A precocious student, he received Bachelor of Science degrees in mathematics and experimental physics in 1935, and a Ph.D. in psychology and philosophy in 1938, all attained at the Royal Hungarian Petrus Pazmany University in Budapest.
From 1932-1934, Rapaport lived on a kibbutz in Palestine, where he met and married Elvira Strasser and where his first child, Hanna, was born (Gill, 1961; Knight, 1961).
In December 1938, Rapaport and his family emigrated to the United States, sponsored by the American Psychoanalytic Association’s Emergency Committee on Relief and Immigration.
Rather than being a mere psychometrician, Rapaport regarded his work on diagnostic testing as carrying forward the efforts of Kraepelin and Bleuler to identify and describe pathological organizations of thought.
Rapaport played a prominent role in the development of psychoanalytic ego psychology and his work likely represented its apex (Wallerstein, 2002).
He discussed abstract metapsychology with the fervor of a political orator and the thunder of a Hebrew prophet.” (Gill, 1961, p. 757) Rapaport exerted a major influence on a generation of clinical psychologists and psychoanalysts, notably Merton Gill, Roy Schafer, George S. Klein, and Robert R. Holt, in their exploration of such diverse topics as diagnostic testing, cognitive style, subliminal perception, altered states, and ego autonomy.