Peter Geyer
Type Coaching and Training
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Peter Geyer
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On "Personality"ICISTS Conference KAIST Daejeon Korea 17 July 2008 People and Qualities: The nature and type of participants in an Australian MBTI® Qualifying Workshop
Presentation
On "Personality"C.G.Jung and the MBTI®
Theory & Research
APTi IAC Research and Theory Articles
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CHAPTER 2 A QUANTIFYING AND EFFICIENT SOCIETY The fact that two American women could contemplate and set out to undertake what was generally considered the work of professionals gives an indication of what sort of people Katharine Briggs and Isabel Myers were, personally and socially. It also provides a broader indication of aspects of the type of society in which these two women lived. Katharine Cook Briggs was born in 1875, the same year as Carl Jung, but in a society different in philosophy and approach to the Switzerland of the author of Psychological Types. At an individual level, Briggs was part of the growing move of Americans to the larger cities from town and country, in her case, from the Mid-West state of Michigan to Washington DC. The 1920’s, the period of her discovery of Jung’s work, ultimately saw the population in urban areas in the United States outnumber those living in rural areas for the first time (Ranson,1994;p28) . Lyman and Katharine Briggs and their only daughter Isabel were also one of many middle to upper class families of ostensibly typical Americans seen as “rising indefinitely to new levels of affluence and progress” (Bellah et al,1986;p117) . The energy and movement characteristic of American society as a whole had been observed by Tocqueville in the early part of the nineteenth century. He described it as “restlessness in the midst of prosperity” (p117), implying a desire or compulsion to be always active, always doing. From the end of the American Civil War in 1865 through to World War II, this turbulence can be seen in several processes such as Reconstruction, the rise of corporate business and its clash with organised labour and the expansion of American interests overseas (e.g.Cuba and the Philippines). In the early decades of the 20th Century, the experience of World War I and post-war immigration, the vote for women and the “Great Migration” of black people to northern towns also impacted on and described this innate restlessness. Throughout this time, science was called on to assist in providing social order. A theme in American society as a whole through these and other events was the desire for development and self-improvement, focussed on the individual as well as on social groups (p119). The overall emphasis was on efficiency, and science was seen as the means by which these improvements were to be made. American pragmatism, or the emphasis on the practical application of ideas was extremely influential, exemplified by the ideas of intellectuals such as William James and John Dewey, the activities of men like Henry Ford, John D.Rockefeller and Frederick W.Taylor, and manifested by applications of rationality and efficiency in all areas of Amercian life such as kit houses, regular clothes sizes, domestic appliances. In the workplace, where it seemed that people were often just a troublesome extra, the ideas of Taylor, Gilbreth and Ford sought to find “the one best way”; “Wild Facts” had to be brought under control, ordered and regulated (Banta,1994;pp27-28). Almost as a consequence, even the human body became part of this regulation, with the rise of human engineering (pp282-286). Illustrating the pervasiveness of this movement, at a mundane level The Boston Cooking School Cook Book, published in 1896, was the first cookbook to use precise standardised measurements for its recipes, rather than the conventional “pinch” and “dash” (Ritzer,1993;p67). For philosophers Dewey and Tufts these “more rational” ideas and applications were merely “more social” and “moral” (Banta,1994;p338). This standardisation was the way to a better, scientific, future for all true Americans . Regulating or standardising people was a significant part of this approach. Ideas from the social and behavioural sciences were applied to planning in all aspects of society (Gillespie, 1993;p5). For example, State Boards of Public Charities, accountable in the late 19th Century for managing the mentally ill, saw their role being ”to consider not only the practical but the scientific aspects of the questions which command...question” and “to bring order and system and economy out of chaos” (Grob,1983;p80). Any personal benefits for the mentally ill people concerned remain unstated. Standards, norms and averages were the objective means by which the efficacy of production goals and conduct were judged; all else had to bend to them . Particularly influential in the late 19th century period were ideas and methods relating to the social application of Darwin’s theory of evolution, notably the ideas of the English thinker Herbert Spencer . Although discounted today, Spencer’s views on the development and self-improvement of the human race had an impact at all levels of society at this time. His ideas on education found approval with Katharine Briggs (Saunders,1991;p10). Spencer was not alone in his promotion of evolutionary ideas. Similar ideas, or what has become known as Social Darwinism, have been well described by commentators such as Hofstadter (1955), Degler (1991) and Kevles (1986). In the mood of the time, Darwinian or evolutionary views under the general theme of human betterment, however innocently presented, often reached over into a “scientific” justification for racism and other activities, which were often directed by the State, using these ideas in discriminating against those deemed unsuitable or inadequate . Key themes, among them Instinct, Eugenics and Intelligence, as they applied to individuals and groups, became important foci for the emerging and developing field of psychology, whose professionals were looking, like the rest of American society, for objectivity, rational solutions, efficiency and quantifiability, ostensibly for the benefit of all. The nature of human personality of course has been part of philosophical contention and speculation in Western culture since written records have been made (Tarnas;1991). Furthermore, activities dealing with the human psyche are found throughout all human cultures (Ellenberger;1994). However, concerted attempts, both in the United States and elsewhere, to establish psychology as a separate field of scientific enquiry and a profession separate from medicine and philosophy, date from the late 19th Century. Carl Degler considers William James’ Principles of Psychology , first published in 1890, to be the event that marked the formal study of human psychology in America as we recognise it today (1991;p33) . But James was not the inventor or founder of American psychology. The origins of American thought on psychology go back earlier in the century to the influence of the German Wilhelm Wundt (Boring,1963;pp132-140) , who trained many Americans later influential in American psychology in his experimental methods at the University of Leipzig. The German influence in US psychology remains strong overall even today, but at this time, the ability to read the ideas of German psychology in the original language was widespread and valued amongst American psychologists as they developed their own perspective. For Boring, this perspective was clear. “The adjectives that best apply to American psychology are functional and practical”” (1963;p163). American psychology, more than any other, concentrated on measurement as both a preferred methodology and in its drive for “scientific” acceptability. Whether the psyche can be quantified is still contested, but in the late 19th century, Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, thought that it could be done and, building on mathematical work earlier in the century , was a catalyst for statistical measurement in this area, notably in the field of intelligence. This seemed to be the most important part of personality for Galton. Questionnaires became the approved scientific method by which this measurement was to be performed (Danziger,1994;p75) notably because “quantification is favored by the desire of investigators to claim the prestige of science for their research” (Boring,1963;p156). Boring also stated that “since Galton, statistical method and the psychology of individual differences have developed in mutual support”, dating its development from 1908 (p141). A prominent proponent of testing from this time, Robert M. Yerkes, felt able to claim that “theoretically, man is just as measurable as a bar of steel”, a position that found many supporters (Kevles,1986;p80). This method of researching individual differences differed from Wundt’s, concentrating on aggregates of populations, rather than individuals . Data from this research was collated and generalised, enabling American psychologists to present their work as a useful and practical “contribution to management of social problems that could be defined in terms of the statistical variation of individual traits” (Danziger,1994;p80). These generalisations depended on an empirical and phenomenological view of reality and implied that these average results were akin to “a general natural scientific law” (pp85-86) as opposed to the socially constructed definiitions they were . Mischel has described the trait theories of personality of this time as a “psychology of common sense in which the layperson’s theory of what people are like became the scientific theory of what people are like” leading to classifying people in subgroups “rather than [to] capture and explain the ongoing flow of their behaviour” (1985;p515). Psychological tests were extensively used in the US armed forces in World War I, notably in connection with intelligence and based on the ideas of Binet, but with ambivalent results, although this testing was proclaimed successful by its proponents (Gould,1992). In any case, by the end of this War psychologists and psychological testing had high public exposure and recognition for their practical use in administrative settings (Gillespie,1993;p31). One of the issues for this administrative approach was regulating the use of such tests. The professional body for psychologists, the American Psychological Association, found it impossible to regulate tests and testing at this time. The work of individuals in the area of reviewing and evaluating thus became important . A theme for psychologists in this period was that they marketed their skills and professional expertise, in addition to these tests ,while also battling “untrained” people in the field . The influential rise of behaviouristic ideas in American psychology from the early part of the 20th Century complemented its emphasis on quantification, and hastened a move away from the more philosophical approaches of psychology’s founders and early influences. Statistical approaches were seen as free of theoretical bias, thus suiting the practical and empirical American approach. Those who preferred other views ultimately suffered a decline in their professional standing (Degler,1991;pp155-156,192), their views giving way to an emphasis on experimentation, quantification and purely cultural explanations for human behaviour (p162) while, paradoxically, engaging in a search for empirical human universals or aggregates that transcended cultures . While the theme of American psychology in this period is that as described above, other approaches to psychology still had influence. The field was relatively new in any case, and so it was also a time of development for what are now large and influential schools of psychological thought and method . The overall emphasis, however, was on quantification, empiricism and behaviorism. |