In 1968, Joe South sang “Oh the games people play now. Every night and every day now. Never meaning what they say now. Never saying what they mean.” The Sixties was a vibrant and volatile decade, often called a decade of ‘promise and heartbreak.’ It featured a greatly expanded public interest in psychology, with popular psychology manifested in a host of new magazines, books, movies, and television shows that focused on the fascination with human behavior. The decade also ushered in a new generation of psychological games: board games and party games. These games promised to reveal hidden personality traits, to help players get in touch with their “true selves,” to expose prejudices, to enhance empathy, and to reward psychological strategies in solving problems. There was the “Group Therapy” game, released in 1969 that helped players “open up, get in touch, feel free.” And there was “Insight” which appeared in 1967, a game intended to reveal a person’s personality.
At the Cummings Center for the History of Psychology at the University of Akron, one of our jobs is to preserve the historical records of psychology for scholars and others who want to understand psychology in all of its forms. To that end we are working to build a collection of these psychological games. One of our blogs in January 2015 described three psychology games from the 1970s and asked for individuals who might own those games to consider donating them to the Center. Alas we have not received any of those. From a search of ebay listings over the past several years we know that at least 50 psychology games have been marketed in the past century, and the actual number may be much higher than that. The oldest psychology game we have identified is a game that features palm reading that was released in 1919. We have this game in our collection (see photo). But this is the ONLY such game, thus it is a very small “collection” to say the least.
Psychology of the Hand, 1919
Here are a few of the other games out there that we hope to acquire:
Person-Alysis is a game from 1957 that uses inkblots similar to those in the Rorschach Test to reveal a person’s personality. There are perhaps a dozen games on the market that use inkblots in this way.
Person-Alysis, 1957
There is the Woman & Man game from 1971 that explores gender differences in a board game that allows men and women to stay in their gender roles or to switch so that “men can learn what it is like to be a ‘mere female,’ to compete in a world that caters to men. And women will get a taste of male supremacy, and compete in the sweet certainty that the world is made in a male image.”
Woman & Man (1971)
And there is Psychologizer from 1987 “for the people watcher in all of us.”
Psychologizer, 1987
So perhaps you are preparing to clean out your attic or just reduce some clutter. If your cleaning leads you to discover such games, we would welcome them as additions.
Or, if you’re interested in making a charitable donation, some psychology games are available for purchase on ebay. You can have them sent directly to us at Cummings Center for the History of Psychology, The University of Akron, 73 S. College Street, Akron, Ohio, 44325-4302. You can contact us at [email protected].
- Person-Alysis (1957): http://r.ebay.com/Ow0ZHV
- Woman & Man (1971): http://r.ebay.com/PFbY3G
- Therapy Game (1986): http://r.ebay.com/uZUT9B
- Psychologizer (1987): http://r.ebay.com/2GxoYv
- Think Blot (2000): http://r.ebay.com/Hmy2UC
Here is a list of psychology games we have identified.
- 1919 Psychology of the Hand
- 1937 50 Million Faces
- 1942 Profiles
- 1957 Guys and Gals
- 1957 Person Alysis
- 1957 React-O
- 1967 Insight
- 1969 Group Therapy
- 1969 The Robot Game
- 1970 Body Talk
- 1970 Blacks and Whites
- 1970 The Cities Game
- 1971 Perception
- 1971 Psych Out
- 1971 Society Today
- 1971 Woman Man
- 1972 The Feel Wheel
- 1972 The Ungame
- 1976 Roll-a-Role
- 1976 Social Security
- 1978 Bonkers
- 1979 Gone Bananas
- 1981 Assert with Love
- 1986 Stress Attack
- 1986 Therapy – The Game
- 1987 Ink Blotz
- 1987 Psychologizer
- 1987 PSI – Psychology, Slander, Intuition
- 1990 True Colors
- 1993 Imagine
- 1998 Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus
- 1998 Rorshock
- 2000 Think Blot
- 2004 Dr. Playwell’s Anger Control Games
- 2004 Psychobox – A Box of Psychological Games
- 2012 Psych-a-Doodle
- 2012 Psychopoly
- 2013 Therapy Flashcards
- 2015 Better Me
- 2015 Doodle Therapy
- (no date) Mindfulness Matters
- (no date) Mixed Emotions
