Psychologists League

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During the Great Depression in the 1930s, a group of progressive psychologists formed the Psychologists League to help unemployed and under-employed colleagues and to push psychology toward social change as part of a Marxist-backed radical science movement. The group adopted a Popular Front style and began with a meeting on January 16, 1935 in the Bellevue Hospital psychiatry auditorium. About 200 psychologists attended, and at the end about 30 audience members volunteered to form the organization, which aimed to combine political activism with reform in psychology. Mary Bressler served as Secretary, Solomon Machover was Chairman, and Solomon Diamond led Programs and Publications (also writing under the name Albert Magnus).

The League, with Communist sympathies, wanted to create more job opportunities for psychologists and to change the field’s theories and methods to emphasize social change, criticizing traditional objectivity and elitism. In a 1936 forum, Goodwin Watson argued that narrowly focused disciplines could not solve the era’s social crisis and urged addressing broader social problems rather than just treating individuals. The League did create some jobs, notably through the Works Progress Administration, but it had limited impact on the American Psychological Association. It also suffered from Communist Party factionalism; when the party refused to let the group vote on the Soviet invasion of Finland, theLeague’s president Dan Harris resigned. By 1941 the League had shrunk to a few dozen members who remained loyal to the Communist Party.