Science under changing ideological conditions: Hungarian psychology in the twentieth century

Abstract Creative academic thinking and research are inconceivable without academic freedom. This applies to all academic disciplines, including psychology. A concrete example that illustrates this fundamental idea is the history of academic psychology in Hungary. Apart from a few brief exceptions, Hungary was ruled by more or less autocratic or dictatorial regimes throughout the twentieth century. Their political orientation changed repeatedly—and with it the criteria according to which academic freedom in general was restricted and the course of psychological research in particular was dictated. The paper traces the key fractures in these developments through concrete biographies and through institutional as well as thematic shifts. It shows that political conditions function like sorting machines that determine who can conduct what kind of research and who is pushed to the margins of the discipline or even silenced.