Conscripts are waiting for their turn. One by one, the naked torsos advance to be measured, palpated, observed by a military doctor. The result of the examination will determine who is authorized to serve under the flags and which is declared unfit. “The soldier must have a healthy, robust, well constituted organism, capable of resisting the many causes of illness in peacetime and of supporting deprivation, fatigue, bad weather in the countryside”decrees Doctor Ernest Moreau-Defarges, military doctor during the First World War, in a 1916 manual.
A must to the army
A real rite of passage, the medical examination is a obligatory step for men wishing to join the ranks. At the beginning of the XXe A century, both in France and in the United Kingdom, the proportion of recruits passing this examination success between 60 and 80%, proof of a fairly selective procedure. At the time, it was circumscribed physical. Begament, myopia, varicose veins, skeleton malformations, cardiac problems, the presence of diseases (such as tuberculosis) are enough to dismiss an individual from the active service. The contagious, the Malingers and the Weights, one thinks, have no place in the army.
What about the mental level? At the time, nerve afflictions were not systematically detected within the framework of the medical examination. It was only after several years of a formidable and mechanized war-combat, shell, flame launcher, etc.-that we are beginning to measure the psychological consequences of the conflict.
Especially when we see the survivors returned to the country with “shellfish” (Shell Shock In English), a set of post-traumatic stressful disorders which are their origin in the context of the trench war of the first world conflict. Suffering from hallucinations, uncontrollable tremors, mutism or paralysis, these apathetic veterans affected by this war neurosis exhibit often irreversible symptoms that amaze the medical profession.
Observing the convalescents, the American psychologist Robert S. Woodworth (1869-1962) is convinced: it should be possible to determine, upstream, what recruits may experience this kind of trauma. It is for this purpose that this teacher of experimental psychology developed, in 1917, the examination which bears his name, the Woodworth Personal Data Sheetin order to assess the “emotional stability” of the engaged in the United States army (US Army).
“The experience of other armies had shown that the risk of shell or war neurosis was an almost as serious handicap as a lack of intelligencewrites Robert S. Woodworth in an autobiography published in 1930. After considering other possible emotional tests, I concluded that the best immediate track was in the early symptoms of the neurotic trend. ”
116 questions, 30 bad answers
Largely considered to be the first personality test in history, Woodworth’s psychonevrotic examination takes the form of a 116 -point questionnaire, to which we respond by “yes” or by “no” in less than fifteen minutes. Most of the questions are quite banal. They concern social practices (“Is it easy to make friends?”); physical condition (“Do you often have a headache?”); The medical history (“Have you ever made a nervous breakdown?”).
On the other hand, some are more confusing:
#32. Were you considered a bad boy (or a bad girl)?
#51. Have you ever hurt yourself by masturbating?
#57. Have you ever had the impression that someone hypnotized you and made you act against your will?
#59. Do you sometimes have the weird impression of not being yourself?
#81. Do you have trouble urinating in the presence of other people?
#83. Do you sometimes want to go on fire to something?
#116. Do you support disgusting odors?
Tested beforehand on patients with mental disorders, each question assigns a point to the candidate if he has selected the answer synonymous with cracks (for example, “yes” to all previous questions, with the exception of the last), thus determining an inverted note out of 116 after the examination. According to Robert S. Woodworth, the ideal recruits would get a score of around 10, while the soldiers deemed unfit in the service would display averages between 30 and 40. (Personally, I obtained 18.)
More than a thousand American recruits will rub shoulders with this questionnaire, but the armistice will be signed before the psychologist was able to democratize his system to all regiments. In the absence of better, the period of the interwar period will serve as a laboratory for a whole battery of tests aimed at stagging the intelligence or to probe the unconscious, sometimes serving as pretexts for eugenist policies. Are we all neurotic today? According to an English -speaking simulation in open sourcemore than 80% of modern respondents to the Woodworth test are beyond the critical threshold of 30 … to meditate.
