Psychological research by Ukrainian scholars in exile in Prague (1920s–1930s)
Psychological research by Ukrainian scholars in exile in Prague (1920s–1930s)

Summary/Abstract: This article describes the academic achievements in the field of psychology of Ukrainian scholars Yakim Yakimovich Yarema and Alexander Ivanov, who lived and worked in exile in Western Europe during the interwar period. Yarema, a Ukrainian psychologist, philosopher and literary critic, received his Doctor of Philosophy degree from Charles University and was engaged in teaching and research at the Ukrainian Pedagogical Institute named after M. Drahomanov. His major publications in the field of psychology, such as Psychology and professional selection (1929) and Problems of unconscious psychological processes (1926), date from this period. In the former, Yarema examines a librarian’s professiogram, the structure and content of which reflect modern approaches of labour psychology in the analysis of the activities and personality of a worker. In the latter, he draws upon the ideas of Carl Gustav Jung about extraversion and introversion as the dominant types of motivation for human behaviour and formulates a general characteristic of the Ukrainian psychological type. The methodological approach he proposed for analysing Ukrainian history on the basis of psychoanalysis became the starting point for further developments in the field of Ukrainian history and ethnopsychology. Dr. Alexander Ivanov taught professional psychology and was involved in research in the field of psychotechnics, inspired by the theoretical framework of German psychologist Hugo Münsterberg. In his work ‘Called by psychology’ (1934), he points out the need to use psychotechnical selection in professions related to public security services. Ivanov identifies the professionally determined personal qualities required for a policeman and gendarme, points out the need to compare these with their occupational requirements and proposes a test system for selecting personnel for service in police and gendarmerie. Ivanov’s scientific developments have laid an important groundwork for solving the modern problems of professional selection and suitability for professional activities.

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