Psychology Aweigh: History of Clinical Psychology in the United States Navy, 1900-88

240 Pages·1990·59.761 MB·English

by  Frederick McGuire

Psychology
Aweigh!
A History of
Clinical Psychology
in the
United States Navy,
1900-1988
Frederick L. McGuire
Captain, MSC, USNR, Retired
A M E R I C A N P S Y C H O L O G I C A L A S S O C I A T I O N
WASHINGTON, DC
Psychology Aweigh! A History of Clinical Psychology in the United States Navy,
1900-1988, by F. L. McGuire
Copyright © 1990 American Psychological Association. All rights reserved.
CONTENTS
Foreword ............................................................. ix
Preface ............................................................... xi
Acknowledgments .................................................... xv
Prologue
1. The Beginnings of Clinical Psychology ............................. 3
The Evolution of Clinical Psychology
.
in the U S NQVY
2 . Before World War I ................................................ 11
3 . World War I ........................................................ 17
4 . Between the Wars ................................................... 31
5 . World War I1 ....................................................... 35
6 . Enter the Medical Service Corps .................................... 49
7 . The Korean War .................................................... 55
8 . The Vietnam Era .................................................... 61
9 . The Training Program at Bethesda .................................. 63
10. Women in Clinical Psychology and the Armed Forces .............. 65
11. The Chief Clinical Psychologists, 1944-1988 ...................... 71
12 . The Civilian Consultants ............................................ 73
Recruit Screening
and Evaluation
13 . Early Standards for Recruits ........................................ 77
14. The Introduction of Binet-Type Testing ............................. 83
15 . Recruit Screening in World War I .................................. 87
16 . Recruit Screening in World War I1 ................................. 97
17 . The Search for an Actuarial (Statistical) Approach to Screening .... 105
18 . The Marginal Recruit ............................................... 115
V
PSYCHOLOGY AWEIGH!
The Practice of Clinical Psychology
.
in the U S Navy-Then and Now
19. Introduction ....... ............................ ........... 121
20 . Administration and Management .................................... 123
21 . Direct Mental Health Services ...................................... 125
Hospitals and Clinics ............................................. 125
The Issue of Sexuality ....................... 132
Health Psychology ................................... 135
Alcohol and Drug Abuse ............................... 137
Crisis and Postdisaster Intervention ............................... 141
22 . Duty with the Operating Forces-Not Just in the Nav
But of the Navy ...................................... ........ 147
The U.S. Naval Academy ........................................ 147
The Fleet Marine Forces ......................................... 156
The Submarine Service ............... ....................... 165
The Naval Air Service ............................................ 171
The SERE (Survival. Evasion, Resistance. and
Escape) Program ............................................... 179
The SEALS (Sea-Air-Land Teams) .............................. 182
Forensic Psychology ............ .............................. 184
The Marine Security Battalion ....................... 186
............................................ 189
Epilogue
24 . The Personal World of a Navy Clinical Psychologist ............... 201
25 . The Future of Clinical Psychology in the U.S. Navy ............... 207
References ............................................................... 221
Appendixes and Indexes
Appendix 1 . Ranks in the U.S. Navy ................................... 235
Appendix 2 . Uniformed Navy Clinical Psychologists on Extended
Active Duty, Medical Service Corps. 1948-1988 ......... 231
Appendix 3 . Suggestions for the Management of Psychological Services
in the U.S. Navy .......................................... 241
Name and Author Index ................................................. 243
Subject Index ............................................................ 247
vi
CONTENTS
List of Tables
Table 1. Marine Corps Recruit Screening Tests, Binet-Type, 1915 ..... 85
Table 2. Comparison of Recruits’ Test Scores With Performance
Record, Marine Corps, 1915 .................................. 85
Table 3. Service Records of Follow-Up Group of Marine Corps
Recruits, 1915 ................................................. 86
Table 4. Comparison of Service Records of Suspect Group and
Normal Control Group, Navy Recruit Screening Program,
1941-1944 .................................................... 100
Table 5. Comparison of Psychiatric Discharge Rates of Recruits at
Three Naval Training Stations, 1943 .......................... 101
Table 6. Comparison of Intelligence Test Scores With Year-End
Academic Standing, Freshmen, U.S. Naval Academy,
1922- 1923 .................................................... 150
List of Figures
Figure 1. Navy Recruit Screening Card, Brief History, 1919 ........... 89
Figure 2. Navy Recruit Screening Form, Reverse Side of Preliminary
Psychiatric Test Sheet, List of “Character Descriptives,”
1919 .......................................................... 90
Figure 3. Navy Recruit Screening Form, Neurological Examination,
1919 .......................................................... 91
Figure 4. Navv Recruit Screening Card, Life Historv, 1917-1918 ...... 93
vii
FOREWORD
E
xcursions into little known chapters of the history of psychology have
afforded me great enjoyment during the 31 years that I have been teaching a
graduate seminar on this subject. Thus, it was with more than a little pleasure
that I read Fred McGuire’s chronicle of those developments in our history that
relate to the evolution of clinical psychology in the U.S. Navy.
It is most appropriate that the American Psychological Association is pub-
lishing this book about a subset of American psychologists just as the association
is preparing to celebrate the centennial of its founding, in 1992. For, as is clear
from McGuire’s lively account, which quotes liberally from documents of the
period, the history of clinical psychology in the U.S. Navy during the twentieth
century, in all its seemingly disparate facets, reflects the history of our country’s
clinical psychology more generally. Just as in recent years our universities,
industries, schools, clinical facilities, and other agencies recruited graduates of
our psychology departments whose advanced education included such subsets
of our discipline as human factors, statistics, and clinical, experimental, phys-
iological, social, and related areas of psychology, so also did the U.S. Navy
recruit their classmates who also had just completed such advanced training in
the same classrooms, laboratories, and practicum settings.
regard to the major focus of this book, that subset referred to as clinical
In
psychology, McGuire’s book illustrates changing attitudes toward clinical psy-
chology that prevailed not only in the Navy but also in civilian life. Specifically,
he chronicles the evolution of Navy clinical psychology from its roots in Titch-
ener’s turn-of-the-century brand of experimental psychology, to the introduction
of the Binet-Simon Scale in the Navy’s earliest efforts to improve mental and
psychological assessment, to the present high-level professional roles (in treat-
ment, assessment, intervention, research, and administration) being exercised
by today’s generation of Navy clinical psychologists, all of which roles are
similar to those engaged in by their civilian counterparts.
I particularly enjoyed reading McGuire’s book because 1 served in the Navy
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PSYCHOLOGY AWEIGH!
from 1943 to 1947 and thereafter in the U.S. Naval Ready Reserve until 1987.
Additionally, my PhD mentor (from 1948 to 1952) and lifelong friend was
William A. Hunt, an academician-clinical psychologist who served from 1940
to 1945 as the Navy’s first Chief of Clinical Psychology; he maintained his love
for that service until his death in 1986. I had thought that both of these experiences
provided me with fairly good firsthand knowledge of the history of clinical
psychology in the U.S. Navy from 1940 to the present. In addition, I have served
as the National Consultant in Clinical Psychology to the Surgeon General of the
U.S. Navy continuously since 1981, and I have taught our department’s History
of Psychology seminar for three decades. However, McGuire’s book was a
pleasure to read because it introduced me to much that I did not know about the
history of clinical psychology in the U.S. Navy.
Because it explores little-known territory, I believe that McGuire’s book will
be much appreciated by historians from several disciplines. Furthermore, I es-
pecially hope that the authors of our current books on the history of psychology
will take time to read it. If books comparable to this one on the Navy were
written on still other little-known chapters of our history (for example, psy-
chologists working in industry, public schools, prisons, other government ser-
vices, medical schools, and so forth), the content of our history of psychology
textbooks, most of which has changed little during the past half century, would
contain considerably more exciting material.
In a 1987 article in the American Psychologist, I argued that there is only a
single core of knowledge that differentiates the discipline of psychology from
the disciplines of mathematics, sociology, physics, English literature, and so
on, and that what differentiates one psychologist from another (for example, a
clinical versus an experimental versus a social psychologist) is the forum in
which that common, identical core of psychological knowledge is applied. I
believe that McGuire’s book provides good support for my thesis; namely, that
those clinical psychologists who served in the U.S. Navy during the past century
were applying in the naval setting the same pool of knowledge, called psy-
chology, that their civilian counterparts concurrently were applying in hospitals,
clinics, industry, and university settings.
D. MATARAZZO
JOSEPH
Professor and Chairman
Department of Medical Psychology
Oregon Health Sciences University
Past President, American Psychological Association
X
-
PREFACE
P
rior to the August 1986 annual meeting of the American Psychological
Association in Washington, DC, a Navy Psychology Day was held at Bethesda
Naval Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland. Attendees included a number of active-
duty psychologists, members of the Naval Reserve, representatives of the other
services, and the current clinical psychology internship class stationed at Be-
thesda. The program was chaired by Captain Frank A. Mullins, MSC, USN,
Specialty Advisor for Clinical Psychology to the Naval Medical Command, and
Dr. Melvin A. Gravitz, civilian Director of Psychology Training and Research
at Bethesda.
In addition to a program of distinguished speakers, a number of informal
discussions took place among the participants. As is common at such meetings,
one of the main topics of conversation was recalling the “good old days,” and
it became evident there existed a huge gap in our so-called corporate memory.
The collective experience of the senior clinical psychologists then on active duty
extended back less than 20 years, and the “memory bank” of many of the
important years of clinical psychology in the Navy now resides only with retired
or reserve personnel. Furthermore, the January 1986 death of William Hunt,
one of the first uniformed Navy clinical psychologists on active duty in World
War I1 and an ardent supporter of Navy psychology during his successful career
in civilian life, reminded us that these resources will not be available to us much
longer.
Because of poor documentation and the fact that much of their work was
buried in government publications, many of the unique contributions of clinical
psychologists in the Navy have gone relatively unnoticed. This state of affairs
has not been limited to the Navy. In 1953, the late Robert Watson, himself a
Navy clinical psychologist during World War and a distinguished professor
I1
of the history of psychology, noted that “clinical psychologists have been sur-
prisingly ahistorical. Very little thought has been given to, and less written
about, the origin and development of clinical psychology” (Watson, 1953). In
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PSYCHOLOGY AWEIGH!
1956 Hunt wrote, “Because of the relative tardiness of recognizing and defining
clinical psychology as a professional entity, much of its history is hidden else-
where in psychology” (Hunt, 1956). A search of the literature showed the
situation in 1987 to be relatively unchanged. Several books have been written
about clinical psychology, but with the exception of an excellent book by Reisman
(1976), the history has been relegated to an occasional chapter limited to a simple
listing of sequential events rather than an in-depth analysis. A history should be
written with a purpose in mind. In addition to simple documentation, it should
become a useful tool for management and training.
The original conception of this book was that one could not write of the history
of clinical psychology without also describing the history of its parent discipline:
experimental, or scientific, psychology. The author believes that clinical psy-
chology has never left its symbiotic relation with scientific psychology or its
adherence to the scientific method of inquiry as its primary tool. Furthermore,
it was deemed important that the younger psychologists and the nonpsychologists
who read this book understand and appreciate the historical base of clinical
psychology, including the contributions of such philosophers as Socrates (469-
399 B.c.), Plato (428-348 B.C.); Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), St. Augustine (354-
430), Leonard0 da Vinci (1452-1519), and Rene Descartes (1596-1650), as
well as the works of the early psychologists such as Gustave Fechner (1801-
1887), Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894), Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920),
and Sir Francis Galton (1822-191 1). It is disturbing to read recent publications
in which the writer has “reinvented the wheel” or cloaked ancient ideas in fancy
labels and offered them as being new or original.
However, to cover such a broad area proved to be an overly ambitious goal.
Not only is this historical base so vast as to require a separate volume, but it
was thought that this would distract from the primary focus of the book: the
accomplishments of clinical psychology within the U.S. Navy. As one reviewer
observed, “Those are two books, and you meant to write only one.” For readers
wishing to pursue this historical base without engaging in the tedious task of
searching for original sources, many of which are not written in English, there
are a number of secondary sources (Boring, 1929; 1950; Garfield, 1965; Korchin,
1976; Mora, 1967; Wolman, 1965, Zilboorg & Henry, 1941).
The usefulness of a history of clinical psychology in the U.S. Navy is no
different from that in any field of human endeavor. First, an individual cannot
be said to be well rounded in his or her field without a historical perspective.
To quote Boring (1929), “The gift of professional maturity comes only to the
psychologist who knows the history of the science. . . . A psychological so-
phistication that contains no component of historical orientation seems to me to
be no sophistication at all” (pp. x, vii). In addition, and perhaps just as important,
Navy psychologists have historically engaged in a wide variety of fascinating
activities that are sure to be of more than passing interest to all students of clinical
xii
PREFACE
psychology, and their contribution to the field should be memorialized. Finally,
clinical psychology in the U. S. Navy is on the verge of many significant changes
that will cause it to occupy an increasingly important role in the future. Planning
and implementing this future cannot be done with maximum efficiency without
appreciation of what has gone before.
This author has chosen to limit this book to the relation of clinical psychology
to the Navy and to focus further, although not exclusively, on the men and
women in uniform-the so-called “deployables. However, the reader should
”
know that a great deal of work relevant to the Navy took place among civilian
psychologists in the federal civil service attached to Navy installations. fact,
In
some of the latter group have been some of our best “sailors.” Work conducted
by the Army, especially during World War 1, is also included in this book
because it not only relates to psychology in the Navy but also established a
model for military psychology later followed by both services. Unfortunately,
the Navy’s participation in this model has been poorly documented, and the
work done by Army personnel is presented herein as part of the historical base
held in common by both services.
This history is based in part on accounts in the professional and official
literature. Of particular note are the volumes of the Naval Medical Bulletin, the
official in-house publication of the Navy Medical Department from 1907 through
1949, and its successor, the Armed Forces Medical Journal, and the usual array
of psychological journals and books. A variety of Navy documents also provided
a great deal of information; most of these now reside in government depositories
and installations.
Large amounts of written material exist concerning all aspects of the history
of the U.S. Navy but have not been catalogued or used. On numerous occasions
the author has heard naval historians observe that all too often the general attitude
of the Navy toward documentation of its own history has been to merely gather
and store voluminous amounts of material without processing it, apparently with
the attitude that should anyone care to write a history, the material is there. In
addition, and especially when compared with the U.S. Army, the Navy has been
slow in allotting financial resources to the documentation of its own history.
Given this combination of inadequate cataloging, poor retrieval capability, and
the lack of financial support, the result has been predictable. One naval historian
remarked, “This situation is an absolute scandal.”
The history of clinical psychology in the Navy during World War is rea-
I1
sonably well documented due to the fact that so many of the nearly 500 psy-
chologists of all types in Navy uniform were in a climate favorable to writing
about their military experiences while on active duty and following their return
to civilian life. However, since that time, what little has been written is scattered
and has never been organized to serve a historical purpose.
Retrieving this information meant obtaining ‘‘oral histories” by recording
...
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