ed.), The psychologists: Autobiographies of distinguished living psychologists Vol. 3(pp. 85–104). Brandon, T: Clinical Psychology Publishing.
* 1983, "Kurt Koffka: an unwitting self-portrait." Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press.
* 1991, "Inkblots and poems." In C. E. Walker (Ed.) The history of clinical psychology in autobiography Vol. 1 (pp. 125–169). Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole.
Joint author
* 1951, Harrower, Molly, and Matilda Elizabeth Steiner., ''Large Scale Rorschach Techniques; A Manual for the Group Rorschach and Multiple Choice Tests''. Springfield, Ill: Thomas.
* 1987, Harrower, M., Bowers D., ''The Inside Story: Self-Evaluations Reflecting Basic Rorschach Types''
* 1995, Eric A. Zillmer, Molly Harrower, Barry A. Ritzler, Robert P. Arche, ''The Quest for the Nazi Personality: A Psychological Investigation of Nazi War Criminals.''
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Harrower, Molly
American women psychologists
20th-century American psychologists
Gestalt psychologists
Psychology educators
American psychology writers
20th-century American women writers
20th-century American non-fiction writers
Women science writers
20th-century Scottish poets
Scottish women poets
University of Florida faculty
People educated at Godolphin School
South African emigrants to the United States
1906 births
1999 deaths
American women non-fiction writers
American women academics
20th-century Scottish women