Among the Intelleetualoids: Psyched Out in Left Field
Gahr, Evan
This is the background image for an unknown creator of an OCR page with image plus hidden text. all APA members receive, published "Deconstructing the Essential Father." The authors attacked...
...Fowler did not return a phone call for this article...
...Her paper on "Cultural Factors in Child Abuse and Neglect Evaluations" explained that white psychologists fail to be culturally sensitive and miss all sorts of nuances, even when a Hispanic mother smacks her kid in the head...
...Psychologists Carl Auerbach and Louise Silverstein insisted that the promotion of fatherhood discriminates against gay couples and single mothers...
...Lawyer Angela Oh made a valiant effort of her own to explain the seemingly unexplainable...
...A non-Hispanic psychologist recommended the "termination of her parental rights with all children...
...An Asian client had complained to her of racism by two of his colleagues...
...He even closed with his trademark "keep hope alive...
...Besides, where did he get this idea that they were racist...
...Ramos-Grenier, however, later examined the mother at her lawyer's request and disagreed...
...Jackson did make a brief reference to one of the convention's theme issues, cancer—he had just lost his brother to the disease and buried him earlier in the day...
...Best known for her stint on President Clinton's race commission, the softspoken Oh first made her name apologizing for the virulently anti-Korean L.A...
...A Hawaiian Ohana (family) ceremony celebrated various ethnic minorities—American Indians, blacks, Asians, Latinos, even "EuroAmericans"— each of them represented by an APA division president...
...The actual number may be less than 1 percent— it turned out that many women Koss classified as rape victims hadn't described their experience as such...
...Rep...
...it's just that when he wasn't around they would urinate on his desk...
...By contrast, Carl Auerbach, co-author of the fatherhood study, was barely noticed...
...of rape (forced colonialism), trashed George W. Bush and even Ronald Reagan...
...Oh was one of the convention's most popular figures, as crowds swooned around her both before and after her presentation...
...We do not find any empirical support that marriage enhances fathering or that marriage civilizes men and protects children...
...Perhaps the most curious explanation came from Julia Ramos-Grenier, a psychologist from Collinsville, Connecticut, who spoke at a panel on the "Promotion of Social Justice —Addressing Minority Issues in Psychology and Law...
...Those controversies were initiated by a person in the public media," he later told TAS...
...Consequently, Puerto Ricans often grow into adulthood with a "tendency to suppress anger until a The American Spectator • November 1999 build-up and eruption occurs, leading to an over-reaction in the parent...
...Joseph Pitts and other congressmen complained to Fowler in an August 6 letter...
...Sometimes the presence of fathers is "detrimental" to both mother and child because they may squander the household money by gambling or buying alcohol or cigarettes...
...At a left-liberal advocacy group like the APA, scientific progress can be rapid indeed...
...With his gray suit and closely-cropped gray beard, Auerbach blended perfectly into the crowd as he and others went from meeting room to meeting room...
...f the APA was stung by this criticism it wasn't evident at the August convention...
...She urged that the mother get all her kids back...
...At a Sunday morning panel, Oh told a bizarre story...
...Unfortunately, there were all too many efforts to explain what psychology has to do with "diversity...
...Again, Fowler hid behind science...
...It offered all the usual complaints about the disproportionate number of minorities in jail because of the biased criminal justice system...
...Nothing really...
...Suinn, a Hawaiian lei around his neck, then introduced keynote speaker Jesse Jackson, whom he called the "conscience of the nation...
...Meanwhile, at a packed meeting for Division 44, the society for gay psychologists, members passionately discussed whether to welcome the "transgendered" community into their ranks...
...Ramos-Grenier explained that the white psychologist's judgment was impaired by a "lack of knowledge of the relevant cultural factors...
...How quickly we forget that it was only in 1975 that the APA decided no longer to classify homosexuality as a mental disorder...
...Not so, of course, with the other co-theme...
...True to form—psychologists, after all, coach their patients to avoid guilt and remorse —APA President Richard Suinn in his opening remarks said nothing about the recent unpleasantness...
...I would rather have Roosevelt in a wheelchair than Reagan on a horse," he offered to loud applause...
...So instead of harping on the past, APA honchos reveled in their diversity...
...In a September 2o letter to Pitts, he said APA publications are designed to engender scientific debate...
...As he looked over papers left outside a meeting room —just beyond a television light's glare—no one seemed to realize that this mild-mannered man had recently launched one of the most public attacks on fatherhood since Murphy Brown...
...Ignoring the recent controversies, Jackson railed against the "jail industrial complex," demanded universal health care, accused the U.S...
...The connection between psychology and cancer is obvious, if tenuous (helping families and victims cope...
...rioters...
...It was the perfect kick-off for a convention dominated by panels that either relegated science to a mere afterthought or invoked science only to confer legitimacy on manifestly political assertions...
...The latter approach often required quite a leap of logic...
...all APA members receive, published "Deconstructing the Essential Father...
...Just consider the convention's two themes: cancer and diversity...
...At a symposium on "Critical Issues for Women in the New Millennium," University of Arizona Professor Mary Koss shrugged off criticism that she had grossly exaggerated the prevalence of rape on college campuses...
...Anger, for example, "is suppressed in the Puerto Rican culture during the development years...
...In the example she cited, a Puerto Rican mother had her four children taken from her after she fractured one child's skull with her shoe...
...Her NIH-funded study had "found" that 2 7 percent of women on campuses had either been victims of rape or attempted rape...
...But Ramos-Grenier tackled a slightly different problem...
...Other controversial figures were more visible...
...But she warned him against reaching any rash conclusions—to avoid the "seduction of reduction...
...We thought it was clarified and we had closure in these areas...
...The authors attacked the "neoconservative" claim that fathers are crucial to a child's development...
...Otherwise he was content to rehash most every leftist slogan uttered since the 197o's...
...Although some of the cancer sessions were devoted to the "empowerment of women with cancer," most were straightforward and not politicized...
Vol. 32 • November 1999 • No. 11
