thing all decided before we talked about something else. Now Miss Smith, she talks to us about everything all at once." Some form of subjective recording would have shown "how to talk about one thing at a time."

In conclusion, may I just make one more plea for the further study of the interview as a tool in the art of helping?

THE ART OF HELPING BY CHANGING HABIT

Betsey Libbey, Supervisor of Districts, Society for Organizing
Charity, Philadelphia

Since my college days, habit has walked out of the groove of repetition it occupied in the textbooks of those days. More recently it has stepped forth from the laboratory, and its latest excursion is into the market place the symbol of the interweaving of the activities of life. Parents, educators, psychiatrists, and social workers are all on terms of familiarity with this new dynamic habit. Even clinics have incorporated it into their names.

For obvious reasons, the greatest interest in the development of socially useful habits and in changing those that dwarf personality has been in the habits of children. So much has been written already on this problem, and more doubtless will be forthcoming, that I feel justified in omitting the habits of children from this discussion, and in concentrating on the change of habits in adults. And after all this is not unrelated to the problem of habit formation in children, when we recall how important a factor environment is in the development of habit, and what a significant part of the social environment of the child are the attitudes and habits of its parents.

Perhaps some of you are questioning, as another social worker did recently, "Do we ever succeed in helping adults change their habits?" It would not be a shock to me to discover that our successes are few and far between. It might be that we would concede more of them if change of habit did not imply to some of us a completeness of right-about-face, a finality and foreverness that we, no doubt, inherit from the old concept of habit as the repetition of a particular act.

While I am not able to speak with any authority on the frequency of our success in changing habits of adults, I do feel reasonably certain that family case workers are daily attacking the problem with enthusiasm and optimism. How many husbands and fathers in our families we characterize as men who have lost the habit of work or who suffer from the drink habit. What faith we have in our ability to help them become breadwinners again or to be sober husbands and home-lovers.

At conferences we are accustomed to learn from each other through the recital of our successful experiences. I hope we are not so used, both here and elsewhere, to the happy ending that an analysis of a case history in the process

of becoming either a success or a failure will be too great a bore. Our interest in this discussion, I assume, is in process. Sometimes processes are more easily got at on the way than after arrival. It is for this reason that I have selected the Seldon family for discussion.

The Seldons' was a youthful marriage. They were married twenty years ago, when he was seventeen and she was sixteen. From early childhood Mrs. Seldon had had to take responsibility and had begun to help with the family's support when she was only eleven years old. Mr. Seldon's childhood and early life were very different. His family was English and always in comfortable circumstances, although his father died when he was five years old. Shortly after Mr. Seldon's marriage, his brother placed him with a corporation where he was employed. There was an excellent opportunity for advancement, but Mr. Seldon kept this position less than a year. He then secured work through friends with the X Company, where he was employed for sixteen years. Eight years ago, when he was twenty-nine, and twelve years after their marriage, he had to go to the hospital for a minor operation. It was then that the family agency first knew the Seldons. The problem was seen as one of financial need, resulting from a brief illness of Mr. Seldon, and the case was closed as soon as he was able to go back to work. Three years later he had another minor operation. Shortly after that, while at work, he was in an accident which resulted in the death of a child. He was exonerated, but was very much upset nervously. However, he went back to his work after a few days and all was well until a few months later, when he was discharged for insubordination. Since then he has gone from job to job, with frequent intervals of unemployment in between.

During the eight years that the family society has known them, the case has been opened and closed many times, and always the immediate situation has been dealt with. The picture of Mr. Seldon had gradually changed from a sick breadwinner to a somewhat "shiftless" man, drifting from job to job.

Six months ago a new visitor was introduced to the family. She was interested in more than the immediate situation, and was not satisfied with such generalized descriptions of his personality as shiftless or even manic-depressive, the diagnosis made two months later. She discovered that Mr. Seldon was the youngest of four children, and had always been much petted by his widowed mother. While never having any serious illness, he was always considered delicate and was allowed to stay home on the slightest pretext and to leave school entirely when he was in the lower grammar grades. He had never worked regularly, as he stayed home whenever he felt like it, just as he had in his school days. Mrs. Seldon told the visitor that for years she had telephoned to his employer that he was ill when apparently there was nothing the trouble with him, and that she had done this because she was afraid he would lose his job. His mother, until her death, had always been ready to pay a month's rent for them when he had "made a short week," and after her death one of his sisters had come to the rescue. Mrs. Seldon had helped out from time to time by doing

day work and gradually drifted into working part of every day, contributing $35 a month to the family budget.

His work record, except for irregularity, was good. He was a skilled workman and his position with the X Company, where he had been employed for sixteen years, was one of responsibility. The charge of insubordination was made against him because he boasted in the presence of some fellow-workmen that he did not intend to comply with a minor order that had been issued. This was passed on to his supervisor, and he was discharged. The same supervisor had spoken of him not many months before as one of the best workmen in his division, and seemed not at all critical of his irregularity, which was attributed to illness. From any facts that could be secured, the dismissal seemed hardly justified. In the three years since he was discharged he had drifted from job to job, with recurrent but always unsuccessful efforts at reinstatement.

Two of these jobs were of particular significance. The year after his discharge the X Company gave him work as a watchman. He took it, hoping that it was a way back to his former position of responsibility. It was work that was given ordinarily to the old men in the service, and he was thirty-five years old. He was stationed where each day he saw scores of his former colleagues. It was not surprising that the humiliation was more than he could bear. Another job was with the corporation where he had been placed by his brother when he was first married. He took an inferior position and in a few weeks received two promotions that placed him in a position of responsibility with a good salary. A month after his promotion he left voluntarily. It was necessary for him to write weekly reports. He felt he did not have enough education to do them, and so never sent any in. He left when he thought it would soon be discovered that his reports were missing. A number of accidents happened while he was there, and while he was in no way responsible or connected with them, it is not impossible that he was a great deal disturbed through associating them with his own accident. How much he was affected by Mrs. Seldon's unwillingness to give up her work when he was earning a good salary is a matter of conjecture. From Mrs. Seldon's point of view, and that the of relatives too, Mr. Seldon's only bad habit was his irregularity as a worker. He was a kind and gentle father, adored by his four children, fond of his home, and very helpful about the house. It was evident that he had a habit of long standing, of staying at home, either from school or from work, whenever he felt like it. It was equally apparent that this habit had been encouraged, first by his mother's indulgence and later by the financial help of his relatives and his wife's earnings. It had been an unconscious conspiracy on their part, for each in his own way had tried to help him correct the habit, mostly by nagging and taunting. Mrs. Seldon's relatives considered him a shiftless ne'er-do-well who could not support a family; his oldest brother had "washed his hands of him"; increasingly his sister's help was far from a generous gift, and Mrs. Seldon's sarcasm was biting. The children alone were friendly and uncritical. The family's methods might have been un

successful with any man, but with a sensitive, retiring person like Mr. Seldon they certainly contributed to the bad habits begun in childhood a deep sense of inferiority. He had less education than his brothers and sisters. He was unsuccessful in every way in comparison with them, and even in comparison with his wife's brothers and sisters, to whom his own relatives felt decidedly superior. Mr. Seldon's mental depression had been noted two or three times in the early contacts with the family, but was not regarded as of any special significance. His depression may have been more marked, or perhaps it had more meaning for the new visitor. For as soon as she had a personality picture of Mr. Seldon she persuaded him to have a physical and psychiatric examination. The former revealed nothing of importance, but the psychiatrist ordered a short period of treatment in a mental hospital, which Mr. Seldon was perfectly willing to accept. He was there for two months and was much less depressed when he came home.

While he was away the visitor was working with the attitudes of the family. Her success with one of his sisters was encouraging, but Mrs. Seldon's periods of insight readily gave way to her old attitude that he was either lazy or crazy, and from her point of view both were equally reprehensible. The visitor had been a great deal absorbed in Mr. Seldon's problems, and realized that some evidence of her concern with Mrs. Seldon's difficulties might be more fruitful in changing her attitudes than further interpretation of Mr. Seldon's personality. Mrs. Seldon was working part of every day and was overwhelmed with the problem of the discipline of the children in his absence. She had no skill in managing them and knew it. While she laughed about it and pretended that she did not care that Mr. Seldon could get along with them so much better, it was quite apparent that she was sensitive about it. The visitor suggested that as soon as Mr. Seldon came home it might be a good plan for Mrs. Seldon to have two weeks' rest at a convalescent home, because she had had so much strain during the last few months. This marked the turning-point in Mrs. Seldon's attitude toward her husband. She could not enter sympathetically into Mr. Seldon's problems until she felt the visitor's real concern with her troubles and burdens.

Helpful as the hospital treatment was in clearing up the depression for the time being, the major difficulties in the way of Mr. Seldon's becoming a dependable breadwinner for his family had not been removed. His long-standing habit of irregularity was still to be reckoned with, as well as his acute sense of inferiority and his emotional interest in the old job. Where was the visitor to begin in her effort to change his habits? Dewey tells us that "until one takes intermediate acts seriously enough to treat them as ends, one wastes one's time in any effort to change habits. Of the intermediate acts, the most important is the next one.' ." What was the next step? Would he stay any length of time in a new job, to say nothing about daily regularities, while he was still wishing and x John Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct.

hoping to return to his old job with the X Company? Was it wise for him to go back to the old job, considering his nervous condition and the accident which might easily happen again? What influence could be brought to bear to get him reinstated, if that were desirable? How could he be helped to take himself emotionally out of the old job? If returning to the X Company had to be given up both by the visitor and by Mr. Seldon, what kind of work ought he to have? Would any job meet the situation, or would the kind of job he succeeded in getting have some effect on his feeling of inferiority in relation to his wife and their relatives? How much could be done about his bad habits from childhood until these other obstacles were removed?

The visitor was convinced that he could not return to the X Company in the old position. There was too much risk for him on account of his nervous condition, and it was unfair from the point of view of the public safety. Any inferior position with the company was not to be considered. A careful analysis of his work record for the last three years confirmed her in her feeling that just a job would have little if any therapeutic value, but that the right job might help considerably in relieving his feeling of inferiority.

We are not accustomed to think very much about the kind of work a person is doing in relation to his personality. Because family societies have had to be so much concerned with the economic aspects of family life, it is not surprising that any job that yielded an income has been accepted at its money value. For the man or woman who has no marked personality difficulties, any job that pays a reasonable wage may do very well. But for a great many people who have no appetite for their work, we may find as we give more consideration to it that the right job is the best of appetizers and that it is more significant than we have realized in the development of personality.

It was a question whether even a position that he considered as important as the one he had held with the X Company would help take him emotionally out of the old job. The visitor thought she would probably fail if she tried now to get him to face what his emotional bondage to the X Company had done to him in every job that he had held in the last three years. Until she could see some better way of handling this she decided that she would take a chance on its clearing up if the right job could be found for him.

If work of any kind had not been so difficult to find on account of the industrial depression, the visitor might have set, as her first goal on the way to his becoming a steady, dependable breadwinner, finding just the right job that would meet the needs of his personality. She faced the fact that it might be some time before it could be found, and turned to more immediate goals, of keeping him from becoming discouraged and depressed in the meantime. She accepted the fact that there might be another period of job-drifting, but considered this better than no work at all. If not any job, almost any job became the next step. Should she find it for him or expect him to find it for himself? Analysis of his work history revealed that someone had always found his jobs