Marie Jahoda

Marie Jahoda
Jahoda appearing on television discussion programmeAfter Darkin 1988
Born	26 January 1907 Vienna, Austria
Died	28 April 2001 Sussex,England
Nationality	Austrian-British
Alma mater	University of Vienna(PhD,1933)
Occupation	Social psychologist
Spouse(s)	Paul Lazarsfeld Austen Albu
Children	Lotte Franziska Lazarsfeld

Marie Jahoda(26 January 1907 – 28 April 2001) was anAustrian-Britishsocial psychologist.

Biography

Jahoda was born in Vienna to a Jewish merchant's family, and like many other psychologists of her time, grew up in Austria where political oppression against socialists was rampant afterEngelbert Dollfussclaimed power. Starting in her adolescent years she became engaged in theAustrian Social Democratic Partyin ″Red Vienna.″ This was a major influence on her life. She is (among many others) considered as Grande Dame of European socialism.

In 1928, she earned her teaching diploma from thePedagogical Academy of Vienna,and in 1933 earned her Doctor of Philosophy inPsychologyfrom theUniversity of Vienna.Together with her husbandPaul LazarsfeldandHans Zeisel,she wrote a now-classic study of the social impact of unemployment on a small community:Die Arbeitslosen von Marienthal(1932; English ed. 1971 –Marienthal: the sociography of an unemployed community– paperback by Transaction Publishers in USA, 2002). Marienthal was an industrial district that suffered very high levels of unemployment in the 1920s, and the research team examined the (often devastating) psychological consequences. These went beyond the obvious hardships associated with financial deprivation, and Jahoda concluded that in modern industrial societies work provides important social benefits, including a sense of personal worth, connection with wider social objectives, and a time structure to their days and weeks.

In 1934, Jahoda divorced Lazarsfeld since he had started a relationship withHerta Herzogin 1932. In 1936, she was imprisoned by the dictatorial regime ofKurt Schuschniggfor her underground work for the socialists. In 1937, after some foreign appeals to release her, she was allowed to leave prison on the condition she leave the country immediately. Her Austrian citizenship was revoked. In fact, however, this might have saved her from worse oppression following the NaziAnschlussthe following year. Jahoda went to England staying there duringWorld War II.

In 1945she arrived in the United States. During her time there, she worked as a professor of social psychology at theNew York Universityand a researcher for theAmerican Jewish CommitteeandColumbia University.She contributed significantly to the analysis of theStudies on Prejudiceand was co-editor of the third volume of these studies calledAnti-Semitism and Emotional Disorder: a Psychological Interpretation,which was published in 1950. Between 1958 and 1965, at what is nowBrunel University,she was involved in establishing Psychology degree programmes including the unique four-year,thin-sandwich degree.Jahoda founded theResearch Center of Human Relations,and was recruited by theUniversity of Sussexin 1965, where she became Professor of Social Psychology. Later at Sussex University she became consultant, and then Visiting Professor, at theScience Policy Research Unit.In 1968 she was member ofSocial Science Research Council (UK).

In 1958 she developed the theory of Ideal Mental Health. Through her work Jahoda identified five categories which, she said, were vital to feelings of well-being (1982, 87). These were: time structure, social contact, collective effort or purpose, social identity or status, and regular activity. She maintained that the unemployed were deprived of all five, and that this accounted for much of the reported mental ill-health among unemployed people. In the 1980s, when unemployment levels were again high, this approach was rather influential, and her Marienthal studies attracted renewed interest: she made many presentations on this topic in Europe. She was at that time working at theScience Policy Research Unit,where she had also contributed substantially to the Unit's work on innovation and futures studies – most visibly in the coedited study byChristopher Freemanand Marie Jahoda (eds) 1978,World Futures: the Great Debate(published by Martin Robertson in the UK). She continued her interest in psychology with the 1977 studyFreud and the Dilemmas of Psychology(Hogarth Press), and was coeditor ofTechnology and the Future of Europe: Competition and the Global Environment in the 1990swithChristopher Freeman,Keith Pavitt,Margaret Sharp and William Walker (Thomson Learning, 1991). She was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciencesin 1992.

Jahoda died on 28 April 2001 inSussex,England, aged 94.

Family life

In 1927 she marriedPaul Felix Lazarsfeldwith whom she had her only childLotte Franziska Lazarsfeld(born 1930). who became a professor of management atM.I.T.In 1934, she divorced Lazarsfeld, who had been involved withHerta Herzogsince 1932. After she returned to the UK in 1958 she married theLabourpoliticianAusten Albu.

Positive Mental Health

In her bookCurrent Concepts of Positive Mental Health(Basic Books, 1958), Marie Jahoda summarized and integrated previous work by social, psychodynamic, and humanistic psychologists such as Gordon Allport, Erik Erikson, Erich Fromm, Heinz Hartmann, Abraham Maslow, and Carl Rogers. As a result, she identified six basic components of positive mental health:

• Attitudes of an individual toward his own self.
• The individual's style and degree of growth, development, or self-actualization.
• Central synthesizing psychological functions (a.k.a. integration).
• The individual's degree of independence from social influences (a.k.a. autonomy).
• An individual's perception of reality.
• Environmental mastery (this included six facets: the ability to love; adequacy in love, work, and play; adequacy in interpersonal relations; efficiency in meeting situational requirements; capacity for adaptation and adjustment; and efficiency in problem-solving).

Major publications

In addition to those cited above –Current concepts of positive mental health;World Futures, Technology and the Future of Europe;Freud and the Dilemmas of Psychology– her major publications include:

• (withPaul LazarsfeldandHans Zeisel),Die Arbeitslosen von Marienthal.1932.
  • English ed. 1971 –Marienthal: the sociography of an unemployed community– paperback by Routledge, London, 1971 and republished in 2002.
• Research Methods in Social Relations – With Especial Reference to Prejudice.1952.
• (with Richard Christie)Studies in the Scope and Method of The Authoritarian Personality: Continuities in Social Research(1954)
• (withClaire Selltiz,Morton DeutschandStuart W. Cook)Research Methods in Social Relations.1964.
• (with H. S. D. Cole,Christopher Freeman,andKeith Pavitt)Thinking About The Future – A Critique Of The Limits To Growth(published in the USA asModels of Doom). Sussex University Press, 1973.
• Work, employment and unemployment: An overview of ideas and research results in the social science literature.SPRU occasional paper series, University of Sussex, 1980.
• Ich habe die Welt nicht verändert[I didn't change the world]. Julius Beltz GmbH, 2002.

References

• OxfordDictionary of National Biography