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We have had examples of the use of psychoanalytic theory in the study of historic characters from Moses and Leonardo to Luther and Gandhi. Greenacre, Bond, and others have even extended the method to fictional characters. But so far as I know, Fromm and Maccoby are the first researchers to make serious and extended use of the psychoanalytic framework to classify the members of a sizable social group according to the major character types which they exhibit.
The group which they selected was the entire “adult” population (males over sixteen and females over fifteen) of a Mexican village situated in a high, fertile valley some distance southwest of Mexico City. In addition, however, to the psychoanalytic approach, the authors employed the concepts and insights of anthropology and other social sciences, with statistical analysis playing a major role. They did not psychoanalyze any of their subjects but used an elaborate questionnaire filled out by carefully trained staff members in extended interviews with all of the 417 “adults.” These were supplemented and verified experimentally by Rorschach tests of 110 villagers and some use of the TAT.
The study, which in its various phases and with some interruptions extended over a period of more than ten years, takes us behind the scenes and surface appearances of a “quaint” peasant population. It reveals the immense range of character types within this small rural population according to a classification scheme evolved by the authors. The “non-productive receptive” (passive) type predominated, next was the “productive hoarding” character, and finally came the “exploitative” type with its two subgroups: the “productive exploitative” and the “unproductive exploitative.”
The authors trace the interaction of the psychological, historical, and social forces which operated to produce individuals of one type or another. They describe in colorful detail the practical results of the individual's classification into one or another of thes