Letters

Honoring King's legacy

THANK YOU FOR REPRINTING Martin Luther King's address to the 1967 APA Annual Convention. I was near the aisle Dr. King walked that day in the great ballroom when this surprisingly small dignitary was escorted to the podium by the then current APA leaders.

Today I listened again to MLK as I read for the first time his speech to the APA convention and some of the tensions of 32 years ago returned. It was a vigorous message that made me an uncomfortable "sinner" as I had not considered myself prejudiced. Some of Dr. King's 1967 comments about America's role in Vietnam were perceived unpatriotic by this World War II ex-GI, and I sat on my hands when the audience cheered his prophetic remarks. His speech was moving and I feel fortunate to have experienced that bit of Martin Luther King's legacy.

Jack Jernigan, PhD
McKinney, Texas

Self-esteem

I READ WITH INTEREST THE column on self-esteem and aggression in the January Monitor. Drs. Staub and Baumeister struggle with multiple concepts of self-esteem. Is self-esteem defined as one's opinion of oneself (good, bad, in-between) or is there a "hidden" self-esteem? The surface self-report measures do not predict behavior consistently. The concept begs for definition.

Harry Stack Sullivan's notion of self-esteem may be helpful. He defined it as a basic mechanism of functioning, and in my opinion, his is a helpful measure of overall emotional well-being and good psychological adjustment. In a nutshell, if an individual is raised in a generally accepting environment, he or she will be essentially self-accepting. The converse is that if negated as a self, the individual will have low self-esteem and high defensiveness. In being self-accepting, the individual will be aware of his or herself, and will be able to learn from experience. Bullies and narcissists do not do this. The essential component of good adjustment--admitting and learning from error--needs to be recognized to reliably predict constructive or (self) destructive behavior.

In my opinion, feeling good about oneself is a more surface phenomenon and should not be mistaken for the self-esteem that comes from knowing oneself. Hence, Dr. Baumeister's call for the schools to promote self-regulation (based on self-awareness) is right on target.

Margaret O'Conner Griffiths, PhD
Chicago

Media watching

AS A MEMBER OF THE MEDIA Watch Group, I read with interest the letters in the January Monitor concerning the group's efforts to monitor and respond to portrayals of psychologists. There appeared to be important misunderstandings that I would like to point out.

First, one writer suggested that the Media Watch Group might better direct its energies to the negative images of mental illness in the media and asserts that there is no anti-defamation group for this purpose. In fact, there is such a group, the National Stigma Clearinghouse. In addition, NAMI and the National Mental Health Association have initiated similar activities. Second, to disparage the work of the Media Watch Group as merely "political correctness" is to miss a main point of the group's efforts. The group is not simply objecting to depictions that offend psychologists' narcissistic desire for a positive image. The concern is with depictions that may harm those whom psychologists serve by reducing trust in therapists, discouraging people from seeking treatment and making those who seek help less likely to recognize boundary violations.

Whether we like it or not, a great deal of public knowledge about psychology and psychotherapy comes, not from APA education campaigns, but from the mass media. We would be well advised to follow the lead of the Media Watch Group and pay closer attention to the nature and consequences of those media portrayals.

Otto F. Wahl, PhD
Fairfax, Va.

AS A MEMBER OF THE DIV. 46 Media Watch Group, I would like to respond to the letters that critiqued the November article "How are psychologists portrayed on screen?" I feel that the letter-writers misunderstood our goals.

The group's overall concern is the impact on the public of the portrayals of therapists as bumbling, evil or unethical. Do these portrayals reinforce anxiety about seeking help? Can people even spot the boundary violations?

The study conducted by Susan Dickson and myself revealed that many people are not aware that certain dual relationships, sanctioned in other professions, are unethical for us. A romance between therapist and former patient was considered OK by 41 percent, while a post-therapy or business relationship was seen as OK by 71 percent. Movies may not be causing these attitudes, but, at the least, reinforcing them.

Our committee can monitor, not censor, media therapists (this can include talk shows) to provide consultation to filmmakers, perhaps resulting in more ethical representations and the showing of sanctions for unethical behaviors. But more importantly, we can devise ways to highlight unethical and ethical behaviors, teaching the public which are which and why. This goal is concordant with that of APA's Public Education Campaign. None of these precludes efforts to root out egregious actions among our real-life colleagues.

Harriet T. Schultz, PhD
Houston

On methadone treatment

IN A JANUARY COLUMN, John Grabowski stated that heroin addiction is a medical problem, and methadone is the proper medication for it. How odd for a psychologist to adopt a medical model! An addiction is not a disease, and methadone is not a medication.

Methadone is a legal synthetic opiate. People who take it continue to be addicted, but the addiction has been decriminalized. In other words, the main advantage of methadone is that it is legal. Its oral administration is also convenient and acceptable to the user.

What is clear to most health professionals, but not to Mayor Giuliani, is that the unavailability of methadone will drive methadone users back on the street looking for a heroin fix.

Arnold Hyman, PhD
New Haven, Conn.

Our image

I APPRECIATED DR. EWING'S "Judicial notebook" on the judgment against Dr. Myron Liptzin of North Carolina. I was appalled that his patient was held incompetent to recognize the need to take his antipsychotic medication, and that Dr. Liptzin was to have been able to penetrate this thought-disordered barrier to make his patient understand the importance of continuing to receive services from the health center when Dr. Liptzin left to retire.

I am distressed by the implication that no provider is free to withdraw from the practice, even if a clinic remains available. I am more distressed by how the jury, representing the public, saw providers. In these court procedures, it seems that psychologists are not only responsible for remote acts of patients seen long before the acts were committed, but that we cannot do good, and that our entire effort is futile if not exploitative.

There is a myth about mental illness afloat. Emotional difficulties are held not to exist--so convenient for people who need to deny that they have hurt other people who now suffer, or deny that they themselves have been hurt. If someone hurt seeks help, this myth insists that the psychologist they approach be unable to help, and be actually the source of hurt itself. Don't blame the media; they only purvey what people will buy. Something is indeed very wrong with the image of psychology, and we will suffer for it.

Karen Greenbaum-Maya, PhD
Claremont, Calif.

Y2K anxieties

I READ WITH INTEREST THE January article on anxiety precipitated by the imminence of the Year 2000. Although my own research and clinical domain is in depression, I recently witnessed a phenomenon that I resonated to when I read the article: Two patients who went through a fairly profound depression brought about by the pending end of 1999, and their reflection that they had accomplished little in their life, and further, that they will have accomplished no more by the end of the millennium. Somehow, as noted the Monitor article, they attached a significance to the passing of the millennium, and their personal sense of achievement in relationship to it.

Based upon these cases, I wonder if we may expect not only an increase in anxiety as the Year 2000 approaches, but a surge in the "millennial blues" phenomenon right after the new year. If so, I predict these depressions will primary occur among people with a depressive style more related to achievement (what Beck refers to as the autonomous subtype of depression), rather than interpersonally oriented (or sociotropic) depression. We might also predict an increase in suicide at that time. Preventive efforts, aimed at differentiating personal sadness and regret from some more cataclysmic or universal sense of failure, may well be warranted.

Keith Dobson, PhD
Calgary, Canada

All letters to the editor must be 250 words or fewer. Mail them to APA Monitor, 750 First St., N.E., Washington, DC 20002-4242, or e-mail them to letters.monitor@apa.org. We regret we cannot run all the letters we receive.



Read our privacy statement and Terms of Use

Cover Page for this Issue

PsychNET®
© 1999 American Psychological Association

APA Home Page . Search . Site Map