The Relation of Psychology to Social Service
- Author:
Marie Louise Hubbard, A.M.,
University of Pennsylvania.
It is rather unsatisfactory to make an attempt to state the relation of one object, concept, or activity to another object, concept, or activity until each has been clearly defined. Much confusion and strife are caused by fuzziness of thinking, vagueness of ideas, and indeterminate boundaries of subjects under discussion. To begin with, then, let us ask ourselves the question, “Just what is Psychology, and just what is Social Service?” The relation of a planet to the sun, the relation of a man s ability to deal with space relations to an architectural career, are likely to call up in the minds of different people concepts sufficiently coincident to permit of an intelligible discussion. But when we employ the word Psychology in casual conversation with travelers on the highway, we find that to one the word means a Jesuitical knowledge of human nature; to another, a study of mental phenomena; and to still another, the application of the law of suggestion to daily life. That is to mention only three, and the concepts vary almost as do the travelers. One soon learns to determine just which part of the elephant his friend is talking about?ears or leg or tail before discussing shape of tip or girth or flexibility. To change the metaphor, Psychology is an embryo, not yet formed, in which some see a puppet, others the ruler of beasts, and still others a shining angel. Or would it be better to say Ps3rchology is a sea, with a fog thick upon it, and explorers in rowboats let down their little buckets to draw up cold water, warm water, phosphorescent animalcule, or devil-fish? Be that as it may, in common parlance Psychology always does mean something pertaining to the human being, so let us decide arbitrarily, and as definitely as possible, just what we mean by the word in this particular discussion. Let us define it as a scientific investigation of why people behave as they do, embracing a study of instincts, motives, and mental abilities.
If we find difficulty in selecting and outlining a crystallized idea of Psychology, we find our difficulties not diminished, but multiplied, when we turn to Social Service, that irregular mass of heterogeneous activities, stuck together by common consent. If, in despair before our own helplessness of formulating even a tentative definition of Social Service, we appeal to authorities whom we think ought to give us at least crumbs, we become interested in the diversity of their opinions, or, more correctly, perhaps, in the diversity of their manner of approach. If we take refuge in an encyclopedia?the Americana, for example?we find the following ponderous sentence: “Social Service is the modern study of people and conditions looking toward the betterment of mankind: a forward movement dealing with life, occupation, and environments, embracing the observation and investigation of the relations between employers and employees, cooperation, labor legislation, hours of work, wages, industrial betterment, child labor, factory sanitation and inspection, safety appliances, improvement of civic and municipal conditions, civil service, public ownership, the initiative and referendum, tax reform, marriage and divorce, housing, temperance, pauperism and crime, defective and delinquent children, education, institutional churches and the like.” If we turn to the International Encyclopedia, we find listed the American Institute of Social Service, which defines its object as “social and industrial betterment;” its method, “to place human experience on file so as to make it available for all who wish to profit by the experience of others;” and its functions, ” (1) to gather facts bearing on social conditions and whatever is being done to improve them; (2) to interpret these facts by learning their causes and effects; (3) to disseminate the resulting knowledge in every possible way for education of public opinion.” The National Social Workers’ Exchange of New York City offers, in place of a definition, an outline of the activities it would cover, consisting of six major divisions and a total of fifty-seven sub-divisions. A practical worker in the field, tagged with the label Social Worker, when asked for her definition of Social Service, replied: “Getting in touch with all possible sources of help and making an adjustment.” The lay mind is quite hopeless. To it we find the term Social Service often suggests either the giving of money or the playing of Lady Bountiful in some other way?from just the proper height. If, with interest still further aroused, one goes into a public library, takes down one book after another, and skims through it, noting the date of publication and author’s preface in particular, he can not fail to realize that the thought of service to humanity runs like a thread throughout, no matter how much the ideas strung on the thread may differ. In many of the books published about 1900 the religious note is definitely sounded. Reference to religion steadily decreases through the succeeding twenty years, but the thought of service is persistent and insistent. Has Social Service been shifted from a religious basis to an ethical one? Perhaps not a real thought, but just the shadow of a thought, falls athwart our consciousness, that it would be well not to make too hasty and vigorous a denial of religious motives until religion is defined, because the definition of religion is in process of undergoing a profound change. However, that is another subject. It is sufficient to note that the word “betterment” is a key word. No matter how much our authorities may disagree in choice of words, they all do agree that Social Service deals with the bettering of the human being and thereby social conditions, or the bettering of social conditions and thereby the human being. If we go back to our first encyclopedia and accept the first part of its definition, of which the entire following portion seems but an amplification, “the modern study of people and conditions looking toward the betterment of mankind,” we can re-word it, and say that in this discussion we will consider Social Service to be any work with individuals or with groups of individuals, whose specific aim is the betterment of society. Not that this definition has clearly defined boundaries. It hasn’t. It leaves plenty of room for such challenging questions as “Is the office of the Confessional that of social service? Is it social service to pick up a piece of broken glass lying in the street?” But it becomes something whose relation to Psychology can be discussed. The subject of our paper now becomes the relation between the study of why people behave as they do and a work whose aim is the betterment of the behavior of these people. Discussing the relation of Psychology to Social Service means discussing the relation of why man behaves as he does to a work involving an improved change in this behavior.
The units with which Psychology concerns itself, individual persons, are also the units with which Social Service works, but the points of view are not the same. Psychology is interested in the individual as the object of a scientific study. Social Service is interested in these individuals in their interactions with other individuals. Ihe interactions of two or more individuals depend upon the personalities of each. A change in economic and moral conditions must be brought about by a working knowledge of the individual units whose changed interactions will bring about the changed social conditions. The relation between Psychology and Social Service is that Psychology devotes itself to finding out the principles, which it then turns over to Social Service for practical use. Psychology supplies Social Service with some of its most useful tools, not all of them, because other sciences, such as the biological sciences, also furnish tools. To reverse the statement, Social Service takes the facts discovered by Psychology and applies them as working principles in accomplishing its aim. This relationship is, in general, recognized, as one may notice from various evidences. For example, in a recent book dealing with vocations for women, thirty-four of the hundred and seventy-three discussed, mentioned Psychology as a requisite study in the preparation for that particular calling, and all except one or two of the thirty-four vocations also find a place under the outlines of Social Service.
Professor Ell wood, in his book “Sociology in its Psychological Aspects” makes several observations which have a direct bearing on this subject: “A psychology of human activities or behavior will supply the missing key for the interpretation of social phenomena. … Reflexes and instincts lie at the very basis of mental and social life… . Interactions between between individuals, all social structures and institutions rest finally upon the basis of instinct… . Society is made up of and ruled by psychic elements such as impulse, instinct, habit, emotion, desire, interest, sensation, imagination, and reason… . Mind indicates that it has been developed in and through social life-process, every aspect of consciousness is tinged with social life.… The activities of the organism spring from its own organic needs, such as nutrition and reproduction, and are directed to the satisfying of those needs. … If the ground for the beginning of the act is within, it is not less true that the act is developed with reference to the environment, and through the stimuli which the environment affords… . The process of building up habits out of instincts (through the mediation of consciousness) constitutes the essence of mental growth both in the individual and in society… . The building up of new habits, the breaking down of old ones, the adjustment of the countless number of habits to each other, give rise to the most striking social phenomena. … In the social life the emotions powerfully reinforce habits and customs which are based upon native impulses… . The intellect is directly concerned with environmental factors… . Reason is the most complex of all the devices of consciousness for aiding the organism in adapting itself to its environment… . Consciousness is deeply tinged with the social life around. … It is certain that all human consciousness is socially conditioned… Each of these sentences quoted from Professor Ellwood forms a nucleus for a chapter of knowledge which ought to be understood by any one attempting the “betterment of mankind.”
Since Social Service is admitted by the leaders within its ranks to be an aggregate of activities with a common aim rather than an integrated or dynamic whole, it would seem legitimate to pick out several of these activities separately for purposes of illustration. Let us choose Medical Social Service, the Housing field, the field of the Americanization problem, and service to the Child.
Here is an arresting statement made by Dr Richard C. Cabot of the Massachusetts General Hospital: “Habits, economic and moral conditions, cause the illness of nearly two-thirds of the patients who are subjects of charity at our hospitals. This is as true of the well-to-do patients as it is of the poor. I often regret that they, too, cannot have the assistance of a social worker.” In the same paragraph Dr Cabot says: “He (the doctor) may know that the moral situation, some crime or some error committed in the past, has so changed the situation that there must be moral relief before there can be physical. But he has no time to look into all these attendant causes of illness.” Dr Cabot’s statements are startling because of the high percentage of sick who need psychological treatment rather than medical aid, and because of the emphasis placed upon the need of a highly trained specialist other than the doctor himself. Certainly a woman fitted to bring about moral relief must understand the primal instincts of the race. She must understand the respective parts that habits and emotions play in an individual s life. She must understand that a man’s volitional act is far less an expression of his free will and far more dependent upon his environment and past experiences than is generally supposed. From a study of psychology she understands these things, and from the same source she has learned how to guide the building up of new habits, how to arouse a new motivation, and how to be a new factor in the patient’s environment which will change the resultant direction of his volitional act. Mental suffering is intense, and a nervous patient needs a chance to reveal in the full light of day the cause of that suffering to some one who can see it in its true perspective and point the way to controlled thought and emotion.
Under “every form of housing abomination,” Elmer S. Forbes lists “dark rooms and halls, unventilated closets used as bedrooms, damp and decaying cellars, hideous sanitary accommodations, dangerous fire risk, dirt, filth and dilapidation.” What is the psychological effect of herding human beings in droves into such surroundings as those just named? “Two-thirds of the delinquent children, onethird of the mentally deficient, one-third of the shiftless mothers, and two-thirds of the deserting fathers, come from homes where dirty and ill-ventilated rooms predominate. To bad living quarters can easily be attributed two-thirds of the necessity for much that we call ‘problems’ in our reform work.” The worker striving for housing reform sees only too clearly the relation between the environment he is fighting and the criminal and mentally deficient recruits who fill’ourlinstitutions.
Frank E. Spaulding presents the problem of the education and assimilation of the immigrant as being one of the most interesting in Social Service. From all the nations of the world they are coming to us, bringing what assets they have, for every nation has something. What are we doing to welcome them? What are we doing to tiy to understand them and to govern them to their best advantage and ours? When the immigrant comes he wants work. All he can get is unskilled labor. He has to begin at the very bottom, which is not a misfortune, but who is interested in helping him make the next step upward? What our great industries want them for is the cheapest grade of labor with no chance for advancement, and the conditions under which we keep them, keep them alien. Psychology teaches us that man is a social being. When a newcomer arrives, he is compelled to seek quarters with people of his own race. He needs those who will understand. A little group of Greeks, for example, forms a nucleus which in time becomes a foreign section as fresh newcomers seek refuge with them. This section is like a little bit of the old country transplanted and into which American ideas and influences do not penetrate. Americans take no trouble to understand them as human beings nor to make them understand our institutions. This isolation of the foreigner, this segregation of different nationalities, leaves both American and immigrant in ignorance of each other. The strikes of foreigners have revealed how dangerous this mutual ignorance may be. Spaulding does not make mention of the psychological element which enters here, but it is hardly necessary to mention how important it is to recognize the psychological basis of race misunderstanding. It is the aim of Social Service to avoid strikes and antagonism by making use of psychological knowledge, by enabling the newcomer to gain the American point of view, and by implanting in him a motivation which will result in cooperation and not resistance. No one is more receptive to just and scientific handling than the immigrant.
Doubtless, the most varied activities of Social Service are carried on with reference to the child. Playgrounds, child labor regulations, vocational guidance, juvenile courts, and child caring work all make social betterment an aim by putting environmental factors into the child’s life which will result in improved volitional behavior when the child has become adult. When Social Service steps into a tangled situation and touches a child who is a trouble-maker at school and is bound headlong for the House of Detention; or a child who doesn’t get on in school and doesn’t hold his own at home; or an abused and neglected child; or a child leaving school to find work, it finds indispensable the services of the refined technique and experiRELATION OF PSYCHOLOGY TO SOCIAL SERVICE. 115 enced interpretation of that particular branch of Psychology called Clinical. By the functioning of the Psychological Clinic, Social Service may determine whether the child presents a problem of disordered motivation or deficiency of mental abilities: it may determine in which vocation or choice of vocations a child may win success: it may determine what measure of responsibility to put upon him. Likewise, a knowledge of why people behave as they do, dependent upon inherited instincts, acquired habits, and environment, is of great importance to one whose aim is to change the trend of that behavior in dealing with either pre-adolescent or adolescent children.
By the very nature of their subject-matters, Psychology and any form of Social Work or Study are connected. In the words of Professor Ellwood, “With the fuller knowledge of human nature and human society … it will be possible for humanity to control its own social progress.”
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