STUDENTS AND THE DRAFT
Halleck, Dr. Seymour L.
A Psychiatrist's Report STUDENTS and the DRAFT by DR. SEYMOUR L. HALLECK Ihave always found airports depressing places and I have found them especially so in the past year. In addition to their...
...Yet some factors are often more crucial than others...
...Many are not greatly interested in their work...
...Every male patient I have treated in the last two years (irrespective of his political beliefs) has talked of fears of failing in school or fears of making some mistake which would result in his being drafted...
...From my experience working with students at a large university, I have become convinced that a substantial number of male students who accept the 2-S deferment pay an enormous psychological price for this privilege...
...Although neither course of action is feasible as long as one is a student, there is a part of every student's conscience that says to him, "You either belong in the army or in jail...
...By the time a man reaches thirty, he has done many things he is not proud of...
...Other students are simply opposed to becoming an agent in the destruction of their fellow man...
...Whether such activity will pacify their tyrannical consciences, however, is uncertain...
...The war in Vietnam and student deferments are not, of course, the only factors in the new student demands for what are often highly desirable changes in the university structure...
...Others, if granted, would necessitate a violation of professional ethics...
...He now not only fears military service but is convinced that he must avoid it...
...It is becoming more and more difficult for the psychiatrist to treat male students whose illnesses border at a level of severity which might qualify them to be exempted from military service...
...The student role may have its gratifications, but it is hardly one in which a young man can prove his masculinity in our society...
...Certainly compassion for those who are being maimed or destroyed, and indignation towards those who perpetuate the war, exert a powerful influence on many students...
...I do not wish to imply that guilt and fear are the only emotions which contribute to discontent among students...
...Yet they do not...
...Anything else is at best a rationalization, at worst a cowardly compromise or "sellout...
...It is more difficult for him to convince himself that pursuing a career will be useful either to himself or to society...
...I have often wondered what runs through the minds of servicemen who observe the privileged status of their contemporaries...
...He has participated in a few homosexual acts but has recently noticed that he is less interested in boys and has been experiencing some urges towards girls...
...Here as a student I can work for peace...
...Part of the reason must be that in spite of their efforts to be defensive, today's students do have a tendency to be unusually honest...
...The sight of these young men reminds the adult traveler that we really are at war...
...Some of his personal problems become a matter of public record...
...Today's student has a limited capacity for self-deception...
...What does happen to the student who is able to convince his draft board that he is too emotionally disturbed to serve in the military...
...Not everyone has to fight...
...He comes to the university and with great effort manages to preserve his psychological equilibrium, gain a little confidence, and complete his freshman year...
...The increasing need to reassure one's self that his status in life is meaningful encourages a sometimes selfish interest in preserving a stable society...
...He has served as resident psychiatrist at the Menninger Foundation and as staff psychiatrist at the U.S...
...The activist student cannot understand how supposedly idealistic men like his professors can continue to live their lives as though nothing was wrong...
...Many of them are justified...
...Obligations incurred towards one's loved ones encourage a certain acquisitiveness...
...The burdens imposed upon the unfortunate ones, our poor youth, especially the young Negro, are more extreme and more visible...
...Whatever rage or contempt resides within them is kept carefully hidden...
...If the social setting provides certain rewards for being sick, illness is more likely...
...Nevertheless, he pays a price for this freedom...
...It is not a gratifying task...
...Without even being aware of what is happening to him, he may find that his homosexual inclinations again assume dominance over his newly found heterosexual urges...
...Their activism is constantly nurtured by the demands of their students...
...the possibility of living a decent life within this society...
...Although this guilt is often denied or rationalized, it is a significant factor among the causes of unrest on our campuses, and it contributes to a deep sense of personal despair in the lives of many students...
...Even if the student's face is sometimes as grim as the serviceman's, his civilian dress makes him appear much more free and relaxed...
...Many have themselves sought the university as a sanctuary, in this case an intellectual sanctuary from the serious problems of the world...
...You start wars and expect us young people to fight them...
...From the standpoint of a psychiatrist, the most disturbing effects of student deferments are apparent in those students who are struggling to avoid mental illness...
...Such a student immediately gains a degree of freedom that is denied to his fellows...
...Or one might hear: "If you think I'm going to feel guilty over trying to avoid this filthy war you're crazy...
...Still another factor in contributing to this new guilt is the enormous affluence of our society, an affluence that allows more young people than ever before to attend college...
...As he nears the completion of his schooling and seriously contemplates the draft, he must realize that he can avoid conscription if he can convince his draft board that his homosexual tendencies are strong...
...If he is not ashamed of some of his actions, it is only because he refuses to acknowledge to himself that he may have betrayed, or callously compromised, his principles...
...Non-patient students with whom I have talked informally have voiced similar fears...
...Each of these arguments has its advocates among students and serves as a buffer against their own consciences...
...After four, five, or six years in school the student is often stale and eager to do something he per-r ceives to be more constructive than accumulating knowledge...
...As long as there is this new premium on remaining sick, the chances of such a student getting well are diminished...
...We know your games are all meaningless...
...But sooner or later, particularly if he is in therapy or knows others who have been granted medical deferments, he will appreciate that if his emotional disturbance gets worse or does not improve he may not be drafted...
...As one grows older and begins to appreciate the limitations imposed on his existence by economic insecurity, infirmity, and death, the pressures to compromise principles steadily increase...
...Still others would prefer to take a year or two off to travel or to earn money...
...They seem surprisingly tolerant towards those our society has ordained to be their betters...
...If life is only an absurd game, then who can be blamed for playing that game selfishly, without commitment, and without involvement...
...This leads to a vicious circle...
...Even when the social advantages of psychiatric symptoms are substantial, the symptoms lose none of their excruciating quality for the patient...
...A more discouraging response of students to their guilt and fear is abandonment of all hope in...
...Simply by growing older one abandons a certain degree of ideological purity...
...Youths today are especially concerned that they do not "sell out" and are scornful of anyone who does...
...Consider another hypothetical case, that of a boy who has been struggling with homosexual impulses...
...Whenever he sacrifices, or even moderately compromises principles, he "sells out...
...Unlike the Federal Government, it is small enough to react to that form of dissent which attacks its integrity, and when it does respond the student has some sense that he is being recognized as a person who can do something useful...
...Professors are not infrequently met with demands such as, "You can't let me fail...
...We were wrong to have gone in there, we're wrong to stay there, and we're still slaughtering innocent people...
...The problem is that they all ignore or reject an aspect of morality or conscience that is especially relevant to today's youth...
...Where there is a possibility of using one's emotional disturbance to avoid a difficult obligation such as the draft, there is an increased possibility that the illness will become worse...
...Whether intentional or not, student deferments serve as a bribe, a bribe which keeps middle-class parents and their children in a protected but impotent position...
...There is pressure on many university employes to corrupt the ethics of their respective professions to help students avoid real personal calamity...
...This is especially true as one grows more sophisticated about the nature of the feared event...
...A considerable proportion of an administrator's and even a professor's time must be spent in dealing with the byCalifornia's New Vigilantes by WILLIAM WINGHELD products of their students' relation to the draft...
...They ate also more capable of tolerance towards those who have "sold out...
...While his deferred selective service classification increases the student's guilt, it does little to alleviate his fear of being drafted...
...Consider, for example, the case of a young boy who is anxious when away from home, and who is shy and timid...
...Whenever a person uses some aspect of personal weaknesses to avoid responsibility for a social obligation, he is more likely to continue to maintain that pattern in his subsequent actions...
...It's you adults who have created this mess anyway...
...Sometimes people who seem to be on the verge of maturing backslide quickly when the possibility of conscription becomes more imminent...
...Usually it is more psychologically stressful to wait for a painful event to happen than to go out and face it...
...If he has homosexual tendencies, for example, he must be concerned with the possibility that members of his family and his community will find out about them...
...Our job is to survive and we can't do that if we hold to any of the values of your world...
...I am against student deferment and I've let people know it...
...Students request deans and counselors to provide official excuses, change requirements, or lower standards to keep marginal students in school...
...There is a pervasive mood of fear on our campuses...
...To pretend that it does not exist, and to carry on either adult or student business as usual, corrupts us all...
...As he anticipates his academic decline, he becomes more anxious...
...His draft exempt status allows him to drop out of school, to go to work, or to take a more casual attitude towards his studies...
...In addition to their aura of impersonality and isolation they confront today's traveler with the painful realities of military conscription and the war in Vietnam...
...Well, let me tell you loud and clear that youth today is different...
...There is no way of understanding what is happening on our campuses without considering the pernicious influence of guilt and fear...
...He cannot resume his journey without being haunted by the faces of boys in uniform...
...If one lives long enough in the hippie world and takes enough LSD, the possibility that the military services will even want to draft him becomes more and more remote...
...If the values of our society are meaningless, then one need not feel guilty for having compromised them...
...Not surprisingly, they are plagued with guilt, an unremitting guilt which dominates every aspect of their existence...
...Once the draftee becomes a member of the armed forces he is not encouraged to delve into the state of his psychological well-being...
...Adults naturally have a more moderate view of this phenomena than young people...
...Our airports are populated with hundreds of grim-faced, crew-cut, bleary-eyed adolescents in uniform traveling to and from training camps that have recently been designated their homes...
...They are, however, important factors which seem to catalyze an ever increasing sense of protest on our campuses...
...The war is real, ugly, and dirty...
...We have two classes of youth-some who go to college and others who go to war...
...Up to a certain point, this process may be easily reversible...
...What does "selling out" mean...
...His earlier lukewarm acceptance of his Government's position on Vietnam has changed to a deep conviction that the war is immoral...
...Unless they have sought a military career or have an unusual sense of duty they must know that their being in the military service is a direct result of not being rich enough or intellectually gifted enough to be somewhere else...
...The teacher who must fail a student is haunted by the possibility that a low grade will force that student to leave school and will make him available for the draft...
...When some students at Wisconsin attempted to obstruct recruiting by the Dow Chemical Corporation, the violence that followed led to a profound reaction on the part of previously un-involved students, faculty, and administrators...
...Many more find the role to be alien and frustrating...
...Certainly in past wars students were deferred and there was much less fuss...
...I will use any method I can to keep from becoming one of 'Johnson's assassins.' " Or the student might say: "Look, I know that the draft is terribly unequal...
...This is not at all a matter of deliberate or conscious faking...
...The airports make it all painfully clear...
...A "purer" mode of anti-war activism has recently appeared on the nation's campuses in the form of the draft resistance movement...
...It is not only through ideological commitment that professors have been among the most vocal critics of the war...
...Many do not belong there on an intellectual basis...
...The best solutions to our problems in Vietnam and the rest of the world are more likely to come out of a society in which each social class shares in the responsibilities and miseries of war...
...Halleck has contributed numerous articles to psychiatric and medical journals, and he is the author of "Psychiatry and the Dilemmas of Crime...
...We will probably not appreciate the psychological effects of a discriminatory military draft upon those youth who have been conscripted until the war is over...
...He is a ripe candidate for a permanently alienated life...
...If the student deferment allows me to live with my beliefs, so be it...
...We can no longer afford either that detachment or that guilt which interferes with a rational solution to a conflict that may destroy the character of our nation...
...As the student perceives his efforts to be ineffective, as he observes the relative non-involvement of his parents and professors, and as he contemplates the business-as-usual atmosphere on the campus, his frustration grows...
...I am not going to be any part of it...
...Again, there are many factors which contribute to the alienation of students other than the war or the draft, but guilt and despondency generated by their protected status undoubtedly contribute to the increasing sense of meaninglessness and the increasing use of consciousness-altering drugs among today's youth...
...The alienated, and especially the "hippie," way of life, in addition to being a potent means of castigating one's parents for having imposed this world upon them, is also a means of drowning one's guilt in a sea of nihilism...
...It is my opinion, however, that human behavior must be examined in terms of its selfish as well as its idealistic motivations...
...The problem with anti-war activism as a means of dealing with one's own conscience is that there is not much that students can do to end the war...
...If one were to confront students with the fact of their guilt, perhaps the majority would deny it...
...If you do you are sending me to die in Vietnam...
...The impact of the war and draft deferments upon administrators and professors is also serious...
...They may complain of the dishonesties of the adult world but at the same time they have grown up in a society dominated by mass communication media, a society in which it is hard to retain a fleeting half-truth or absorb rigid dogma...
...The university community is an available and palpable target...
...If one opposes the war and is troubled by his protected status, the most rational and psychologically useful action he can take involves joining an activist movement which seeks to end the war...
...If the war is wrong, they should do everything in their power to stop it...
...It is somewhat easier to examine the emotional impact of unequal conscripDR...
...No single factor is ever a sufficient determinant of who becomes ill and who doesn't...
...When students declare themselves potential draft resist-ers or mail their draft cards back to their local boards, they undoubtedly experience a sense of courage and commitment...
...During this time he is aware of the war and the possibility of being drafted...
...It is not surprising that his anti-war energies come to be directed against the university itself...
...Although psychiatrists spend many hours attempting to explain this phenomena to their patients, the power of this new anti-therapeutic factor in our university environment is often irresistible...
...Much more direct and intensive protests at the Pentagon seemed to have had far less impact...
...Recent disturbances on the Madison campus of the University of Wisconsin, to cite only one of many such campus events, support this observation...
...They cannot blame their plight on having merely experienced poor luck in a game in which all had the same opportunities...
...The student who uses mental illness as a means of "beating the draft" increases the probability that he will remain mentally ill...
...Then one can observe two varieties of youth, both the same age but nevertheless looking as if they were inhabitants of different worlds...
...Physicians are often asked to write medical excuses allowing students to drop courses, to take diminished credit loads, or to be excused for poor performance...
...Many, if not most of those who have joined such movements, are still protected from the draft by their 2-S status...
...There are other pressures on the faculty...
...At this point he will find it more difficult to shake off his symptoms...
...Cynicism does not come easily to the young...
...The alienated life may even have some practical advantages...
...How do they manage to live with this knowledge...
...If the war is right, then they should not shirk their duty but should help fight it...
...Living in a world dominated by guilt and fear is certainly an important cause of mental illness...
...In the depths of their consciences they are able to find only two "pure" answers to their personal involvement with the war in Vietnam...
...Furthermore, his suffering is painfully real...
...As long as they accept this bribe, they must operate from a weakened moral position which limits the possibility of honest dialogue or constructive dissent...
...They would probably prefer a phrase such as "judicious compromise" to the more invective "selling out...
...It is one thing to shout "We won't go" at a political rally...
...The student might strongly deny to himself and others that he would use illness as a means of avoiding anything...
...Yet he feels trapped...
...His loyalty to his fellow servicemen, his sense of duty, and sometimes his need to rationalize his plight do not allow him to experience directly whatever sense of persecution he might feel...
...This morality is best illustrated by the phrase, "selling out...
...Medical Center for Federal Prisoners...
...They may also find that the emotional price that must be paid for preferential treatment is not worth the temporary physical safety it provides...
...If the psychological consequences of student deferments were fully understood and appreciated it is doubtful that anyone—our Government, our students, or their middle-class parents— would continue to tolerate this inequity...
...It might be asked why guilt over draft deferment should be so intense during this particular war...
...SEYMOUR L. HALLECK is professor of psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin and director of its student psychiatric services...
...Even if he manages to overcome his psychological difficulties, the student who avoids the draft by virtue of mental illness pays a considerable price...
...Perhaps an even more crucial determinant of whether or not a person becomes sick is the social setting in which illness occurs...
...I do know from my experience in treating and talking to male students that sooner or later they relate much of their malaise, their depression, and their anxiety to guilt over their privileged status...
...A university community contains a large number of students who consider themselves captives, who view the university primarily as a sanctuary...
...The abundance of black faces on television film clips of the war constantly reminds the student of inequities in our society, inequities which benefit him at the expense of others...
...I am not arguing that this view is rational...
...The university employe thus comes to be more familiar with the issues involved in the war and less able to ignore them than other middle-class adults...
...Whether one supports, reluctantly tolerates, or opposes the war in Vietnam, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that our Government's efforts to protect the sons of middle-class parents from t|ie hazards of military service has had a poisonous effect upon our campuses and our country...
...Only a few professors are comfortable with their new role as political activists...
...Nor am I insisting that it is consciously understood by the majority of students...
...Beneath their painfully reasoned arguments for accepting a student deferment is a nagging fear that they have "sold out...
...As a person moves about in the world he is repeatedly confronted with situations in which he is tempted to sacrifice principle for what he perceives to be personal gain...
...The problem with many youths is that they are so intellectually committed to their idealism that they cannot honestly face themselves when they compromise that idealism...
...He is stigmatized and denied many employment opportunities...
...I know it sounds square but I'm a different kind of soldier, one who's fighting for truth and decency in a world that's going mad...
...More and more students are choosing this alternative...
...In this sense there is really no way for anyone to avoid "selling out...
...If the student happens to be carrying expensive luggage, tennis rackets, or golf clubs, or if he has a deep suntan or long hair, the contrast he provides with the serviceman becomes bizarre, almost obscene...
...He is put into a social role which may permanently prevent him from being a first-class citizen...
...Why shouldn't those who have the ability to make special contributions to our society be protected from the hazards of military service...
...Patriotism, loyalty, honor, these are just words...
...tion upon those who are favored by it, namely, youths who receive student deferments...
...The more nervous he becomes, the harder it is for him to study—and the less he studies the more nervous he becomes...
...Yet, most professors are poorly prepared for a political role...
...Rationalizations such as the following would be most common: "I am a serious student and believe I can serve my country better by becoming an engineer, a doctor, or an attorney...
...Moreover, the immediacy of the task of survival in a military world does not leave much time for rumination or self-pity...
...If one travels during a period when college students are leaving or returning to school, airports are even more depressing...
...Of course these requests are not new in a university setting...
...And finally, there might be this response: "My God, why should I be guilty...
...But what can I do to fight either that corruption or the corruption of the war once I am stuck in the service...
...The rationalization that he serves his country best by remaining in school is easily attacked...
...Now let us suppose that either because of intellectual limitations, guilt, or just plain exhaustion he begins to find his school work more difficult in his sophomore year...
...It is something else to face the threat of a court trial and possible imprisonment once a person is eligible for the draft...
...It is in this atmosphere of resentfulness and even surliness that professors are required to teach the ever increasing complexities of modern knowledge...
...It would seem natural that at some point they would want to lash out at somebody, either those contemporaries who have it so much easier or those adults who put them in such an unfortunate situation...
...With all his freedom, such a student has nowhere to go...
Vol. 32 • February 1968 • No. 2
