Providentia

Does Racial Discrimination Undermine Health?

In recent years, health statistics have consistently shown that Black Americans are far more prone to  wide range of medical problems than most other ethnic groups.   

Not only do they have a 30 percent greater risk of dying from cardiovascular disease, but they twice as likely to develop diabetes and also have a much lower life expectancy than average.   And despite efforts to reverse these trends, the problem appears to be getting worse.

Efforts at explaining these differences often focused on  low income, unemployment, and living in high-crime areas, as well as lifestyle choices including higher rates of smoking, less exercise, and poor diet.   Still, high rates of disease and disability have also been reported in middle and upper-class Blacks who live relatively advantaged lives.  Since conventional risk factors aren't explaining these differences, more recent research has focused on the "weathering hypothesis" first developed by University of Michigan professor Arline Geronimus and her colleagues.   According to this hypothesis, the poorer health outcome seen in Black Americans is a cumulative effect of the social, economic, and political exclusion they often experience.   

This can include the emotional impact of the daily slights, systematic discrimination, and other risks faced by Black Americans on a daily basis.  Research evidence supporting the weathering hypothesis suggests that these kind of stressors can trigger biological changes, including stress-related problems that can increase the risk of disease.   One model which has shown promise in explaining why social adversity can affect health is the predictive adaptive response (PAR) model.    According to this model, childhood and early adolescence are critical periods during which people learn to prepare for the future by developing cognitive and emotional skills.   

Due to adverse environmental conditions such as abusive home  environments or systematic discrimination however,  young people often become more distrustful and vigilant due to the perceived threats around them.  This also means becoming more sensitized to different life stressors as well as a hypersensitive immune system.   As they grow older, this early adversity often means an  elevated inflammatory response that can enhance the effect of adult stressors. As a result, they become more vulnerable to stress-related health problems.  

To read more, check out my new Psychology Today blog post.

The Brain of Charles Hinkley

It must have seemed like a good idea at the time....

When 25-year-old Charles Hinkley was picked up by Miami police in early 1947 for renting an automobile using a bad cheque, it was just the latest in a long line of similar infractions.   Born into a well-off Eastern family, Hinkley had long been seen as the "black sheep" by his relatives and well-known to police for passing bad cheques for amounts as high as $1500.   He had a long and colourful history despite his young age, including being discharged from the military after 18 months for being "emotionally unstable."   What had basically happened was that he had gotten into repeated scrapes, including several court-martial offenses, before finally going to far by fighting with a medical officer.

Once out of the military, he then went on a cheque-writing binge across the country which ended when he chartered a boat to Bimini before finally being picked up by police.  Given that he was already wanted for similar crimes in other states, not to mention the fact that his family wanted nothing more to do with him, Hinkley likely knew that he was facing a lengthy prison sentence when his case came to trial.  And so, when he read an intriguing news story while he was sitting in county jail, he immediately contacted his lawyer.

The story related to a radical new brain operation that had been developed years before by eminent Portuguese neurosurgeon Antonio Egas Moniz.   Based prior research with lab animals, he concluded that most forms of mental illness were due to abnormal neural pathways in the frontal lobe.  To test this hypothesis,  Moniz developed a surgical procedure for removing white matter fibres from the frontal lobe which, theoretically, would cure abnormal behaviour.  Dubbing this new operation a prefrontal leucotomy,  Moniz and his surgical team soon found it made mental patients more docile and easier to manage.  

Though the first surgeries involved injecting alcohol into the brain to destroy the frontal lobe,  Moniz and his colleague Almeida Lima developed a new technique involving the use of a surgical instrument with a wire loop.  Carefully rotating the loop allowed the surgeons to sever key white matter fibers in the frontal lobe.  Based on his observations of the first 40 patients to undergo the operation, Moniz was enthusiastic in proclaiming the new operation to be a successful treatment for a wide range of mental disorders.   Though he noted some personality and cognitive deterioration, he considered this to be an acceptable risk given the improvement his patients showed as far as their original symptoms were concerned.

While the international medical community was hostile to the idea of psychosurgery at first, surgeons in the United States, Brazil, Italy, Cuba, and Romania began using Moniz' technique on their own patients.   Though the complex nature of the operation meant that few surgeons were willing to risk it on their patients,  newer procedures were soon developed which mostly focused on accessing the frontal lobes through the eye sockets.   Though critics of the operation were already warning that leucotomy patients were much more impaired than Moniz and his supporters were claiming, the prospect of a "cure" for many different kinds of mental illness and violence was too intoxicating for these warnings to be heeded.   This enthusiasm surrounding psychosurgery would win Moniz the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1949.

But it was neuropsychiatrist Walter Freeman who really popularized the procedure in the United States.   c Having met Moniz personally, Freeman became enthusiastic about the possible benefits of the new surgery and carried out the first leucotomy in the United States in 1936.    Recognizing the difficulty of carrying out Moniz' original procedure, Freeman, along with his colleague Jamie Watts, found a way to streamline the procedure by developing what would be termed  the Freeman-Watts standard prefrontal lobotomy.   Though initially requiring surgeons to drill holes into the scalp,  Freeman soon learned to lobotomize patients by going through the optic tract instead.   

According to Freeman himself, he apparently first experimented with this approach by using an icepick from his own kitchen (though at least he tried it out on cadavers before proceeding to actual humans).    This new procedure involved lifting the upper eyelid and placing a long, thin surgical instrument just above the eyeball.   Using a mallet, he could then drive the instrument straight into the skull where, with some careful maneuvering, could then sever the neural tracts connecting cortical tissue of the prefrontal cortex to the thalamus.   The operation would be then repeated on the other side of the brain.   Not only did this procedure avoid drilling holes in the brain, but it could be done with minimal risk of infection.   

Given the advantages of this new operation, which was much simpler than any previous operations of this type, it hardly seemed surprising that lobotomies became a popular procedure.  In an era before the rise of psychiatric medication, mental hospitals were often filled to capacity with patients deemed to be incurable.   As well, Freeman and Moniz also boasted about the effectiveness of the surgery in eliminating criminal behaviour and making prison inmates less violent.   As for newspaper stories about the radical new operation that would revolutionize care for mental patients and even long-term prisoners, they were nothing but positive.  Not only did they feature interviews with the ever-enthusiastic Walter Freeman, but the prospect of emptying out mental hospitals (which represented a major financial drain for most states) seemed tantalizing.   Even the illustrious Kennedy family was sufficiently impressed by the news stories to have their wayward daughter Rosemary lobotomized in 1941 (a mistake they would later regret).

Certainly, Charles Hinkley was  enthused over the stories he read and the possibility that the surgery could help him a lengthy prison sentence.  While his lawyers were initially skeptical, he persuaded them to consult several psychiatrists who all agreed that the operation would be worth trying.   After that, it was simply a matter of making the necessary financial arrangements.   In an interview with reporters, Hinkley was open about why the surgery was necessary.  "I'm a cooked goose,"  he said.  "I'm wanted in many states.  I'm willing to be a guinea pig.  It's better to be dead than to go on this way."   

As for his attorneys, they justified the need for the operation by describing their client's chronic passing of bad cheques as a  "compulsion" given his above-average intelligence.  Though they acknowledged that the lobotomy would leave him without any "emotional initiative" for a time, their hope was that he could eventually be taught the "difference between right and wrong."   Then, after a lengthy recovery period, he would be presented to the court where he would face sentencing for his charges.

In the final hearing on whether the surgery should be allowed, Criminal Court Judge Ben C. Willard verified that Hinkley was of sound mind and willing to undergo the procedure.  Then, after wishing Hinkley good luck, the judge signed the authorization.   After that, all that remained was the operation itself.    Since Hinkley was still a prisoners, jail guards had to escort him to the Miami hospital where the surgery would take place.   They also posted a 24-hour guard to wait at the hospital until he was well enough to be transferred to another facility.   

On October 29, 1949,  neurosurgeons Irwin Perlmutter and Richard Strain conducted the surgery on Hinkley.  They drilled two holes into his skull (the optic tract method wasn't widely accepted at the time) and directly separated the neural tracts linking the prefrontal lobe to the rest of the brain.  According to newspaper accounts, the operation only took two hours and went without a hitch with doctors later describing the patient as being in "satisfactory" condition afterward.   

Newspapers across the country followed the story, including openly speculating on what a successful operation would mean for criminals everywhere.   As for Hinkley himself, his lawyers made arrangements for him to go to a hospital for his recovery (the exact location wasn't revealed to ensure privacy).    As it happened though, the location of the hospital became public knowledge soon enough when Hinkley escaped from the Veterans Administration hospital in Topeka, Kansas just  a few months following his operation.

Though nobody seemed certain what the operation would do to Hinkley, what followed suggests that there was very little change.   After leaving a trail of bad cheques from Kansas to Massachusetts, he was finally picked up after passing a bad cheque for $150 after buying a watch.     All of which left his defenders scrambling to try to explain what went wrong with the lobotomy plan.  While the lawyer who had first arranged for the operation insisted  that his client had been genuinely hoping to reform, police insisted that the entire lobotomy ordeal had been meant as a scam to escape justice from the very beginning.

As for Hinkley himself, he acted as his own lawyer at his hearing,    Despite his lobotomy, he seemed highly articulate when he insisted that he needed to go back to hospital to finish recuperating.    "I'm not insane," he said.  "but I can't be asked to be responsible for my actions when I haven't been sufficiently hospitalized."    The judge seemed unswayed by this argument and instead sentenced him to one year in jail.   And, that seems to be it for Charles Hinkley.   I haven't been able to find any later news stories describing what happened to him.   Suffice it to say, there were no glowing success stories about him later in life.

Though it was clear enough from cases like Charles Hinkley and Rosemary Kennedy that lobotomies were hardly the panacea that had been promised, patients continued to be operated on, often for spurious reasons.    Walter Freeman continued to be a major supporter of lobotomies and traveled across the country conducting operations (often without anesthesia or proper sterilization) and even trained non-surgeons to conduct lobotomies as well.   Not only did he operate on adult men and women, he also operated on young children as well.   All told, an estimated 40,000 people would be lobotomized in the United States alone though it wasn't until the 1970s that the operation was finally phased out.    But lobotomies were widely practiced in countries around the world and it would take decades until the procedure fell out of favour.  

As for Walter Freeman, he conducted his last lobotomy in 1967 and lived long enough to see himself being reviled over the surgical procedure that made him famous (he died in 1972).  Lobotomies have since been banned in most jurisdictions and calls to rescind Egan Moniz' Nobel Prize are still being made.   Though only a few patients who underwent a lobotomy are still living, they continue to represent a sad legacy to a medical innovation many believed would change the world.

The Palpable Scholar

When William Whiston was fired from his position as the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge in 1710, selecting  a suitable replacement was hardly a simple matter.   First established in 1663, the Lucasian Chair had already been held by some of the most eminent mathematicians in history, including Isaac Newton.    The competition came down to two brilliant candidates, Nicholas Saunderson and Christopher Hussey though it would be Saunderson who won the vote to claim the position.   In considering Saunderson at all, the Regents who selected him had to deal with two rather remarkable stumbling blocks.   Not only did Saunderson have no academic degrees as such, he was also completely blind.

Born in Yorkshire in 1682, Nicholas Saunderson lost his sight as an infant due to smallpox.   Not only did the disease leave him blind but his eyes needed to be removed as well.   Practical programs for teaching blind children would not be developed for centuries though Saunderson's teachers managed to teach him to read and write by some unorthodox methods.   According to one story, he learned his letters by tracing his fingers along the tombstones in a nearby cemetery.  

The lack of any formal educational system for blind students meant that Nicholas Saunderson was forced to develop his own personal methods for learning.   That included having friends read his textbooks to him since he could not read on his own (Braille would not be developed until the 19th century).    Despite these barriers, he was an excellent student  who became fluent in French, Latin and Greek as well as developing a special affinity for mathematics.     In his spare time, he also became a skilled musician and gave performances with a flute.  Since no university program could accomodate a blind student back then, he was largely educated at home after finishing his studies at the local free school.    He was only able to continue with his mathematics training with the help of a mathematician friend, William West, who instructed him in algebra and geometry with his friends still reading the advanced textbooks to him.  

By 1707, Saunderson became a good enough mathematician for his friends to encourage him to go to the University of  Cambridge to continue his education.  Unfortunately, his blindness and lack of funding kept him from registering though William Whiston was impressed enough by his ability to allow him to become a lecturer.   Despite his lack of formal degrees, Nicholas Saunderson was an excellent teacher and his lectures were always extremely popular.   He also began making his own original contributions to mathematics and became friends with some of the greatest mathematicians of his time, including Isaac Newton and Edmund Halley.    

Essentially, he invented an entire new system  he termed "palpable arithmetic" which involved developing his own tactile aid to examine mathematical concepts by touch alone.    Using a specially-constructed "calculating table", basically a large pegboard allowing him to insert pegs and squares as needed, he could carry out complex arithmetic problems by touch.   For problems in geometry, he used  strings tied between pegs to represent geometric figures allowing him to work out complex mathematical problems on his own.    By running his fingers over the board and changing the pegs and strings as needed, he was able to explore abstract concepts in fields as diverse as algebra, geometry and optics.   

When Saunderson was chosen to replace Whiston in 1710, Queen Anne solved the problem of his lack of credentials by making him a Master of Arts.    He was appointed to the Lucasian chair on the very next day and would spent the rest of his professional career at Cambridge.   Ironically, while Whiston had been fired for his bizarre religious ideas,   his successor was openly agnostic.   He also had the good political sense his predecessor lacked.   Despite his continuing needs for assistants to help him with written material, Saunderson maintained a heavy workload, including seven to eight hours a day of lecturing.   He also became legendary for his ability to use his remaining senses in ways that seemed superhuman.  According to one source, he could not only use sound to judge the size of a room and his location from the walls, but he also once  "... distinguished in a set of Roman medals the genuine from the false, though they had ... deceived a connoisseur who had judged by eye."  

As his recognition grew, so did the honours that was conferred on him.   He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1719 and King George II personally travelled to Cambridge to meet Saunderson and to confer the LLD title on him in 1728.   By then, he was already in failing health and his colleagues pressured him to write a book based on his lectures.   As his health allowed, he managed to complete a two-volume work titled, Elements of Algebra, though he became ill with scurvy before the book could be completed.   Whether the scurvy was due to his neglecting his own health or not, Nicholas Sauderson died on April 19, 1739 and his book was only published after his death.

While Elements of Algebra was the only book he wrote in his lifetime, Saunderson also left behind an enormous amount of material on differential and integral calculus which his son, John, later edited into a second book.   Published in 1759,  the book's full title was The Method of fluxions applied to a Select Number of Useful Problems, together with the Demonstration of Mr Cotes's forms of Fluents in the second part of his Logometria, the Analysis of the Problems in his Scholium Generale, and an Explanation of the Principal Propositions of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy  (usually just called The Method of Fluxions for short).

Despite the example provided by Nicholas Saunderson and other blind scholars, special education for blind children would not be available for centuries except for whatever educators could improvise on their own.  Certainly Saunderson's "palpable arithmetic" was never adopted by anyone except himself though it represents an ingenious way of getting around his inability to see.     Along with his legacy as an educator and a mathematician, Nicholas Saunderson's life as a blind man helped combat rigid attitudes that often regarded blind people as having no value to society.   

In his 1749 work, The Letter on the Blind for the Benefit of Those Who See, Denis Diderot devoted considerable attention to Nicholas Saunderson and his methods for overcoming blindness.   Along with describing Saunderson's palpable arithmetic, including how his "calculating table" worked, Diderot discussed the different strategies Saunderson used to integrate himself into sighted society.  Many of these strategies are similar to ones used by visually impaired people even today.    Diderot's work represents one of the first true explorations of the psychology underlying blindness though it was primarily meant as a philosophical exercise (and which got him in trouble with government censors).  

It may have have helped inspire the rise of the first true school for blind children in France in 1784.    Though often underfunded, the school would slowly transform blind education and one of its students, Louis Braille, would also develop the tactile reading system that now bears his name.   As the Braille system became used around the world and blind students began entering universities, many of the attitudes that had barred Nicholas Saunderson from being a university student would be overcome.     

As one final note on the amazing legacy left behind by Nicholas Saunderson, a play based on his life opened in 2006.   Written by a teacher living in the town where Saunderson was born and educated, the play provided modern audiences a glimpse into the life of this remarkable scholar.  Still regarded as local celebrity, a local residential street and the science wing of the local grammar school all bear his name. 

Loneliness and the Internet

A study recently published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences examined the relationships between loneliness, interpersonal motives for Internet use, online communication, and friendships on Social Networking Sites (SNS) in emerging adults. Participants were 1st-year university students (N = 149; M_age = 20.33 years; SD = 2.51). Social and romantic (emotional) loneliness were indirectly related to the total number of friends reported on SNSs via social compensation and social networking motives and mechanisms of spending more time in online communication and engaging in more self-disclosure. Romantic loneliness was indirectly related to the number of new friends made on SNSs via social networking motives and online communication. These different relationships show that to understand the mechanisms by which emerging adults make friends online, it is important to consider individual differences in the type of loneliness as well as their motives for going online and their communication while online.

For the abstract

 

Indian Couple Axed to Death Over Sorcery Suspicions

 Police in the Indian state of Odisha have arrested a 42-year-old man following the brutal ax murder of a couple on September 8 of this year.    The victims were  52-year-old Puna Hembram and his 50-year-old wife Singha who lived alone in their house in the Baripada Sadar Block of Odisha's Mayurbhanj district.  According to police reports, Ratha waited until Puna and his wife had finished their dinner and gone to sleep before taking advantage of the darkness to hack them to death in their bed.   Though the Hembram's had one married son, he was living with his own family.   

The accused, Ratha Hembram, was Puna's younger brother who reportedly suspected the couple of practicing sorcery on him and his family.  In his confession, Ratha said that he had become distressed following the deaths of three of his family members due to various diseases over the past three years.    According to a press release issued by Baripada Sadar police, "“Ratha revealed that a tribal god appeared in his dream and blamed Puna and his wife for the deaths. The god advised him to kill the couple to ensure his family’s safety,”   After having the dream, Ratha then began planning the older couple's death.  

The bodies were discovered on the morning following the murder when neighbours found the couple lying in a pool of blood.   Police and forensic teams found that most of the inflicted injuries were inflicted to their heads and necks.  Upon  being notified of the murder, their son immediately accused his uncle based on accusations of sorcery he had made in the past.  The bodies have been sent for a forensic analysis while Ratha Hembram is being held.   

While the killing of suspected witches has taken place in different parts of India, new legislation has led to a crackdown on allegations of sorcery.  But witchcraft-related deaths continue to occur worldwide and the plight of suspected witches in countries across Africa, Asia, and South America remains bleak.

The Nazi Patient

Adolf Hitler never had much luck with his doctors (not that being a hypochondriac helped).

And he certainly had his share of medical issues.  Along with lingering problems from his World War I injuries (including posttraumatic stress), he also suffered from uncontrollable flatulence. Ever since childhood, the Fuhrer experienced spasmodic stomach cramps, diarrhea, and constipation although medical historians seem divided on whether this was due to physical causes or lifelong stress.  

Whatever the reason, dining with Hitler was often an uncomfortable situation for his supporters due to the digestive attacks that happened after most meals.  Although no one dared comment whenever Hitler jumped up from the table and rushed to his room, his medical issues definitely grew worse over time.  While trying to cure himself by going over medical manuals (including embracing a vegetarian diet where possible), being a rabid hypochondriac left Adolf Hitler acutely self-conscious about his health.  Not only did he examine his stool with elaborate care, but he also experimented with various fad remedies.   Along with camomile enemas (don't ask), he also swore off meat completely after 1931 and only ate heaping plates of vegetables which were carefully prepared for him.  He also refused all cooked foods (which he considered to be cancer-inducing) and only ate a high-fibre diet. 

For Adolf Hitler, a daily regimen often involved oatmeal with linseed oil, cauliflower, asparagus tips, and artichoke hearts .  This vegetarian fare did little to cure his digestive problems but der Fuhrer refused to consider anything else.  His mistrust of most medical doctors seemed to stem from the audacity of some of them to suggest that many of his problems were psychosomatic and that his self-diagnosis and treatment were at the root of his problems.

But his health issues only got worse after meeting Dr. Theodor Morell...

Born and raised in a small village in the upper Hesse,  Morell trained as a gynecologist and obstetrician and became a licensed physician in 1913.  Despite his thorough grounding in conventional medicine, he developed a reputation for favouring unconventional medical treatments in his Berlin medical practice.  Which he made various claims to an academic career, including studying under legendary bacteriologist, Elie Metchnikoff and teaching in different universities, the actual historical evidence for his academic career is scarce at best  Not that this stopped Morell from labelling himself as a professor at times, or owning
shares in several pharmaceutical companies.   His unlikely rise to prominence only began when he met Adolf Hitler during a party at the Berghof near Berchtesgarden in the Bavarian Alps.   It still isn't clear why Hitler decided to make Morell his personal physician. 

While historians have speculated that he may have treated Hitler for his recurring syphilis, the official story seems to be that Hitler was won over after Morell helped cure a painful case of eczema on his legs and provided temporary relief for his stomach cramps.   The other Nazi doctors had little respect for Morell (aside from his fondness for quack cures, he was also grossly obese with a body odour problem) but, from 1937 onward, he had complete control over the Fuhrer's medical care.   Although Hitler had another doctor previously, Dr. Karl Brandt, it was Morell whose medical opinion he relied on (infuriating Brandt and the other doctors).

And it was some care.  While Theodor Morell was probably not a complete quack, the medical treatment that he provided to Adolf Hitler seems bizarre, to put it mildly.   Morell was a firm believer in polypharmacy - treatment with multiple medications  (and the fact that the good doctor owned shares in many of the drug companies likely influenced his medication choices).    He also preferred to administer drugs by injection rather than oral doses.  To deal with the Fuhrer's stomach problems,  Morell chose not to send his star patient for a thorough gastronintestinal examination (despite Germany having some of the best internists in the world).  Instead, he prescribed a generous dose of "Dr. Koester's Anti-Gas Pills" for Hitler's stomach problems.   The Fuhrer took as many as sixteen of these pills a day, which was probably a bad idea since they contained dangerous levels of strychnine and atropine.   Even in small doses, both ingredients are deadly poisons and likely contributed to many of the adverse symptoms Hitler displayed during the last years of World War II (including glazed eyes, sallow skin, attention problems, and mood swings).  

Along with the pills though, Morell also began giving his patient daily injections of methamphetamine.   It is hard to say when Dr. Morrell first introduced Adolf Hitler to this new medication (or whose idea it was) but the daily injections apparently began by late 1941 or early 1942.  This was in addition to the other medications, including methamphetamine pills that Hitler took by mouth.  Hitler's arms eventually became riddled with injection marks and even Eva Braun grew to despise Morell and referred to him as "that injection quack" as she was talking to her mother.   She also dismissed his office as being a "pig sty" and refused to allow him to give her any more medical care.   By 1942 however, even Hitler's staunchest supporters were noticing that their leader was becoming increasingly bizarre with signs of distrust, irritability, loss of control, and poor decision-making - all signs of methamphetamine addiction.   These symptoms continued right up to the end of the war and Adolf Hitler's suicide on April 30, 1945.  

After their leader developed jaundice in 1944, three other doctors (including Karl Brandt) tried to have Morell fired but Hitler adamantly opposed them.  Whether this was through loyalty to Morell or his own amphetamine addiction is an open question.    Suspicious of the jaundice attack, Heinrich Himmler even went so far as to question Morell's assistant, Richard Weber, over whether the doctor was deliberately poisoning their leader, Weber replied that it was "out of the question.  Morell's too big of a coward for that".  While Hitler's mental deterioration during the last months of his life has been extensively written about and attributed to mental illness and the corrupting influence of absolute power, a more recent book has suggested that the treatment received from Dr. Morell may have played an important role in his downfall.  

As for Theodor Morell, his own downfall was rapid enough.  On April 22, 1945,  a week before his suicide, Adolf Hitler dismissed Morell from his Fuhrenbunker in Berlin and told him that he no longer needed medical care.   In poor health himself, Morell left a large supply of medicine in the bunker for Hitler's needs and managed to catch one of the last German flights out of the city.  He quickly fell into Allied hands however and spent the next two years in an internment camp on the site of the former Buchenwald concentration camp.   While the interrogators were repelled by Morell's lack of personal hygiene (his body odour was as bad as ever), they managed to collect complete details of the astonishing treatment that he provided Hitler. 

In addition to the amphetamine injections, Hitler also took more than twenty-eight other kinds of medication including vitamins, testosterone, opiates, liver extracts, laxatives, and sedatives.  That also included some more innovative remedies including cocaine eye drops (Hitler had ten of these a day), human placenta compounds, and "potency pills" made from ground bull's testicles.  According to Morell's diaries (now in the National Archives in Washington, D.C.), Hitler still suffered from daily flatulence despite the bizarre range of medications Morell offered.   If Morell hadn't been such an obvious Nazi toady, the Allies might well have pinned him with a medal for his role in Hitler's defeat.   As it was, he was released after two years of internment without ever being charged.   He died on March 26, 1948 of stroke-related problems.

It's easy to dismiss Dr. Theodor Morell as a total quack who was only propelled to the ranks of power because he was willing to provide his star patient with the medical care that more ethical doctors wouldn't.  Still, many of those same "ethical doctors" (including Karl Brandt) were later prosecuted for a range of war crimes involving human medical experimentation and other Nazi extermination policies.  Since there was no evidence that Morell was involved in the same way that other Nazi medical doctors were, he was never charged.  Presumably, Morell wasn't considered competent enough to participate in mass murder.

 If so, being a quack had its advantages

 

Does Video Gaming Help or Hurt Academic Performance?

Young people spend a lot of time playing video games these days.

Whether they're building new worlds on Minecraft, doing battle on Call of Duty, committing mayhem on Grand Theft Auto, or roaming any of the other countless virtual worlds available to them, video games have transformed the way most teenagers spend their free time in recent years.   According to the latest Neilsen 360 report, over two-thirds of the U.S. population aged 13 and high now consider themselves gamers and the saturation point has likely not even been reached yet.     

As for the total amount of time spent playing these games, recent surveys suggest that children aged 12 to 15 spend up to 12.2 hours a week in 2017 alone and this number is even greater in older teens..  Even in younger children between the ages of 3 and 4, the time spent playing video games can average 5.6 hours a week or more.  Given the popularity of game playing, it's hardly surprising that parents and teachers have been worrying about the possible harmful effects as well as the long-term effects that video games might have on child development.   While much of this concern has been focused on the often violent content of video games and whether it might lead to greater aggression, other researchers have warned about possible health issues including loss of sleep and reduced social functioning.   

But research looking at the impact of video gaming on school achievement has been more controversial.   While some studies suggest that intensive video gaming can have a negative effect on school achievement, other studies have shown the exact opposite.   Part of the problem with this kind of research is that most of the studies carried out have been cross-sectional making it extremely difficult to make assumptions about cause and effect.    In other words, do video games affect school performance or are academic underachievers simply more likely to play video games?   

To read more, check out my new Psychology Today blog post.

Documenting the Holocaust

 Though the actual number of people killed during the state-sponsored mass murder perpetrated by the Nazi regime is still hotly debated, there seems little question that as many as six million Jews died in what came to be known as the Holocaust (a.k.a. Shoah).  Adding in the mass murder of Romani, the disabled, homosexuals, and various other persecuted minorities, the total death toll was likely  over ten million although the full extent of people killed, much as with the Jewish fatalities, may never be known for certain. 

With the end of World War 2, the heartbreaking task of documenting the full extent of the death toll and providing justice for the victims began.   While forensic analysis and interrogation of Nazi perpetrators provided some information for investigators, the principal source of the testimony provided in the Nuremberg trials came from the survivors themselves.   In dealing with these traumatized survivors, interviewers faced the task of obtaining evidence that could be used to prosecute the Nazis who directed the Holocaust as well as creating a permanent record to be preserved for posterity.    Many holocaust survivors would eventually provide their own accounts but they would not become available until decades afterward.   

Since time has a way of distorting memories,  the most valuable accounts of the Holocaust came from oral statements from victims in the months following the liberation of the death camps.  Many of these oral statements came from a series of interviews by American psychologist, David Pablo Boder.   While the interviews that Dr. Boder collected are now considered to be a cornerstone of Holocaust studies, the project he carried out faced enormous obstacles that very nearly derailed his research before it could even start.

Born in 1886 in Liepaga, Russia  (now part of Latvia), David Boder was educated at the Psychoneurological Institute in Moscow before World War I.  After the subsequent Russian Revolution forced him to flee to North America with his wife and family, he taught at the University of Mexico before emigrating to the United States in 1926.   Finishing a master's degree at the University of Chicago and a doctorate at Northwestern University,  Dr. Boder earned a position at the Lewis Institute in Chicago (now the Illinois Institute of Technology).   As the founder and directory of the Psychological Museum there, he presided over an active research career studying the psychology of language.

Exactly why he would decide to undertake a project interviewing Holocaust victims is an intriguing question.   He had no living relatives in Europe at the time that World War 2 broke out so he was not directly affected by the genocide  in the same way that so many of his friends and colleagues were.    Though fluent in German, Yiddish and a number of other European languages, he had no special qualification for the ambitious task he laid out for himself.   There was also the fact that his project was almost entirely self-funded (all requests for research grants had fallen through) and he was on a sabbatical at the time.   

Securing permission to travel to Europe was another major task for him as well.  Though the war was over, many of the occupied and liberated zones were still under military control and he needed to get clearance from the State Department before he could travel.    By the time he got the necessary permission, his sabbatical was nearly complete and the university president refused to grant him an extension.   Despite these delays, he managed to reach Paris equipped with a special wire recorder that had been developed by a fellow professor (relatively high-tech for the time). 

Any of you who are into podcasting or other audio work know how essential it is to control for background noise while recording interviews.   Imagine then what poor David Boder had to face in the various refugee camps he visited as he collected interviews with Holocaust survivors.   Most of the refugee interviews that he conducted were carried out in storage rooms, administrative offices, or whatever space that he could arrange.

There was also the problem of providing his interviewees with the privacy they needed to tell their stories in peace.   With other refugees listening in and, at times, demanding to tell their stories as well, establishing the necessary rapport to draw out traumatized survivors seemed impossible.  There were also problems with his still-experimental recorder which required electricity that was often hard to find in refugee camps.

Despite these difficulties, Boder managed to interview more than one hundred refugees at camps in France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy over a two-month period.  Though the majority of the survivors interviewed were Jewish, he was emphatic in stating that his research was not focused on Jewish suffering alone.   He also avoided interviewing people with unusual or extraordinary stories.   "I wanted the rank and file experience-- not the unusual story," he would later state.  "I would limit my stay to about two days in one place, partly because the narratives would begin to show signs of preparation and lose their spontaneity, and partly because of the desire to record the experiences of individuals in many and dissimilar groups."

The interviews were remarkable in that they were completely non-directive with no prearranged set of questions.   He basically just asked them to describe their lives before the war and let them tell their stories as best they could.   Boder even sat behind the people he was interviewing as they spoke to ensure that his facial expression did not influence them in any way.  As an interview strategy, it worked amazingly well.   The interviews often lasted for hours with little if any prompting from Boder himself.  

Once the interviews were collected and he was safely back in Chicago, David Boder was left with the task of transcribing and publishing the interviews he had collected.   He finally managed to get funding from the United States National Health Service and transcribed seventy of his most important interviews.  Copies of these interviews were stored on mimeograph and microfiche for posterity and deposited in research libraries across the United States.  

Actual publication was another matter though.   Though he tried to interest different publishers, Boder was repeatedly told that there was no market for yet another book describing Nazi atrocities.    Being able to provide first-hand interviews of actual Holocaust survivors was not a selling point given the horrific revelations that had already come out of the Nuremberg trials.  

Eventually, he managed to convince the University of Illinois Press to publish eight of the interviews.  The book, I Did Not Interview The Dead, was released in 1949 but was not a commercial success.   Despite winning a graphics award for artistic design, sales were so poor that the publisher refused to do a reprint.    No other publisher would agree to a follow-up books and most of the interviews collected in Dr. Boder's project remained in limbo until after his death in 1961.

The lack of interest in David Boder's research project largely tallied with what Holocaust survivors were discovering for themselves.   Many survivors who emigrated to other countries found that public interest in the Holocaust waned in the years following the end of the Nuremberg trials.   The world seemed more interested in other matters and Nazi war crimes were regarded as ancient history.

The turnaround only began with the capture of Adolf Eichmann by Mossad agents in 1960.   News of his arrest and subsequent trial helped revive interest in the Holocaust and many victims finally came forward with their own stories of what had happened.  Unfortunately, time has a way of distotring memories and the long delay meant that vital details could be forgotten or exaggerated. 

It also meant that critics could challenge the reliability of the various eyewitness accounts on the grounds that accounts can become less accurate because of frequent repetition (a common problem with eyewitness testimony in forensic settings).  All of which made David Boder's research project so important.   While the Yad Vashem project would begin in 1953 as an official Holocaust memorial,  the oral recollections that Dr. Boder collected were virtually unique since they were gathered immediately after the war while victim memories were still fresh.

Virtually forgotten at the time of his death, David P. Boder's research is now a valuable resource for Holocaust scholars with many of his recordings and transcripts available online.  His work also marks him as a pioneer in psychological field research and the value of first-hand observation in preserving oral history for posterity. 

 

 

 

 

On Trump and Twitter

The 2016 US Presidential campaign saw the meteoric rise to power of Donald J. Trump, unprecedented perhaps in the history of American politics not only for its style but also for its unswerving “address” (Lempert and Silverstein 2012) to a “base” that was large enough to give Trump an electoral college victory. This talk was connected most distinctively (though of course not exclusively) to the social media platform Twitter. A new article published in Signs and Society provides what is arguably the first anthropological linguistic analysis of Twitter, while also interrogating for the first time Trump’s use of Twitter as a speech practice. It is no doubt too soon to tell, but it is suggested here that rather than the broad-spectrum address of the message that has heretofore characterized much of the history of presidential campaigns, Trump’s social-media address to a base may mark a shift in the rise of presidential talk to come. 

For the abstract

Heartless Con Artist Tricks Elderly Couple Out Of Life Savings

For the two pensioners living in their home in Blackpool, England, their nightmare began when a 38-year-old man who identified himself only as "Gerry" first contacted them.  Identifying himself as an account manager at the Lloyd's bank they had been using for years, he then told the couple that "fraudulent transactions" had been detected on their joint account and warned them that they were being targeted for fraud.   The couple, aged 81 and 80, who cannot be publicly named for their own protection, both suffer from dementia and were easily persuaded to reveal confidential financial details which they believed would help "Gerry" with his investigation.

Except that the friendly customer service advisor was actually a 38-year-old confidence artist named Syed Bukhari.  Within weeks, Bukhari had set up ten scam credit cards, redirected the couple's mail, and even diverted their telephone landline so that he could continue scamming the couple out of their life savings of £150,000.   He also attempted to take out a £40,000 bank loan which led to his arrest.   Unfortunately, by the time police managed to unravel his entire scheme, the couple's house, which they had lived in for 40 years, had already been sold to a private company with the proceeds going straight to Bukhari.  As part of their investigation, police learned that Bukhari had spent all the money he had stolen on numerous luxuries including trips to Dubai, stays in luxury hotels, and repeated hair transplant operations.  

While Bukhari has since been sentenced to seven years in prison, the economic consequences for the two victims are grim.   Though family members are contesting the sale of the house, it seems unlikely that their life savings will ever be returned to them.  As for the couple's 55-year-old son, unraveling what has been done to his parents is proving to be a nightmare.  " “Every time I'm sorting through my dad's financial affairs he asks what I'm doing and I have to tell him he's been conned - each time the shock and upset is exactly the same as the first time.”   

In a media interview, Detective Sergeant Janette Bashall, from Lancashire Police's Economic Crime Unit, said the couple “had worked hard all their lives to be able to retire in some comfort yet he [Bukhari] saw to destroy this by taking their home and hard earned savings, defrauding them of in excess of £350,000”.     Police also suspect that Bukhari had been working as part of a gang targeting vulnerable elders by posing as bank officials though, so far, no other members of this gang have been located.

Sadly, identity thieves often target the elderly because they tend to have considerable assets saved up and are also less likely to be suspicious of strange emails or phone calls.  They are also more likely to be dependent on help from family members or friends for help, especially if they are suffering from dementia or other medical issues, which makes them more susceptible to scams.   And even afterwards, many seniors are reluctant to call police due to embarrassment or the fear that their family members would force them into a nursing home.   

To avoid being scammed, seniors or their family members need to keep a close eye on their bank and credit card statements and report any unauthorized activity.    As more Baby Boomers reach retirement age and become vulnerable to diseases such as dementia, the risk posed by scam artists will only increase with time.