Molly Harrower - Career in Research

Career in Research

She obtained a post-doctoral fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation for 3 years; 6 months with Kurt Goldstein at the Montefiore Hospital in New York and the balance working with Wilder Penfield at the Montreal Neurological Institute. In the latter position, she worked on the psychological effects of the famous electrical brain stimulation research conducted by Penfield. There, she also began work developing a group Rorschach test. She developed her own set of inkblot cards to administer to groups of Canadian military recruits in World War II. Known as the Harrower Blots, the tests were used to help analyze personality traits through a subject's interpretation of a standard series of inkblot designs. She also refined diagnostic tests to measure tolerance for stress. She followed her first husband, neurosurgeon Theodore Erickson, to Madison, Wisconsin, but the two divorced and she moved to New York and undertook a personal analysis.