Sigmund Freud argued, in Civilization and Its Discontents (1930) and elsewhere, that the two primary needs of the human animal are love and work.
Nowadays, a lot of folks would understand him to mean “sex” and “money.” But that is not what Freud meant.
We are animals with profound spiritual, not just physical, needs.
What Freud meant by “love” was marriage and family. However, the kinds of personality tests we are concerned with on this website are not generally geared to helping you find a mate. Therefore, let us set love aside.
So, what did Freud mean by “work”? Here, I think he had in mind two things.
First, “work” may refer to the role of provider, of supporting one’s family.
But I think the good doctor from Vienna probably also had in mind the way that “work” not only serves an instrumental purpose (providing for one’s family), but also is an end in itself.
The inherent spiritual value of work has to do with the way it fills up one’s life and thus inevitably constitutes a crucial element in the formation of one’s sense of self.
Most people want to do their work well, not just to get paid, but for the sake of the satisfaction of a job well done—and, yes, also for the gratifying social recognition that derives from a reputation for skill, competence, reliability, and other virtues.
If we combine these two basic aspects of “work”—being a provider for one’s family and deriving satisfaction from one’s own efforts and one’s resulting place in the world—then we can perhaps translate Freud’s basic insight about the centrality of work to our lives by invoking the concept of a “career.”
And careers are something we do very much concern ourselves with on this website!
So much for the deep significance of careers in our lives. But how should one go about choosing a career?
Typically, people’s basic orientation towards the work world begins to be formed at an early age. Obviously, one cannot take too seriously the six-year-old boy who claims he wants to be a fireman when he grows up.
On the other hand, that boy’s basic orientation towards an active, adventurous life—possibly combined with a devotion to helping other people—may indeed be something that endures throughout his life.
Apart from such childhood romantic imaginings, probably the most important contributor to most people’s eventual choice of a career is their success, or lack thereof, in school.
Not everyone in this world is cut out for book-learning. In an ideal world, our public education system would do much more than it does by way of providing children with the opportunity for meaningful vocational training.
Currently, most public schools attempt to fit their square-peg kids, who should be learning how to work with their hands, into the same round academic hole of college preparation.
Setting this issue aside, our current system does a reasonable job of exposing young people to the various practical and theoretical fields of human endeavor.
Many high school– and college-age kids become enamored of Russian literature or Roman history or astrobiology, say, and decide to devote their lives to the life of the mind.
For the lucky few who have the intellect and the drive to stick with it, this sort of career can be immensely satisfying.
However, most people wind up being neither plumbers nor philosophers.
For a great many, if not most, of us, choosing a career means navigating the landscape of the white-collar professions, for example:
- Accounting
- Advertising
- Architecture
- Banking
- Business
- Clergy
- Engineering
- Entertainment
- Government
- Information Technology
- Insurance
- Journalism
- Law
- Medicine
and many others.
This might seem like a straightforward proposition,
One problem is that all of us may harbor illusions about ourselves.
For example, when I was in college, I set my sights on being a creative writer. I even went so far as to pen a 150-page autobiographical novel. Unfortunately, the manuscript was truly awful—as I realized very well even at the time.
Good novelists must be highly attuned to other people, both their objective behavior and their subjective feelings. Self-absorbed introverts do not make gifted authors.
Even worse, during my mid-forties I experienced a typical, male, mid-life crisis. For a while, I considered fleeing the world by training to enter the priesthood.
There was only one small problem with that plan—priests have to like people. A misanthropic priest is a recipe for disaster!
Fortunately, my depression eventually lifted, and I gradually became better able to see myself clearly. The solitary pursuit of proofreading, editing, and analytic writing is what I was born to do.
The point of this little foray into my personal foibles and fantasies is just this. A person’s untutored career predilections are not infallible.
In fact, one might say that the requirement everyone faces to decide on a career is fundamentally paradoxical.
On the one hand, clear-sighted self-knowledge is the key to choosing wisely.
On the other hand, self-knowledge is not that easy to come by. Indeed, our friends and family often know us better than we know ourselves.
All of which is why it makes sense to seek professional advice regarding perhaps the most-important decision you will ever make. Well, the second-most-important (after your choice of a mate).
Taking a reputable personality test and carefully evaluating the results can be an important element in seeking such advice and in gaining greater insight into oneself.
Other articles on this website investigate some of the strengths and weaknesses of the principal online personality tests available at present (for example, here). Therefore, I will not rehearse that material here.
However, I do want to say a few words about the reasons why the test offered on this site—the Success Portraits Personality Test, or SPPT—is an excellent solution to the paradox posed by the vitally important need to choose a career with care and prudence.
Unlike conventional assessments like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), which posits a four-factor theory of personality, or the various Big-Five tests, the SPPT provides analyses of fully 19 underlying traits affecting human behavior.
Moreover, these particular traits were established on the basis of substantial and lengthy field studies and other forms of empirical investigation.
For this reason, the SPPT is highly effective as a conventional personality test—that is, the type of tool that is most useful for career-assessment purposes.
The SPPT goes beyond the traditional type of individual-oriented personality test—especially, with respect to the various roles that employees and managers may play in the work environment (see here).
But that is subject matter for another blog post.
Let me wind up this post by citing two famous sayings from Antiquity, which show that Sigmund Freud’s views on this subject were really nothing new.
On the importance of a career:
“First of all, though, we must decide who and what we wish to be, and what kind of life we want. That deliberation is the most difficult thing of all.”
(Cicero, De officiis, I.117; translation in Cicero, On Duties, edited by M.T. Griffin and E.M. Atkins. Cambridge University Press, 1991; p. 46.)
On the importance of self-knowledge:
Gnōthi seauton.
(“Know thyself”; inscription on the architrave above the entrance to the Temple of Apollo at Delphi.)