Viking_Yearbook_71

88 Psychologist, Counseling Center Director There has been a gradual shift over the eight years I've been here from students coming to us for vocational counseling to increasing numbers coming for help over personal problems– roommates, parents, self-confidence in class. I see about 12 students a day and work in an encounter group once a week. The counseling center has had group sessions for years, but for awhile no one seemed to know about them. Now there is a waiting list to get into groups. It has become an accepted idea that it's worthwhile to be able to relate to people more intimately, less obtusely . To get in a group does not mean you have a problem. Some people come because they want to learn to relate better to people on a one-to-one basis right now. Other people would like to do something about their world outside, and hope they can learn some techniques here and then experiment with them later. We use some of the same techniques used by the sensitivity people. We use techniques of the encounter people. We use techniques of therapy groups in hospitals. We use whatever seems to fit. College creates a lot of problems. I think it inevitably alienates each generation. And it's going to become worse because the more we learn the more separated we become from the people who graduated before us, or never went to college. Students go home and ask their parents questions which they don't want to be asked. The parents get very upset because they don't want to be questioned or doubted. My father's generation tended to buy what their elders said. A lot of it was half-truths, lies, the old stuff. I think my generation questioned our elders but we didn't speak out. We knew we were being told the old stuff. We went along with it though and waved the flag. I don't think today's generation is buying the same stuff. At least some of them are standing up and screaming "This is hypocrisy." I think you see this change because of education and communication ... We have a group for married couples. There is a problem, particularly for older students, when one person returns to school and the other one stays at home and works. The spouse attending college will change with the introduction of new ideas and new views on life, while the one at home remains the same. Soon the couple may feel estranged. We try to help them to see the problem (stressing that the situation with school is only temporary) and find ways for them to relieve the differences in their lives. One of our major problems is that we are not helping a lot of people who need help. This is for two reasons. One, people don't know where we are in the university, or don't know of our existence. Two, people don't come see us even if they do know about us because they're too scared, too threatened by the experience. This is true ot"society in general. I worked at a mental hospital for three years. The advantage of working in a hospital is that you get people who are more seriously disturbed. What you would see here you wpuld see at the mental hospital in the exaggerated sense, which gives you a better opportunity to see what is really going on . Occasionally you see a very disturbed person here, but they're fairly rare. Also, at the hospital you have a captive audience. You feed them into an atmosphere which you set up to be therapeutic in every sense. Here you've got maybe one hour a week with a student, or two to three hours if he's in a group. You're not apt to have anywhere near the therapeutic impact. The suicide rate for college people is quite high. About one student in 10,000 commits suicide. At PSU, in the years I've worked here, there has not been a suicide by a person currently enrolled in school. They have happened when people were on a vacation or working after graduation. People here have a better opportunity to blend with the woodwork than they do at most universities. If you wanted to come here and not meet anybody I think you could do so for four years. Of course there are situations where you can meet people. But it isn't pushed on you as it is in high schools and many small colleges. Last year I was on sabbatical at a rural institution in Illinois. It was a nice academic institution, respectable and all that. But there were no radical ideas. The students were pretty provincial. Conformity was the by-word. I think one of the things that I like about PSU is that we don't have overall conformity. There's a lot of diverse elements, though I think sometimes there is very rigid conformity within those elements. We have a hip group and a super straight group. We have middle-of-the-roaders. We have those who are working students, which really covers the spectrum of all groups. At the same time we have those who are basically employed and are just going to school part-time. We have older students and beginning freshmen right out of high school. The problem is that there isn't much interaction between these diverse elements. I remember one administrator who was here last spring during the strike and the Park Blocks police trouble. His comment was that it seemed to him that the most extreme elements involved were the liberals, the group which was putting up the street barricades, and the jocks, who wanted to tear down the barricades. The public and the police and the general students were really on the outside of this in-fight which was going on between these two groups. That was where the biggest hassle was, rather than between the strikers and everybody, or the university administration and everybody, or students in general and everybody .. . Portland State, the overall institution, I see as confused at the moment. And I think it probably always will be, because I don't think it'll ever be any one thing. Many large universities can be neatly described as a university with a liberal arts college and a number of graduate schools and that's it. The University of Missiouri, where I worked for awhile, could fit this description. But I don't see us that way because we have a different kind of student body. We have a metropolitan setting and that makes for a metropolitan kind of student. They're a different breed of cat than the students who live in dormitories on campus. A lot of the students live in all kinds of rat holes and what-have-you around here, and I think they're probably a much more independent lot. There are exceptions. Many students live at home with parents and, therefore, maybe they're less independent than students away in a dormitory. So you have a real mix. And I think it will always be that way . I don't think it's bad though . It encourages diversity. And I'm personally very much in favor of diversity. I think it's a great idea t hat we should spread out in many directions. We can do so because we've got some pretty good backing in a lot of areas. We've got some really outstanding people in many university departments. . .