Ethics and Professionalism

7. The Subscapular Reality

o 7 THESUBSCAPULAR RFALIlY Typifications are avowed simplifications and idealizations. The functionalist model is proposed as an approximation of actual occupations and an ideal toward which they strive. The criticism of the model is that professions do not approximate it closely enough nor strive hard enough to achieve it for it to be a typification . Instead, it encourages the uncritical spectator to exaggerate the merits of particular occupations by imagining characteristics they do not possess and debasing ideals to fit the characteristics they do have. This chapter argues that the functionalist model is a justificatory myth. I use 'myth' in its dictionary sense of an ostensibly historical narrative of obscure origin that explains practices, beliefs, and institutions. The term carries over from its theological use' the notion that a myth supports mores of a group and reinforces communal life. The pioneers of professionalizing occupations , thus, are mythmakers attempting to build a community , and sociologists are their mythologists.' The Myth of Collectivity Orientation The Urmythos from which all of the myths in the professional mythology spring is that professions are oriented to the service of humanity. Professions avow in their official pronouncements and the functionalist typification endorses the view that professions are oriented to service rather than to profit or the interest of any patron group. Handsome rewards are required to entice recruits, compensate for the cost of education, and provide equip- 121 THE SUBSCAPULAR REALITY ment and trappings for effective practice. It is simple justice that those who serve well should be paid well. But they serve to serve, not to be paid. In such bald form, protestations of service are easy to ridicule. Parsons and others, however, advance the claim that professions are institutionally directed toward the public good by a reward system that defines success in terms of the welfare of the client. An invisible hand assures that even the most self-seeking professional will take care of his or her clients. This claim is more difficult to refute. We also have seen that sociologists cite the prominence of symbolic rather than material rewards as evidence of the structural orientation to service on the premise that, to quote Barber, "money income is a more appropriate reward for individual selfinterest , and . . . prestige and honors are more appropriate for community interest." The intrinsic intellectual quality of professional work is taken to be further evidence of its contribution to the public good. The functionalist offers no argument to show that desire for honors motivates one to serve others any more than desire for money or power. The significance of honor depends on what one is honored for, just as the significance of money depends on what one is paid to do and the significance of power depends on what one uses power for. Perhaps desire for honor in preference to money or pleasure reveals an elevated soul but, as Aristotle observes, only if one desires honor as a confirmation of virtue.' To say that a desire for professional honors betokens a service orientation begs the question of whether professionals are honored for service. They, like business persons, also may be honored because they are successful; that is, because clients or employers are satisfied with their work. As professionals themselves insist, these are poor judges of the quality of professional work and they also may be indifferent to the professional's service to humanity. The observer may be more impressed by the honors bestowed by professional associations. Service to a profession transcends self-interest as narrowly defined, like the business person's participation in the Chamber of Commerce, United Fund, and civic boosterism. It is not to denigrate either to point out that selfless service to a group is not service to humanity unless the prosperity of the group benefits humanity. That the group possesses a 122 MODELS OF PROFESSIONS system of honors does not contribute one whit to proving that it does. Similar remarks may be made about the putative superior intellectual character and intrinsic interest of professional work. Theory and technique have their fascination. For that very reason they can become ends in themselves. Engineers may be attracted by the challenge of a complex space or weapons program to the neglect of mundane human needs. Physicians may be honored for breakthroughs with complex instrument- and expertise-intensive therapies for esoteric ailments at the expense of attention to more ordinary and widespread hazards to health. The most prestigious and...