. Thirdly,--and this is for us the most important point,--he
saw that the methods had to be elaborated in such a way that the
personal traits and dispositions might be discovered with much
greater exactitude and with much richer detail than was possible
through what a mere call on the vocational counselor could unveil.[3]

It is well known how this Boston bureau has stimulated a number of
American cities to come forward with similar beginnings. The
pedagogical circles have been especially aroused by the movement,
municipal and philanthropic boards have at least approached this group
of problems, two important conferences for vocational guidance have
met in New York, and at various places the question has been discussed
whether or not a vocational counselor might be attached to the schools
in a position similar to that of the school physician. The chief
progress has been made in the direction of collecting reliable data
with reference to the economic and hygienic conditions of the various
vocations, the demand and supply and the scale of wages. In short,
everything connected with the externalities of the vocations has been
carefully analyzed, and sufficient reliable material has been gained,
at least regarding certain local conditions. In the place of
individual advice, we have thus to a certain degree obtained general
economic investigations from which each can gather what he needs. It
seems that sometimes the danger of letting such offices degenerate
into mere agencies for employment has not been avoided, but that is
one of the perils of the first development. The mother institute in
Boston, too, under its new direction emphasizes more the economic and
hygienic side, and has set its centre of gravity in a systematic
effort to propagate understanding of the problems of vocational
guidance and to train professional vocational counselors in systematic
courses, who are then to carry the interest over the land.[4]

The real psychological analysis with which the movement began has,
therefore, been somewhat pushed aside for a while, and the officers of
those institutes declare frankly that they want to return to the
mental problem only after professional psychologists have sufficiently
worked out the specific methods for its mastery. Most counselors seem
to feel instinctively that the core of the whole matter lies in the
psychological examination, but they all agree that for this they must
wait until the psychological labora