Eugenia Hanfmann

Hanfmann was born on March 3, 1905, in St. Petersburg, Russia to father Maxim Ganfman and mother Katarina.[5] Her father was raised in a Jewish family before converting to the Russian Orthodox Church when he married Katarina.[6][4] She was the oldest of four children and the only daughter. Her brothers were George, Alexander, and Andrew.[3]

Growing up, her family was part of a progressive Russian intelligentsia class.[2] She had several educated female role-models in her life such as her mother, who was a college educated part time teacher, and her aunt, who was a physician.[2] Psychology was described by her as an early interest and that she had a "vivid memory of reading William James’ short Psychology during a bombardment of Kiev..."[2]

She was twelve years old at the beginning of the Russian Revolution; in an autobiography she describes, "during the years of civil war and famine, our concern was to stay alive today and tomorrow".[2] After the civil war, her family moved to Lithuania and she resumed her education graduating with a high school diploma.[2] In 1922, her family moved to Berlin, Germany and their last name was converted from Cyrillic version, Ganfman, to the Latin alphabet, Hanfmann.[5]

In 1923, Hanfann began her college education at the University of Jena in Germany.[1] She studied psychology, education, philosophy, and philology.[1][2] Her mentor professor was Wilhelm Peters, an Austrian Jew and socialist at the university, is described by Hanfmann as being especially important in her education, saying he “transformed [her] school life.”[2][7] He assigned her thesis problem, which she published and received her doctorate in 1927.[1]

After earning her doctoral degree, Hanfmann says she was unable to find work in academia due to ethnic and language barriers.[2] However, in 1928, with Professor Peters as her sponsor, Hanfmann joined the staff at the University of Jena.[5] In 1930, Peters recommended Hanfmann to Kurt Koffka, one of the early developers of Gestalt psychology, for a research assistant position on Koffka's staff.[2] She was chosen for the position. Hanfmann obtained a visa and went to work with Koffka at Smith College in the United States.[2] There she became colleagues with Tamara Dembo, together they would collaborate on a number of projects throughout their careers.[1]

In 1932, Hanfmann was hired to work at Worcester State Hospital in Massachusetts as a research psychologist by the hospital's Chief Psychologist and Director of Psychological Research, David Shakow.[5] During this time Hanfmann gained clinical experience and was able to perform a number of psychological studies, one of which was with Dembo on new patients’ reaction to the hospital.[2] Part of her research at the hospital was focused on schizophrenia which brought her into contact with psychiatrist Jacob Kasanin in Chicago.[5][2][1]

In 1936, she left Worcester State Hospital with a grant from Masonic Foundation to continue research on schizophrenia.[1] She joined Kasanin in Chicago at Michael Reese Hospital, where the pair collected data and wrote more papers on this subject.[5] Together they continued the work of Russian psychologist Vygotsky. Hanfmann would later in 1962, translate and publish Vysotsky's book Thoughts and Language in English.[1][2] They also developed the Hanfmann-Kasanin Test,[8] used as a measurement of schizophrenic thought disturbance, and published Conceptual Thinking in Schizophrenia in 1942.[5]

Starting in 1939, Hanfmann began working at Mount Holyoke College as an instructor and then assistant professor. She taught a number of courses at the university dealing with general psychology. During this time, she was able to help her mother and brothers come to the US and escape wartorn Europe.

In 1944, she took a leave of absence from Mount Holyoke College and accepted an invitation to work for the US government as a senior instructor of the assessment staff in the Assessment Program of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS),[1] an intelligence agency during WWII that would eventually become the CIA.[3] There she worked with other psychologists evaluating “people volunteering for service overseas”[2] during the Second World War. Hanfmann described this job positively and only being frustrated at the end of the war for having to burn all OSS records and notes on those they had interviewed “instead of looking for answers to the intriguing questions of personality theory in the… men I had interviewed.”[2]

After the war, instead of returning to Mount Holyoke College, Hanfman became a lecturer at Harvard University, from 1946 to 1952, in their psychology department. While there she took part in Harvard's Russian Research Center's project on the Soviet social system.[1] In this personality study, she interviewed displaced Soviet citizens “as informants about life behind the Iron Curtain.”[2] Based on this research, in 1976 she and her colleague Helen Beier published a book, Six Russian Men: Lives in Turmoil.[5]

Hanfmann describes in her autobiography being among the minority of women employed at the different institutions throughout her career.[2] Sometimes being the only one. She describes some of her male colleagues having low expectations of women, so that they seemed to be more impressed with her achievements. At Harvard, she was recommended by her chairman for a three-year reappointment, only to be rejected by the dean. According to Hanfmann, the dean's reason for this was that it would have entitled her to attend faculty meetings, “and no woman had ever attended a meeting of the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences!” Later on her next three year reappointment, she was allowed to attend faculty meetings.[2]

In 1952, she was invited by Abraham Maslow to start a counselling service for students at Brandeis University and join the new psychology department as an associate professor for psychology and director of the Student Counselling Center.[1][2][5] She described this as an opportunity to create psychological services that were available for all students, or "emotional education for the well", not just those that were ill.[2] In 1956, she became a full professor of psychology at the university.[3] In 1972, she retired as professor emeritus. She published Psychological Counseling in a Small College in 1963, and Effective Therapy for College Students in 1978.[1]

Hanfmann had a cerebral stroke and died two weeks later at the age of 78 on Tuesday, September 14, 1983, at Waltham Hospital.[3]

In 2010, William R. Woodward, a professor at the University of New Hampshire, wrote in his paper, "Russian women émigrées in psychology: Informal Jewish networks" that Hanfmann and two other Russian women psychologists depend upon the patronage of Jewish mentors and networks of patronage by sympathetic male psychologists.[4] Woodward also seemed to identify these women as Jewish, but in association rather than by self identification. In rebuttal to Woodward's paper, Frances Cherry, Rhoda Unger, and Anderw S. Winston published "Gender, ethnicity, and career trajectories: A comment on Woodward" in the journal History of Psychology.[6] They argued "that these women were part of an active network of Gestaltists, topologists, and Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues leaders, and that any help that they received may be explained by the shared theoretical and disciplinary outlook of these groups as opposed to a 'Jewish network'".[6]