Eugenic Nation

by Stern, Alexandra Minna

  THE GENDER OF TEMPERAMENT

  When Mrs. C was asked to change her attitude and behavior in order to defuse her “masculine protest,” she was just one of hundreds of women who were expected to realize the lion’s share of alteration indicated by the results of the JTA. Taken as a microcosm of the values encrusted in the AIFR’s marriage counseling, the JTA illuminates the operating principles and biases of the family-centric eugenics of the postwar period. As a psychometric and statistical instrument, the JTA rewarded strict gender conformity; women and men who strayed from the reproductive and biological function of their sex were transgressing and required reconditioning, which could come in the form of one-on-one therapy, self-improvement exercises, and physical regimes. Mirroring the AIFR’s philosophy, the JTA’s statistical assumptions and assessment protocols allowed men much greater deviation than women. The internal architecture of the JTA was profoundly asymmetrical: although masculinity was implicitly valued as normal and normative, women were harshly criticized for even minimally overstepping the boundaries of expected femininity.

  That the JTA was fixed in the male-female binary was not surprising. In the 1930s, when Terman, who belonged to the HBF and worked closely with the California Bureau of Juvenile Research, began to formulate his Male-Female Test, he was in regular contact with the AIFR. Having abandoned the racial assumptions underlining his recalibration of the Binet-Simon into the Stanford-Binet intelligence test, Terman, in tandem with other eugenicists in the 1930s, turned to sex and gender in the hopes of pinpointing some of the fundamental determinants of personality and temperament.136 In particular, he was concerned to develop a psychometric tool that could ascertain the etiology of homosexuality, which he believed was caused by a knotty combination of genetic, psychological, social, and endocrine factors. After administering the M-F Test to more than 130 men from the prison and general population, Terman suggested that passive male homosexuals were true biological inverts while their active counterparts were not. This conclusion reflected the kind of sex-gender hereditarianism that was being consolidated at the AIFR, which often clandestinely incorporated Freudian speculations about human sexuality. Moreover, it implied that more masculine active male homosexuals, who tended toward bisexuality, not “true inversion,” were much more amenable to gender reform.137 In 1937, Johnson, the AIFR’s counseling director, wrote to Terman and asked him for copies of the M-F Test form in order to “put the invert test in the routine for all male homosexuals,” and integrate the test into their evaluation of “marital maladjustment.”138 Returning the favor, that same year the AIFR provided Terman access to eight hundred subjects for his Marital Happiness Survey, which he conducted utilizing the M-F scale and which found that marital contentment hinged on well-delineated gender comportment. Through its circular reasoning and by fostering the “rigid standards of masculinity and femininity,” the M-F Test and its offshoots helped to consolidate the family values that characterized the Cold War era.139

  Despite its merits, the AIFR deemed the M-F Test too specific to gauge the totality of human personality and thus of limited value for comprehensive marriage counseling.140 Thus, in the late 1930s, Johnson began to craft an instrument that could capture the nuances of temperament, which he conceived as encompassing the breadth of human personality and, although multifarious in origins and expression, rooted principally in heredity. In a diagram of concentric circles that Johnson prepared in 1950 to illustrate the “factors producing temperament,” he located genes dead center followed sequentially by the intra-uterine environment, birth injuries, infancy, childhood, and finally, nutrition, accidents, and disease. In the words of Popenoe, temperament was “probably 60% inherited or the product of deep-seated early conditioning.”141

  An understanding of temperament as inherent, in contrast to “character,” which was seen as more fungible, had cohered at the close of the nineteenth century, as the disciplines of sociology and psychology generated novel techniques for rationalizing emotion and quantifying intimacy.142 In the first three decades of the twentieth century, Mendelian eugenics continued to buttress the notion that temperament was biologically fixed. For instance, one of the first tests, the Downey Will-Temperament Test, viewed temperament as innate and permanent.143 In the 1930s, however, as part of a general assault on biological reductionism, Boas and Mead and others began to assert that temperament and other aspects of personality were culturally constructed, varied across time and place, and could not be easily captured as a singular inherited trait.144 In order to incorporate environmental and psychogenic variables, many scientists turned toward constitutional holism and biotypology in their quest to calculate temperament. Some physicians used primarily anthropometric and physiological instruments that measured lung capacity, visual acuity, and thorax to limb ratios, whereas others, predominantly psychologists, employed written and drawing tests. Some scientists began to lend greater faith to psychometric tools because of expanding distrust of the readability of the human body, which, despite being probed and measured in many laboratories, could be stubbornly elusive when it came to explaining confounding subjects such as manly homosexuals and feminine lesbians.145 The AIFR fell in the latter group, actively seeking out tools scientifically to measure the mental, emotional, and psychic traits of their clients, information that was critical to curing ailing marriages and stimulating procreation. Soon after its founding in 1930, institute psychologists were administering the M-F Test, the Willoughby Emotional Maturity Scale, the Humm-Wadsworth Temperament Scale, the Kent-Rosanoff Test, the Bernreuter Personality Inventory, the Neymann-Kohlstedt Scale for introversion-extroversion, the A-S Reaction Study for ascendance-submission, Guildford’s S.T.D.C.R. Test, and the Rorschach Inkblot.146 Their “main dependence,” however, was on the JTA.147

  When he designed the JTA, Johnson chose nine oppositional traits that, once plotted on a variance spectrum, revealed an individual’s unique temperament. The test taker responded to a long list of one-sentence questions, usually tagged to one adjective, including whether or not she or he was forgiving, a regular exerciser, neat and orderly, organized, openly affectionate, optimistic, lenient, reflective, likely to carry a grudge, slow to complain, often depressed, empathetic, or emphatic.148 Once tallied, the results mapped fairly neatly onto either the masculinity-femininity or the extroversion-introversion continuum. Dominant-Submissive, for example, resonated with sex-gender norms, whereas Active Social–Quiet and Expressive-Inhibited correlated with extroversion-introversion. In order to identify clear-cut personality types, AIFR counselors were given instructional sheets on trait and cross-trait interpretation. If a client was classified as high nervous, he was told to watch his diet, take vitamins, relax, and have his thyroid checked. High activity was seen as desirable, especially if paired with high self-mastery and low nervousness. Following the injunction to push introverts out, cordiality was defined as “one of the most valuable traits, and one of the easiest to cultivate.”149 High subjectivity was more problematic and, if matched with high aggressiveness, could translate into a paranoid personality. The two most damaging traits, if high or poorly combined, were aggressiveness and criticalness. The former was beneficial for leaders, such as “military officers and responsible executives,” but was potentially combustible when found in subordinates such as wives, and could wreak havoc in certain marriages. For such cases, AIFR counselors concentrated on diverting “the aggressiveness into channels that are less harmful or even helpful,” which could mean physical activities such as boxing. Criticalness was similarly described. For women, an “improvement desirable” or “improvement urgent” score on the Aggressive and Critical axes translated into diagnoses of badgering, ego-damaging, and unpleasantly forceful wives. Another telling trait was self-mastery, which determined if a person was “systematic, responsible, dependable, able to plan in advance.” Those with low self-mastery percentiles were “impulsive, impatient, likely to fly off the handle.”150 AIFR counselors were taught which trait combinatio
ns were highly problematic, such as low active–low cordial–low aggressive, which suggested ill health and weak vitality.151 Furthermore, sex-gender presumptions were reinforced when the JTA was calculated, as men and women were scored with two different stencils and raw-score-to-percentile calculators.

  The JTA stood at the center of the AIFR’s marriage counseling. From 1941 to 1962, at least seventy thousand people were administered this test at the institute.152 Additionally, it was part of the AIFR’s business strategy, mobilized to ensure that clients would return. On a sheet titled “Clients will come back for a second time if . . . ,” the scenarios listed were: “you leave part of his story in the air,” “you emphasize the need of time” (from one week to one year for thorough counseling), and “you promise report on JTA.”153 It was also the premier tool called into action when assessing clients who contacted the AIFR from afar. In 1954, Popenoe announced the institute’s “Marriage Readiness Service,” in the LHJ, which sought to prepare women nearing or over the age of thirty to find a mate before they were relegated to spinsterhood. Dozens of women wrote letters to the AIFR to take advantage of this opportunity, which for a fee included a personality assessment based on the JTA, supplemental written questionnaire, relevant pamphlets, and four personalized letters written by an institute counselor.154 Within less than six months, sixty young women had participated in the Marriage Readiness Service.155 One of these was a twenty-seven-year-old Canadian, who wrote to Popenoe, care of LHJ, “Last night I read with avid interest the story of ‘Marcia Carter’ and the Marriage Readiness Course. This morning I came in at 7:00 to write to you.” She identified completely with Marcia’s story, “I am 27 and more than anything else in the world I long for a good husband, a home, and children but I can’t seem to achieve it. As each year goes by I become more afraid, more lonely, more heart-hungry, wondering desperately what is wrong,” adding that, “I am quite nice looking and try to dress nicely. I like housework, can sew, mend, knit, have pleasant good taste.” She closed her letter asking, “Can you, can you possibly help me?”156 Mrs. Leslie F. Kimmell, of the AIFR’s public relations department, immediately dispatched a letter to this young woman, informing her that she could certainly do the service by mail. After taking the JTA, this young woman was diagnosed as hypercritical, depressive, and cold, as well as aggressive, and was sent counseling sheets to begin to work on her deficiencies.157

  Figure 9. Paul Popenoe pointing at a placard of the Johnson Temperament Analysis Test showing an example of test results. Photo courtesy of the Paul Bowman Popenoe Collection, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

  Another client, a twenty-eight-year-old advertising agent with a successful career in Chicago participated in the Marriage Readiness Service. Miss M had serious problems: “Your score on Aggressive is also unusually high—you scored higher than 92% of all women.” Given her unbalanced temperament, it would be nearly impossible for Miss M to locate a “man aggressive enough that you could create a mutually satisfying relationship with him.” Mrs. Gene Benton, one of the institute’s many certified female counselors, explained Miss M’s problem as a form of gender distortion. This young woman needed to begin to emulate her intrinsic sex-gender identity: “Our desire for an aggressive male is deep, biologically rooted in centuries of evolution where the only survivors, the only producers of offspring, were those clever enough, fleet enough, or strong enough to protect their females during the young-bearing period.” In order to improve her chances of finding a man, Miss M was instructed to channel her aggressiveness into feminine behavior and, furthermore, to self-scrutinize: “from time to time when you are with a man, note what you are doing that you feel is aggressive.”158

  In addition to hyperaggressiveness among women, the JTA often diagnosed frigidity, alerted by “improvement urgent” or “improvement desirable” on the Cordial-Cold axis. Mrs. P, for example, an “uninhibited” and handsome woman, with “strong-looking, capable and expressive hands,” sought expertise at the AIFR in 1952, where she was determined to be suffering from “possible frigidity.”159 Mrs. P was depicted as unmaternal, prone to puerile crushes, and reaching orgasm on very rare occasion. Once her JTA confirmed frigidity, she was given several AIFR pamphlets.160 Frigidity was found in another woman, a twenty-eight-year-old from Washington, who completed the Marriage Readiness Service.161 Her counselor encouraged her to celebrate sexual desire and view it as a physical and reproductive communion between two biological mates: “This is the deep, strong urge, so strong that only with the most powerful distortions can we possibly block or change it. This is the drive that insures the survival of the human race.”162 From the AIFR’s standpoint, frigidity was perhaps the most egregious form of gender distortion. It destabilized male-female relationships and jeopardized the perpetuation of the middle-class family.163

  The AIFR implored women diagnosed with masculine protest and frigidity to embark on a course of self-transformation and reeducation involving therapeutic and behavioral techniques or sometimes simply to feign enjoyment for the sake of the marriage. Ideally, wives would be rewarded with more affection from their husbands and a richer sex life. Given his advocacy of incipient family values, we might expect that Popenoe’s gender conservatism would steer him away from frankly discussing sexuality and pleasure. But this was far from the case; he was a tireless advocate of the female orgasm and eroticism, as long as it occurred vaginally on the traditional marriage bed.164 He encouraged husbands to learn what aroused their wives, avert premature ejaculation, and slow down the sex act if that was what fulfilled their spouses. Popenoe asseverated that all this could be accomplished in the missionary position, which allowed for the natural aggressiveness of the male and the passivity of the female. Like other marriage counselors, many influenced by Freud, Popenoe insisted that an authentic and mature female orgasm could only be obtained vaginally. He associated the clitoris with infantilism, fear of men, hatred of the penis, and perhaps even homosexuality. It was of secondary importance: “Both husband and wife may be well instructed to leave the clitoris alone, contrary to the advice given in many manuals.”165

  For the most part, frigidity could be cured or managed through psychological counseling and attitudinal modifications. Sometimes, however, medical intervention was necessary. In 1954, Dr. Arnold Kegel, a Los Angeles physiologist, joined the AIFR as a consulting scientist for a “cooperative project,” and began to aid the AIFR in “gaining a deeper understanding of ‘frigidity’ and new techniques for aiding the wife to help herself.”166 The institute referred one thousand patients to Kegel, who probed the strength of their vaginal contractions in millimeters with the perineometer, an instrument he had developed with this purpose in mind.167 His focus was on the “innermost, softer portion of the muscle,” the middle third of the vagina, which had been neglected as an erogenous zone. After his hands-on examination and calculations, Kegel prescribed exercises, known to many who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s as “Kegels,” to build up the muscle by “ ‘pulling up’ on it as if the flow of urine were being shut off.”168 The frigid wife could engage in her Kegels “even while she is engaged in some of her housework.”169 According to an article in Family Life, many of Kegel’s patients reported that after following his training, coitus was no longer painful and dreaded, but supremely gratifying.170

  In spite of a difficult period in the early 1960s when the institute’s Board of Trustees hired a director whose lack of management skills caused a precipitous decline in consultations and mutiny among the staff, the AIFR was afloat forty years after its birth.171 Popenoe was still penning his syndicated series, now called “Your Family and You.” The institute ran four satellite clinics—in Redondo Beach, Orange County, Riverside County, and East Los Angeles, the latter bilingual, with a large Mexican clientele. Hundreds of marriage counselors were being educated and one thousand clients per week, on average, sought guidance at the institute. Within several short years, however, the AIFR would disappear from the Los Angeles l
andscape. In the mid-1970s, Popenoe retired to Florida to be near one of his brothers, and in 1979 he died. The new directors relocated the AIFR to North Hollywood, near the San Fernando Valley, and soon after that the institute was absorbed by another counseling institution.172 In some senses, the AIFR died with the man who had founded it, but not before it came under attack, first and foremost from the very generation whose parents had probably heeded, or at least scanned, the words of “Mr. Marriage.” As his son David put it, by the late 1960s, his father’s message was one that “people no longer wanted to hear.”173

  Yet for more than forty years the AIFR successfully conveyed this message, introducing ideas about heredity, fitness, marital compatibility, and personality to Americans who came of age between the Great Depression and the 1960s. By expanding eugenics and focusing it securely on the family, sexuality, and reproduction, Popenoe and the AIFR recrafted aspects of better breeding in the postwar period. Through its extensive marriage counseling enterprise, the AIFR promoted a sex-gender system that was based primarily on simplistic theories of biological determinism but also influenced by dominant paradigms in psychiatry, psychometrics, endocrinology, and sex research. In particular, the introversion-extroversion dichotomy, with its embedded assumptions about the differences between male and female constitutions and the distribution of universal biotypes across population groups, epitomized the AIFR’s philosophy. Moreover, if the institute strove to spread the gospel of family, marriage, and normalcy, this vision strongly appealed to tens of thousands of American men and women who eagerly sought out and applied the tools of self-assessment and self-discovery developed by the AIFR’s cadre of experts. It is important to emphasize that many of these concepts of human differentiation, especially in regard to sex and gender, are still recognized if not accepted today.