Mass-producing the individual: Mary C. Jarrett, Elmer E. Southard, and the industrial origins of psychiatric social work

Bulletin of the History of Medicine

Volumn 79, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 430-458

  Gabriel, Joseph M ^a  

^a RUTGERS UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Individualization; Industrial relations; Jarrett, Mary C.; Personnel management; Psychiatric social work; Psychiatry; Social work; Southard, Elmer E.

Indexed keywords

EID: 27144495799     PISSN: 00075140     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/bhm.2005.0098     Document Type: Review

References (162)

1. Mary C. Jarrett, "The Mental Hygiene of Industry," Ment. Hygiene, 1920, 4: 867-84, quote on p. 867.
2. On Southard, see Frederick P. Gay, The Open Mind: Elmer Ernest Southard, 1876-1920 (Chicago: Normandie House, 1938);
3. for a comprehensive bibliography of Southard's extensive work, see pp. 300-313. A biography of jarrett has yet to be written, but see Nancy A. Harrison, "Mary C. Jarrett: Beginnings of Psychiatric Social Work, 1913-1921" (M.S.W. thesis, Smith College School of Social Work, 1978).
4. Elmer E. Southard, "The Movement for a Mental Hygiene of Industry," Ment. Hygiene, 1920, 4: 43-64, quote on p. 43.
5. In addition to Jarrett, "Mental Hygiene of Industry" (n. 1)
6. and Southard, "Movement for a Mental Hygiene of Industry" (n. 2), the most important of these papers are
7. Elmer E. Southard, "Trade Unionism and Temperament," Ment. Hygiene, 1920, 4: 281-300;
8. and Elmer E. Southard idem, "The Modern Specialist in Unrest: A Place for the Psychiatrist in Industry," Ment. Hygiene, ibid., pp. 550-63.
9. Jarrett, "Mental Hygiene of Industry" (n. 1), p. 884.
10. Roy Lubove, The Professional Altruist: The Emergence of Social Work as a Career, 1880-1930 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965), pp. 55-117;
11. Walter Trattner, From Poor Law to Welfare State: A History of Social Welfare in America (New York: Free Press, 1999), pp. 259-69;
12. Gerald C. Rothman, Philanthropists, Therapists and Activists: A Century of Ideological Conflict in Social Work (Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman, 1985), pp. 41-60;
13. Daniel Walkowitz, Working with Class: Social Workers and the Politics of Middleclass Identity (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999).
14. On the early history of psychiatric social work, see also Lois Meredith French, Psychiatric Social Work (New York: Commonwealth Fund, 1940), pp. 1-74;
15. Elmer E. Southard and Mary C. Jarrett, The Kingdom of Evils: Psychiatric Social Work Presented in One Hundred Case Histories, Together with a Classification of Social Divisions of Evil (New York: Macmillan, 1922), pp. 517-34.
16. The importance of Southard and Jarrett's work at the Boston Psychopathic Hospital to this disciplinary transformation is a matter of some debate. Elizabeth Lunbeck has put their work at the center of the story of the new psychiatry in her examination of the BPH, while Jack D. Pressman has argued that Southard lay at the margins of the disciplinary transformation and that Adolf Meyer is instead the key figure in the story of how psychiatry came to focus on the question of social adjustment. In my reading of the sources, Pressman appears to have understated Southard's significance - Southard was one of the founders of both psychiatric social work and social psychiatry, despite the fact that he was, as Gerald Grob has noted, "essentially a somaticist in his interpretation of mental disease" (Gerald N. Grob, Mental Illness and American Society, 1875-1940 [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983], p. 132).
17. He trained a number of influential students, most notably Karl Menninger, and at the time of his death was widely acknowledged as one of the country's leading psychiatrists. In 1923, for example, Joseph Collins referred to Southard as America's "most gifted psychiatrist and its most promising mental hygienist" (Joseph Collins, "Social Work from the Psychiatrist's Laboratory," New York Times, 21 January 1923, p. BR13).
18. Southard may not have been as important as Meyer, but he was important nonetheless. On this issue, see also Elizabeth Lunbeck, The Psychiatric Persuasion: Knowledge, Gender, and Power in Modern America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994);
19. Jack D. Pressman, "Psychiatry and Its Origins," Bull. Hist. Med., 1997, 71:129-39;
20. Grob, Mental Illness (n. 6), pp. 135-42, 234-65.
21. On the early history of the Boston Psychopathic Hospital, see Gay, Open Mind (n. 1), pp. 104-32;
22. Lloyd Vernon Briggs, History of the Psychopathic Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts (Boston: Wright & Potter, 1922; repr. New York: Arno Press, 1973).
23. Pressman, "Psychiatry and Its Origins" (n. 6), p. 138.
24. John Dewey, Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics (1891)
25. cited in James Livingston, Pragmatism and the Political Economy of Cultural Revolution, 1850-1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), p. 188.
26. Adolf Meyer, "Objective Psychology or Psychobiology with Subordination of the Medically Useless Contrast of Mental and Physical, "JAMA, 1915, 65: 860-63, quote on p. 860.
27. Johannes C. Pols, "Managing the Mind: The Culture of American Mental Hygiene, 1910-1950" (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1997), p. 3.
28. On the mental hygiene movement, see also David J. Rothman, Conscience and Convenience: The Asylum and Its Alternatives in Progressive America (Boston: Little, Brown, 1980), pp. 293-323;
29. Grob, Mental Illness (n. 6), pp. 144-78.
30. Mary C. Jarrett, "The Practical Value of Mental Hygiene in Industry," Hasp. Soc. Serv., 1921, 3: 361-65, quote on p. 364.
31. Mary C. Jarrett, Hasp. Soc. Serv., Ibid., p. 365.
32. Lunbeck, Psychiatric, Persuasion (n. 6), p. 120.
33. Elmer E. Southard, cited in Grob, Mental Illness (n. 6), p. 141.
34. Boston State Hospital, Psychopathic Department, "Second Annual Report of the Psychopathic Department," in Fifth Annual Report of the Boston State Hospital (Boston: Wright & Potter, 1914), p. 16.
35. Fifth Annual Report of the Boston State Hospital, Ibid., p. 12.
36. Fifth Annual Report of the Boston State Hospital, Ibid., p. 19.
37. Boston State Hospital Inpatient Files, box 36, file 10678, pp. 4-6, Massachusetts State Archives, Boston, Mass.
38. Grob, Mental Illness (n. 6), p. 237.
39. Cabot established the first social work department in an American hospital in 1905, and over the next two decades he worked tirelessly to promote medical social work - quite possibly to the detriment of his career. See Ian Evison, "Pragmatism and Idealism in the Professions, 1869-1939: The Case of Richard Clarke Cabot" (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1995);
40. Christopher Crenner, "Organizational Reform and Professional Dissent in the Careers of Richard Cabot and Ernest Amory Codman, 1900-1920,"J. Hist. Med. & Allied Sci., 2001, 5:211-37.
41. Mary C. Jarrett, "Psychopathic Department Boston State Hospital: Social Service Chronology," n.d., Papers of Mary Jarrett (hereafter MJP), box 2, file 22, p. 1, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass, (hereafter SSC).
42. Psychopathic Department Boston State Hospital: Social Service Chronology, Ibid., p. 2.
43. Jarrett, "Mental Hygiene of Industry" (n. 1), p. 870.
44. Jarrett, "Psychopathic Department Boston State Hospital" (n. 21), p. 1.
45. Jarrett, "Mental Hygiene of Industry" (n. 1), p. 870.
46. Jarrett, "Mental Hygiene of Industry" (n. 1), p. 870., Ibid.
47. Elmer E. Southard, "Mental Hygiene and Social Work: Notes on a Course in Social Psychiatry for Social Workers," Ment. Hygiene, 1918, 2: 388-406, on p. 397.
48. Herman Adler, "Unemployment and Personality: A Study of Psychopathic Cases," Ment. Hygiene, 1917, 1: 16-24;
49. Mary C. Jarrett, "The Psychopathic Employee: A Problem of Industry," Med. & Surg., 1917, 1: 727-41.
50. Jarrett, "Psychopathic Employee" (n. 28), pp. 729-30.
51. Jarrett, "Psychopathic Employee", Ibid., p. 729.
52. Jarrett, "Psychopathic Employee", Ibid., p. 735.
53. Harrison, "Mary C. Jarrett" (n. 1), p. 7.
54. Mary C. Jarrett, "Psychiatric Social Work," Ment. Hygiene, 1918, 2: 283-90, quote on p. 285.
55. Mary C. Jarrett, Ment. Hygiene, Ibid., p. 288.
56. Mary C. Jarrett, Ment. Hygiene, Ibid., p. 289.
57. Mary C. Jarrett, Ment. Hygiene, p. 289. Ibid.
58. Mary C. Jarrett, Ment. Hygiene, p. 289. Ibid.
59. Frederick W. Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management (1911; repr. New York: Harper, 1913), p. 12.
60. On welfare capitalism, see Stuart Brandes, American Welfare Capitalism, 1880-1940 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976);
61. Andrea Tone, The Business of Benevolence: Industrial Paternalism in Progressive America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997).
62. Roy W. Kelly, "Promoting Industrial Harmony," Industr. Mgmt., 1925, 69: 89-91, quote on p. 89.
63. Robert G. Valentine, quoted in Sarah Lyons Watts, Order against Chaos: Business Culture and Labor Ideology in America, 1880-1915 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1991), p. 87.
64. On Taylor and his followers, see Daniel Nelson, Frederick W. Taylor and the Rise of Scientific Management (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1980);
65. Martha Banta, Taylored Lives: Narrative Productions in the Age of Taylor, Veblen, and Ford (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993).
66. Walter Dill Scott, Increasing Human Efficiency in Business: A Contribution to the Psychology of Business (New York: Macmillan, 1911);
67. Hugo Mustenberg, Psychology and Industrial Efficiency (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1913).
68. On the psychological testing movement, see Richard T. Von Mayrhauser, "Making Intelligence Functional: Walter Dill Scott and Applied Psychological Testing in World War I,"J. Hist. Behav. Sci., 1989, 25:60-72;
69. Michael M. Sokal, ed., Psychological Testing and American Society, 1890-1930 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1987);
70. JoAnne Brown, The Definition of a Profession: The Authority of Metaphor in the History of Intelligence Testing, 1890-1930 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992).
71. For a useful overview, see Watts, Order against Chaos (n. 41), pp. 87-141.
72. See also Loren Baritz, Servants of Power: A History of the Use of Social Science in American Industry (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1960);
73. Tone, Business of Benevolence (n. 39);
74. Julie Kimmel, "Creating a 'Real Science of Human Relations': Personnel Management and the Politics of Professionalism" (Ph.D. diss., John Hopkins University, 2000).
75. Mary C. Jarrett to Frankwood E. Williams, 10 April 1917, MJP, box 2, folder 20. Williams was the associate medical director of the National Committee for Mental Hygiene. He explained his organization's reluctance to fund Jarrett's laboratory by stating that "the Rockefeller is devoting its funds and attention very largely to war work, and this is true of our own committee, so that it is not likely that it would be possible to get funds in the near future" (Frankwood E. Williams to Mary C. Jarrett, 15 August 1917, Creating A 'Real Science of Human Relations': Personnel Management and the Politics of Professionalism, ibid.).
76. Mary Van Kleek, "Report of the Smith College Alumnae Committee on Cooperation with the Training School for Social Work," 19 October 1922, SSC, box 1311.
77. Elmer E. Southard to Thomas W. Salmon, n.d., MJP, box 1, folder 9. See also Southard to Thomas T. Reed, 29 November 1918, MJP, ibid.
78. Mary C. Jarrett, "The Mental Hygiene of Industry: Report of Progress on Work Undertaken under Engineering Foundation," in National Conference of Social Work, Proceedings of the National Conference of Social Work (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1920), pp. 335-42, on p. 339.
79. Jarrett, "Mental Hygiene of Industry" (n. 1), pp. 868-69.
80. Jarrett, "Practical Value" (n. 11), p. 362.
81. Elinor Johnston, "Nature and Function of Social Casework," n.d., MJP, box 2, folder 35.
82. Jarrett, "Mental Hygiene of Industry" (n. 1), p. 872.
83. Jarrett, "Mental Hygiene of Industry", Ibid., p. 876.
84. Mary C. Jarrett, "Montgomery Ward & Cp., Chicago III," 11 December 1919, MJP, box 2, folder 37.
85. Jarrett, "Mental Hygiene of Industry: Report of Progress" (n. 47), p. 339.
86. Southard, "Trade Unionism and Temperament" (n. 3);
87. Southard idem, "Modern Specialist in Unrest" (n. 3);
88. Southard idem, "Movement for a Mental Hygiene of Industry" (n. 2);
89. Jarrett, "Mental Hygiene of Industry" (n. 1).
90. Elmer E. Southard, "The Mental Hygiene of Industry: A Movement That Particularly Concerns Employment Managers," Industr. Mgmt., 1920, 59:100-106;
91. Elmer E. Southard idem, "Trade Unionism and Temperament," ibid., pp. 265-70;
92. Elmer E. Southard idem, "The Modern Specialist in Unrest: A Place for the Psychiatrist in Industry," Industr. Mgmt. ibid., pp. 462-66.
93. Selections also appeared in various other works, such as Lionel D. Edie, Practical Psychology for Business Executives (New York: Wilson, 1922), pp. 337-49.
94. Southard, "Modern Specialist in Unrest" (n. 3), pp. 553-56.
95. Southard, "Modern Specialist in Unrest", Ibid., p. 555.
96. Mary C. Jarrett, "Psychiatric Study of an Industrial Plant," handwritten notes, n.d., p. 3, MJP, box 2, folder 36.
97. Southard, "Trade Unionism and Temperament" (n. 3), p. 286.
98. Southard, "Trade Unionism and Temperament" (n. 3), p. 286., Ibid.
99. Jarrett, "Practical Value" (n. 11), p. 364.
100. Jarrett, "Mental Hygiene of Industry" (n. 1), p. 867.
101. Jarrett and Southard were aware that their efforts to introduce psychiatric techniques into labor management might be viewed with suspicion by workers. Southard worried, for example, that "the whole thing might very well run on such lines that the labor unions would stiffen their backs to the matter" (Elmer E. Southard to Thomas T. Reed, 26 December 1918, p. 2, MJP, box 1, folder 9). Clearly, some of the behavior that Southard and Jarrett saw as indicative of psychopathology would have been viewed by workers in a more positive light, perhaps as an appropriate response to difficult and unfair labor conditions, monotonous work, and so on. Despite this, there are at least some indications that segments of the labor movement were themselves interested in, and sympathetic toward, the project of using psychiatric methods to address problems of worker dissatisfaction. In December 1919, for example, Jarrett met with Florence Thorne, Samuel Gompers's secretary at the American Federation of Labor ( Mary C. Jarrett, notes on interview with Florence Thorne, MJP, box 1, folder 9). Thorne expressed support and interest in the study, and in July of the following year a member of the AFL's Publicity Department wrote to Jarrett and asked her to send the AFL reprints of their articles: "We consider these booklets of extreme value," the publicist wrote, "and would like to pass one or two of them on to competent men in the trade union movement" ([unclear] Arnheim to Mary C. Jarrett, 31 July 1920, MJP, box 1, folder 9).
102. Mary C. Jarrett, "The Educational Value of Psychiatric Social Work," Ment. Hygiene, 1921, 5: 509-18, quote on p. 517.
103. Elmer E. Southard, "Memorandum," n.d., MJP, box 1, folder 36.
104. Elmer E. Southard, "Engineering Foundation: Mental Hygiene of Industry Progress Report," 10 December 1919, MJP, box 2, folder 36.
105. Mary C. Jarrett, "White Motor Company - Cleveland, Ohio," MJP, box 2, folder 37.
106. Mary C. Jarrett to Elmer E. Southard, 6 November 1919, MJP, box 1, folder 9.
107. Southard andjarrett, Kingdom of Evils (n. 5), p. 498.
108. Southard andjarrett, Kingdom of Evils, Ibid., p. 503.
109. Abraham Flexner, "Is Social Work a Profession?" Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and Corrections, 1915, 42: 576-90.
110. Daniel J. Walkowitz, "The Making of the Feminine Professional Identity: Social Workers in the 1920s," Amer. Hist. Rev., 1990, 95: 1051-75, on p. 1054.
111. Rothman, Philanthropists (n. 5), pp. 19-60.
112. Mary Richmond, Social Diagnosis (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1917), p. 39.
113. Stanley Wenocur and Michael Reisch, From Charity to Enterprise: The Development of American Social Work in a Market Economy (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1989), pp. 71-72.
114. See also William G. Black, "Social Work in World War I: A Method Lost," Soc. Serv. Rev., 1991, 65: 379-402;
115. Donna L. Franklin, "Mary Richmond and Jane Addams: From Moral Certainty to Rational Inquiry in Social Work Practice," ibid., 1986, 60:504-25.
116. Lunbeck, Psychiatric Persuasion (n. 6), p. 132.
117. Richmond, Social Diagnosis (n. 75), p. 368.
118. Mary C. Jarrett, unpublished outline, 30 January 1920, MJP, box 1, folder 8.
119. Mary C. Jarrett, "The Psychiatrie Thread Running Through All Social Case-Work," Ment. Hygiene, 1919, 3: 210-19, quote on p. 210.
120. Jarrett, "Psychiatric Social Work" (n. 33), p. 285.
121. In one of the initial outlines for her industrial study, Jarrett listed a wide variety of factors to be investigated, including "specific industrial hazards such as effects of poisonings, fumes, dust, etc. occurring in industry" and "general hygienic principles of industry such as construction of buildings and machines, light, ventilation, etc. in relation to the working man" (Mary C. Jarrett, "Medical Problems of Industry for Investigation," n.d., MJP, box 2, folder 36). However, she never pursued these topics in any depth due to her focus on individual casework, and as a result her efforts with Southard should probably be understood as distinct from other reform efforts to address problems of worker health and hygiene. On the industrial hygiene movement, see
122. Christopher C. Sellers, Hazards of the job: From Industrial Disease to Environmental Health Science (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997).
123. Jarrett, "Practical Value" (n. 11), p. 365.
124. Mary C. Jarrett, unfilled outline, n.d., MJP, box 2, folder 35.
125. Ibid.
126. Kathleen Ormsby Larkin, "Psychiatric Social Work," in Fred S. Hall and Mabel B. Ellis, eds., Social Work Yearbook 1929 (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1930), p. 342;
127. June E. Lyday and Maida H. Solomon, "The Problem of the Supply of Psychiatric Social Workers for State Hospitals," Amer. J. Psychiatry, 1928, 7 [old ser. 84]: 629-38, esp. pp. 635-36.
128. On the early history of the American Association of Psychiatric Social Workers, see Lois Angelina Meredith French, The American Association of Psychiatric Social Workers: Its History, Purpose, and Activities (New York: The Association, 1941).
129. Jarrett, "Educational Value" (n. 65), p. 515.
130. "Program, National Conference of Social Work, Forty-Ninth Annual Meeting, June 22-29, 1922," pp. 6-11, Papers of Mary Van Kleek (hereafter VKP), box 65, folder 1047, SSC.
131. National Conference of Social Work, Conference Bull., 1928, 31: 4-6.
132. Walkowitz, "Making of the Feminine Professional Identity" (n. 73), p. 1054.
133. Southard, "Movement for a Mental Hygiene of Industry" (n. 2), p. 49.
134. Course syllabi and book lists can be found in SSC, box 1312: those I have consulted include Mary C. Jarrett, "List of Manuals and Reference Books-Summer Session, 1922";
135. Elsa Butler Grove, "Smith College School for Social Work: Outline of Course 20 July 5, 1923 to Sept 1, 1923";
136. "List of Books for Social Medicine" (n.a., 1920).
137. Required readings included Ordway Tead, Instincts in Industry: A Study of Working Class Psychology (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1918);
138. Helen Marot, The Creative Impulse in Industry (NewYork: Button, 1918);
139. Thorstein Veblen, The Instinct of Workmanship, and the State of Industrial Arts (New York: Macmillan, 1914).
140. Jarrett, "Mental Hygiene of Industry" (n. 1), p. 880.
141. Jarrett, "Mental Hygiene of Industry", Ibid., p. 884.
142. "Alumnae Notes," Social Syndrome: An Alumnae Publication of the Smith College Training School for Social Work, 1919, 1:2.
143. "Alumnae Notes," Social Syndrome: An Alumnae Publication of the Smith College Training School for Social Work, 1919, 1:2. Ibid.
144. "Books desired on reserve shelf for work in Social Psychology 1930," SSC, box 1312.
145. Tone, Business of Benevolence (n. 39), p. 234.
146. William Tolman, Social Engineering (New York: McGraw, 1909), p. 51.
147. Jessie Taft, "Qualifications of the Psychiatric Social Worker," Ment. Hygiene, 1919, 3: 427-35, quote on p. 435.
148. Maxwell Broke, "Shall We Say Farewell to 'Welfare?'" Industr. Mgmt., 1923, 66:206-8, quote on p. 206.
149. "Outline of a Tentative Report of the Committee on Forming a Professional Organization of Those Engaged in Industrial Social Work," 9 December 1921, pp. 19-20, VKP, box 64, folder 1040.
150. "Outline of a Tentative Report of the Committee on Forming a Professional Organization of Those Engaged in Industrial Social Work," Ibid., p. 21.
151. Grace E. Manson, "Bibliography on Psychological Tests and Other Objective Measures in Industrial Personnel," J. Personnel Res., 1926, 4: 301-28.
152. Morris S. Viteles, "Selecting Cashiers and Predicting Length of Service," J. Personnel Res., 1924, 2:467-73, on pp. 467-68.
153. Donald A. Laird, "Recording the Worker's Personality," Industr. Mgmt., 1924, 68: 307-14, quote on p. 308.
154. Jarrett and Southard, Kingdom of Evils (n. 5), p. 535.
155. E. V. McCollough, "Reader's Guide to Management Literature," Industr. Mgmt., 1925, 69:98-107.
156. National Conference of Social Work, Conference Bull, 1928, 31: 4-7.
157. Conference Bull, Ibid., p. 10.
158. Lance E. Metz and Ivan M. Viest, The First Seventy-Five Years: A History of the Engineering Foundation (New York: Engineering Foundation, 1991), pp. 47-51.
159. Psychiatrists interested in industry during the 1920s regularly cited Southard and Jarrett's work. See, e.g.,Jau Don Ball, "Industrial Psychiatry," Amer. J. Psychiatry, 1922, 1 [old ser. 78]: 639-77, on p. 677;
160. Mandel Sherman, "A Review of Industrial Psychiatry," ibid., 1927, 6 [old ser. 83]: 701-10, on p. 710.
161. Victor V. Anderson, Psychiatry in Industry (New York: Harper, 1929), p. xiv.
162. Richard C. S. Trahair, The Humanist Temper: The Life and Work of Ellon Mayo (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1984), pp. 150, 166, 202-3; quote on p. 202.