A PSYCHIATRIST LOOKS BACK AT BERKELEY
Heisler, Dr. Friedy B.
A Psychiatrist Looks Back at Berkeley by DR. FRIEDY B. HEISLER In mid-March the newspaper headlines informed the nation of the resignations — since withdrawn — of Clark Kerr, President of the...
...She is a member of the faculty of the University of California's extension division and serves as consultant to educational institutions and school boards...
...Their elders have failed to resolve the problems of social, political, and racial injustice during recent decades and even centuries...
...They began to relate unexamined terms and slogans to prevailing attitudes and values...
...American college students, with others throughout the world, are stepping into the forefront, demanding not only political change but thorough social reform...
...Slowly the goals of the demonstrations crystallized, revealing that the students wanted an institution truly dedicated to learning, and designed to provide for the needs—and even to function under the control—of the students and faculty...
...These disorders, while dealt with superficially, were blinding them, and us, individually and collectively, and preventing a clear vision of the gravity of the many evil conditions in our society...
...The announcement, following the continued publicity of the disorders on the Berkeley campus, was bewildering, since it lacked any explanation...
...FRIEDY B. HEISLER In mid-March the newspaper headlines informed the nation of the resignations — since withdrawn — of Clark Kerr, President of the nine-campus University of California, and of the newly-appointed acting Chancellor, Martin Meyerson...
...The shock of the officials' actions tended to obscure the real source of the group's frustrations and fears...
...Whatever the underlying causes may be, it is undeniable that a substantial proportion of the student body had begun to develop a deep concern over social injustices...
...The students also have acquired a hunger for action...
...What some of them say in four letters can be said in three: "I am...
...A voice of protest, small at the outset but swelling quickly to embrace an unprecedentedly large part of the student body, was first observed on the Berkeley campus in September, 1964...
...When universities from Khartoum to Rio de Janeiro, from Madrid to Calcutta, sent thousands of students into the streets to demonstrate against the Soviet suppressors of the Hungarian revolution...
...Like the beatnik movement, which began many years ago, these students in their frustration are rejecting the "market" which their elders accept—and not just the razor blade market but the market of ideas and values...
...She is a former president of the Monterey County Mental Health Society and vice president of the Northern California Mental Health Society...
...Suddenly, it seemed, the students of Berkeley, for a variety of reasons, were becoming aware of the discontent within themselves and with society at large...
...But all of this appears to have changed...
...This concern of the students reveals their determination—at first unrecognized—to undertake the required task of correcting their elders' omissions and commissions...
...This new role of American students is a grave threat to the established authority structure, but it is foreordained that the threat will come from students who have, thanks to their education, a more than usual understanding of contemporary political problems...
...Democracy, a beautiful concept which the students had all been taught to cherish, in actual practice betrayed many symptoms of disease when brought out into daylight for close inspection...
...The stream of letters and telegrams reaching the Berkeley campus from faraway student and faculty groups sympathizing with and congratulating the vanguard at California would indicate that the source of frustration and discontent was not confined to Berkeley...
...A few days after the ruckus of the four-letter word—which each generation learns from the last—the young man at Berkeley who was credited with "starting it all" was quoted by The San Francisco Chronicle as follows: "I was simply trying to shock the community into realizing that things are wrong and words like 'kill' and 'war' are acceptable and that other word isn't...
...The intensity of the students' protest, perhaps more than the nature of their demands, provoked considerable alarm and confusion because it raised an enormous threat to the established authority structure...
...Ever-changing and increasing protest demonstrations, leading eventually to the massive sit-in demonstrations in December, indicated more than a passing reaction to some transitory conditions which could easily be remedied...
...The brusque attitude of some of the regents did nothing but exacerbate the feelings of frustration of the students, the faculty, and Kerr and Meyerson, all of whom were striving for a solution...
...Others, however, wondered if the roots of the unrest might lie in a deep and widespread feeling of rejection among the young men and women of the campus, and whether the feeling of rejection might have arisen out of years of exposure to depersonalized, dehumanized learning situations...
...What, then, were the ingredients that led to such a dramatic result...
...With astonishing speed, protest after protest took on a wide variety of forms, from sit-ins, picketings, banner-carryings, to passive resistance, culminating in many arrests and court proceedings...
...The terse statements of the two men said only that they would submit their resignations to the Board of Regents at its forthcoming meeting...
...They do not demand something more...
...Once the students made this discovery, they strongly embraced the hope that they were needed in the long overdue push towards the great society...
...It is unfortunate that the resignation of the heads of the great sprawling University of California appeared to have come in response to the parading and expression of a few obscene words by a miniscule fraction of students joined by a similarly insignificant number of non-students on the campus...
...What can the community and its authorities say to that young man and the thousands—or millions—like him...
...There is now no doubt that their demands, while subject to some modification, will be met in considerable measure...
...The display on posters and verbal use of an unprintable four-letter word by three students and six non-students on the campus was quickly dubbed by the newspapers "the filthy speech movement...
...Concepts of poverty and affluence, equality and oppression, rights and responsibilities began to take on significance for a large number of students...
...they demand something different and something better...
...Others were doubtful that the insignificant and unrepresentative demonstration of immature behavior could have any other than accidental connection with the resignations...
...some recommended the use of the woodshed and the application of the paddle...
...It was early last fall when the first open indication of severe discontent and brooding unrest manifested itself on the Berkeley campus...
...And we are uncomfortable to hear our own distress in such loud and uncompromising form...
...Whatever the form of their protest, it comes to the assertion of their existence on the earth and in our society...
...In their stifled cry, obscene or not, they are saying what many of their more introspective elders are saying...
...These frustrations finally reached a peak of such magnitude that the students were liberated from the paralyzing fear of asserting themselves aggressively...
...In the Berkeley struggle, it appears that logic and justification are on the side of the students...
...Not long ago America's advanced students appeared to be greatly, if not totally, disinterested in social problems either at home or in the world at large...
...First the University, and then the civil authorities, were challenged on the issue of the rights of the students to free speech and freedom of assembly...
...It is important to recall that the first conflict on the Berkeley campus was triggered by the attempt of some of the students to demonstrate their concern with the glaring injustices involving our Negro citizens...
...When the authorities reacted by attempting to frustrate this challenge, and to deny their right to decide and dispose, the heretofore unconscious conflict was consciously placed on the level of the psychiatrically-celebrated father-son struggle...
...What these young people want, and, indeed, what everybody wants and must want, is what the American Negro has wanted for three hundred years—to be a person and to see himself as a person...
...Will our anger make them accept it...
...This brusqueness on the part of "authority" and the increased resistance of the younger "alive" generation made a clear-cut conflict inevitable...
...It seemed to many to be the catalytic agent which culminated in the resignation of the two top administrators of the university...
...They mean to exist, to exist as persons and not as digits...
...Their frustrations appeared to arise out of home and school pressures driving them towards a life of conformity, resulting in emotional and intellectual impoverishment, and the curtailment of a fuller exploration and experimentation in realms other than the wresting of secrets from the physical and material world and competing for their control...
...While in Asia, Africa, and South America students are playing an ever-increasing role in eliminating unpopular action by those in authority, even overthrowing the government itself, the students in this country are limiting themselves so far to pointing out social injustice and leading the way toward its elimination...
...Whatever regents and legislators may have said in public, the withdrawal of the resignations of the two chief administrators made it clear that the fundamentally intelligent and understanding attitudes of President Kerr and Chancellor Meyerson would prevail...
...If they reject it, should we, their elders, be angry with them...
...It was a later statement by Chancellor Meyerson that condemned "the most recent flagrant violation of accepted FRIEDY B. HEISLER is a practicing psychiatrist in California...
...In their youthful ardor and intemperance, they are speaking for all of us...
...Recognizing the conflict will not clarify our minds as to the causes, nor does it explain its sudden upsurge...
...behavior . . . the display of obscenity which assailed the campus and the public last week...
...There were demands from alumni, so-called taxpayer groups, and some fulminating legislators that rigid discipline must be enforced...
...What can we say, or do, about killing and war and the world we are asking the next generation to accept...
...when students outside of this country were in the forefront of protest against injustice, poverty, and war, we found only disinterest and almost total detachment in the United States...
...This came as a surprise to many observers because the upsurge of student concern followed a protracted period of apathy, indifference, detachment, futility, and even rejection of life itself by college students...
...The result was their "audacity" to assert themselves...
...The students were plainly determined to air political and social issues, on and off campus, as well as demand a voice in University affairs, such as curriculum, grading, and hiring and firing of faculty members, heretofore the sole prerogative of the administration (with some voice on the part of the faculty...
Vol. 29 • May 1965 • No. 5
