MOTIVES AND ANTECEDENTS OF VOCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY
VOCATIONAL EFFORTS OF PRIMITIVE MAGIC
Among very primitive people we find the recognition already established that the course of the individual's fortune depends on two distinct factors: external forces and personal characteristics. Individuals similar in type experience different fortunes because of the different external events that attend their respective careers. Equally, individuals of however diverse characteristics suffer the same fortunes at the hands of some common or identical external occurrence. Two combatants of equal skill and valor are rendered unequal by a defective lance; two runners equally swift are made unequal by a pebble in the path; a vigorous babe fails to mature properly because of pestilence, war, or famine. On the other hand, both old and young, weak and strong, stupid and cunning, are alike reduced to helplessness in the face of flood, earthquake, and forest fire.
Primitive thinking, in its attempts to control the course of personal fortune, thus had its attention directed to two groups of factors, each of which it sought to control by such means as it could at the moment devise. A very early stage of such thinking took the form of the belief that desire could impress itself on the course of physical events and also on the development of personal characteristics. The expression of desire, either of the individual immediately concerned or of others more remotely involved, was consequently invoked and declared in more or less emphatic and overt form as a determining factor in personal fortune. In many cases this expression was given some indirect or symbolic form, as in gesture, ritual, tableau, masquerade, and imitative portrayal.
On the side of physical factors this attempt took the form of crude magic, adjuration, sacrifice, and incantation, all of which were calculated to dispose the physical elements favorably toward the individual concerned in the ceremonials. Crude ritual observances and ceremonies, such as sacrifice, mimicry, and tableau, were believed to influence in some occult way the growth of crops, the changes in weather, the health of enemies, the movements of game, the supply of fish, etc. A typical fishing expedition among the natives of the Caroline Islands aptly illustrates this point of view. The chief official is not an expert boatman nor a fisher, but the medicine man of the tribe. He owes his authority not to his knowledge of the habits and haunts of fish, but to his store of incantations and exorcisms. Various rites are conducted before embarking. The fishermen must leave the island without speaking; and especially, the purpose of the expedition must not be mentioned aloud. A "luck" formula is pronounced over the boat. Sacrifices of special foods are offered, lest the lines be broken by sharks or tangled in the rocks. In Mexico, an elaborate pantomime, representing the harvesting of crops, was staged annually at a religious festival. This was believed sufficient to produce the good crops which were desired for the next season. Special dances were performed by persons representing the various vegetables which were particularly coveted.
Among primitive races in almost every part of the world one finds magical properties attributed to a sort of toy which anthropologists call the "bull roarer." It consists merely of a flat stick, attached to the end of a cord. When whirled around it produces a roaring or humming sound which easily reminds one of the rumble of wind, the roll of thunder, or the distant cry of an animal. In various quarters this instrument is used in a ceremonial way. Since its sound resembles thunder, it is used as a charm against that form of physical violence. Because of its resemblance to both thunder and wind, it is incorporated in elaborate rain-making mysteries. Sometimes it is used to drive or call wild or domesticated animals, and hence comes to be used as a means of bringing luck to hunters. Figures and emblems, carved on the slab of wood, are supposed to specify the particular kind of luck or fortune which the individual seeks.
On the side of personal characteristics the same endeavor took the form of blessings, incantations, dedications, curses, prayers and petitions, the wearing of symbolic charms and the submission of the infant or youth to a variety of prenatal and childhood experiences and ceremonials. Thus it is believed that by appropriating a dead man's spear and thereby expressing a desire for his skill and valor, these traits of character will pass to the new owner. Boys are tossed into the air to make them grow tall, and rubbed with crystals and snake-skins to make them clever and intrepid medicine men. By scratching lifelike sketches of bison, deer, and fish on rocks, walls, and weapons, the savage hunter sought to acquire otherwise unattainable adroitness and success. "Disease or death may be produced by operating on the cuttings of a person's hair, the parings of his nails, or the remains of his food, when the person himself is far away. By wearing tiger's teeth a man may make himself brave and fierce." By drinking the blood of bulls he may become stalwart and powerful. The Ojibway Indian, in order to hurt his enemy and thus further his own interests, makes a small image of him and pierces it with a needle in the faith that the enemy will suffer. In order to terminate the latter's career he burns or buries the effigy, uttering magic words as he does so.
Remnants of this primitive magic still persist in the "psychological underworld," and many an old-wives' practice and incantation is in various quarters still believed or professed to further the course of the individual's fortune, or to jeopardize it, by rendering natural forces more benign or malignant, or by exerting some occult molding influence on the infantile abilities and propensities. Thus it is not at all uncommon, even in these days, for children to be dedicated at birth to the ministry, the missionary field, the service of the king, or to some particular cause or propaganda. A woman of the writer's acquaintance, solicitous for the future welfare of her babe, read solid and serious books during gestation in order to balance the emotional influences due to her absorption in music teaching during that period. Many practices of the most superstitious kind are resorted to in order to predetermine the sex, and hence the vocational prospects, of children yet unborn. Reliance on prayer as an effective agent in changing the course of events or the disposition and habits of some other individual is by no means confined to savages. Petitions that a neighbor may lose his appetite for drink, recover his lost eyesight, or find his wallet are as current in modern times as are official days of prayer for rain. Seeking to influence public opinion by the passing of formal resolutions, and modifying character, curing diseases and prolonging life through "absent treatment," the laying on of hands, the contemplation of relics, visitation of shrines, and concerted supplication, are practices which find high warrant in contemporary life. The essential idea behind all these practices seems to be the simple faith that nothing will interfere with the realization of desire, if only that desire is indicated by a method which has official or traditional sanction. The true nature of cause and effect and the conception of natural law are not yet realized on this level of thought.
THE PRACTICES OF MEDIEVAL CLAIRVOYANCE
A more advanced stage in the development of such thinking is indicated by the recognition that both the series of physical events and the individual endowment follow laws which transcend the personal desires of men. Nature comes to be recognized as a system of facts and connections. Both control and foresight henceforth seek to base themselves on the utilization of these stable laws and relationships. Instead of willing the individual's fortune to be thus and so, there is an earnest endeavor to seek for signs and clues of what that fortune is inevitably destined to be. Fortune-making becomes fortune-telling. The accidents and accompaniments of birth, the momentary positions of the planets, the calendar incidents, the hour or day of birth, the local meteorological conditions, birth-marks, stigmata, physiognomic and anthropometric characteristics, the folds of the flesh, the lines of the hand, the mode of birth: every fact that can participate in a relation of coincidence with the birth of the individual is selected as a sign of some future state of affairs, desirable or untoward, in the fortune of the individual, of his personal, domestic and occupational career.
Thus, in a recently published guide to character analysis based on ancient astrological pretensions, the following characteristics are asserted to belong to those who are born in the month of February:
"Those born in this month are very intuitive and good judges of character and human nature. They are successes in mercantile interests and enterprises. It is said that the best wives are born in this month, being always faithful and devoted. Great sincerity and power are possible for those born in this month. They rise to great heights and on the other hand are inclined to sink to the lowest depths. At times they are inclined to be melancholy, a tendency which they may overcome.
"Most February persons have good taste, are quick at absorbing information, and intuitive. One of their great faults is that they are inclined to be intolerant and cannot make themselves think from another's point of view.
"Their most common diseases are of the nervous and rheumatic orders. They should guard their actions on the ninth and sixteenth day of each month. Luck day, Saturday. Favorite colors, all shades of blue, pink, and Nile green. Lucky stones, sapphire, opal, or turquoise. Lucky numbers, 5 and 7. They will excel in music and art, and should marry with those born in October, January, or June."
Hardly less common than faith in the horoscope is belief in the detailed prophecies of palmistry. The following is a direct reproduction of paragraphs from a well-known metropolitan American newspaper, of the year 1915 (A. D.), headed, "What Your Fingers Mean:"
"Shorter palm and longer fingers, these show an aptitude for doing small things well. Their owners analyze everything, are supersensitive over trifles, often feeling unintentional slights. When these fingers are slim, as well as longer than the palm, they give to one the quality of diplomacy. Card sharps and gamblers have these long, slim, smooth fingers. The average-length fingers with an ordinary-sized palm show a well-balanced mind, with a thoroughly commonplace nature. When long fingers (with shorter palm) are knotted at the joints we find an extreme love for the minor parts of construction, whether it be in the building of a bridge or the endless tasks pertaining to a kitchen."
The same thing happens in the case of the individual's own acts. Every petty move and caper is taken to be significant of his future disposition, powers, or achievements. The first word the child utters, the first object for which he reaches, the animal he first imitates, the form of his earliest play activities, nothing that can be identified and described but comes to possess, in someone's mind, some peculiar significance and prognostic value. "Homely in the cradle, lovely at the table," is an oft-quoted maxim among hopeful mothers. "Happy is the bride that the sun shines on," has doubtless served to postpone more than one nuptial ceremony, and being "born under an unlucky star" has equally often afforded a certain consolation for personal awkwardness. A father of the writer's acquaintance believed his boy destined to follow the career of a druggist or pharmacologist, because, as a child, "he was so fond of playing with bottles and of pouring water from one into the other." Any lack of submissive devotion to a rubber doll is calculated to fill the parent's heart with apprehension and dire forebodings for the domestic peace of his daughter. War-babies and infants born on the high seas are envied for their romantic prospects. Illegitimate children are expected to be idiotic or else to be especially gifted with some poetic form of talent.
Belief in vocational magic and clairvoyance is clearly not entirely confined to medieval days. Nor is it true that such instances as those just cited arise only as material for frivolous conversations or as journalistic space-fillers in a dearth of more serious copy. So firmly are these superstitions established among large classes of people that special legislation is required to prevent their exploitation at the hands of crafty fakers. The fortune-teller is far from being a romantic and vestigial institution; and the type of prophecy which medieval clairvoyance represents continues to provide many with a substitute for more rigorous and less exciting inquiry.
MODERN PERIOD OF GUIDANCE AND SELECTION
However, as knowledge develops, a third stage is reached, in which we may be said to be moving, even though somewhat slowly, in our own scientific and educational work. This stage is marked by relative inattention to the series of physical events and by special emphasis on the original nature of the individual and on changes wrought in that original nature through the experiences of school life and other forms of educational process. The conditions and environmental factors of life have become so plastic that individuals can fairly easily find congenial environment and occupational material near at home or far from it, if only they know for what environment and material their natural powers are best adapted. Modern life, whether in city or in country, has become so diversified and labor so divided, that a small community affords the vocational variety which only a few years ago was quite unfamiliar to it. Moreover, the various avenues of communication, transportation and coöperation have become so elaborate that workers in one part of a nation can with little difficulty profit by activities and opportunities existing in distant places. Each branch of industry, commerce and art, as well as each professional and occupational activity, provides not only for a larger number of workers but for a greater variety as well. There is thus a tendency for the individual at an early point in his career, not only to adapt himself to an environment already provided, but to a certain degree to select that environment for which his abilities and interests seem best to fit him.
Attempts at controlling fortune, as now exercised, are neither magical nor clairvoyant. They take the rational, selective form of fitting the individual to the place for which his natural aptitudes best adapt him, so far as these facts of adaptability are discoverable, and so far as the environment is plastic or optional. This is at least the description of the process in democratic conditions of society. In countries in which hereditary aristocracy and caste systems still exist, the fortune of the individual is determined to a considerable extent by his birthright, by the occupation of his father, above all by sex—all dominated by tradition. Within this field of guidance and selection, activity has developed rather independently in two different directions. There has been on the one hand the notion that all the individual needs for a satisfactory occupational adjustment is knowledge of available opportunities, and appropriate technical training for the occupation of his choice. This point of view is seen in our own country in the popularizing of general education.
Under this conception general education, instead of being the prerogative of the ruling or moneyed class, is urged as a common right, a social duty and an economic necessity. Learning is not limited to those who expect to enter the theological, medical, legal, or academic professions. A certain amount of elementary school-knowledge, or at least of school-attendance, comes to be required of every prospective worker. Even the feeble-minded are labored with in the attempt to bring them up to their highest possible academic level. Boys and girls alike are not only urged but compelled to equip themselves with the knowledge of the elementary formal subjects; and the community taxes itself to furnish the teachers, the books, and the necessary physical paraphernalia. In this earlier form of educational theory little effort is made to give immediate applicability to the subject-matter of the curriculum. Classical studies with very little relevance to contemporary life; dead languages, with only a feeble claim to concrete serviceability; formal exercises in designing and constructing useless bric-a-brac; trivial geographical, astronomical, anatomical, and military details: these are the subject-matter of the "general education." Back of their selection lies of course the doubtful conception that the general powers or faculties of the student are thereby cultivated, and that these may then be brought to bear effectively on any vocational activity which may be chosen.
The subject-matter is selected, not because of its interest or its utility, but mainly because of its difficulty and its formal character. Parental compulsion, vague social tendencies and impulses, petty personal rivalries, fondness for the teacher, and general cultural aspiration are relied on to facilitate the work of administration and to provide incentive. The "life-career" motive is but little utilized, and tends on the whole to be discouraged as sordid and commercial. But it is nevertheless believed that the grammatical, geographical, historical, and arithmetical elements will in the long run enable the pupil not only to enjoy life but to find it as well, or at least to be of the greatest possible service in the work into which he or she drifts. Only in the case of those who are utterly incompetent to deal with the general subject-matter, the feeble-minded, the blind, and the deaf, is this formal education willingly abandoned in favor of some definitely serviceable "industrial" training.
THE METHODS OF INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION
Quickly following this effort of the public schools to guide every boy and a few girls into successful careers through general education, came the realization that literary, linguistic, and mathematical information alone is inadequate to this task. It was felt by many that industrial or vocational education, calculated to fit the individual directly for his or her life occupation, should be begun at a much earlier age than that at which the group choosing the professions entered upon their further studies in the higher technical schools. It became obvious that many pupils terminated their public-school education as soon as they had satisfied the minimal requirements of the compulsory education law. These engaged at the earliest possible opportunity in some immediately gainful occupation. The occupations into which they commonly drifted were such as called for only a slight amount of intelligence and promised proportionately little by way of further equipment or promotion. They have come to be called "blind alley" occupations, and refer to such work as that of errand boys, elevator and telephone operators, small clerks, domestic servants, nursemaids, messengers, delivery boys, and teamsters.
Meanwhile those who had continued in school and completed the high-school curriculum emerged without special vocational fitness, and even without any knowledge of the vocational possibilities of their age and locality. The further development of vocational and industrial education of special sorts was then supplemented by general instruction in the vocational opportunities available. Vocational surveys were initiated for the purpose of acquiring information which could be placed in the hands of pupils and of those in charge of their training. These surveys made systematic inquiry into the vocational opportunities afforded to young people by the industries and enterprises of the vicinity. The assistance of employers was sought in the effort to learn the requirements of the various types of work; the nature of the labor involved; the wages; the general conditions, such as healthfulness, danger, companionship, and instruction; the rate of promotion; the prospect of future advancement. Such information has in many cases been published in pamphlets and bulletins and thus made accessible to teachers, pupils, and parents.
Along with this tendency went the attempt to give the pupil some first-hand knowledge of and immediate experience with the materials, implements, and products of the various industries from among which he or she might be expected to choose after leaving the school. This has been a difficult step to bring about, partly because of the various technical and administrative difficulties which it involved. Occasional hasty visits to mills, factories, stores, shops, offices, laboratories, and similar busy places give the pupil but a superficial notion of the actual work of the operations there observed. More extended and intensive observation, on the other hand, with perhaps an actual trial at the work, means a corresponding limitation of the range of institutions inspected. Talks by managers and foremen are likely to give only a dramatized view of the facts. School industries, on the other hand, cannot easily be organized and conducted in a manner technically complete and industrially representative. The result has been a growing tendency to push the vocational training further and further back into the earlier years of the curriculum, thus displacing much of the purely formal subject-matter. With this change have come various experiments in study-practice methods, in which part of the day or term is spent at the general academic work, and part in actual service in a tentatively chosen form of industrial or commercial activity.
In this movement but little recognition was given to the psychological differences and peculiarities of the individuals concerned. Knowledge of personal aptitudes and capacities, interests, and satisfactions, was more or less taken for granted in each case, or at least left to develop in its own way. It was assumed either that any individual could satisfactorily pursue any vocation in which he might become interested, or else that industrial and vocational information alone was needed in order to enable the individual to make a suitable choice. Nor was there any doubt that the work which the youth found interesting and attractive at the time was the work in which he might find a maximum of ultimate success, satisfaction, and serviceableness. With the vocational surveys, the industrial schools, and the part-time practice methods of education we shall not be concerned, in what is to follow. They represent a movement of tremendous social and educational significance, but their development does not immediately concern that other field of work which we have designated "vocational psychology." They proceed mainly by giving the individual a knowledge of the external series of facts and events, thus replacing the era of fortune-telling and clairvoyance, with its search for signs and omens, just as fortune-telling had, in its own day, replaced the practices of crude objective magic. But the methods of industrial and occupational training have been found to solve only one aspect of the vocational problem; and it is more and more coming to be realized that a thorough understanding of the aptitudes which the individual brings to his work is as important as the knowledge of the opportunities which the environment affords. In the remainder of this book we shall be concerned with the various systematic efforts that have been made or are now being made to study the individual himself, and to judge from a determination of his mental characteristics the type of vocational activity which he is best fitted to undertake with success.