PERSONALITY STUDY NEEDED, BOCK ASSERTS

Scientific knowledge of human personality, permitting more accurate determination of individual qualities and capacities, is a vital need in modern society, Professor Arlie V. Bock, Director of the University Hygiene Department, stated yesterday in his annual report.

Years of cooperative case studies by scientists in many fields,--medicine, psychology, psychiatry, anthropology, and sociology,--will be required for the groundwork of such knowledge, which at present is extremely fragmentary, Dr. Bock asserted.

Frustrations Cause Illness

The experience of the Hygiene Department is that a large proportion of the students' individual health problems arise from efforts, or failure, to reach certain goals or to establish adequate personal relationships, he said.

"Most people, whether students or not, tend to resist the idea that failure to reach goals or inability to make adequate personal adjustments may lead to illness, but the correlation appears to be high," Dr. Bock said.

"The mechanisms through which abnormal responses of the body occur, under conditions of stress, are little known and represent an important research opportunity. In considering the problem of abnormal responses of the body I do not refer to the unfit among us, but rather to all of us."

An indication that scientists may hope to achieve more adequate bases for judging personality problems lies in the "apparently intuitive," but highly successful, judgments of men shown by a few administrators in government and industry, Dr. Bock said.

"Is it too much to hope that the time is not too far in the future when enough evidence may be in hand from all sources to enable us to offer to each of a thousand Freshmen a possible working project suitable to the capacities and aspirations of each? Theoretically this is now being done.

"In practice, however, no one anywhere knows enough to carry it through. Plenty of administrative and other machinery exists, but man as an individual having a place to make for himself, has reached the point where more knowledge of himself is a vital need," Dr. Bock said.

Grant Study

As one approach to the problem of "filling out knowledge of man," the Harvard Hygiene Department has undertaken the so-called Grant Study in Social Adjustments,--an investigation of normal, healthy undergraduates, by the techniques of medicine, psychology, psychiatry, physiology, anthropology, and other sciences. "Our approach is designed to develop our knowledge of man as a functioning organism, especially of the kind of man who is able on the whole to meet his responsibilities in general," Dr. Bock explained.

"The problem that we, in common with others, face is that of finding a basis for judgment of an individual," he said. "For the young such knowledge would be of use to parents and schools, and for people of college age, it should be of assistance in personality development and in furthering the selection of the type of job or career suited to the person.

"The presumption underlying our thinking is the simple one,--that there must be better ways than now exist of determining individual qualities and capacities of a man, and that these ways may be found."

"There is little doubt that this study reveals the great diversity of persons coming to Harvard for an education and is impressive in indicating the need for more individualization in many procedures. There is something worth developing in all these young men," Dr. Bock said