NEWS FROM APF

Roy Scrivner leaves $361,335 bequest to APF

By Rebecca A. Clay

When Royce 'Roy' W. Scrivner, PhD, came out as a gay man during a Texas Psychological Association (TPA) executive committee meeting in 1984, his colleagues were taken aback.

'If he had asked me, I would have told him not to do it,' remembers private practitioner Michael C. Gottlieb, PhD, who was then serving as TPA?s liaison for professional affairs. 'I thought it was political suicide.'

Gottlieb was wrong. Eight years later, TPA?s membership elected Scrivner president and made him one of the first openly gay state association presidents. By the time he died of colon cancer last December, the 58-year-old psychologist was nationally known for his work in gay, lesbian and bisexual family therapy and for his advocacy on behalf of gay, lesbian and bisexual causes. In his many book chapters, journal articles and presentations, Scrivner explored the intersection between family therapy and gay, lesbian and bisexual issues. In 1996, APA gave him the Distinguished Professional Contribution award to recognize this groundbreaking work.

The terms of Scrivner?s will ensure that his contributions to psychology will continue indefinitely. His $361,335 bequest to the American Psychological Foundation (APF) will encourage other psychologists to conduct research on lesbian and gay family psychology and therapy.

'The bequest is a wonderful opportunity for the foundation to work on issues that were close to Dr. Scrivner?s heart,' says APF President Joseph D. Matarazzo, PhD.

As the money builds a year?s worth of income, a committee made up of representatives from Div. 43 (Family) and Div. 44 (Society for the Psychological Study of Lesbian and Gay Issues) will decide how to award the income that results. The Roy Scrivner Fund will award its first grant some time next summer.

'There are a lot of people doing gay and lesbian research, but we don?t have a lot of good research on gay and lesbian families,' says Scrivner?s friend Roberta L. Nutt, PhD, director of the counseling psychology program at Texas Woman?s University. 'Roy wanted to help fill that gap.'

Scrivner received his PhD in counseling psychology from the University of Texas in Austin in 1974. He began working at the Dallas Veterans Administration (VA) Medical Center in 1975, serving first as a counseling/clinical psychologist assigned to medical and surgical wards and becoming a family therapist two years later. He started seeing patients in private practice in 1980.

Between 1976 and 1990, Scrivner worked with the Dallas Community Resource Center, which sponsors a gay hotline. He also lobbied extensively on behalf of lesbian and gay rights.

He helped draft a TPA amicus brief supporting the repeal of a Texas law forbidding homosexual sex and testified as an expert witness in cases related to gay, lesbian and bisexual concerns.

Even before his death, Scrivner had made an impact on the next generation of psychologists, colleagues say. At the Dallas VA, he directed the psychology internship program, chaired the continuing-education committee and chaired a subcommittee for psychology training.

He also directed the Dallas Community Resource Center?s training program for five years. In all of these roles, he made sure that training included gay, lesbian and bisexual issues.

Scrivner also provided years of service to TPA. His presidency capped a TPA career that included positions as membership chair, organizational affairs officer and director of the Division of Applied Psychology. When he came out to his colleagues, he was serving as the liaison between TPA and APA?s Committee on Gay Concerns. In 1986, he established the Texas Psychological Foundation?s Lesbian and Gay Research Award. That fund also received a bequest at his death.

In addition, Scrivner was active in Divs. 43, 44 and 51 (Society for the Psychological Study of Men and Masculinity). He founded Div. 43?s Committee on Lesbian and Gay Family Issues and served as chair for several terms. In 1997, he received Div. 43?s Carolyn Attneave Award for outstanding contributions to diversity issues in family psychology and Div. 51?s award for distinguished professional service.

He also belonged to Divs. 18 (Psychologists in Public Service), 42 (Psychologists in Independent Practice) and 45 (Society for the Psychological Study of Ethnic Minority Issues).

'[Roy] represented the voice of the gay and lesbian community, usually as the lone voice,' Neil A. Massoth, PhD, wrote of his mentor and friend in an obituary published in Div. 51?s newsletter.

'Roy was able to make one aware of our unconscious bias or oversight in a manner that always made the person feel respected and loved.'

Rebecca A. Clay is a writer in Washington, D.C.

Brown donates funds for program support

Life long psychodiagnostician Fred Brown, PhD, has given $10,000 to support the American Psychological Foundation?s (APF) programs. Brown says APF?s program activities remind him of the idealism that first attracted him to the discipline more than 65 years ago.

'I have read about and seen the pictures of the young scholarship winners, the lectures and the descriptions of awards for profession-associated activities,' says Brown, of New York City. 'These activities are directed toward burnishing the image of psychology and revealing its essential idealism.'

As a young man, Brown almost missed his calling to psychology. He was enrolled in a predentistry curriculum with courses in physics and chemistry. Just before he entered dental school, he decided to delay his enrollment and take a year of liberal arts. Included in those courses was a class on psychology. 'It was love at first sight,' Brown says.

Brown received his doctorate in psychology at Ohio State University in 1933 under H.H. Goddard?s supervision. In the early years of his career he worked as chief psychologist of the Minneapolis public school systems. During World War II, he joined the U.S. Air Force, working at the 173rd general hospital in Nancy, France, and later, teaching psychology at the G.I. University in Shrivenham, England. He was discharged in 1946 with the rank of major.

Since 1946, Brown has been affiliated with the Mount Sinai Hospital, and the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. He was instrumental in establishing the division of psychology at the medical center and in training the psychologists and psychiatric residents. In 1973, he became professor emeritus of psychiatry at Mount Sinai.

Brown?s life work at Mount Sinai has only been one part of his professional activities. Throughout his career, he continued a psychodiagnostic practice with children , adolescents and adults; served as an expert witness in court cases; and taught psychology at the University of Minnesota and New York University.

Today, Brown travels, reads and attends lectures with his wife of 60 years and indulges his lifelong passion for classical music.

He continues to keeps abreast of issues and advances in psychology and is committed to furthering the discipline through activities such as his recent donation.

'When I remembered the Foundation, I went to the phone, called the offices and, with a very agreeable sense of perfect closure, announced this gift,' he says. 'In a way, I suppose, I would list this as one of my peak experiences because it was so absolutely right.'

Unifying psychology is theme for new APF lecture series

In honor of his 75th birthday, the family of Arthur Staats, PhD, has established the American Psychological Foundation (APF) Arthur W. Staats Lecture Series for Unifying Psychology, which will be given yearly at APA?s Annual Convention. Unifying psychology is defined as the unification of the disparate areas of psychology into important, coordinated avenues. The inaugural lecture in the series will be given Friday, Aug. 14, noon?12:50 p.m., and will be delivered by Arthur Staats. After this year, APA Div. 1 (General) will choose as lecturer a leading thinker from a different major field. The lecturer will receive an honorarium of $1,000 for work judged to have the most general significance within the field and across other fields or that has the potential to be extrapolated by the author to contribute to psychology?s unification.

'Unification is my father?s passion,' says Peter S. Staats, MD, chief of the Division of Pain Medicine at Johns Hopkins University, who has authored and researched a unified theory of pain with his father and Hamid Hekmat. 'He has focused his creativity on developing a broad unified theory, as exemplified in his latest book, ?Behavior and Personality: Psychological Behaviorism? as well as on a philosophy of science.'

Arthur Staats? works have been in fields ranging from basic learning to theories of child development, personality and abnormal behavior, to the invention of applied educational and clinical procedures such as time-out, behavioral toilet training and the token-reinforcer (token-economy) system. It was this range of research that led him to consider the problems of psychology?s fragmentation and the need for working toward unification. In 1984, Staats and five others organized a special interest group that became the Society for Studying Unity Issues (SUNI) in psychology. The group was devoted to organizing APA symposia and special addresses on unification; many such events appeared following the organization of SUNI in Div. 1, Div. 24 (Theoretical and Philosophical) and others. Since those days, unification has been the theme of conventions of APA, the American Psychological Society, the Association for Behavior Analysis and the Association for the Advancement of Behavior Therapy . It has also been the topic of various articles and books.

'All sciences begin in chaotic disunity, the focus is on producing new methods, theories and findings, not on relating what has been found,' Staats says. 'Later that unifying work begins and it increasingly yields products that bring enormous power to the science.'

Psychology is young, he says, but it has the constituents who can make it a great science, basic and applied. But psychology must begin to put its chaotic diversity together, Staats believes. 'Various important avenues of unification can now be delineated. The discipline needs to know them and to invest resources in developing them, for the great advances they will yield.'

Two psychologists establish APF lecture in honor of their daughter

Raymond A. Weiss, PhD, and Rosalee G. Weiss, PhD, psychologists from Teaneck, N.J., recently established a permanent lecture series with the American Psychological Foundation (APF) in memory of their daughter, Lynn. The first lecture will be given at APA?s Annual Convention, Aug. 20?24, 1999, in Boston.

Lynn Stuart Weiss, who died from cancer in 1971 at age 25, was interested in the science and art of politics with a focus on world law. She sought to better understand institutions? strengths and weaknesses in promoting conciliation and peace among nations. The lecture series will connect Lynn Weiss? range of interests by rotating it among four APA divisions: Div. 9 (Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues); 41 (American Psychology?Law Society); 48 (Peace); and 52 (International).

Lynn Weiss, born at the end of World War II in San Antonio, Texas, gained national recognition while she was in high school for her debating skills and Latin scholarship. She received a bachelor?s degree in government from New York University and a master?s degree in public law and government from Columbia University. She was finishing work for her doctorate at Columbia when she died. University faculty and students honored her by establishing within the international relations department a resource center in her name.

The Lynn Stuart Weiss Lecture is the second lecture series that the Weisses have established through APF. In 1994, Raymond Weiss began the Rosalee G. Weiss lecture series, which supports a lecturer from the arts or sciences whose work has significance for psychology, or an outstanding leader in any of the special areas within the spheres of psychology. The Weisses have also made a sizable bequest in their wills to sponsor think-tanks that seek to advance psychology.