PSYCHOTECHNICS

PSYCHOTECHNICS, a branch of psychology that studies the role of the "psychological factor" in various areas of human activity with the aim of its rationalization. The term "psychotechnics" was first applied by W. Stern in 1903 to denote psychology that develops questions concerning the influence on humans and seeks principles and means of this influence. The term P. was very soon established and gained wide circulation, but not in the narrow sense that Stern attributed to it. As a special direction in psychology, P. is characterized mainly by two features: 1) P. develops only those psychological problems that arise as a result of the direct refraction in psychology of certain practical demands; 2) P. develops specific research methods aimed mainly at identifying practically significant psychological features (the analytical channel of P.), at recognizing these features in different people (the experimental-diagnostic channel of P.), and at finding reliable criteria for the practical effectiveness of measures developed by P. (the control channel of P.). Applying mainly means of psychological analysis, experiment, and control, P. covers a subject broader than traditional psychology, constantly cooperating with representatives of other specialties (doctors, physiologists, engineers, economists, educators, etc.), because it must ultimately satisfy the needs of production, schools, clinics, the army, etc. In psychotechnics, questions about the criteria for the effectiveness of its research arise with exceptional acuteness. Hence a series of special issues built upon its main problematic area, such as methods for evaluating qualifications, accounting for productivity, measuring success, establishing mathematical indicators of the validity and reliability of psychotechnical tests, etc. History of P. The emergence of the first attempts at the psychological study of human labor activity in capitalist countries is closely connected with the general trends of capitalist rationalization, which is a characteristic product of the final stage of the capitalist economic system with extreme exacerbation of contradictions between the growth of productive forces and the class structure of society. P., which initially developed most in advanced capitalist countries, was called upon to deepen capitalist rationalization in the direction of accounting for and utilizing human resources (labor power) involved in the production process. Capitalist production uses for its purposes the psychology of labor as a science capable of revealing the psychological prerequisites for individual differences in professional fitness, reducing expenses for training the necessary qualified workers for production, and decreasing losses arising from the improper organization of work regimes and conditions, and the irrationality of the labor process. The naive-psychological views of the first researchers who studied the role of the "human factor" in labor activity found their expression in the completely uncritical transfer of measurement principles from exact sciences to the area of research into human psychological properties. From this originates the mechanistic trend in that section of P. which is devoted to the "measurement" of human abilities. This trend still strongly manifests itself in diagnostic P. The first more or less serious attempt to include the study of individual differences in the system of scientific knowledge are the works of Binet (France), Stern (Germany), Cattell (America), begun already at the end of the 19th century. In these works, however, all attention is concentrated on studying differences in the intellectual abilities of schoolchildren-children and adolescents. The establishment of the direct significance of psychological differences between people in relation to their labor activity is the merit of later works by Münsterberg. From 1908, psychotechnical institutions concerned with professional selection begin to appear. At the same time, from the very beginning, two types of institutions are outlined: 1) psychotechnical laboratories in enterprises, mainly concerned with evaluating the professional fitness of candidates for various professions; 2) vocational counseling bureaus serving mainly adolescents finishing school and being distributed along various professional channels. These two types of institutions arise and develop in parallel, reflecting in their existence the initial differentiation of tasks in professional selection. In terms that have already gained citizenship, this differentiation is expressed by the words "professional selection" (choosing suitable people for a specific profession) and "vocational counseling" (choosing suitable professions for an individual). - Further impetus to the development of P. was given by the imperialist war. On the one hand, the war immediately increased the demand for military professional selection psychotechnical laboratories, which carried out the selection of the most suitable candidates for such military specialties as pilots, radiotelephone operators, drivers, etc. On the other hand, wartime industry, having lost its main qualified cadres and finding itself faced with the need to use the labor of women, adolescents, as well as war invalids, mobilizes all means to reduce losses arising from the lack of qualified labor power. Soviet P. began its development in 1921, when for the first time a psychotechnical laboratory was created in the Central Institute of Labor (a few years before the creation of this laboratory in the Reflexological Institute of V.M. Bekhterev, a department of labor reflexology was organized, which had already included a number of psychotechnical questions in its program), which then moved to NKTud, and then to the Institute of Labor Protection. From 1921, a period of intensive growth of Soviet P. begins. Over several years, many psychotechnical institutions arise in different cities of the USSR. In the history of Soviet P., three periods can be conditionally outlined: the first (1921-23) is characterized by the application in our conditions of the methods of P. of capitalist countries without due critical evaluation. This is the period of mastering the technique of psychotechnical research of capitalist countries and accumulating initial experience. -The second period (1924-30) is characterized by searches for specific tasks of P. in application to socialist production, by an attempt to deepen the methodological means of Soviet P. both in the field of psychological analysis of professions (creation of the labor method for studying professions) and in the field of experimental research of professional fitness, work capacity, fatigue and exercise, etc. During this period, Soviet psychotechnicians raise a number of theoretical questions (variability of professionally important psychological properties, prognostic value of tests, principles of psychological classification of professions, etc.), the psychotechnical problematic noticeably expands: along with work in the field of professional selection, work is begun on the study of psychological symptoms of fatigue in connection with the task of rationalizing the work regime, the role of the "personal factor" in traumatism and accident rates is studied, questions of applied psychology are developed mainly along the line of safety propaganda, the principles of vocational training are studied, work is carried out on the rationalization of working conditions and the labor process. Together with the quantitative growth of psychotechnical laboratories, their differentiation process proceeds along the lines of industry, transport, the army, school, clinic. Although the work of all the numerous and spontaneously grown psychotechnical institutions in this period is mainly empirical in nature and the influence of bourgeois P. is still strong, this period is also marked by a number of achievements of Soviet P. These achievements are noted in the resolution of the I All-Union Congress of P. and physiology of labor (Leningrad, 1931). Basically, they come down to the following: "...The formation of professional graphy as a special methodical task of P.; ...development of methods of professional graphy, in particular the labor method; distinction of the character that should be given to professional grams depending on the goals of studying professions, in particular the introduction of the professional graphic principle into the study of production fatigue; a number of studies of exercise; formulation of the specific trainability of professionally important features, ...struggle with mechanism in the study of fatigue; ...indications of the incorrectness of the stable concept of optimum productivity and of the dependence of the fatiguing nature of labor not only on its severity but also on the type of stimulation... Psychotechnicians have carried out many works along the line of rationalization and struggle with fatigue, rationalization of the workplace, regime of the workday. Psychotechnicians participated with their work in such major reorganizations of labor in our enterprises as the introduction of the seven-hour workday, intensification of the workday in the textile industry, introduction of female labor in metal industry, in the professions of urban transport, etc. ..." "In the field of professional selection, psychotechnicians have done more than representatives of other specialties... In all work on professional selection, P. plays the leading role."

This work is conducted according to three branched systems: in transportation laboratories and stations; ...in institutions of departments working on vocational selection in FZU (Factory Apprentice Schools); ...in the system of military psycho-physiological laboratories. Psychotechnical assessment of suitability in industry, in the army and in transportation has long since demonstrated its practical usefulness even in its current imperfect form" (see the journal "Psychotechnics and Labor Psychophysiology", Nos. 4-6, 1931, p. 375). Only from 1930 does the third turning point begin in the development of our Psychotechnics. During this period, the starting points of psychotechnical work are reconsidered in relation to the tasks of vocational selection (in connection with the tasks of accelerating the pace and promotion to higher qualifications, utilization), rationalization of working conditions, the struggle with fatigue, with industrial traumatism and accident rates. Questions are posed in a new way regarding the connection of Psychotechnics with the tasks of training and education, and a path is outlined for the direct approximation of Psychotechnics to the tasks of socialist construction. This period is also marked by the beginning of planning psychotechnical work. On the threshold of the second five-year plan, Psychotechnics places greater emphasis on the development of problems of labor organization, attempts to investigate essential questions of the theory and practice of technical norming (criteria for determining the qualification of work, principles of production instruction, psycho-physiological foundations for constructing a work regime, reconstruction of labor processes, etc.), sharpens its attention on questions of production training, deepens the principles and methods of psychological analysis of professions, charts paths for vocational guidance in schools, etc. A whole series of new positive tasks set before Psychotechnics by the second five-year plan required the decisive overcoming of errors and shortcomings in the entire previous history of psychotechnics. In the resolutions of the First All-Union Psychotechnical Congress, these errors were noted and sufficiently fully exposed. "...In the field of Psychotechnics and labor physiology there is a marked lag of theory and practice, and of practice from the needs of socialist construction, as well as a number of theoretical errors which are a reflection of class-hostile influences." These errors found their expression in the "uncritical application by certain representatives of Soviet Psychotechnics of tests borrowed from bourgeois authors" (hence the distortion of the class line in vocational selection, the great-power distortion of national policy, e.g., in the work of Baranovsky on national differences in suitability for particular professions), in the "hypostatization" of unchanging abilities and constitutionally determined giftedness, in "borrowing individual positions from the idealistic system of personalism of Stern without sufficient criticism of his entire system as a whole" (Spielrein), in the "underestimation of socio-genic factors in psychotechnical differentiation", in "operating with mathematical quantities without preliminary qualitative and psychological analysis of the material being studied", in the denial or underestimation of the influence of heredity on differences between people, in attributing these differences only to "the influence of the environment", in ignoring the influence of concrete-historical conditions on the emergence and development of professions, in underestimating the differences in the nature of professional labor in capitalist countries and in the USSR, in the tendency toward a narrow biological interpretation of labor, in the orientation toward studying only the negative influences of labor on the organism, in the isolation of tasks of labor protection from questions of labor organization and in the actual transformation of labor protection into protection from labor (Kaplun). The active involvement of Soviet Psychotechnics in the struggle for increasing labor productivity during the second five-year plan determines its specific features, sharply different from capitalist Psychotechnics. The coordinated work of the psychotechnician and the teacher, economist, engineer, foreman, worker, physiologist, clinician, and physician creates the prerequisites for the comprehensive study of human labor activity and eliminates the inevitable sources of errors and distortions inherent in a narrowly specialized approach to complex phenomena. This is the sharply distinctive feature of Soviet Psychotechnics, which carries out its work according to a known plan, relying on the analysis of the national economic plan as a whole. The problematic field of Psychotechnics. The problems of Psychotechnics arise from the nature of its participation in the development of the following practical tasks: 1) vocational selection and vocational counseling for adults and adolescents, 2) preparation and training of adolescents and adults, 3) rationalization of working conditions and the labor process, 4) participation in propaganda work (e.g., propaganda of safety). Refracting all these tasks, Psychotechnics builds its research on certain psychological concepts. These concepts reflect the very method by which Psychotechnics poses individual problems. Thus, the task of vocational selection is based on the assumption of the existence of a) differential-psychological features of labor in all the diversity of its concrete forms, on the one hand, and b) individual differences between people on the other. Hence—the striving of Psychotechnics to reveal through psychological analysis the specificity of abilities activated by various types of labor and to study the concrete psychological features of man in terms of their intervariability, i.e., interindividual differences. In the system of capitalist vocational selection (whether in the form of negative selection or in the form of vocational counseling), the differential-psychological foundations of the very idea of selection are distorted in accordance with the bourgeois-class character of capitalist Psychotechnics. These distortions are expressed either in purely primitive views on the causes of variability in people's mental properties, or in ignoring the historical character of labor, or in the biologization of all human properties, including his social attitude, work orientation, etc., or in the fetishization of measurement-mathematical means for diagnosing abilities—in the whole, in the distortion of the actual connections between the psyche and human labor activity. In the system of Soviet Psychotechnics, the tasks of vocational selection and vocational counseling are considered as an integral part of the work on the preparation, formation, promotion, and distribution of cadres. Hence—the close connection with labor and education agencies, with the school, with the tasks of polytechnical education, the emphasis on the educational character of vocational guidance work, the careful accounting of dynamic tendencies in the growth and development of professional qualification, the inseparability of the entire system of vocational counseling measures at all stages and phases of vocational counseling, starting from work conducted in the school itself, proceeding to the distribution of school-leaving adolescents, going further to the staffing of special schools (FZU and others), and finally entering production with questions of intra-shop distribution of adult workers, utilization of disabled labor, etc. Under the conditions of the USSR, the sharp opposition between vocational selection and vocational counseling—these two forms of vocational selection—turns out to be inexpedient. Both forms are subject to our system of planned measures for the distribution and placement of the labor force. Therefore, all work in this field represents a sequential chain of tasks with the starting point in the school and the concluding stage in production. Depending on the served contingents and the nature of the tasks facing the agencies for staffing, distribution, and placement of the labor force, the role of Psychotechnics in vocational selection changes. In our conditions, the functions of preparation and the functions of placement of cadres turn out to be completely inseparable. In connection with the general tasks of planning the preparation and placement of cadres, the planning of psychotechnical work at each stage of the preparation and placement of qualified workers also becomes mandatory. Psychotechnics in the seven-year or nine-year school covers primarily the tasks of professional enlightenment and assistance to students in their professional self-determination. As it transitions to serving students of FZU and adult workers, Psychotechnics narrows the object of its work and at the same time sharpens its attention on individual special questions of psychotechnical work. Thus, for example, the development of refined instrumental methods for testing professionally important qualities acquires particular importance when serving contingents of both adolescents and adults being directed to specific professions. Likewise, an in-depth psychological analysis of some specific profession with the most precise possible determination of its specific requirements becomes an essential stage of psychotechnical work where the tasks of vocational selection acquire particularly acute importance (selection for professions of pilot, driver, railroad engineer, etc.). The task of rationalizing the preparation of cadres is carried out along the lines of changing the content and methods of production training. Psychotechnics relies in this on the psychological principles of learning. If in works on vocational selection Psychotechnics is guided by a differential-psychological concept and considers labor from the point of view of the specificity of its requirements for the psyche, then in questions of training and preparation the guiding psychological idea of psychotechnical research is the idea of the variability of psychological properties in the process of formation, growth, and development of professional skills and qualifications.

And although the question of individual differences is not resolved here (it occupies a definite place in connection with the individualization of pedagogical influences), in the main one must take into account the regularities of development and the laws of exercise. In the area of intervention of Psychotechnics in the problems of polytechnical education in connection with the study of the comparative polytechnical value of various types of labor, Psychotechnics is guided by the concept of labor as a factor of development and attempts to concretely find those conditions under which various types of labor, when included in the system of polytechnical education, could acquire maximum polytechnical value. In terms of personnel training tasks, Psychotechnics participates in the compilation of profiles and qualification characteristics of professions and specializations, suggesting rational changes in the programs and methods of training specialists. This work is conducted in the closest contact with educators. Finally, in individual cases, where analysis of the profession makes it possible to identify a direct connection between the development of professional skills and changes in elementary psychological functions (for example, color discrimination in steelworkers) or complex psychological processes (for example, coordination of visual-motor acts in production situations among machine drivers), psychotechnics uses methods of 'psychotraining' with the aim of accelerating the development of professional skills and abilities. Both the problems of selection and training create an acute need for the development of the problem of exercise. The tasks of rationalizing working conditions and the labor process are refracted in Psychotechnics in two directions: a) taking into account the influence of various working conditions on the psyche, b) constructing rational working conditions with the aim of bringing them into the greatest correspondence with psycho-physiological requirements. Practical measures resulting from this type of work are expressed in the rationalization of the workplace, labor tools, work regime, etc. The basic idea underlying these studies is that every labor process, insofar as it has duration in time, inevitably entails a certain fluctuation of the psychological functions activated by this process. Objectively, this is expressed in fluctuations in productivity and quality of work, depending on fluctuations in work capacity. The nature of this fluctuation is determined, all other conditions being equal, by the specific features of the particular labor and the method of its organization. One of the essential practical tasks of labor rationalization, resulting from the study of this fluctuation, is the regulation of the labor process in time (through the construction of a certain system of alternating periods of work and periods of rest). This is briefly designated as the rationalization of the work regime. For a long time, Psychotechnics solved this task by comparing various variants of the work regime and evaluating their psycho-physiological and production efficiency using indicators of the decline of psychological functions as symptoms of fatigue. By this method, Psychotechnics attempted to draw conclusions about the most expedient variations of working conditions. In this case, the methodological techniques by which Psychotechnics established changes in psychological functions over time were usually special tasks (tests) designed to assess the state of the most labile and sensitive to the influence of prolonged work functions. Hence the attempts, through preliminary analysis of the profession, to establish the possible range of these functions, outline early symptoms of fluctuations in work capacity affecting the course of productivity and quality of labor, and find ways to diagnose them in production conditions. Soviet Psychotechnics has the merit of having managed to significantly expand the circle of methods by which it is possible to evaluate early symptoms of fatigue. Recently, Psychotechnics approaches the problems of the study of fatigue and work capacity from another side. Psychotechnics strives to a greater extent to rely on the analysis of the dynamics of production indicators (productivity, defects) within the framework of working time. By this method, the causes of fluctuations in work capacity lying in the nature of the labor process itself, in its difficulty, specific complexity, ratio of automated and non-automated moments, tension of attention, etc., are revealed. Under the term 'applied Psychotechnics' is usually meant the branch of Psychotechnics that seeks to psychologically substantiate various external influences capable of affecting the perception, attention, judgment, etc., of a person or group of people and prompting them to a specific action. A typical example of psychotechnical work in capitalist countries in this direction is work on the psychology of advertising. The study of the most typical features of attention, taste, perception, etc., of the population group to which a certain range of applied measures are directed constitutes the initial premise of applied Psychotechnics. Here, ordinary experiments (mainly exposing apparatuses-tachistoscopes and similar ones) are used, which more or less superficially reproduce one of the traditional methods of experimental psychology, but give some results applicable to mass influence. Among the means developed by applied Psychotechnics, an important place is occupied by safety labor posters. The concentration of psychotechnicians' attention on safety labor posters is explained by the proven practical effectiveness of this type of means in the fight against industrial injuries and accidents. However, the question of the type of posters, their content and form requires specific study. Individual psychotechnical institutions dealing with this problem detail the characteristics of the poster and study the comparative applied effect of various variations of these characteristics on the viewer. So far, such features of the poster as the combination of colors on it, inscriptions, and its emotional coloring (a terrifying poster, a comic poster, etc.) have been most studied. Psychotechnics and medicine. The connection of Psychotechnics with medicine has long been established. In the 'Foundations of Psychotechnics,' Münsterberg devotes a special chapter called 'Health' to the consideration of related problems. Since Münsterberg's time, work in medical Psychotechnics has developed in various directions, but it is hardly legitimate to attribute all forms of the psychologist's participation in preventive work, in diagnosis, in physiotherapy, in psychotherapy, in psychoanalysis, in eugenics to purely psychotechnical research, as Münsterberg does. From the multitude of partly conceivable, partly actually existing paths of application of Psychotechnics to medicine, the most essential and typical should be singled out. First of all, one can consider typical the psychotechnical work on studying the influence of a particular disease on psychological functions and on the nature of their shifts. For Psychotechnics, the orientation is characteristic of analyzing these shifts as an additional to other medical data symptom-complex of changes in work capacity or state of work capacity. Practically and organizationally, this line of psychotechnical work finds its expression in the joint work of specialist physicians and psychotechnicians in institutions of social insurance and corresponding clinics, if one does not count special research institutes (for example, institutes for the study of the labor of the disabled). The strengthening of the psychotherapeutic trend in Soviet psychiatry and in particular the sharpening of attention to the problems of labor therapy create prerequisites for bringing Psychotechnics closer to the psychiatric clinic along this line. But along with helping physicians in determining the psychological status of the patient, Psychotechnics reveals its participation in medical work through the setting up of special control-psychological studies, which should supplement with new data the material on the effectiveness of one or another method of treatment. Where a new method of treatment (gravidan, histolyzotherapy, etc.) needs objective proof of its significance, there arises a need for a comprehensive account of the changes occurring in the patient's body at various stages of treatment and upon its completion. In these cases, Psychotechnics is called upon to develop special methods for assessing changes in those psychological functions whose disruption is considered a consequence of a particular disease and on the restoration of which the given method of treatment is calculated. There is no need to point out that in all such cases psychotechnical data play the role of supplementary materials to the main indicators of medical control. Finally, one more direction of Psychotechnics' participation in medical work should be noted. The question is about the use of psychotechnical methods less as diagnostic means (compilation of the psychological status), and even less as control means (control of shifts and changes in the psyche in connection with the influence of certain therapeutic means), but rather as a means for restoring impaired functions. This direction received wide distribution in Germany (Poppelreuter and others) in connection with the tasks of adapting war invalids to labor activity. It was expressed in the development of special methods of restorative exercise (Restitutionsubung).

The idea of artificial development of psychological functions through special exercises, which finds partial application in pedagogical psychotechnics, is also reflected in medical psychotechnics in the form of 'psychotraining' as a therapeutic and restorative means for diseased disorders. Most often, one deals here either with sensory and motor functions subject to restoration, or with the use of the laws of exercise in relation to non-activated organs (e.g., the left hand), or with adaptation to work through compensatory mechanisms and functions. In the USSR, joint work by physicians and psychotechnicians is carried out in a number of institutions. It acquires particular importance where comprehensive individual research of a person is conducted to draw conclusions about the work capabilities of the subject being examined. The closest contact has been found in the work of psychotechnicians and psychoneurologists-psychohygienists. In America, psychiatric-psychotechnical service of enterprises occupies a significant place (special works on this question belong to Anderson and M. Viteles). Organizational forms of psychotechnical work in capitalist countries and in the USSR. The intensive growth of various psychotechnical institutions in almost all European countries and in America created the prerequisites for the organizational formalization of psychotechnical work. In the past years (1920-33), 7 international psychotechnical congresses were held. As early as the first three conferences (in Geneva in 1920, in Brussels in 1921, in Milan in 1922), certain theoretical questions were raised, dictated by the need to critically process the vast material of various research conducted in a number of countries. However, at these congresses, delegates from those countries where psychotechnical work had received the greatest development (in particular the USA) were not yet represented in sufficient numbers, and the accounting of experience turned out to be far from complete. The attention of these congresses was concentrated mainly on mutual information, exchange of experience, and the theoretical side of the problem of professional selection (questions of giftedness), in particular on questions of testology (the so-called science of tests, with the help of which psychotechnical tests are mainly conducted). But already at the 4th international psychotechnical conference (in Paris in 1927), delegates from almost all countries (including from the USSR and the USA) were represented, and the range of questions subjected to discussion at this congress noticeably expanded. Here for the first time reports were presented on the criteria for the prognostic value of psychotechnical tests in connection with the trainability of psychological functions. Questions of the application of variation statistics to psychotechnics were also considered in a fundamental aspect. Questions about the connection of psychotechnics with related borderline areas were touched upon, the question was raised about the possibility of using psychotechnical methods to investigate not only the formal properties of personality, but also the peculiarities of character, temperament, and a whole series of others. As a result of the work of this congress, the International Psychotechnical Association was created, within which a number of special permanent commissions were выделены (allocated) for working on particularly important questions. Thus, a commission on psychotechnical terminology was created, a commission on the role of psychotechnics in the fight against traumatism and accident rates, a commission on the study of psychological factors of labor productivity, a testological commission, and others. At the 4th international psychotechnical conference (Paris, 1927), the statute of the International Psychotechnical Association was prepared, and at the 5th (Utrecht, 1928) it was approved. The chairman of this association is as a rule a representative of the country in which the next international conference is planned to be convened. A number of commissions have been created under the association to unite international initiatives in the area of the most pressing tasks of psychotechnics. Thus, under the association work: a) a commission on psychotechnical terminology, b) on the study of traumatism and accident rates, c) on the study of the influence of the 'human factor' on labor productivity, d) a commission on collecting and studying tests used in psychotechnics, e) a commission on the study of the influence of 'environmental factors'.

Subsequent congresses (5th in Utrecht in 1928, 6th in Barcelona in 1930, 7th in Moscow in 1931) conducted their work more systematically and included in the agenda questions prepared in advance, preparing them through so-called symposia. Thus, in Utrecht there were three main groups of symposium reports representing the views of the largest psychotechnical institutions on pre-determined questions, namely: 1) the question of the trainability and educability of psychological functions, 2) on the study of the characterological peculiarities of personality, 3) on the role of the personal factor in traumatism and accident rates. In Barcelona, two symposium questions were raised: 1) on statistical criteria for the reliability of psychotechnical tests, 2) on methods for studying industrial fatigue. In Moscow, three questions were included in the order of business of the congress, also prepared through symposia by representatives from a number of countries: 1) theoretical foundations of psychotechnics (from the side of Soviet psychotechnicians, the report on this topic revealed the class content of psychotechnics and was particularly sharp in its criticism of bourgeois tendencies in psychotechnics of capitalist countries), 2) problems of the psychology of professions, 3) the limits of application of mathematical methods in relation to psychotechnics. In a number of countries, internal associations of psychotechnicians have also been created, regulating in one way or another the activity of numerous institutes and laboratories. Thus, in England there are: 'Industrial Fatigue Research Board' and 'National Institute of Industrial Psychology' - institutions of the type of research institutes, but at the same time performing a number of public functions and subsidized partly by the state, partly by individual enterprises; in Germany - the union of German practical psychologists V.D.P.R.; similar institutions have been created in a number of other countries. In the USSR, the All-Russian Psychotechnical Society has been functioning since 1927. Since 1931, the society becomes all-union. In a number of cities, departments of the society are created (Leningrad, Kharkov, Baku, Tashkent, Kazan, Sverdlovsk, etc.). In January 1933, the People's Commissariat of Labor of the USSR approved a new statute of the society. The society and its departments unite in fact all psychotechnicians of the USSR, stimulate their work along the line of involving them in the development of the most pressing questions of socialist construction, generalize the accumulated experience and direct psychotechnical thought towards the struggle against bourgeois influences in psychotechnics, the assimilation of Marxist-Leninist methodology and its penetration throughout psychotechnical practice. Under the society, a number of special sectors have been created to generalize experience and direct research work in individual areas of psychotechnical work (methodological-planning sector, sector on professional selection, on industrial traumatism and accident rates, personnel sector, etc.). The main personnel of psychotechnicians are trained in psychotechnical or related departments of higher educational institutions, in special courses (from 2 years to 1/2 year - depending on the qualification being prepared) and from specialists of related fields (physiologists, physicians, pedagogues, economists). A psychotechnical department providing higher education training for psychotechnicians exists in Leningrad at the Herzen Pedagogical Institute. Under the department there is the first and only department of psychotechnics in the USSR. In the largest scientific research institutes, postgraduate studies have been introduced.

The largest institutions conducting work in psychotechnics in the USSR and under the jurisdiction of the People's Commissariat of Labor, People's Commissariat of Health, People's Commissariat of Communications are: the Institute of Health Improvement, Organization and Economy of Labor (former Institute of Labor Protection) in Moscow; it has a psychotechnical department and a number of psychotechnical groups working by branches of industry (metallurgy, machine building, chemical industry, agriculture, etc.). At the same institute, the central methodological laboratory for professional selection and vocational counseling operates, subordinate at the same time to the interdepartmental council on professional selection under the People's Commissariat of Labor of the USSR. Similar institutes exist in Leningrad, Sverdlovsk, Kharkov, Rostov, Kazan, Minsk, etc. The Labor Institute on Transport - in Moscow with corresponding branches in a number of cities (Sverdlovsk, Leningrad, Rostov, etc.) and with its own peripheral psychotechnical stations; the Moscow Municipal Transport Institute, which provides psychotechnical service for the main driving professions of urban and road transport, a similar institute in Leningrad and a number of psychotechnical laboratories at the bodies regulating urban traffic in many cities; the Obukh Institute, which has one of the oldest and strongest psychotechnical institutions (Moscow), the Institute of Pedology, Psychology and Psychotechnics, which has recently concentrated on the problems of school psychotechnics and has the largest postgraduate studies, and a whole series of others. As of 1933, in the USSR there are over a hundred psychotechnical institutions and up to a thousand psychotechnicians of various qualifications. The society has developed a project for the organization of a psychotechnical higher educational institution and correspondence courses in psychotechnics.

S. Gellershtein. Psychophysiology of Military Labor. Work in the psychophysiology of labor constitutes one of the essential elements in the work of a military physician. When properly organized, it can provide him with significant help in resolving the tasks before him. All of the physician's work is subordinated to one task—the task of strengthening the unit and improving its combat qualities. In this regard, questions such as the rationalization of labor and training of Red Army soldiers are of very significant importance, and their proper resolution is by no means insignificant in ensuring combat readiness. The growing mechanization and motorization of our army further highlights the role of the physician as a labor rationalizer, making his participation in training and the like even more necessary and valuable. The introduction into the army of a multitude of various machines and specialties requires the physician's assistance in assigning recruits to these specialties. Psychophysiology of labor is precisely the field of knowledge that develops questions of selection and assignment, questions of training and rationalization of working conditions. The main objective of labor psychophysiology in this context is to place each person in the position most corresponding to their psycho-physiological characteristics, thereby ensuring, on the other hand, that each specialty has the most suitable workers. The best resolution of this task will maximize the efficiency of each worker. Rationalization of working conditions, introduction of the most rational work regimen, elimination of such aspects in working conditions that may adversely affect the worker's body—all of this will also lead to an increase in labor productivity. A particular feature of psychophysiological work in the army is that all of it must be adapted to the conditions of combat, while the development of all questions is carried out in peacetime conditions. This creates additional difficulties in the work and requires the utilization of all factors that can bring us closer to combat conditions. Therefore, special attention must be paid to work in camp conditions and during maneuvers. Psychophysiological work in the Red Army has a short history—its beginning dates to the end of 1925. The main attention of psychophysiologists was devoted to developing psychophysiological methods for staffing military schools and for evaluating conscripted recruits. In addition, considerable attention was given to studying the effects of various types of military labor on the human organism. However, although military labor psychophysiology, to a greater extent than general labor physiology, sought to serve the demands of practice, there was still a great deal of abstraction, a significant gap between its work and the needs of the army. This explains why, despite the fairly large number of workers and the rather long period of work, its practical results proved to be completely insufficient. The insufficiency of these results becomes particularly noticeable when compared with the enormous tasks facing military labor psychophysiology. In the Red Army, as nowhere else, there are favorable conditions for psychophysiological work—the presence of a clear military organization, a homogeneous collective, centrally managed and easily regulated—all of this creates the full possibility for carrying out work and implementing its results in practice. Military labor psychophysiology was characterized by the same distortions of theory as the entire theoretical front. Mechanicism, which denied the specificity of man, compared him to a machine and saw nothing but a machine in him, developed particularly significantly. This led to the approach of studying man as a machine exclusively by the methods of physics and chemistry, to reducing complex phenomena to the simplest, and to reducing consciousness, mental activity to conditioned reflexes, replacing them with the latter. But at the same time, it also reflected the errors of Menshevist idealism. Its characteristic separation of theory from practice, denial of partisanship in science, the break between the social and biological, failure to understand the role of the social when overestimating the role of the biological in man (which the mechanists were also guilty of)—all of this flourished in military labor psychophysiology. As a result of the work of the entire first stage of military labor psychophysiology (up to 1931), we have primarily the development of questions of march—the optimal ratio of movement and halts, optimal rhythm and length of step, marching speed, drinking regimen, the most rational type of a soldier's equipment, etc. The overwhelming majority of these works, however, had no practical value. Starting from 1931, the basic principles of psychophysiological work in the Red Army were radically changed. They were based on the understanding of man as a 'complex of social relations,' as a product of labor, in the process of his development from the ape. This assessment of the essence of man should be understood in such a way that the social in him constitutes an inseparable part of his essence, that one cannot imagine man apart from his social essence. Human physiology is specific, qualitatively unique, compared to animal physiology. Therefore, it is erroneous to interpret processes occurring in the human organism exclusively from the standpoint of the nature of these processes in animals. Man possesses consciousness, which animals do not. Consciousness is an internal state of highly organized matter. Consciousness, thinking are products of the human brain. But this by no means follows that in order to understand processes occurring in consciousness, it is sufficient to understand the mechanism of processes taking place in the brain. For example, to what extent can the method of conditioned reflexes help us resolve questions arising in the study of the higher nervous activity of man, i.e., his consciousness. Of course, all changes in the state of consciousness correspond to certain processes in the brain. But it is just as certain that applying the mechanism of conditioned reflexes of the dog to explain these processes is clearly insufficient, since the dog's brain does not have the capacity for such processes. Therefore, any attempt to do so will result not in clarification of the problems, but in their distortion and will lead us far from the truth. The basic prerequisite for the correct organization of the study of man is thus the correct methodological approach. The human brain is not the same as a dog's brain; it is much more complex, and it became so complex as a result of human social development. That is why we cannot disregard social factors when we approach the study of man. This is especially important when we try to approach the study of man from the standpoint of his labor activity. The content of this activity, its direction, is social. Therefore, we must necessarily take this aspect into account when carrying out work in labor psychophysiology. Along with this, a decisive turn was made toward ensuring the unity of theory and practice. The guiding principle for military psychophysiology became the desire to organize all its work in such a way as to maximally ensure the resolution of the most pressing tasks in building the Red Army, to join in the general work of increasing its combat power, to become a necessary element of this general work. Its main task, labor psychophysiology now sees, is to keep pace with the general construction of the army. The updating of the content of its work has led to the fact that we already have a number of significant achievements to its credit. First of all, this should include the significant expansion of the subject matter itself. In addition to work on staffing and rationalization of labor, it has included within its sphere of competence such questions as questions of training, nutrition, psychohygiene, combating accidents, questions of physical training, marksmanship training, etc. Despite the novelty of these questions for labor psychophysiology in general and military in particular, we already have practical achievements in a number of them. Thus, systems have been developed for training a fire team in artillery, a tank driver, a Morse operator—systems of training that significantly rationalize and improve them. In the area of marksmanship training, methodologies have been developed for researching the shooter to determine the causes of unsuccessful shooting, which allow us to outline specific ways to correct his shortcomings. This methodology can significantly improve the quality of marksmanship training in our units. Similarly, in the area of physical training, the development of special exercises, corrective and preparatory for special work and corresponding to the characteristics of various branches of the troops, significantly improves the system of training units. In questions of nutrition, before us stands the task of scientifically substantiating nutritional norms for all branches of troops, ensuring nutrition appropriate to the characteristics of each branch, both in terms of quantity and composition of the ration, and in terms of regimen and organization of nutrition. At present, such a ration has already been created for mechanized units.

In the future, along with the creation of rations for other branches of the military, the task of differentiating rations in accordance with the climatic features of various regions of our Union arises. The developed system of work by the psychophysiologist should provide substantial assistance in reducing accident rates through the specification of measures based on a concrete analysis of working conditions and the characteristics of individual drivers. One of the most serious tasks—the task of assistance in the staffing of units and the selection of candidates for main specialties—is now posed in a new way. Until recently, psychotechnical methods were not yet able to meet this need. Its main drawback was that it did not consider the personality as a whole, but took its individual aspects and properties in isolation from each other. It was built not on the basis of a thorough psychophysiological analysis of a given specialty, a professional profile, and the development of a research methodology based on it, but on the basis of the empirical selection of individual human properties necessary for one or another type of work. But it turned out that for any work, almost the same properties are needed—attention, resourcefulness, speed of reaction, etc. Thus, all specificity of different specialties disappeared. At the same time, it was not taken into account that the same property, for example, attention, has completely different characteristics; one thing is the attention required by a technician when repairing, another is for a scout, a third is when solving a mathematical problem, etc. Attention should be tested in accordance with the characteristics of that specialty for which a candidate is being selected. A professional profile, which is a detailed psychophysiological characteristic of a given profession, giving along with a description of the profession also a characterization of the requirements that this profession imposes on the human personality—makes it possible to identify the specific differences between one specialty and another and to build a system of psychotechnical selection on this difference. At present, work is being carried out on the systematic profiling of the main specialties of various branches of the military. For a number of specialties, such as pilot, driver, radio operator, some specialists of the naval fleet, artillery, such professional profiles already exist. If previously there was one system of psychotechnical tests for different branches of the military, then in PSYCHOTECHNICS 84 at present we are setting the task of developing a differentiated system for different branches of the military, which would allow for the classification of conscript contingents by main branches of the military and the selection within these branches of candidates for main specialties. At present, there already exists a methodology for staffing mechanized units, selecting driving personnel, a methodology for staffing schools of mechanized, flying and general troops, and for selecting candidates for regimental schools. The main difference in psychophysiological work at present is that it is conducted for the main branches of the military, covering all aspects related to one or another branch of the military. The issues concerning rifle mechanized units and aviation are developed much better than others. In the latter case, the participation of psychophysiology in the development of such issues as night and high-altitude flights proved to be very fruitful. For carrying out psychophysiological work in the Red Army, there is a network of laboratories specialized by branches of the military. This work is headed in methodological and methodological terms by the Scientific Research and Testing Sanitary Institute of the Red Army. D. Shatenshtein.