Hugo Munsterberg and the Origins of vocational guidance.

 
Hugo Munsterberg was among the most famous psychologists in the world 
at the turn of the 20th century. Despite his preeminence and 
associations with prominent leaders in several disciples, including 
Frank Parsons, his abrasive personality and unpopular politics led to 
his work being largely ignored during the 20th century. One such work 
is H. Munsterberg's (1910c) Vocation and Learning: A Popular Reading 
Course, which represents an early triait-and-factor psychological model 
of vocation. This triangular model suggests that people and vocations 
are composed of thinking, feeling, and willing dimensions that must be 
aligned to find the most suitable vocation for the person. 

In 1910, Hugo Munsterberg (1910c) wrote a correspondence course in the form of five parts titled Vocation and Learning: A Popular Reading Course. This five-part series outlined what may be the first psychological theory of vocation. Furthermore, it may have been the first theory of vocation that applied the same structural model to assess a person and vocation in an effort to match people and careers and was certainly a precursor to Holland's (1997,1999) theory of career personality, which is a dominant structural model in career theory today. Although the theory is an important part of the history of vocational guidance and psychology and was cited by other pioneers in vocational psychology and guidance (e.g., Hollingworth, 1916), over time it has been lost. To understand how this work was lost, one must understand Munsterberg and the role he played in psychology and vocational guidance during the later 19th and early 20th centuries. The first half of this article briefly describes Munsterberg and his link to Frank Parsons in an effort to understand his place in the history of vocational guidance and vocational industrial/organizational (I/O) psychology and to explain why the theory did not take hold. To reestablish the importance of this theory in the history of vocational guidance and psychology, the second half of the article briefly places the theory in context and summarizes how it accounts for career development.

The Defining Features of Munsterberg

In combination, Munsterberg was probably the most prodigious, industrious, and provocative psychologist in the world at the turn of the 20th century. In a letter to his brother Henry, William James wrote of his efforts to persuade Munsterberg to leave Germany to direct the psychological laboratory at Harvard. In that letter, James described Munsterberg as the "Rudyard Kipling" of psychology, because like Kipling, Munsterberg was a prodigy. At 28 years old, Munsterberg was regarded as one of the most accomplished psychologists in Germany (James, 1920). Munsterberg was arguably among the most productive psychologists of his era, with a vita including more than 20 books and numerous articles produced during a 17-year period (Hale, 1980; M. Munsterberg, 1922). Munsterberg's daughter Margaret reported that he frequently wrote entire books in 5 to 8 weeks (M. Munsterberg, 1922). His productivity can be traced to his absolute devotion to his work, a characteristic that Charles W. Eliot, then president of Harvard (and his boss at the time), underscored in 1909 when he wrote to Munsterberg suggesting that he stop working on the weekends and spend more time getting some exercise and fresh air (as cited in Benjamin, 2006). Munsterberg's productivity was finally curtailed at the age of 53 by a cerebral hemorrhage that took his life while he was lecturing (Benjamin, 2000). Combining a solid work ethic with his noted genius and a personality that was at once investigative and enterprising led Munsterberg to become a leading figure in psychology worldwide, but his candid, provocative, and attention-seeking nature intervened during the 2nd decade of the 20th century and eventually led the scientific community to view him with distaste and the public to scorn him.

Munsterberg was abrasive, and by some accounts, he was largely unaware of having this effect on people (M. Munsterberg, 1922). Munsterberg viewed himself as a cultural ambassador and went to great lengths to promote German values, scholarship, and politics in the United States. His efforts were initially greeted with enthusiasm by contemporaries like James, but he eventually became overbearing to the point that Harvard officially instructed Munsterberg to cease these activities (Hale, 1980). He also had the tendency of being harshly critical of other influential social scientists' work in very public forums and of being equally defensive of even slight criticisms of his work. His offensive and defensive stances led to disputes in the popular press with notable psychologists and educational leaders including Edward Scripture, Edward Thorndike, James Cattell, James, John Dewey, G. Stanley Hall, and Joseph Jastrow (Benjamin, 2006; Hale, 1980). In contrast to Munsterberg's strong stance on a range of subjects, he was also prone to massive changes in his perspective. One of the most obvious examples was his early strong and sharp criticism of applied psychology that gave way to his becoming one of its strongest and most public advocates in the space of a few years (Benjamin, 2006; Landy, 1997). Adding to this tension, the popular press was attracted to Munsterberg because he often made provocative comments in an authoritative manner and on a wide range of popular topics, such as the role of women in the work place, the falsifiability of mystics and psychics, and the fallibility of witnesses in court proceedings. From 1910 to 1916, he was routinely quoted in the press and mingled with U.S. presidents and other influential political figures. Many in the scientific community viewed his public self-promotion and almost constant comment on a range of subjects that he had inadequately studied as pontification and self-aggrandizement, an affront to psychology, a threat to its credibility as a true science (Benjamin, 2006), and, ultimately, a source of embarrassment. Much of his favorable popularity turned to disdain when he publicly supported Germany during World War I (1914-1918). His political views led to sharp criticism in the press (H. Munsterberg, 1915b), calls for his removal from the Harvard faculty, and even death threats.

The synergy of Munsterberg's prodigious, industrious, and provocative natures yielded a man who left a deep imprint on psychology and who for a time was the object of admiration, scorn, and curiosity in the U.S. psychological community, political establishment, and popular press. This combination of traits coupled with his obvious commitment to German ideals and politics led Harvard, the psychological community, and the general public to distrust and even despise Munsterberg. This sentiment likely contributed to his being written out of the history of psychology for the better part of the 20th century (e.g., Hale, 1980; Street, 1994) and may have contributed to his theory of vocation being lost during the same period. Only over the past few decades have historians begun to fully rediscover the weight of his influence.

Munsterberg and Parsons