The role of counseling psychology in a tuberculosis hospital.

No one will dispute the desirability of fitting the round peg in the round hole and the square peg in the square hole. But it is easy to forget that when the peg is a human individual and the hole is a niche in human society neither is perfectly round nor square. Nor are their shapes constant. Adaptations in both the individual and society are continually needed to make better “fits.” The attempted adaptation frequently results in a poorer fit below the surface even though the fit at the surface appears to be good. The peg becomes wobbly, or bent, or so loose it falls out, or so tight it cracks. These attempted adaptations have often shaped the pegthe human individual-in a fashion that limits greatly the number of holes he can fit. Further adaptations-more realistic ones-are often necessary. Vocational counseling, attempting to facilitate better adaptations, is replacing vocational advising with its emphasis on finding a ready-made hole that the peg can fit. Nature has endowed man with a remarkable power of adaptability. it has been estimated that the average individual is physically and mentally equipped to fulfill the requirements of about 30 job families with approximately 30 variations of jobs in each family, making possible a total of 30 times 30, or 900 occupational possibilities.4 The gifted individual is even more fortunate. The field of choice is somewhat narrowed for the man handicapped by tuberculosis but still offers him considerable choice. The greatest constrictor of a man’s field of occupational choice is not his physical and mental capacity, but his pattern of acquired attitudes and emotional needs. This limits the variety of activities that can yield him satisfaction. Being acquired, or learned, they can be re-learned, or “un-relearned,” or re-oriented. For the tuberculous patient the re-orientation of some of his attitudes must often be a primary goal of vocational counseling. There are at least two reasons for this. The first and more obvious is that the removal of some of the constricting effect of personal attitudes