Introduction

Summary

It is [the] combination of personal values without deep social underpinning which doubtless explains … the fact that we allow economic disorganization, which produces fourteen or fifteen million unemployed and their families to suffer; then, instead of letting them die off, we feel sorry for them to the extent of giving them “relief,” maintaining them at a starvation level. It is a question whether such a combination of emphasis upon and violation of social values can be long sustained.

Lois Barclay Murphy (1937)

As … psychology goes beyond sheer common sense, and becomes dynamite to society, those dominant in society will try to protect themselves against the explosion. It seems to me that this is a sufficient answer to the ivory-tower remark that we should stick to science and let public practice alone. The answer is that public practice will not and cannot let psychology alone.

Gardner Murphy (1939)

To a large degree our division of labor is forced, not free; young people leaving our schools for a career of unemployment become victims of arrested emotional and intellectual development; our civil liberties fall short of our expressed ideal. Only the extension of democracy to those fields where democracy is not at present fully practised – to industry, educational administration, and to race relations for examples – can make possible the realization of infinitely varied purposes and the exercise of infinitely varied talents.

Gordon Allport (1940)

During the 1930s, the United States underwent one of its greatest periods of economic, social, and political crisis, as vocal groups of Americans engaged in intense debate over truths that no longer appeared to be self-evident.