A Study of Catholic Psychological Concepts as Applied to Military Guidance and Counseling

Abstract

This study is an attempt to examine the relationships between the major concepts proper to Catholic psychology and their application to the practice of counseling in the military guidance program. The problems involved are of particular importance in view of the fact that vast numbers of the youth of America are faced with the prospect of spending from two to eight years of their lives in either voluntary or compulsory military service. Since the invasion of the Korean Republic by Communist forces in 1950, the military services have followed a course of continued expansion. Through Selective Service and voluntary enlistments, the manpower of our armed forces was increased to almost 3,500,000 persons between the outbreak of the conflict and 1952, while the Department of Defense has made repeated requests for a military force of between 6,000,000 and 7,600,000 men. The major source for the personnel required by the armed forces is the reservoir of young men and women of our country. Many of these are still in school, and many others are unable actively to pursue their life goals because of their indeterminate status as civilians. How long this period of heightened military needs will last cannot be predicted, but it is highly probable that America will not reduce her military power for many years. Even should some radical change in world affairs call a halt to the progress of rapid and constant military expansion, we would be confronted with the fact that millions of men and women are now serving in the armed forces, and thousands more face the prospect of military service in the near future. These service men and women, both actual and potential, are confronted by the same basic personal, religious, and vocational problems which arise in any human society, be it military or civilian in nature. In civilian life programs offering counseling and guidance services are becoming familiar institutions. What sort of counterpart do they have in the armed forces and what implications do Catholic physchological concepts carry into the functions of military counseling agencies? That is what this study will attempt to delineate. Because the development of guidance and counseling has been most extensive in the United States Air Force, especially through the impetus imparted by studies made by the Human Resources Research and Development Centers, a preponderance of the military data cited will consist in Air Force studies and publications. This emphasis should not be construed as indicative of a lesser interest in guidance and counseling on the part of the other forces. The newly autonomous Air Force found, in September, 1947, that it possessed in the Aviation Psychology Program a tool highly conducive to the establishment of a sound guidance program. Nine months later, the Airman Classification Battery began to be used for initial screening of basic air men. Shortly thereafter the process of classification placed emphasis upon counseling, whereas earlier it had emphasized selection and placement. The other service forces, with their more solidly established systems of selection, found it more difficult to incorporate counseling into the classification system. Instead, the Army, Navy, and Marines increased the scope of their information programs to include some aspects of educational and vocational counseling. Recently, however, Army classification procedures have come more and more to resemble the integrated counseling and classification system of the United States Air Force.