Psychology to the General
I
THE public press some time ago announced that, during one of the forensic impasses to which debate not infrequently leads in our most august legislative body, a member proposed that the services of the official chaplain of the Senate might well be dispensed with and the time hitherto given to devotional exercise allotted to a professional psychologist. This proposal to appeal when in doubt to mundane rather than divine counsel was probably neither made nor received with entire seriousness, though the Congressional Record sometimes makes difficult any attempt to separate the ridiculous from the sublime. But, whether the intent of our Solon was serious or not, this plan to have recourse to this modern God from the Machine, psychology, for aid in calming emotional squalls and in discovering correct and practical methods of addressing and deciding baffling questions, is in keeping with the spirit of the present day and the attitude of the present generation.
The reasons for this pressing need for succor in meeting the accumulating problems of this golden age of novelty and speed are not far to seek, and, in fact, need not be sought at all, for they are recited or reiterated from every pulpit and forum and echoed by the public press. It has become commonplace to call attention to the dislocation along the fault which separates to-day from all the yesterdays and to show that the simple practices and codes of our forefathers have been strained to the breaking point. But in the midst of this Rip van Winklian bewilderment, and thus at a moment uniquely psychological, the new science of psychology comes to the rescue and places at the service of mankind the rich results of its prodigious industry. Researches in this productive field, so we are told by the more active protagonists, have made available to all and sundry the laws which underlie the motives and determine the behavior of the mass and of the individual. Each of us may now learn, for the asking, the sources and the limits of his own capacities, the hidden springs of his own personality, and may know the influences which motivate his relations to his fellow men. The way is now clear, so the assurance runs, and the first steps taken toward the solution of the basic problems of human nature and the social order.
Never have man-made plans held fairer promises. Little wonder that a confused and famishing world should, without close scrutiny, give ready and general acceptance to a boon which seems to fall but little short of a knowledge of good and evil, and that psychology, or what passes for psychology, should become our guiding cloud by day and pillar of fire by night. Everyone, accordingly, who takes thought concerning his relation to his own time and place finds himself an unconscious participant in this twentieth-century mass psychology, or its unwilling victim. He cannot but seek to orient his mind to this new all-embracing movement.
These considerations have prompted this brief non-professional survey of the present status of psychological research and of those applications and derivatives of this research which most affect our daily life, in the hope that some basis may be gained for estimating its value to the average man, who is, after all, the ultimate consumer. This venture is that of a layman who must form his estimate of what psychology is by what it does to and for him and his kind. It will seem both presumptuous and futile to officers holding high command for the common soldier to try to conjecture, on the basis of what happens to him, what is going on in the minds of the General Staff. His not to reason why! But psychologists must know, even if generals do not, that conjecture on the part of the lowly is inevitable, however inadequate the basis upon which it must rest.
II
The evolution of modern psychology is spanned by the memory of living men. It grew out of the discovery of new worlds to conquer in the biological and sociological sciences, resulting in an awakening comparable with that which followed the revelation of the new heavens by Kepler and Galileo and a new world by Columbus and his successors. The latter part of the last century was characterized by unprecedented progress in every field of natural science. Intensive study and experimentation, coupled with new incentives and new approaches, led to numerous broods of new sciences. Thus psychology, deriving on the one hand from philosophy and on the other from physiology, entered upon an independent rôle. In one important respect has the recent renascence of intellectual interest and activity differed from the earlier. Then, only the intelligentsia were interested or affected; now, any important scientific discovery becomes on the morrow the common property of the whole reading or listening public.
The first psychological laboratory was set up by Wundt at Leipzig, in 1874, in the belief that mental phenomena could be best studied by controlled experimentation and that the knowledge of the mind in all of its manifestations need no longer be wholly dependent on introspection and inductive reasoning. From this source has sprung a vast and vigorous progeny, well represented in this country by numerous laboratories, many of which are devoting their resources to investigating the organs and processes of sense reactions, the effects of various kinds and degrees of stimuli, and to recording and interpreting all discoverable processes and evidences of sensation, feeling, and will. The great foundations established to promote human welfare have drawn millions from their reservoirs to aid the new cause. White rats, guinea pigs, cats, dogs, and bees, and primates of various stages in the evolutionary processes, have been made to serve man’s great need. The product of this research is purveyed to scholars and to others in several learned periodicals and in more than a thousand monographs yearly — to say nothing of textbooks for schools and books with a less technical purpose for the general public.
The layman is immediately struck by the disconcerting divergence of faith and hope illustrated in this research or in such parts of it as are intelligible to him. Learned psychologists, or those who purport to be, appear to disagree as to the relative dependability of introspection as compared with more objective investigation. They differ as to whether intellectual activity consists of functions and processes merely, and thus as to whether we can know what the mind is except by observing what it does and how it acts. They are not in agreement as to whether sensation brings concepts to the mind as simple units or as patterns and relationships as well, or as to whether there is outside of sensation some impelling force which integrates these sensatory units into concepts and, if there be such force, whether it is innate or acquired. There is no consensus of opinion as to the relative influence on human behavior of instincts, if these exist, and of the subconscious, whatever that may be. The structuralist, the functionalist, and the behaviorist each interprets the same mental phenomena as evidence of the truth of his own separate and divergent faith. There is wide divergence of claims as to what has been attained by modern psychology and as to what may be confidently expected of the future.
Thus the layman has brought home to him, at the very outset, a fact which he had already suspected — that there are psychologists and psychologists, and that the extremes of these two groups are as wide apart in claims, methods, and unfortunately in general influence, as a typical professor of dogmatic theology and a much-sought-after revivalist of the Pacific Coast.
The smaller group applies to its researches methods no less objective, a skill no less trained, and a restraint no less marked, than are illustrated in the best representatives of the natural sciences. None can doubt that benefit has accrued to us from the researches in this field and from the consequent interest aroused. We have a clearer conception of mental states and mental activities, of the physical sources of such states and activities, of the importance of emotional factors, and of the controllability and measurability of intellectual processes. They have added to our knowledge of abnormal and subnormal mentality, of habit, motivation, and the processes of memory and of learning, the effects of mental fatigue, and have thus given us simpler and more adequate pedagogical approaches to certain problems. These achievements represent something substantial and definite which may serve as a safe vade mecum to all seekers after truth and which will help on the way to clearer thinking and greater intellectual stability.
The psychology or near psychology, however, which is prescribed for the defenseless layman and practised upon him comes for the most part from the larger and more vocal group, which naturally includes the exegetes, popularizers, and exploiters. Representatives of this group undertake to prove by precept and example that psychology, once the most remote and theoretical of sciences, has become one of the most adaptable and practical. The results of its researches have, accordingly, found application not only in school and in college, but also in corrective institutions, large industrial plants, in selling and advertising agencies, in literature, — pure and otherwise, — and, in fact, in nearly all the concerns of everyday life.
It seems reasonable, therefore, to raise the question as to the rating of various enterprises and activities which, in the evident belief of the public, are backed and guaranteed by the whole psychological industry. It is proposed to examine, as briefly as may be, some of the recent applications of what is offered in the guise of new psychology with a view to learning whether the recent pyramiding of psychological projects is warranted by the capital stock, and to determine how much of what is being offered as proved and sound belongs in the purely speculative class. All scientific progress is characterized by constant trial and frequent error, and every offering is fair game to ‘bears’ and ‘bulls’ alike, but in most fields of research t he public is not made the victim of all half truths revealed. The estimate of psychological values here submitted is not based on data collected under controlled conditions and must suffer from such defects as inhere to ‘purely subjective’ findings.
III
Psychology, or what purports to be psychology, touches the average man intimately and affects his life profoundly at three cardinal points — education, literature, and certain everyday business and social contacts. Some of the more familiar aspects of these will be considered.
Education is the greatest industry in this land of great industries. It absorbs more capital and expends more effort than any combine of mass labor and capital. Twelve million children and the future of the States are involved. It is right and proper that all aid to be derived from science and experience should be applied to this great cause, but it is equally essential to the national welfare that the field of education should not be made free to the latest and loudest revivalist or sales promoter to appear over the horizon, proclaiming and ‘representing’ New Psychology — Latest Edition. Life has become synchronized to a series of rapid and abrupt changes. It is hard to hold fast to that which is good or even better. We grasp at every novelty, from a new car to a new vitamin or a new complex; anything that will brighten the home, quicken the memory, break down sales resistance, or build it up, is welcomed. We have neither time nor patience to give the new model or device a thorough road trial before acceptance. Education has shown itself especially susceptible to pseudo-psychologists bearing gifts. It has not been content to adopt and apply the few sound and simple doctrines derived from the study of the processes of learning, of memorizing, of aptitudes, of motivation, and of the transferability of skill from one discipline to another—and underwritten by scientists of recognized standing. Much of doubtful value has been adopted into the educational theory and practice without thorough testing and chiefly because pushed by skillful propagandists who claim psychological backing.
The chief threat against the integrity of the teaching profession arises from the demand that all teachers shall have a thorough training in the science of teaching, which in turn claims as its basis the more recent pronouncements in psychology. When a like demand went forth a generation ago (1892) that the teacher must become proficient in psychology, William James said: —
‘As regards this subject of psychology, now I wish at the very threshold to do what I can to dispel the mystification. So I say at once that in my humble opinion there is no “new psychology” worthy of the name. There is nothing but the old psychology which began in Locke’s time, plus a little physiology of the brain and senses and theory of evolution, and a few refinements of introspective detail, for the most part without adaptation to the teacher’s use. It is only the fundamental conceptions of psychology which are of real value to the teacher and they, apart from the aforesaid theory of evolution, are very far from being new.
‘I say, moreover, that you make a great, a very great, mistake if you think that psychology, being the science of the mind’s laws, is something from which you can deduce definite programmes and schemes and methods of instruction for immediate schoolroom use. Psychology is a science, and teaching is an art.’
This statement was made, to be sure, a generation ago, and thus before the most active, and some might claim before the most productive, period of new psychology, but it would be reassuring to a large class of consumers to have some conservative and non-pedagogical psychologist point out the fundamental discoveries of this intervening period which show or tend to show that James’s criticisms are now quite out of date. His counsel has, in any event, remained unheeded and is probably forgotten. Teaching is in a fair way to be relegated to the lost arts. It has become a science properly relabeled pedagogy, with a rigid system of dogma, an elaborate ritual, and a professional cant. Initiation of novitiates into this caste has become as elaborate as it is perfunctory, and consists, as is well known, in the acquisition, usually by the coupon method, of a certain number of courses in ‘education,’ psychology, methodology, and the like. Meantime the profession has been carefully protected from intrusion by the uninitiated by what amounts to trade agreements with institutions which train novitiates — a unity of interests, confirmed in most states by legislation.
No wholly sane person will object to the training of teachers, or to changes in educational theory and practice, so far as these reveal higher ideals and saner methods, or promise better results. If teaching is to become a learned profession, there must be training, and the aid of tried and true psychology must be invoked. Likewise, if education is to rid itself of the futile doctrine of equalitarianism and to assure to all fair play in opportunities, if it is to give over the regimentation of all recruits at a safe level of mediocrity and to help each to discover and develop his own talents—if education is to undertake these and other progressive and cumulative changes with reasonable hope of fruition, psychology must aid and abet.
The objection here lodged is solely to those laws and practices which so rigidly and inexorably define the methods of selecting and training teachers, and thus artificially and greatly limit the sources and numbers from which the profession may be recruited. The quality of teachers must inevitably be lowered where native ability and knowledge, personality and character, are subordinated to easily acquired technique. Teachers cannot be fabricated to order from whatever material happens to be at hand. In most parts of the country, however, state laws require that one or more years be spent by the would-be teacher largely in the acquisition of doctrines which, with few exceptions, James regarded as of doubtful worth. A person with sufficient native ability to make a good teacher will from his own experiences and those of his successful and unsuccessful associates hardly fail to pick up an adequate knowledge of method and technique, if these are insisted upon as essential. One who has not such ability will not acquire it through the absorbing of the required courses in educational psychology, but, under present laws, no great teacher from Socrates to Charles William Eliot could qualify for service in the public school system of most states. We have sacrificed ability to pedagogy, professionalism, mass psychology, and mass production.
IV
The educational field, thus weakened in its personnel, has been invaded in recent years by a popular device known as the psychological or intelligence test. Since the chief concern of experimental psychology at present is the study of stimuli and responses, it is perhaps natural that the most active, if not the most important, phase of investigation during this century and in this country should be the development of the measurements of responses which reveal intelligence and mental alertness.
There is no question of the need for improving on the traditional hit-and-miss method of measuring a student’s ability and progress. It must be obvious to all concerned that the grades assigned for recitation or examination under the older usage correlate quite as closely with the instructor’s mental attitude and physical well-being as with the student’s knowledge of the matter under investigation. Not all professors are good cross-examiners or good mind readers or good guessers. Yet progress is difficult without some means of determining longitude and latitude and speed.
Intelligence tests were widely used as a rough and ready means of classifying the personnel during the recruiting of the national army, 1917-1918. They have since been developed and perfected by many practitioners and in many laboratories and applied to many different problems. An abundant literature and numerous textbooks deal with the subject. The tests have been tried out on hundreds of thousands of children and adults, and the results thus gained have been used in the manufacture of reasonably reliable scales for measuring achievement in many subjects of study and many varieties of skill. The scales for reading, writing, spelling, and arithmetic have been of great value in determining both the progress of classes and the proficiency of teachers. Most important of all, perhaps, they have helped to demonstrate the necessity of grouping together for instructional purposes pupils of approximately the same mental rate and have thus aided in the baffling problem of the supernormal as well as of the backward child. These tests have, moreover, captivated the interest of the parent, who now speaks glibly of mental age, chronological age, I. Q.’s, correlation, and raw scores.
Intelligence tests can, then, show a good balance on the credit side of the account. The ingenuity displayed in concocting questions which shall reveal every shred of concealed intelligence, in devising stencils or other mechanical means of tabulating answers ‘objectively,’ and in constructing formulæ and graphs for correlating and interpreting results, has put on his mettle the old-fashioned examiner who questioned only for knowledge and power — and, so far, good has resulted. But these new devices, like psychopedagogy, have been oversold, or at any rate overbought. Their promoters have been too optimistic in their claims and have confused hopes and promises, means and end. These tests, without question, measure intelligence, ‘ if,’ as a well-known psychologist states, ‘intelligence is what is measured by intelligence tests.’ But they can be and have been misleading because of the uncertain nature of this element and because of the many determining factors which they must leave out of the reckoning. Their forecast of future performance is not as infallible as represented.
These tests, as thus far perfected, have tested chiefly for mental alertness, cleverness, smartness, or, as one psychologist puts it, whether the examinee has high or low mental gear. The time limit has always been an important factor. Recognizing this characteristic of these tests, a colleague makes it a favorite pastime to defend the thesis that most Americans rated as great by several generations — among them Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Grant, and many more — were slow in their mental reactions, and, therefore, that the rapidity of decision or of the thought processes is no guarantee of good judgment or wisdom or success. This contention lacks the validity of a controlled laboratory experiment, but probably has a considerable basis of truth.
The lay critic, therefore, resents the prevalent assumption that these tests are based upon a new principle and that newly discovered laws of educational psychology underlie them. As far as has been revealed to him, they are as empirical in origin and use as those which educational psychologists rather derisively call ‘content’ tests. The data derived from them are not entitled to special privilege. The layman resents, likewise, the statistical invasion of the field of teaching and learning and the mechanistic implications of these alleged quantitative objective tests, — the kilowatt-hour idea, — the assumption that the mind is made up of functions or patterns or forces which may be readily and accurately measured only or best by the newly devised question-and-answer method. He is not convinced that the educability of the child or of the adult may be reduced to curves and percentages and treated as such. The corollary of this popular process is mass fabrication.
The success of the intelligence tests, as demonstrated by the avidity with which they have been absorbed by the trade, has led to the wide application of this measuring-rod process. Educational psychologists have been busily engaged in perfecting pencil-and-paper tests for discovering other desirable traits of personality — honesty, dependability, stability under stress, and various other qualities or attributes into which character may be resolved. Such tests may also now be had for determining the aptitudes, skills, and other types or degrees of intelligence — if these be intelligence — required in particular studies or tasks. Upon the resultant charts, curricula may be built. There need be no misdirected effort from the beginning to the end of the school or even of the college course if the personality chart justifies this sequel. No more lights need be hidden under bushels of prescribed subjects. There will be perfect division of labor along the lines of aptitudes as revealed by the new process. The character or personality record now demanded for admission to certain progressive colleges covers sixteen pages of questions. Admission officers must not be outdone in the application of up-to-date production-engineering methods.
The benefits of an early and reliable discovery of aptitudes need not end with the school or college course. Researches now in progress indicate that in the near future the aspirant may have his life’s work cut out for him as soon as he has progressed to a point where he may offer himself for an intelligence and a personality test; for it has become possible, it seems, to classify and tabulate the mental attributes, the emotional ingredients, and the species of personality required in each of the numerous trades, professions, and business careers represented in modern life. Our roughhewn ends may now be shaped by engineers in personality. Those who have blacksmith tendencies will no longer become dentists, and the bedside manner will no longer be seen at the bar or in the pulpit. Mr. Ford may reduce labor turnover and costs by adopting personality specifications for the various machines and manipulations of his great enterprise.
Such are the miracles claimed for modern practical psychology. It does not lack temerity, for its task is as difficult as rescrambling the castes of India. Its further progress in determining the essential desiderata for each walk in life will be watched with open-eyed and, let us hope, openminded interest. Meantime, the layman cannot but marvel that civilization has seemingly progressed so far without realizing and supplying the need for psycho-personnel guidance.
V
It is now less timely than would have been the case a few years ago to speak of another not wholly dissimilar product of the school of psychopedagogy — the questionnaire. There can be little doubt that this well-worn device has not only affected the emotional nature of all recipients, but has, to some extent at least, modified educational procedure in general, for much of the lore issued during recent years in the name of education has been based on so-called data collected, classified, and correlated by the perpetrators of these ‘fact-finding’ inventions of despair. They now, however, seem likely to pass without leaving irreparable havoc.
Another phase of psychological investigation and practice which has had great vogue and deep influence on public opinion is associated with the name of Freud. This shrewd investigator has given to practical psychology quite a new turn, or slant, for he found that what earlier psychologists had considered a stream of consciousness was rather a stream of sexual desire, and that it, if inhibited, might from out of the subconscious depths avenge itself on the individual. Dreams, it appears, reveal uncensored thought, and are more significant than to Joseph or Daniel of old when subjected to psychoanalysis. Sex impulses motivate and dominate behavior from birth and are suppressed at one’s peril. Here we have Socrates’ daemon turned bestial, to be exorcised only by psychoanalysts. How pervasive has been this cult, originating with Freud and developed and diversified by Jung and Adler and their pupils and successors, is shown by the glibness with which the layman and the daily press speak of libido, complexes, overcompensation, defense-mechanism, self-projection, introand extro-version.
Priceless truths are not usually revealed in this sudden and overwhelming manner, but, after the smoke of battle between addicts and critics has cleared away and rampant exploitation has exhausted itself, some modicum of benefit and practical value will come to the healing profession and thus to the public at large. This phase of the new psychology must be commended for focusing attention on the role played by the subconscious in emotional and intellectual reactions and for promoting a more profound study of childhood and adolescence. The investigations which have originated with psychoanalysts, or in opposition to them, will help the general practitioner in the diagnosis of various types of neurotics and of unsocial and unstable misfits, and may enhance the technique of the specialist in the treatment of such cases. Pending this happy ending of the melodrama, the layman is at the mercy of those who exploit his helplessness.
Present-day literature reveals the most evident and far-reaching consequences of this Freudian and psychoanalytic cult. The greatest of all arts has no doubt suffered in the past from Puritanic strait-lacedness and Victorian prudishness and other sins of repression, but the lean years, if they may be so called, can neither explain nor justify the satyric slough of sex in which the reading public must now welter. It is no longer a question of reticence — sex has become an obsession. If one may judge by the evidence presented, the motto of the publisher is, ‘If it’s sex, ’t will sell,’ and of the Best Sellers Club, ‘If it sells, it’s good.’ This encourages mass production and creates captains of this industry. Confession and self-revelation may be a necessary part of the cure of neurotics and of those suffering from sex obsessions and other emotional disorders, but publishers should not be encouraged to accept ‘histories’ which belong in a doctor’s office or in a hospital. The reading public ought not to be made to suffer vicariously for the sins, real or fictional, of everyone afflicted with a case of nerves.
The reading layman of the present day is neither a prude nor a Puritan. He does not shy at dirt as such or at nakedness. He approves of adequate knowledge of the physiology or hygiene of sex and applauds a healthy appetite for the pleasures of this world, but he does protest against a literature, based upon this new-old phallic cult, which threatens to break down those restraints and traditions of decent behavior which have been building up ever since men climbed down from trees. Both individuals and nations, in their healthier moods and more robust ages, have protested against letting the worship of Aphrodite get out of hand.
The behaviorists form another bloc situated well to the left in the body psychologic. This cult, too, offers a rule of life which looks both easy and pleasant. The followers see neither a higher nor a lower in human nature. There is no missing link between the intellectual and emotional nature of man and that of the so-called lower animals. The animal and the human being respond in the same manner to the same stimuli. These responses are purely mechanical in nature and may be as easily and as satisfactorily explained as any other physicochemical process. Since, however, several of the prominent captains of this school have wrecked their own ships, and several in positions of less authority have not been wholly successful in exemplifying this philosophy, a radical revision of the older order and traditional codes has seemed less important.
Codes of conduct are not entirely wanting in evidence of the survival of the fittest trial-and-error experiences; for though they differ, to be sure, in certain matters from age to age and from country to country, there appears to be a substantial agreement on a considerable body of those sanctions and loyalties which concern social relations and human welfare. Irrespective of time and place, this agreement — an inheritance, perhaps, of ancestral memory — includes a large portion of such old-fashioned concepts as honesty, decency, and justice.
The earlier lessons of philosophy and of its handmaid, psychology, were moral in their implications. Modern psychology, or what masks in its guise, has, in its drive toward objectivity, become as unmoral, or as amoral, as physics or chemistry. Perhaps this is as it should be. Psychology, as such, need charge itself with no moral mission provided it keeps within the bounds prescribed for all sciences. But many who claim membership in the profession must answer in some measure for the moral bewilderment of the present day. The quantum theory and that of relativity have had no such effect on human behavior. The layman cannot be expected to separate the just from the unjust among psychologists. It is this aspect of the matter which led one of the most broadminded and level-headed and successful college deans to state recently that the great moral problem of his university to-day is its department of psychology.
The art of living is the most universal of arts, and the art of thinking the most difficult. Philosophy has never shirked its responsibility or remitted its efforts to give practical service in both these arts. Practical psychology, which in public interest has supplanted philosophy and assumed its function in large measure, lacks not only the seriousness and serenity of the older discipline, but, what is more important, its responsibility. To all appearances, it throws out its theories to be picked up by sales promoters, personnel officers, pedagogues, psychographers, and other would-be docents and practitioners who prey upon the public, and is off on the hunt for more.
The lay critic is, accordingly, inclined to regard as unprofitable much, if not most, of what is offered in the name of practical or applied psychology. He fails to see how or where the new derivatives discussed have simplified or enriched our daily life — have made it either saner or sounder. He cannot, then, but concur with William James as to the futility of attempting to engraft upon our inherited stock of ideas every new offering from the science of the mind, and to adapt our code of morals to conform to the latest fashion in behavior. We find reassurance in remembering that the great feats of intellect and the most illustrious deeds of valor and of sacrifice were achieved without these recent revelations on mental processes and human behavior. The vigor, durability, and usability of this funded inheritance are illustrated in the records of two millenniums of searchers after truth and champions of the right. What they thought and taught has become art and part of our mental fabric, has become embedded in our language and everyday doings and dealings, and can no more be overlooked or put away than our physical characteristics, evolved through the ages. Quick turnovers had better be confined to other stocks in trade.
In view of the above considerations, it is proposed that a moratorium be declared in the psychological market until a psychology of psychologists can be prepared under the editorship of a long-suffering but hard-headed layman or of a commission composed of ultimate consumers. We have a psychology of childhood, of adolescence, of the only child, of twins, of industry, of war and peace, of religious experience, of the masses, and of this, that, and tother. Modern psychology is a most adaptable and inclusive science. It cannot exceed the competence of a wisely chosen commission to prepare a handbook which will enable a layman of average common sense to recognize on sight a real honest-to-goodness psychologist and which might save him from being victimized by any and every one who has learned to lisp the latest psychological shibboleth. To be effectively modern, modern psychology must assume some degree of accountability to the laity for the pretensions of its representatives.