THE PSYCHIATRIST AND HARVARD

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Mr. Glassman's excellent article on March 8, calling attention to the problem of the student to the UHS, misquoted me ever so slightly but enough to alter my essential point. Mr. Glassman wrote that I had said that a psychiatrist from the UHS should have been put on the Student Faculty Advisory Committee while in fact I had said that no psychologist was appointed to the Committee at its inception. The difference does not lie in the irelevant distinction between the Ph.D. and the M.D., but rather in my wish to call attention to the University's need to pay as much heed to the emotional development of students as to their intellectual development. My concern is not about psychological treatment of students with emotional difficulties but with how the University can make use of psychological counselors to create an atmosphere that facilitates sound emotional development and helps to prevent emotional difficulties. Such counselors, who would consult with the University about policy matters as disparate as the design of the dining rooms or the character of gradng policies, could come from the Health Service with the ment responsibilities; they could come from the existing faculty (Professor Erikson would be an outstanding choice); or they could have special faculty appointments for this particular task. My guess would be that if the University dignified the consideration of the emotional development of the students with the same attention that is paid to the curriculum they would be better prepared to deal with incidents like Dow, and would be preparing now to understand and use constructively whatever new issues will be stirred up by the next generation of students. This approach would have among other advantages that of avoiding an issue becoming a confrontation between lawfulness and license, without in any sense running the risk of treating the college as a "therapeutic" community. If consistent "dialogue" and "communication," hackneyed but essential words, were current within the faculty and administration, and between them and the students, so that all were prepared for what was going on, mutual understanding could, at least in part, avoid sharp confrontation. And, if confrontation occurred, a degree of preparation of a mutually understood position would have been worked through by the faculty. A position based on an understanding of what was going on developmentally in the students and the relevance of this to the ever persisting social changes in the University and the larger culture. Norman E. Zinberg   Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry