The Unemployables
I
OFFICIALDOM is beginning to doubt the validity of counting and re-counting the unemployed. Half a dozen surveys, including the Biggers census, give the figure of twelve to thirteen million after estimates are added for recent layoffs. As Mr. Aubrey Williams, deputy administrator of the Works Progress Administration, put the hard case in his New York Times Magazine article of March 27, 1938: ‘There are more than 12,000,000 unemployed men and women in our country, a large percentage of them able and willing to work, who cannot find public employment.’
The title of his article: ‘Twelve Million Unemployed: What Can Be Done about It?’ indicates that those who are running the relief show are now ready to think about causes and qualities instead of concentrating altogether on effects and numbers. The same significant emphasis dominated Secretary Morgenthau’s declaration that the whole problem should be studied in all its phases by a standing commission.
Obviously the unemployed represent more than mere heads and hands. They present wide variations of behavior, training, and ability. Some are victims of sudden misfortune, some are broken by long runs of hard luck. Part of them have never had a chance; others have muffed no end of chances. There’s the fellow who is the victim of a local shutdown, rotting in a dead town from which he is too poor to move; and his rambling cousin whose very mobility has unsettled him too much. The causes of their present plight range all the way from the disorganization of international trade down to lack of discipline in the cradle.
The twelve million comprise three large groups who are properly the recipients of government aid. These are: —
(1) The young who have not had opportunity to acquire skills and earn a reputation for dependability;
(2) The old who have lost their strength or resiliency, and are unable to place themselves amid rapid technological change;
(3) Those who are handicapped by accident, ill health, stupidity, or destructive appetites which inhibit concentration on tasks.
These last are true unemployables; their joblessness may be considered incurable, except as some may be restored by medical treatment and industrial therapy. But these unfortunates are not the only unemployables, under a social system which combines individual liberty with high standards of competence in work. There is another large group of persons who are able-bodied and technically capable of holding jobs, but who are chronically without employment whether times are good or bad. These are the psychologically unemployable. Often they are well endowed intellectually and are possessed of varied talents, but they cannot or will not remain regularly at work. They constitute a problem which belongs less in the realm of economics and political science than in that of psychology and psychiatry.
Mr. Micawber, of David Copperfield fame, epitomizes the psychologically unemployable. A man of charm and intelligence, albeit a trifle unscrupulous, he is a true child of adversity. Steady employment eludes him, often by a narrow margin. His loved ones (although rarely Mr. Micawber) know the ache of hunger and the sting of cold. Never far distant is the menace of the debtors’ prison. But, in spite of all, Mr. Micawber remains serene and cheery, buoyed by his confidence that ‘something will turn up.’ Were he in the flesh to-day, he would be on the relief rolls.
Various terms have been applied to describe these economic misfits. They are difficult to classify because they do not suffer from obvious intellectual defects and they are not mentally ill in the conventional sense. Recently some psychologists and psychiatrists have noted a similarity between their behavior and that of a small child. Although adult, they make the same demands and employ the same measures to gain their ends that are characteristic of infants. In consequence, they are beginning to be recognized as victims of retarded emotions, or fixations at primitive emotional levels. They have never quite outgrown the cradle.
No surprise need be felt that many find it difficult to mature emotionally. The cradle is the nearest approach to Nirvana that most of us know. Life there has the quality of a dream. Its only end is the pursuit of pleasure. The child is surrounded with love. He enjoys a belief in his omnipotence that he will never again attain. His entire small universe is ordered for his convenience; he shares it with no one. All his capacity for affection is concentrated upon himself. His ego brooks no rival; his narcissism or self-love is complete.
Growth entails painful compromises with reality. The child learns that he must forgo his single-minded pursuit of pleasure. He discovers that he must accept responsibility for his actions. Belief in his omnipotence gives way to impotence before the problems and terrors which confront him. He comes to know pain and thwarting. No longer may he remain completely preoccupied with himself. As he matures he becomes aware that he must fend for himself, be self-reliant and use initiative to satisfy his desires. Wish may no longer be substituted for act. Emotional maturity implies, therefore, acceptance of the world as a place where rewards are not gained by magic or through wishful thinking, but must be earned.
Some are unable or unwilling to make these concessions to reality. They find it difficult to leave the wish-world of the nursery, hard to take first steps toward independence and self-reliance. Their affections remain concentrated upon themselves. Rather than make the sacrifices entailed by an adult attitude toward reality, they try to perpetuate the passive, dependent, receptive, narcissistic existence which they enjoyed in the cradle. To achieve this they evade and distort reality. Sometimes this results in neuroses; under other circumstances it may predispose the individual to criminality. Often the escape is by way of drugs or alcohol. In nearly every case this evasion of reality is the principal determinant of psychological unemployability.
No one knows why some children fixate at infantile emotional levels. A constitutional factor may well be involved, comparable, perhaps, to a predisposition to tuberculosis. In addition, the influence of the child’s environment is clearly recognized in the majority of cases. Paradoxically, two completely opposed types of early background produce this condition with equal facility: the first and more common is that characterized by too much sheltering, protection, and solicitude; the other is where these are not only lacking, but have been replaced by cruelty, frustration, and a dearth of love.
Naturally, parents wish to spare their children the bitterness of their own struggles. In extreme cases they often create for their children an environment from which the harsher, character-forming aspects of reality have been carefully filtered. As a result, their children, never completely weaned emotionally, remain narcissistic, passive, receptive, and dependent. By no means are all such cases confined to the well-to-do. John N., a WPA worker endeavoring to support his family of eight on $55 a month, so pampered his son, a hulking youth of twentyone, that the son could not hold a job as errand boy because he would not get up in time to start work at nine o’clock.
Where there have been too little solicitude and too much pain and frustration, the child’s first efforts at independence may be so rudely rebuffed that he is driven back to the cradle as a place of refuge. Seeking vainly to assuage his hunger for affection, he hoards his own store of love and lavishes it upon himself.
II
In these emotionally retarded adults may often be seen many of the dominant characteristics of the infant.
The small child, for example, exhibits self-love to a marked degree. The adult differs only in his superior skill at disguising it. His counterfeits frequently take the form of convincing, if not too sincere, gestures. Henry M. talked overmuch of his love for his wife and children. He bought them candy and sometimes took them to the movies. Usually, however, they remained in their dank basement apartment without adequate food or clothing while he spent his WPA stipend on clothes and entertainment for himself and his current lighto’-love.
Consequences mean little to the infant. The same is true of the emotionally retarded adult. When something appeals to a baby, the baby wants that thing at once, regardless of its suitability or the possible ill effects of acquisition. So do these grown-ups. Mrs. Grace A. saw an electric sewing machine which she liked. So she purchased it, although she had little need for one. Soon she was seduced by the novel features of a new electric cleaner. Within a month she had also made the down payment on a set of Shakespeare. Since her husband’s wages as a grocery clerk would not stretch to cover the payments, they lost all three and their credit as well.
Babies are not expected to respect obligations. It is equally futile to look for dependability in an infantile adult. Promises are made in terms of their immediate yield; for their fulfillment there is always mañana. When Henry B. borrowed from his friends, his need for the money was always urgent. Under this pressure he would promise faithfully to make repayment from his next salary check. By that time, however, the borrowed money would have been spent, and new and urgent needs would have developed. This would necessitate the postponement of repayment for another two weeks, at which time the same explanations would be gone through once more. When his friends would no longer lend him money, Henry tried the same tactics on a finance company. It cost him his automobile.
The infant believes in the omnipotence of his wish. So does the emotionally retarded grown-up. The latter may find it necessary to supplement the wish with a little magic (a rabbit’s foot or a charm), but his unconscious faith in it is strong. This faith blinds most gamblers to the odds against them, inducing a man to put twenty dollars in quarters into a slot machine in an effort to win a five-dollar jack pot.
Equally typical of the child are the acquisitive and dependent tendencies. When mother has been away, the first cry which greets her return is ‘ What did you bring me?’ The nursery echoes constantly with demands such as ‘ Mommy, tie my shoe,’ or ‘Bring me drink water,’ even where the child is competent to satisfy these needs himself. The infantile adult differs only in that his requests are not so naïve and are more plausibly justified. Nevertheless they embody the same tendencies. Many persons of middle age retain the child’s attitude of passive dependence upon their relatives or friends. More than one family has its dear Aunt Mary who came for a visit after Grandfather died and remained to become a permanent, if not too welcome, guest.
Where relatives or complaisant friends are not available to lean on, such persons often attach themselves to institutional charities. A recent survey in Chicago revealed that 47 per cent of the relief clients had been on the rolls four years or more, and that 43 per cent of these had been accepting charily since before 1932. Of course, they are the very ones who are most voluble in their advocacy of permanent relief. They are quite willing that the government should take over the rôle of bountiful and protective parent and consider their care one of its major obligations.
Of deepest import for the future, however, is the subtle change in the attitude of society toward these passive, dependent, receptive tendencies of the emotionally immature. Expression of these traits is not only being condoned but also being facilitated in a number of ways. Installment buying permits purchases by the improvident. Pensions provide for those who lack foresight to save for their declining years. Unemployment insurance will care for those who may not wish to work steadily.
Indigence is becoming respectable. Before the depression, to become a pauper was to lose social face completely. Now relief has become a commonplace. A new generation is coming to maturity whose members regard this government help not as an emergency measure, a stopgap to tide them over until times improve, but as their inalienable right as citizens and voters.
III
When the unemployed are asked whether they would prefer to remain on relief or to obtain jobs again, the majority emphatically choose the latter. Even those who are obviously among the psychologically unemployable give the same answer. And most of them are quite sincere in this statement.
Unfortunately, clinical experience raises some question as to the underlying integrity of these answers. Freud long ago pointed out that there are unconscious as well as conscious motives; nor is it necessary, he declared, that there be any agreement or even consistency between them. Violently contradictory impulses may coexist in different strata of the human psyche. On this basis, the psychologically unemployable may entertain a strong conscious conviction that they want work, while unconsciously they retain equally powerful drives toward passivity, receptivity, and dependence.
Short of an extended course of therapy, there is no way of integrating these elements. It is entirely futile to tell a person that he has this or that unconscious tendency. His unconscious impulses are so insulated from his awareness that he knows nothing of them. Furthermore, they conflict so violently with his ideal of himself that he would deny them indignantly. The fact that they are unconscious renders them proof against argument or logic.
Despite the fact that these impulses are denied access to consciousness, they may exert a definite influence upon the individual’s behavior. Striving for gratification, yet prevented from direct expression, they make use of disguises, substitutes, and partial satisfactions. Pitted against them to ensure their exile from consciousness in this battle of the psyche are a number of defense mechanisms. These are also unconscious; the entire conflict takes place outside the person’s awareness. Nevertheless, much of the behavior of this type of person is expressive of a compromise between these conflicting forces.
The common defense mechanisms employed by the psychologically unemployable are repression (putting out of consciousness), reaction formation (repression plus denial by behavior of the opposite character), projection (accusing others of having the trait which it is wished to deny), and denial by a failure to perceive. All of these have an identical purpose: to prevent the direct expression or even awareness of impulses that are alien to the ego.
Because the behavior of infantile persons so often flows from conflicting motives, it is likely to be strikingly erratic and inconsistent. To preserve the fiction that they are reasonable persons, people of this type early become adept at explaining or rationalizing their conduct. Rationalization may serve both to prevent them from obtaining insight into their real motivation and to justify their behavior socially.
Goldie S. was only infrequently employed. In moments of candor she admitted that she could see no reason for working. She got along just as well without a job. As she put it, she has the same holes in her shoes, the same runs in her stockings, whether she works or not. Her lunches, carfare, and insurance take all she earns. So why should she work? This is a typical rationalization. Superficially plausible, it does not bear careful scrutiny. When employed, she nets nine dollars each week, after expenses — which is far different from the nothing which she has when she is not employed. She is merely justifying to herself and the world her reluctance to exert herself.
It is this difficulty of awakening the insight and enlisting the coöperation of these people that makes their rehabilitation such a problem. Fundamentally, they have no reason to want to change their way of life. They are obtaining their infantile satisfactions. Any alteration in the direction of increased selfsufficiency might entail a sacrifice. It is hardly to be wondered, therefore, that they resist so tenaciously any attempts to improve them. The clinging vine is often tough to break.
IV
In everyday life, the devices used by the psychologically unemployable to avoid work are legion. A few cases taken at random will be illustrative.
Charles H. would describe in detail his efforts to obtain work; but these attempts never succeeded. Ultimately it was revealed that his stories were wholly fictitious. Actually they had only been a form of daydreaming — a compromise solution to his problem. He knew he should find employment, but unconsciously he did not wish to find it. His work-hunting stories eased his conscience without subjecting him to the risk of finding a job. At the same time, his wish that they were true was so strong that he actually believed them himself.
A common means for rationalizing unconscious wishes to remain unemployed is that of blaming factors which might be responsible but are not necessarily so. William M., a telegrapher who had been displaced at the age of thirty-five by the teletype, had resigned himself to a life on relief. He said that because of his age, and the fact that he had had only an elementary school education, there was no use in his attempting to learn another trade. Instead, he blamed his ‘luck’ for having chosen telegraphy as a profession and cursed his previous employer as greedy and heartless. As a matter of fact, he had known at the time when he entered the field that its day was nearly ended. There is no reason why he cannot learn a new type of work. His real problem is that he does not want a steady job; being on relief is too easy.
Many among the psychologically unemployable obtain positions but do not keep them. In four months Harry W. found three places as night clerk in hotels. The first one he left because the proprietor asked him to keep the books in addition to his work as clerk; he had also been given a noisy room, which made it difficult for him to sleep, so that he feared for his health. From the second position he was discharged for sleeping on duty. He left the last place after three days because he did not like the character of the guests. Harry, too, had an unconscious, or at least unadmitted, dislike of work. Since he could not avoid being hired, he contrived to leave as quickly as possible, either voluntarily or by request. By finding fault with his positions he was able to conceal from himself and from society his aversion to work.
Infantile personalities sometimes employ even more subtle methods. Ralph B. was ambitious. His drive for advancement was so strong that it reacted against him. Wishing to reach the top at once, he soon grew impatient of office routine. Promotion of associates stirred him to jealousy. He used every pretext to place himself in a favorable light with the management, and had no scruples against injuring his fellow employees. Ultimately he began to intrigue against his immediate superior, and tried to engineer the man’s dismissal. The attempt failing, Ralph lost his position. His ambition was primarily a reaction formation designed to deny the passive, dependent tendencies which underlay it. These passive impulses attained their ultimate objective (his release) by causing him to be overactive.
V
The problem of the psychological unemployables must be faced realistically. Sentimentality must be laid aside. Social justice, beneficial as it may be to others, deserved as it may be by others, will not help them, for their need goes deeper. Little is to be gained by an unwillingness to recognize that in a large proportion of the cases the sufferers are primarily victims of their own personality make-up. Although legally responsible, often intelligent, and not among the mentally ill, nevertheless they suffer from defects of judgment and volition which unfit them for adult responsibilities.
The question is not whether they should be helped, but how. To leave the decision to them would only perpetuate the status quo. Each should be subjected to a thorough individual psychological and psychiatric examination. Because of the complexity and variety of individual cases which may be encountered and the many contributing influences and personal factors which play a part, each should be painstakingly and dispassionately analyzed.
Where emotional infantilism is clearly a contributing factor, it may be best to subject the unemployables, no matter how much they resent it, to what Dr. Harold S. Hulbert has termed ‘objective treatment.’ This is the manner in which a deaf nursemaid would handle a recalcitrant child; she can see that he is misbehaving, but she cannot hear his excuses or rationalizations, hence she remains quite uninfluenced and applies the punishment which his behavior warrants.
For psychologically unemployable men, institutions such as the army would bear study. There objective treatment is traditional. And, on the whole, army life should not be uncongenial. The soldier has few economic worries. His thinking is done for him; little initiative is required. Life is much as he knew it as a child. His commanding officer assumes the rôle of his father, the commissary that of his mother.
For women and for those men who cannot qualify for the army, adult CCC corps might be organized, where again objective treatment could be instituted. This does not mean that the unemployables would be inhumanely dealt with; merely that provision would be made to place them in charge of persons who had been schooled in the characteristics of the infantile personality make-up. Such supervisors would be competent to recognize and discount the subterfuges and rationalizations with which they would continually be confronted.
Short of the employment of such objective treatment, no satisfactory means are available for salvaging more than a small part of the productive capacities of these misfits. The harsh alternative, of course, is to write them off as inadequate to the demands of modern life, which implies either a continuance of relief or the institution of a dole, as they cannot be expected to be consistently self-supporting. Such a course means that ultimately they must become permanent wards of the state, like the criminal and the insane.
The greatest hope for the future lies in the prevention of emotional retardation in oncoming generations. This is almost wholly a matter of education. As society becomes increasingly heedful of this condition, cases will be recognized earlier and subjected to appropriate treatment. At the same time, the rationalizations will become more transparent and less effective. The individual will be forced to choose between relinquishing the gratification of his infantile impulses and satisfying them in the face of public intolerance.
The psychological unemployables are not a new phenomenon. They probably antedate civilization. It is only recently, however, that their social and economic significance has been realized. Because they functioned without ostentation, they have been overlooked. Yet, when viewed in proper perspective, their cost in human misery, frustration, and waste has been tremendous. It equals, if not exceeds, that of many more dramatic and better-publicized catastrophes. Plagues are devastating, but they burn themselves out; war is futile, and its cost extortionate, yet it finally ceases. But human frailty persists without end, and until there is a more scientific approach to this particular phase of it relief will continue to be a muddy pool in winch economists, sociologists, and politicians tread water without ever touching bottom.