The Unfit: How to Use Them

There is insufficient trained personnel to do adequate individual therapy under medical guidance for several million partially handicapped individuals. If Government and private agencies assume that serious therapy is worth while, three suggestions are offered for improved utilization of the “unfit.” 1. Improved techniques for maintaining high morale which will strengthen ego organization and provide social support for both the sick and healthy. 2. Study more intensively the problems of thinking by “qualitative” techniques, notably in cases of cerebral injury, “post-operative cases” and “lobotomy.” The methodology developed in this field is valuable in the study of psychotics, neurotics, and psychopaths. 3. Industrial psychiatrists and engineers should cooperate in a program in which patients are trained to do jobs which are designed to match their capabilities. The present programs for rehabilitation seem inadequate in view of the great need to get some useful work out of the huge population with marginal ability. The lack of trained personnel to operate such programs is a serious drawback, but might be overcome. For the working conditions which surround the men assigned to the task of drawing the diagrams of the future, I can think of no better description than that given by Doctor Alan Gregg in the Terry Lectures, “The Furtherance of Medical Research” (11).