ABSTRACT
The aim of Chapter 4 is to introduce some of the individual psychologists themselves who can be identified as queer. Issues around conducting lesbian history in particular are explored and a different form of analysis is introduced – that is using the work of June Hopkins to consider the personalities of these women. Three key women are explored in detail: Margaret Lowenfeld (1890–1973), Ann Kaldegg (1899–1995) and Effie Lilian Hutton (1904–1956). These women lived fascinating queer feminist lives in a period of the early 20th century when institutionalised homophobia in the field they were working in pathologised their lives, how they dressed, and their relationships. This chapter therefore switches the lens somewhat and instead of studying queer people from a psychological perspective, it studies the psychologists themselves: most notably, the psychologists who were using the Rorschach and other similar projective tests. This chapter challenges ideas around how we can claim queer history and what ‘the lesbian personality’ might look like.
