VOCATION AND FITNESS
Instead of lingering over theoretical
discussions, we will move straight on toward our first
practical problem. The economic task, with reference
to which we want to demonstrate the new psychotechnic
method, is the selection of those personalities which
by their mental qualities are especially fit for a
particular kind of economic work. This problem
is especially useful to show what the new method can
do and what it cannot do. Whether the method
is sufficiently developed to secure full results to-day,
or whether they will come to-morrow, is unimportant.
It is clear that the success of to-morrow is to be
hoped for, only if understanding and interest in the
problem is already alive to-day.
When we inquire into the qualities
of men, we use the word here in its widest meaning.
It covers, on the one side, the mental dispositions
which may still be quite undeveloped and which may
unfold only under the influence of special conditions
in the surroundings; but, on the other side, it covers
the habitual traits of the personality, the features
of the individual temperament and character, of the
intelligence and of the ability, of the collected knowledge
and of the acquired experience. All variations
of will and feeling, of perception and thought, of
attention and emotion, of memory and imagination, are
included here. From a purely psychological standpoint,
quite incomparable contents and functions and dispositions
of the personality are thus thrown together, but in
practical life we are accustomed to proceed after
this fashion: if a man applies for a position,
he is considered with regard to the totality of his
qualities, and at first nobody cares whether the particular
feature is inherited or acquired, whether it is an
individual chance variation or whether it is common
to a larger group, perhaps to all members of a certain
nationality or race. We simply start from the
clear fact that the personalities which enter into
the world of affairs present an unlimited manifoldness
of talents and abilities and functions of the mind.
From this manifoldness, it necessarily follows that
some are more, some less, fit for the particular economic
task. In view of the far-reaching division of
labor in our modern economic life, it is impossible
to avoid the question how we can select the fit personalities
and reject the unfit ones.
How has modern society prepared itself
to settle this social demand? In case that certain
knowledge is indispensable for the work or that technical
abilities must have been acquired, the vocation is
surrounded by examinations. This is true of the
lower as well as of the higher activities. The
direct examination is everywhere supplemented by testimonials
covering the previous achievements, by certificates
referring to the previous education, and in frequent
cases by the endeavor to gain a personal impression
from the applicant. But if we take all this together,
the total result remains a social machinery by which
perhaps the elimination of the entirely unfit can
be secured. But no one could speak of a really
satisfactory adaptation of the manifold personalities
to the economic vocational tasks. All those examinations
and tests and certificates refer essentially to what
can be learned from without, and not to the true qualities
of the mind and the deeper traits. The so-called
impressions, too, are determined by the most secondary
and external factors. Society relies instinctively
on the hope that the natural wishes and interests
will push every one to the place for which his dispositions,
talents, and psychophysical gifts prepare him.
In reality this confidence is entirely
unfounded. A threefold difficulty exists.
In the first place, young people know very little
about themselves and their abilities. When the
day comes on which they discover their real strong
points and their weaknesses, it is often too late.
They have usually been drawn into the current of a
particular vocation, and have given too much energy
to the preparation for a specific achievement to change
the whole life-plan once more. The entire scheme
of education gives to the individual little chance
to find himself. A mere interest for one or another
subject in school is influenced by many accidental
circumstances, by the personality of the teacher or
the methods of instruction, by suggestions of the
surroundings and by home traditions, and accordingly
even such a preference gives rather a slight final
indication of the individual mental qualities.
Moreover, such mere inclinations and interests cannot
determine the true psychological fitness for a vocation.
To choose a crude illustration, a boy may think with
passion of the vocation of a sailor, and yet may be
entirely unfit for it, because his mind lacks the
ability to discriminate red and green. He himself
may never have discovered that he is color-blind, but
when he is ready to turn to the sailor’s calling,
the examination of his color-sensitiveness which is
demanded may have shown the disturbing mental deficiency.
Similar defects may exist in a boy’s attention
or memory, judgment or feeling, thought or imagination,
suggestibility or emotion, and they may remain just
as undiscovered as the defect of color-blindness,
which is characteristic of four per cent of the male
population. All such deficiencies may be dangerous
in particular callings. But while the vocation
of the ship officer is fortunately protected nowadays
by such a special psychological examination, most
other vocations are unguarded against the entrance
of the mentally unfit individuals.
As the boys and girls grow up without
recognizing their psychical weaknesses, the exceptional
strength of one or another mental function too often
remains unnoticed by them as well. They may find
out when they are favored with a special talent for
art or music or scholarship, but they hardly ever
know that their attention, or their memory, or their
will, or their intellectual apprehension, or their
sensory perceptions, are unusually developed in a particular
direction; yet such an exceptional mental disposition
might be the cause of special success in certain vocations.
But we may abstract from the extremes of abnormal
deficiency and abnormal overdevelopment in particular
functions. Between them we find the broad region
of the average minds with their numberless variations,
and these variations are usually quite unknown to
their possessors. It is often surprising to see
how the most manifest differences of psychical organization
remain unnoticed by the individuals themselves.
Men with a pronounced visual type of memory and men
with a marked acoustical type may live together without
the slightest idea that their contents of consciousness
are fundamentally different from each other. Neither
the children nor their parents nor their teachers
burden themselves with the careful analysis of such
actual mental qualities when the choice of a vocation
is before them. They know that a boy who is completely
unmusical must not become a musician, and that the
child who cannot draw at all must not become a painter,
just as on physical grounds a boy with very weak muscles
is not fit to become a blacksmith. But as soon
as the subtler differentiation is needed, the judgment
of all concerned seems helpless and the physical characteristics
remain disregarded.
A further reason for the lack of adaptation,
and surely a most important one, lies in the fact
that the individual usually knows only the most external
conditions of the vocations from which he chooses.
The most essential requisite for a truly perfect adaptation,
namely, a real analysis of the vocational demands
with reference to the desirable personal qualities,
is so far not in existence. The young people
generally see some superficial traits of the careers
which seem to stand open, and, besides, perhaps they
notice the great rewards of the most successful.
The inner labor, the inner values, and the inner difficulties
and frictions are too often unknown to those who decide
for a vocation, and they are unable to correlate those
essential factors of the life-calling with all that
nature by inheritance, and society by surroundings
and training, have planted and developed in their
minds.
In addition to this ignorance as to
one’s own mental disposition and to the lack
of understanding of the true mental requirements of
the various social tasks comes finally the abundance
of trivial chances which become decisive in the choice
of a vocation. Vocation and marriage are the
two most consequential decisions in life. In the
selection of a husband or a wife, too, the decision
is very frequently made dependent upon the most superficial
and trivial motives. Yet the social philosopher
may content himself with the belief that even in the
fugitive love desire a deeper instinct of nature is
expressed, which may at least serve the biological
tasks of married life. In the choice of a vocation,
even such a belief in a biological instinct is impossible.
The choice of a vocation, determined by fugitive whims
and chance fancies, by mere imitation, by a hope for
quick earnings, by irresponsible recommendation, or
by mere laziness, has no internal reason or excuse.
Illusory ideas as to the prospects of a career, moreover,
often falsify the whole vista; and if we consider all
this, we can hardly be surprised that our total result
is in many respects hardly better than if everything
were left entirely to accident. Even on the height
of a mental training to the end of adolescence, we
see how the college graduates are too often led by
accidental motives to the decision whether they shall
become lawyers or physicians or business men, but
this superficiality of choice of course appears much
more strongly where the lifework is to be built upon
the basis of a mere elementary or high school education.
The final result corresponds exactly
to these conditions. Everywhere, in all countries
and in all vocations, but especially in the economic
careers, we hear the complaint that there is lack of
really good men. Everywhere places are waiting
for the right man, while at the same time we find
everywhere an oversupply of mediocre aspirants.
This, however, does not in the least imply that there
really are not enough personalities who might be perfectly
fit even for the highest demands of the vocations;
it means only that as a matter of course the result
in the filling of positions cannot be satisfactory,
if the placing of the individuals is carried on without
serious regard for the personal mental qualities.
The complaint that there is lack of fit human material
would probably never entirely disappear, as with a
better adjustment of the material, the demands would
steadily increase; but it could at least be predicted
with high probability that this lack of really fit
material would not be felt so keenly everywhere if
the really decisive factor for the adjustment of personality
and vocation, namely, the dispositions of the mind,
were not so carelessly ignored.
Society, to be sure, has a convenient
means of correction. The individual tries, and
when he is doing his work too badly, he loses his
job, he is pushed out from the career which be has
chosen, with the great probability that he will be
crushed by the wheels of social life. It is a
rare occurrence for the man who is a failure in his
chosen vocation, and who has been thrown out of it,
to happen to come into the career in which he can
make a success. Social statistics show with an
appalling clearness what a burden and what a danger
to the social body is growing from the masses of those
who do not succeed and who by their lack of success
become discouraged and embittered. The social
psychologist cannot resist the conviction that every
single one could have found a place in which he could
have achieved something of value for the commonwealth.
The laborer, who in spite of his best efforts shows
himself useless and clumsy before one machine, might
perhaps have done satisfactory work in the next mill
where the machines demand another type of mental reaction.
His psychical rhythm and his inner functions would
be able to adjust themselves to the requirements of
the one kind of labor and not to those of the other.
Truly the whole social body has had to pay a heavy
penalty for not making even the faintest effort to
settle systematically the fundamental problem of vocational
choice, the problem of the psychical adaptation of
the individuality. An improvement would lie equally
in the interest of those who seek positions and those
who have positions to offer. The employers can
hope that in all departments better work will be done
as soon as better adapted individuals can be obtained;
and, on the other hand, those who are anxious to make
their working energies effective may expect that the
careful selection of individual mental characters
for the various tasks of the world will insure not
only greater success and gain, but above all greater
joy in the work, deeper satisfaction, and more harmonious
unfolding of the personality.