Psychological Diagnosis in Social Adjustment: Including an Annotated List of Tests, Questionnaires, and Rating Scales for the Study of Personality and Conduct

The four chapters included in this volume indicate the contributions that psychology can make to an adequate social program by using techniques for a comprehensive study of the individual. If our social and political organization is faulty, if there is social injustice, if there is unhappiness and misery in large sections of our population, these conditions are in part due to our ignorance of the underlying state of affairs, and the real nature of individuals. If an individual has, by constitution, certain weaknesses which prevent him from attaining the checks and controls demanded by the social situation, or if his home conditions and environment outside the home have bred in him habits and attitudes which make him a problem to society, these facts must be known before society can deal with such an individual properly. The methods by which such individable are now recognized and studied are quite inadequate. On the other hand, society makes use of only the crudest methods for detecting its potential leaders, and the social order suffers because social leaders are so tardily discovered, or as Dr. Butler has stated it, "midgets are placed in the seats of the mighty."

The day has passed when it can be assumed that each individual is wholly responsible for his own behavior. Every one is equipped by heredity with certain physical and mental resources, and every experience adds its quota to his habits and attitudes, even to his intentions, his ambitions,

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