8 - Jahoda

Summary

The final analytic chapter presents the ultimate example: Marie Jahoda, who embodied virtues that are praised in earlier chapters. She was the author of a classic study looking at the effects of mass unemployment the early 1930s. In her report she made telling use of examples to depict the lives of those whom she and her team studied. Just as her examples overspill any theory of unemployment, so the reasons why Jahoda sets an example overspill her abilities to use examples. She understood the tensions between theory and examples, coming down strongly on the side of the latter, recognizing the importance of ‘descriptive fieldwork’. She argued that psychologists were over-valuing theory. She wrote directly with minimum jargon and maximum clarity, believing in the importance of studying the lives of individuals. Jahoda’s use of examples and her suspicion of theory in psychology were just two aspects of a wider humane vision.