Queer signs: The women of the British projective test movement

Abstract

As queer history is often hidden, historians must look for "signs" that hint at queer lives and experiences. When psychologists use projective tests, the search for queer signs has historically been more literal, and this was especially true in the homophobic practices of Psychology in the mid-twentieth century. In this paper, I respond to Elizabeth Scarborough's call for more analytic history about the lesser known women in Psychology's history. By focusing on British projective research conducted by lesbian psychologist June Hopkins, I shift perspective and consider, not those who were tested (which has been historically more common), but those who did the testing, and position them as potential queer subjects. After briefly outlining why the projective test movement is ripe for such analysis and the kinds of queer signs that were identified using the Rorschach ink blot test in the mid-twentieth century, I then present June Hopkins' (1969, 1970) research on the "lesbian personality." This work forms a framework upon which I then consider the lives of Margaret Lowenfeld, Ann Kaldegg, and Effie Lillian Hutton, all of whom were involved in the British projective test movement a generation prior to Hopkins. By adopting Hopkins' research to frame their lives, I present the possibility of this ambiguous history being distinctly queer.

Seeing inside the child: The Rorschach inkblot test as assessment technique in a girls’ reform school, 1938–1948.

“…In this article, a set of Rorschach reports is studied to shed light on what psychologists “saw” and how they spoke about people as a result of conducting the test. Like Katherine Hubbard, then, this article “shift[s] the gaze” from the tested to the testers (Hubbard, 2017a, p. 266; see also Hubbard, 2017b, 2018, 2019; and see Hegarty, 2003, p. 421 for a reflection on this move in the broader historiography and history of the test), to focus on what the test “does” in the world (Hubbard, 2019, ch. 7, e-position 10; also see ch.…”

Histories of psychology after Stonewall: Introduction to the special issue.

“…Double consciousness is also experienced by historians in this field. The erasure of LGBTQIϩ history can present historians of psychology with the dilemma between allowing the erasure to continue versus calling time on it by projecting essentialist notions from the present backward (Hubbard, 2017). Nonetheless, a long view of history over several decades tells stories of shifting recognition of the possibility of diverse lives that is often brought about by small groups of actors, such as those shifting "transnormativity" (Riggs et al, this volume), or the British "liberal humanist" recognition of lesbian and gay individuals (Hubbard & Griffiths, 2019).…”

“…It was the success of these movements that led psychologists to appreciate the early insights of scholars such as Kessler and McKenna into the logic of gender attribution (Kessler & McKenna, 1978; McKenna & Kessler, 2000). Only in the past 10–15 years have history of psychology journals begin to include publications on: GBTQI+ psychology (e.g., Chiang, 2008; Hammack & Windell, 2011; Hubbard, 2017; Pettit, 2011; Serlin, 2012; Weinstein, 2018).…”

“The difference being a woman made” Untold Lives in personal and intellectual context

“…Clark's reflection on the intersectionality of her position as a black woman, regarded differently from both black men (i.e., her husband) and white women, begets the question of the status of a truly intersectional history of psychology, a history that would reconstruct the past as it was experienced and understood not only by women, but also by women differentially positioned and marginalized by race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, and class background. In this issue, Katherine Hubbard offers the beginning of a queer history of the British projective test movement by excavating the contributions of psychologist June Hopkins, an openly gay woman who sought to use projective tests to depathologize lesbianism. Elissa Rodkey (this issue) explores the unique relationship of Magda Arnold to her spiritual and intellectual confidant Father John Gasson, to whom she was drawn in part by their shared marginalization as Catholics in the secular environment of the academy.…”