A Psycho-Sexual Inventory

Within the astonishingly brief period of less than fifteen years a most drastic revolution (quite bloodless), medical and academic, has taken place in the world of the psychologists. The center of gravity has shifted from the intellectual to the emotional factors in behavior and experience. Intelligence tests are no longer deemed intelligent unless accompanied by personality tests: character tests, social intelligence tests, emotional history tests, in short, “personal data “studies. It is becoming a widely accepted truism that you can know nothing vitally important about an individual unless you are intimately acquainted with his (or her!) emotional make-up. Social psychology, abnormal psychology, psychopathology, clinical psychology, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, behaviorism, general dynamic psychology, mental hygiene, studies in delinquency, are all vastly preoccupied with aspects of personality and factors in behavior that are visceral, autonomic, emotional in nature. The recognition, the realisation, that among the emotional factors none bulks so large, none is so ominously significant for harmonious personality-adjustment as sex, is but slowly and half-reluctantly—thanks to ancient puritanic taboos—penetrating the convictions of psychologic-minded persons, even the most academic. An astonishing revolution in values, forsooth!

The cordial attitude toward the “new psychology “(to limit ourselves only to the American group) of academic psychologists of the distinction of G. Stanley Hall, Joseph Jastrow, John B. Watson, L. L. Thurstone, F. L. Wells, Wilfrid Lay, Floyd H. Allport, William McDougall (to mention only a prominent few) is an impressive indication of the tendencies now vitally at work in psychology at large. We may graphically sum it all up by saying that psychology in achieving maturity, has become psychiatrized. “ Integrated personality “is the magic phrase that emphasizes the positive aspect of the newer psychology, disintegrated or dissociated personal