Customer Reviews

Handbook of Military Psychology

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I hunted it down at a research library and read various chapters, scanning through others. Yes, it's a good book, dealing with many aspects that do not exist in civilian life or not to the same extent, and each chapter includes a detailed bibliography. Chapters include:

Personality Factors in Military Psychology
Individual and Group Behavior in Extreme Situations and Environments
Optimal Leadership in Small Army Units
Hostage Negotiation

Still, you can find it in a library and read it there. There is nothing to justify the price (retail $900.00 according to Borders).

As I write, the price of this opus is fluctuating around $1,000. Two questions immediately occur, before reading any further (as other reviews indeed confirm):

a) Why is it so expensive? and
b) Is it worth it?

I have to say immediately that to answer either question authoritatively is beyond my competence. Also, I am not a military psychologist, and my judgments therefore may well differ from those of the target audience.

CRITERIA

I take it, however, that the criteria include those by which any other handbook would be judged: that is, the information in it should be:

* Complete
* Accurate
* Clear
* Up-to-date
* Accessible, i.e. well indexed and cross-referenced.

But given first two criteria alone, several potential problems become apparent immediately.

Firstly, there is the sheer size of the Universe of Discourse. Military Psychology is a massive subject, and no single book can hope to do more than scratch the surface of it. We may, however, hope for:

* good summaries
* extensive bibliographies for further reading.

Secondly, secrecy. If the Military is conducting psychological warfare, it is unlikely to want a discussion of its methods available to anyone able to pay the price of this book. Further, if there are psychological problems among the Military, it is unlikely to want to publicize the extent of them.

Thirdly, psychologists in all areas are under pressure nowadays to produce politically acceptable results. If (for the sake of argument) Eskimos were found in large-scale assessments to make better pilots than Texans, or vice versa; or if homosexuals were found to make much better marksmen than straights, or vice versa; or women better officers than men; what are the chances that the Military would come out and say so? Still less, act on the information?

And fourthly but perhaps most significantly, the authors are themselves mostly (but not all) in the Military, which is not famous for rewarding those who tell it what it does not want to hear. If the majority of officers studied are found to be (say) stupid or incompetent, are the authors going to be able to say so? Budgets have been known to disappear and promotions evaporate. (In fact, such a scenario in real life is described at length in what I thought was one of the frankest and best sections in the book, by Lenz & Roberts, pp.671-687.)

In a sense, it's pointless to expect a great deal that contradicts the official viewpoint: after all, this IS this official viewpoint. But equally well, if the book doesn't measure up, we may dismiss it and save our (or the tax-payer's) money!

CONTENT & ORGANIZATION

The perspective is avowedly international: the authors are from the USA, the UK and Israel, but there is a fair amount of material on the militaries of other countries, including some countries where first-hand material is difficult to obtain, such as the (former) Soviet Union.

At the risk of duplicating Amazon's Product Information, I list the section organization (which seems to me quite sensible), as follows:

1. Selection, Classification and Placement in Military Service
2. Human Factors in Military Performance
3. Environmental Factors and Military Performance
4. Leadership in Military Performance
5. Individual and Group Behavior
6. Clinical and Consultative/Organizational Psychology
7. Special Subjects and Special Situations
Index

QUESTIONS

The object of a handbook is, presumably, to enable its users to find answers to their questions, and thereby, hopefully, to solve their problems.

What are the problems facing the US Military? Other militaries? Which are the most frequent? The most important? Which have significant psychological components, and what are they costing in terms of money, efficiency and manpower? Which ones has psychology proposed solutions for? Were the solutions accepted and implemented, and if so, how effective were they? Or if rejected, why? What proportion of the military budget is spent on psychology? What proportion ought to be spent?

These general questions seem to me to be fundamental, and I would expect to find answers in such a reference as the present one. There is a certain amount of information spread over the book, but finding it is like extracting teeth -- a problem that extends to many other topics as well.

Accepting for the moment that Psychology has a useful body of knowledge to offer the Military, what is it? Among those considered greatest psychologists of the 20th century were Freud, Jung, Adler and Eysenck. But these four men disagreed about almost everything it's possible to disagree about. Whose theories does the Military favour? Or does the Army favour one, and the Navy another? Do psychological casualties get psychoanalysis, or behaviour therapy? And which is more effective, and in what circumstances?

None of the four psychologists mentioned appears in the Index, although Napoleon does (because of a psychological observation!). Thurstone is mentioned in the text, likewise (Eric) Berne, but neither is in the Index (although Berne's Transactional Analysis is).

What personality characteristics does the Military need? Are extraverts better than introverts? Neither word appears in the Index (in any spelling). What tests are used for officer selection? What is their predictive validity? How do you exclude psychopaths? Or do you want to? (Psychopaths are reportedly good at killing people, but bad at accepting discipline.) It is acknowledged by Milgram (p.560) that "the importance of personality variables in all phases of military life and in all fields of military psychology would appear to be beyond question". Nevertheless, "It is with some surprise, therefore, that when we examine the military psychology research literature, we find relatively few studies on personality."

How does the Military deal with discipline problems, from insubordination to fragging? Are these ways the best ways? Insubordination and Fragging are not in the Index, although Discipline is; it gets about a page.

What about incidents like My Lai, which (to put it no higher) are inconvenient for all concerned? Are there warning signs? If so, what are they? Whose responsibility is it to spot them, and how much training do they get? And is it better for morale if the incidents are exposed, or if they're swept under the carpet? My Lai is not in the Index.

What makes people go AWOL? What makes them desert? And are there a few causes, or many? We're told [p.545] that 'a total of 14 reasons were cited by 5290 deserters', but we're not told what those reasons were.

How can we get officers and men to realise the importance of cryptographic protocols? And while we're at it, what attributes does a good cryptographer need? Cryptography is not in the Index.

If the Ancient Greeks could produce first-rate fighting forces with homosexuals, why can't the USA? Or is that it could, but doesn't want to?

What is the incidence of alcohol abuse? Drug abuse, wife and or child abuse? Is it higher among enlisted men than officers? If so, why? Can anything be done about hazing, and if so, what?

Do women in the Military cause problems? If so what problems, and what can be done about them? Are there particular benefits? Are women, on average, better at anything then men, or vice versa? If so, what? And can we take advantage of it without causing resentment in the other sex?

What is the attitude of the Military to whistle-blowers? What should it be? Can they be protected, and if so, how?

Psychology is a self-referential profession. What are the psychological problems facing military psychologists? Bureaucracy? Turf wars? Resistance to new ideas?

I'll spare you the rest.

ANSWERS

I found partial answers to many of these questions, and quite good answers to a few of them, by wading through the book. In few cases was the index of much help.

In places specific facts and figures are indeed given: for instance, we're told that over a four-year period instance ending in 1977, AWOL incidence cost the US Government $1.1. billion. This is sporadic, though.

Unsurprisingly, information is most easily found on uncontroversial issues, such as performance impairment by extremes of altitude or temperature.

On controversial topics, however, refuge is too often taken in safe generalities and/or platitudes, pious recommendations, silence (implicit or explicit -- "no studies exist"), or evasiveness, when not outright denial. For instance, I was left with the distinct impression that South Americans deliberately blow up their own union organisers and bayonet their own pregnant wives, just so they can blame it on their country's US-trained military.

Similarly, quantitative information is in inverse supply to the sensitivity of the subject.

On the issue of the abilities of women, for instance, after a politically safe historical survey, we are told: "Women were proven to be good soldiers..." (p.733). Well, that's certainly a relief! The possibility that women might make (gasp!) BETTER soldiers than men in some circumstances is not even addressed. For instance, a casual selection from my own library yields the following:

"Women seem to be able to hold in their memory store for short periods of time a number of unrelated and personally irrelevant facts, while men are capable of comparable memory feats only if the material is personally relevant and/or coherent." (Eysenck, 1979, p.77)

Memory is relevant to performance on a variety of jobs.

To be fair, there is rather more information than this: for example, that women in the People's Liberation Armed Forces of Vietnam "were found to be particularly effective in liaison and espionage work." Nevertheless, the whole subject gets just 15 pages, including the history. Sexual harassment gets a paragraph.

Racial integration gets two paragraphs, (pp. 538-539) -- and only blacks are mentioned. Goodbye, Navajo code talkers. Neither Native American nor Indian is in the Index.

Likewise, some of the most extensive quantitative intelligence testing information available, going back to World War I, comes from the Military, as documented (for instance) by Shuey (1966) and Herrnstein & Murray (1994). I could find no trace of any of it. Is it true that leaders need to be slightly more intelligent than the men they lead, but if they are too much more intelligent, leadership is lost? I read the whole section on leadership without finding out.

CONCLUSIONS

Why is this book so expensive? I don't know. A lot of work has certainly gone in to it, but the taxpayers will already have paid for much of it.

The initial impression of almost total vacuousness I got when first browsing the book is not in fact correct. There is much valuable information here, but also, to my layman's eye, some gaping holes.

The worst feature is the Index, which is absolutely dreadful. The best is the very detailed references, which presumably contain much of the information I couldn't find in the book itself.

But given its encyclopędic terms of reference, two things are particularly striking:

One is the recurrence of the phrase "no studies exist", which is like mantra.

The other is the curious absence of standard civilian works in the references, even though many military occupations are basically no different from their civilian counterparts. It's almost as if the Military were a different species.

Is it worth $1000, or even $500? Not to me. But if I were a Military Psychologist, and the information here saved the life -- or even the mental health -- of one of my men, I would certainly consider it worth it.

REFERENCES

* Eysenck, H.J. (1979). The Structure and Measurement of Intelligence. New York: Springer-Verlag (ISBN 0-387-09028-2)
* Herrnstein & Murray (1994). The Bell Curve. Free Press (ISBN 0-02-914673-9)
* Shuey, Audrey M. (1966). The Testing of Negro Intelligence. New York: Social Science Press (Library of Congress Catalog Card# 66-19037)

I know that this book does not cost $599.00 so who ever reads this I have a message . Tell someone to fix the page cause I want to buy this book and I can;t do that without the price .

900 bucks is outrageous!! This book better come with a brand new car or a trip to Europe!!

Reuven Gal's Handbook of Military Psychology is a fascinating glimpse into the psychology of today's military. (...) I highly recommend this book to anyone with even a passing interest in either psychology or the military(...).

I certainly hope this book doesn't cost 300 dollars, is it made of gold? I would like to buy it as well, but I find it hard to believe it costs this much money! If anyone reads this, please tell me if the price is correct, My e-mail: flaviacampos@clix.pt Thank you.

thats the price when i look on my screen. must be a big mistake