Allport genuinely embraced psychodynamic theory, not merely for balance.

Evidence

Given the status of psychodynamic ideas (and psychoanalytic theory in general) in contemporary social psychology, one might assume that Allport included the approach in his review merely to be comprehensive, or for “balance.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Although he expressed reservations about the “exuberance of the theorizing,” Allport also urged social psychologists not to forget their “indebtedness to Freud and to psychoanalysis” (1954/1979, pp. 352, 353). Indeed, in an earlier study of people’s reactions to catastrophic social change (specifically, the Nazis’ consolidation of power in Germany), Allport, Bruner, and Jandorf (1941) liberally invoked defense mechanisms such as suppression, rationalization, isolation, and displacement to account for their research subjects’ thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 2342

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the larger story of how psychodynamic ideas fell out of favor in academic psychology — relevant to intellectual history.
• QUESTION: How did the 1941 Allport-Bruner-Jandorf study on Nazi Germany use defense mechanisms, and where are its findings?