Psychology and Industrial Efficiency | Page 3

In this sign experimental
psychology has conquered. The fundamental laws of the ideas and of
the attention, of the memory and of the will, of the feeling and of the
emotions, have been elaborated. Yet it slowly became evident that such
one-sidedness, however necessary it may have been at the beginning,
would make any practical application impossible. In practical life we
never have to do with what is common to all human beings, even when
we are to influence large masses; we have to deal with personalities
whose mental life is characterized by particular traits of nationality, or
race, or vocation, or sex, or age, or special interests, or other features
by which they differ from the average mind which the theoretical

psychologist may construct as a type. Still more frequently we have to
act with reference to smaller groups or to single individuals whose
mental physiognomy demands careful consideration. As long as
experimental psychology remained essentially a science of the mental
laws, common to all human beings, an adjustment to the practical
demands of daily life could hardly come in question. With such general
laws we could never have mastered the concrete situations of society,
because we should have had to leave out of view the fact that there are
gifted and ungifted, intelligent and stupid, sensitive and obtuse, quick
and slow, energetic and weak individuals.
But in recent years a complete change can be traced in our science.
Experiments which refer to these individual differences themselves
have been carried on by means of the psychological laboratory, at first
reluctantly and in tentative forms, but within the last ten years the
movement has made rapid progress. To-day we have a psychology of
individual variations from the point of view of the psychological
laboratory.[1] This development of schemes to compare the differences
between the individuals by the methods of experimental science was
after all the most important advance toward the practical application of
psychology. The study of the individual differences itself is not applied
psychology, but it is the presupposition without which applied
psychology would have remained a phantom.

II
THE DEMANDS OF PRACTICAL LIFE
While in this way the progress of psychology itself and the
development of the psychology of individual differences favored the
growth of applied psychology, there arose at the same time an
increasing demand in the midst of practical life. Especially the teachers
and the physicians, later the lawyers as well, looked for help from exact
psychology. The science of education and instruction had always had
some contact with the science of the mind, as the pedagogues could
never forget that the mental development of the child has to stand in the

centre of educational thought. For a long while pedagogy was still
leaning on a philosophical psychology, after that old-fashioned study of
the soul had been given up in psychological quarters. At last, in the
days of progressive experimental psychology, the time came when the
teachers under the pressure of their new needs began to inquire how far
the modern laboratory could aid them in the classroom. The
pedagogical psychology of memory, of attention, of will, and of
intellect was systematically worked up by men with practical school
interests. We may notice in the movement a slow but most important
shifting. At first the results of theoretical psychology were simply
transplanted into the pedagogical field. Experiments which were carried
on in the interest of pure theoretical science were made practical use of,
but their application remained a mere chance by-product. Only slowly
did the pedagogical problems themselves begin to determine the
experimental investigation. The methods of laboratory psychology
were applied for the solving of those problems which originated in the
school experience, and only when this point was reached could a truly
experimental pedagogy be built on a psychological foundation. We
stand in the midst of this vigorous and healthy movement, which has
had a stimulating effect on theoretical psychology itself.
We find a similar situation in the sphere of the physician. He could not
pass by the new science of the mind without instinctively feeling that
his medical diagnosis and therapy could be furthered in many
directions by the experimental method. Not only the psychiatrist and
nerve specialist, but in a certain sense every physician had made use of
a certain amount of psychology in his professional work. He had
always had to make clear to himself the mental experiences of the
patient, to study his pain sensations and his feelings of comfort, his
fears and his hopes, his perceptions and his volitions, and to a certain
degree he had always tried to influence the mental life of the patient, to
work on him by suggestion and to help him by stimulating his mind.
But as far as a real description and explanation of such