Article archive / February 2017
Originally published: . Volume 8, No. 2. Source pages: 2.
Warning to others? by Times publisher, J. Nelson
On my office wall I have a “Demotivators Calender,” published by Despair, Inc., and for January there is a photo of a shipwreck and caption: “MISTAKES: It Could Be that the Purpose of Your Life Is Only to Serve as a Warning to Others.”
An upheaval going on in Texas gives us any number of warnings: try not to be serving on your state board when you lose a case for violating the United States Constitution; don’t write your practice act so that you wind up in a deposition trying to explain if those in AA and Weight-Watchers are practicing psychology; have some really good words on hand to differentiate psychology from psychotherapy (as futile as that is these days). The most salient warning for me is the one my father phrased, “If you see a crack it doesn’t mean you have to put your tail in it.”
Mary Louise Serafine, a PhD and attorney, was campaigning for the Texas Senate and used the term “psychologist” to describe herself on her website. This was, of course, a violation of the practice act, a misdemeanor. But, while her PhD was in education, not psychology, she did, apparently, do extensive post-doctoral work in psychology, she was on the psychology faculty at Yale and Vassar, she published in a psychology journal, and had been a member of APA for a time.
All of this still does not qualify her to call herself a “psychologist” in Texas, but calling herself a psychologist does not qualify her for the guillotine either.
In Dr. Serafine’s legal brief, we get a feeling for what she experienced: “During the campaign, the Texas Psychological Association (‘TPA’) emailed Serafine that in their opinion the sentence violated Chapter 501. She changed ‘psychologist’ to ‘educator.’
Thereafter the TPA and the Board signed formal complaints against Serafine over the use of the word and filed them with the Board. The Board issued a cease and desist order against Serafine, followed by a letter from the Attorney General threatening prosecution for Serafine’s use of the word in ‘public records.’
The TPA’s lobbyist and the Board then contacted local newspapers, informing them of the cease and desist order and demanding corrections stating that Serafine was not a psychologist. The TPA’s lobbyist phoned the same information to the office of Serafine’s opponent.”
Going for the jugular of a person who has political aspirations, has a PhD, and a law degree from Yale, suggests a group-level Trickster archetype at work. Why such a forceful reaction? Why did they not see their law’s vulnerabilities? (The judge actually mocked some sections.)
I think that perhaps in this situation it might have been some combination of the political (power) model and the natural arrogance that seems to affect some of us. Perhaps that pride that goes before the fall. (I often ask Archimedes if I am as arrogant and self-deceptive as others in the community that I complain to him about and he says simply, “All PhDs are arrogant.” This is why I call him Archimedes.)
I think we make trouble for ourselves when we embrace the political model. It has a way of clouding judgment. We seem oddly susceptible, considering we deal with the unconscious and the collective unconscious. But of course we are just as human as everyone else, and as Edith Hamilton writes, truth reveals herself only to the disinterested.
Becoming conscious of which model we are using as a community might help us. The political model is a win-lose, zero-sum game, and unfriendly to science and science’s quest for truth and innovation. In the terms of Eric Berne, these are third-level intensity games, often ending up in the courtroom. Playing them means we have to cloak ourselves in enough justification to make our actions seem reasonable even when we’re behaving with the wisdom and diplomacy of a group of flatworms.
A win-win model would be better. Win-win is not zero-sum, but a view that the whole can be greater than the sum of the parts, that new things are created as a natural result of innovation and collaboration. This would be a system where achievement is not just winning, but creation of something that benefits all. This type of approach could be friendly to science, because it is also more intellectually honest.
While I think Texas will go through a positive process in rewriting their law, it is unfortunate for them to be forced to do this in the political arena, which is not known for its high reasoning, but rather for making sausage.
If those winds of change blow this way, I hope we can set a good course for ourselves.
This article is part of a historical newspaper archive. Read the original issue for its original layout, photographs and graphics.