David Rapaport (psychologist)

David A. Rapaport (September 30, 1911, Budapest, Austria-Hungary – December 14, 1960, , Mass.) was a Hungarian clinical psychologist and psychoanalytic ego psychologist.

Rapaport was born in Budapest, Hungary on September 30, 1911. A precocious student, he received Bachelor of Science degrees in mathematics and experimental physics in 1935, and a Ph.D. in psychology and philosophy in 1938, all attained at the Royal Hungarian Petrus Pazmany University in Budapest. During this period he also obtained a Montessori teaching degree. Beginning when Rapaport was a teenager, he participated in a Zionist organization and help Hungarian Jews escape to Palestine. From 1932-1934, Rapaport lived on a kibbutz in Palestine, where he met and married Elvira Strasser and where his first child, Hanna, was born (Gill, 1961; Knight, 1961).

In December 1938, Rapaport and his family emigrated to the United States, sponsored by the American Psychoanalytic Association’s Emergency Committee on Relief and Immigration. Initially, he worked as psychologist at Mount Sinai Hospital, and then took a similar position at the Osawatomie State Hospital in Kansas (Gill, 1961; Knight, 1961).

From 1940-1948, Rapaport was on the staff of the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, KS, eventually becoming the chief psychologist and research director. From 1948 until his death, Rapaport was a senior staff member of the Austen Riggs Center, in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Rapaport died from a heart attack on December 14, 1960, at age forty-nine (Gill, 1961; Knight, 1961).

During Rapaport’s career, he became an acknowledged authority on both clinical psychology and psychoanalytic theory. In 1960, he was awarded a Citation for Distinguished Contributions to the Science and Profession of Clinical Psychology from the American Psychological Association. Furthermore, Rapaport was also proposed for honorary membership in the American Psychoanalytic Association. Upon meeting Anna Freud in Worcester, MA in 1950, Ms. Freud stated: “Dr. Rapaport, you know more metapsychology than any of us!” (Knight, 1961, p. 264).

Rapaport’s first notable work was in diagnostic psychological testing. Rather than being a mere psychometrician, Rapaport regarded his work on diagnostic testing as carrying forward the efforts of Kraepelin and Bleuler to identify and describe pathological organizations of thought. Rapaport regarded thought organization as the key to personality dynamics.

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