| Dollard received the Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Chicago in 1931 and then had a year's training in psychoanalysis in Berlin under Hans Sachs. In 1932 he joined the explorations of culture and personality being led by Yale anthropologist Edward Sapir. Dollard spent the rest of his career at Yale: he was a leading member of the Institute of Human Relations during its active years, and subsequently a professor in the Department of Psychology. His work is a notable example of the innovative value of bringing together in one mind central ideas and approaches of the usually separate social
sciences. Dollard's most influential books came during the period of his affiliation with the Institute of Human Relations. In Criteria for the life history he sought to define how life history study could best contribute to a unified understanding of human beings, and applied his analysis to a critique of well-known life histories that had been published by social scientists of diverse theoretical persuasions. In Caste and class in a southern town. his master work. he showed the relations between a social system and the psychodynamics of individuals in various positions within the system. He joined with various colleagues in other influential studies, notably Frustration and aggression (with Leonard Doob, Neal Miller. 0. Hobart Mowrer, and Robert Sears), Social learning and
imitation (with Neal Miller), and Personality and psychotherapy (also with Neal Miller). Typifying the work of the Institute of Human Relations, these studies achieve a remarkable synthesis of psychoanalysis, experimental psychology of learning and motivation, sociological analysis of social structure, and anthropological awareness of cultural variation. Though some of their terminology is out of fashion, these books continue to be a direct source of understanding and an inspiration to the further development of psychology in integral relation
to the other social sciences. In his later years, Dollard concentrated on teaching psychotherapy and on intensive study of the process of
psychotherapy, bringing to this field the integrated viewpoint he had developed. |
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