Robert L. Nelson caught polio just after his appointment as a psychiatrist here and so was unable to work last year. He is back on a nearly full schedule this fall. He was a resident in a Westchester hospital before two year's service in the Army. He got his M.D. in Colorado.

Army Experience

Paul Walters obtained his M.D. degree at Duke in 1951, worked at an Army hospital and Boston Veterans Hospital before coming here last year to work part-time.

M. Robert Gardner, M.D. Columbia '48, worked at the New York Psychiatric Institute and at Boston Psychopathic hospital. He now works part-time.

Carl Binger Psychiatric consultant for Radcliffe also works one day a week at the Hygiene Building.

The duties of these men do not end with interviewing students: they visit Stillman infimary, they have to keep records, and they have to confer, apparently endlessly, about their case work. Coon says in an annual report with what one suspects to be controlled weariness, "It is estimated that the writer, for example, is occupied an hour or more each day just by telephone conferences in behalf of patients."

As indicated, the problems they have to deal with are as varied as the students are in number. They may have to consult with a senior tutor about whether to let a student take his meals outside the House or to let him live out. They may talk to a student who has taken a medical leave of absence in order to undertake intensive therapy. They may be trapped on the telephone, trying to talk to a reporter as well, leafing through their calendars trying to find a student whose appointment they can cancel so that they can make room for a more urgent case.

To add to the confusion, the role of a psychiatrist in a University is only partly defined. There must be room for subtleties, which some have pointed out is a Harvard administrative speciality.

One administrative official, contacted for comment on this feature and asked what he thought the place of psychiatry in the University was, said, "Well, I don't want to say, because I want to be able to look upon psychiatry skeptically one day and as a comfort the next."

Various Aids

One element of imprecision, and not necessarily an undesirable one, is that the psychiatric service is but one of several places of resort of for the student in search of counsel. The skeptics say that the existence of the Bureau of Study Counsel, The Office of Student Placement, the Board of Freshman advisers, plus assorted Deans, ministers, departmental tutors, and so forth provides the possibility (which has become a reality in a few instances) that a student may see them all.

Defenders of the ad hoc system point out that a student may not see his problem as one needing a psychiatrist's help in unravelling and may instead go to the Bureau of Study Counsel. The Bureau, they point out, has a consultant who can give moral support in any borderline cases. It is better, the defenders say, to let a student go on talking to a man he trusts than to lose him altogether.

Dividing Roles

This imprecision has been the cause of considerable debate among faculty members, especially those concerned with the different advising services. It has led W. G. Perry, head of the Bureau, to write an article for the New York Academy of Sciences trying to picture the distinctions between teacher, adviser, counselor, and psychiatrist, without creating rigid divisions which he apparently considers a distortion of the real situation, which includes inevitable overlap.

The Psychiatric service has been concerned with different problems, which also suggest research. Almost anyone could mention a psychological problem which demands further research. Such questions as "What is mental health?" are asked often. Some consideration has been given to problems of how to notice men who are likely to have trouble later in their college career, and how to act to help them meet this trouble before it becomes too acute.

One of the men who would be involved in any research undertaken is Charles C. McArthur, Psychologist for the Hygiene Department who saw 90 or so people in 1954-55, and 150