TCBF said:
We were talking about psychometiric testing for the military. . . . . I recalled a PzAuklrbtn Capt telling me that he asked the Div Psychiatrist to send his way conscripts who would do well on the Boeselager Team. I was amazed that the Bundeswehr psych screened every conscript - over 2000,000 per year.
. . . . .
A few days I fell into conversation (socially, not professionally) with a psychologist, German born, who had served in their army. Recalling this thread, I asked him about psychological/psychiatric screening of Bundeswehr conscripts. Since he had not been a psychologist during his service (went in as a conscript private, left as a conscript private at the earliest opportunity), his knowledge of the specifics of the screening was somewhat limited. However, his recollection of his induction (late 1970s/early 1980s?) leads me to believe that their screening was not much more different than ours at the time, but with variations to account for Teutonic efficiency. While there may have been a lot of psychologists employed in the screening of conscripts their function was probably similar to Personnel Selection Officers as well as performing some of the administrative duties that our recruiting centre staff do, i.e. overseeing aptitude testing. There did not seem to have been a focus on the "clinical psychology" aspect to their screening process other than what an "arzt" could glean during a properly conducted medical examination.
It should also be noted that in that conscript military there is a benefit if the individual is found unfit for military service, he gets to go home and doesn't have to do alternate service. I suppose a more professionally trained person interviewing conscripts (vice a serving soldier who may not be as skilled in that realm) may be able to better identify malingerers.
While I haven't found much on-line about specifics of Bundeswehr screening (at least not in English, and reading German makes my head hurt) I did find this which deals with their conversion to a computer based testing from pencil and paper.
http://iacat.org/sites/default/files/biblio/wi80-01.pdf
For a discussion of faking (both to look good or bad) during screening of conscripts (Switzerland, however) https://www.uni-saarland.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Professoren/fr53_CKoenig/PDFs_Publikationen/BossKoenigMelchers_preprint.pdf
And for those who want a much more detailed explanation of PULHEMS, it's all in
http://wartimecanada.ca/sites/default/files/documents/Physical%20Standards%20and%20Instructions%20for%20Medical%20Examination%201943.pdf