The Laboratory Method: A Historical Perspective

Abstract

The laboratory method has institutionalized itself in the larger social system, and an investigation of how this came about provides an impor tant case study of social intervention. One of the founders of NTL, whose subsequent career was totally invested in the movement, describes how the laboratory method was calculated to meet the needs of the post-World War II world. Uses of the method's intrinsic "change-agent" concept are illustrated, and particular aspects of the growth of the movement are examined. Some unanticipated problems of collaboration and coordina tion and their solutions during NTL's formative years are described. The article concludes with a comparison of the societal conditions in which the psychoanalytic and laboratory movements, respectively, were begun.