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Dr. Richard Crocket.

Diary of a Trip to the United States, 13 May 1968 – 15 June 1968.

Week 4: 4 June 1968 – 10 June 1968

4.6.68 (Tuesday).

The following morning, Mrs. Trist took me to the bank, and cashed a cheque for me. She then drove me to Brentwood Hospital. This is a large V.A. hospital, more or less central to Los Angeles, close to Westwood Village. There are some 1,500 patients in a psychiatric wing. I lectured here to some 50 people, with considerable interest amongst the audience, representing the usual mixture of staff. One or two participants declared their intention of coming to visit Hornchurch. A car from Sepulveda Hospital then picked me up and took me there to a similar lecture, some 20 minutes away on the freeway towards San Fernando.

This is a pleasant valley through the hills north of Los Angeles, adjacent to Beverley Hills. The weather was hot, but overcast, and one did not see the hills easily, but it was easy to discern the attraction of the area. Jacaranda trees were in flower with brilliant mauve colour, along the roadside and in the gardens.

(8.6.68 Thursday).

I was interrupted at that point by Dr. Burrows coming to take me away for breakfast at Mendocino. There has been no time since then to dictate until now, the middle of Saturday morning, in the Travelogue Motel in San Francisco).

The hospital at Sepulveda is slightly old-fashioned (by American standards), a large red brick building, standing a little on its own, and looking very much a mental hospital. although not too large. The group at Sepulveda was more of a professional group with doctors predominating. Reception was more informal and discussion more critical. Dr. Max Unger, himself something of a veteran who has several times been in England, showed much interest, however, and will try to visit us in due course. He drove me in after the meeting to the Trists.

After dinner, Eric Trist and I settled down to talk about the origins of the therapeutic community, this being one of my reasons for trying to see him. He described how about 6 people in the Army began to work on selection procedures, including the discovery of the notion of leaderless groups. This led on to the creation of the War Office Selection Board procedures and the Civilian Resettlement units. He described the first Northfield experiment, confirming much of what I had inferred from the literature, when Bion and Rickman jointly extended the leaderless group principle to the hospital unit concerned. I gathered that the experiment came to an end when it was discovered that the funds relating to the Mess had been misapplied by senior officers; and it was felt wiser not to challenge the military establishment over the matter, as it might end prematurely the development of the original idea being discussed at that time amongst the psychiatrists and psychologists in the Army. My impression from the way Trist commented on this was that the people concerned must have felt a little insecure in the Army milieu. This seems to have been confirmed by the way things were after the War and after the second Northfield experiment. The various people interested found it difficult to keep together and to influence those in authority to provide further opportunity for the application of their ideas. It struck me that Eric Trist did not speak about this with much insight and, indeed, from my point of view he does not speak of institutions with insight, although he implies that he is open to insight.

The second Northfield experiment seems to be identified in Trist’s mind with Tom Main. Again, his information about what went on was in line with what I had previously learnt. Nothing really new emerged from the discussion for me, except that Trist does have a number of papers and documents which could be consulted. Very little was published at the time.

5.6.68 (Wednesday).

The 4th June was the night of Kennedy’s assassination. The news broke on the family about 8 o’clock the following morning when somebody turned the radio on. Mrs. Trist burst into my room to tell me. We all gathered round a small transistor radio while waiting for the television set to warm up. Reporters were excitedly pouring out bits of information, constantly interrupting to bring additional people to the microphone, or to add some little point of observation or comment. Caroline, aged 6, lay taking it all in while sucking her thumb. One’s immediate response was "What a country to be in"! Since that time Kennedy’s death has preoccupied the television commentators and the press, and all the discussion both socially and in professional groups. The theme of violence and why it is there has been predominant. It seems that the right to carry arms is guaranteed under the Constitution, this, however, being conceived originally as a measure to ensure that America could be defended against the British without legal complications. But now the idea has spread around that everybody has a right to have a gun for self-defence. The taxi driver on the way from Los Angeles to the airport talked about this and how he would not feel safe if he could not have a gun in his house, to deal with somebody who came and threatened violence. He did not seem to have any understanding of the implications of this outlook. Similarly he had very many queer ideas about "socialism". These matched the odd notions going around in the more academic atmosphere of the medical fraternity in Alabama.

On Wednesday morning, 5th June, I went to the Training Center for Community Psychiatry and met Arnold Beisser. This training centre is accommodated at the top of a modest skyscraper in the Beverley district. Arnold Beisser is a man about 40, stricken with polio who gets around in an electric wheelchair. He is a gentle and pleasant person. They had a seminar made up of three members of staff and five trainees; and in view of the news about Kennedy they scrapped the whole programme and gave 2 ½ hours to a prolonged group discussion about the situation. as it should be understood by psychiatrists and those concerned with mental health. There were two negro participants, both doctors. The whole discussion was very touching and very relevant to psychotherapeutic training. Towards the end of the session the interchanges turned on the feelings of the negroes and the problem of colour. The divisions, even in that intelligent, highly-trained and sensitive group, became quite apparent and one could sense the need for a long period of "working through" before good understanding could ever be expected to develop in relation to this colour question.

I left Dr. Beisser’s unit with considerable respect for what he is doing. It is a small unit. There is apparently one other in California, in Oakland near San Francisco. This will be a place to visit another time.

I then took Mrs. Trist to lunch at Bel-Air. This is a comfortable and beautiful hotel in the middle of the Beverley Hills area and we drove round the Bel-Air Park afterwards, peeping into the Japanese Garden maintained by U.C.L.A. Thereafter back to the Trist’s house to pick up luggage, and on to the airport. The plane was delayed but I nevertheless got safely to San Francisco and transferred to a Greyhound bus for Mendocino, arriving there more or less on time at about 12.45 in the early hours of the morning.

Mendocino Hospital is in a beautiful valley, some 120 miles north of San Francisco. It is a state hospital. It has achieved a reputation, I think probably mainly on the basis of Dr. W.G. Burrow’s training programmes. The hospital is enlightened in very many ways and is served by consultants who come from Stanford University and from San Francisco, for training purposes. It is divided into units. There are apparently some 500 patients who are alcoholic which is a measure of the problem in this country. A number of the wards are run on therapeutic community lines.

The theme of violence was very much in the mind of Dr. Burrows and others, apart from Kennedy’s assassination, because a young patient in the hospital had, after apparently successful treatment, returned with a rifle and shot another patient and wounded others in the grounds the previous week.

In the morning I addressed about 30 members of staff in the usual way with much interest being shown. In the afternoon, after lunch with the Burrows, I sat in on a seminar in one of the wards where the staff were attempting to set up a psychotherapeutic community. I had the feeling that this was instructive and effective. As at Fort Logan and at Dr. Beisser’s Training Center, I felt that the contributions I was making were possibly of real value.

I was then put on the ‘bus to San Francisco and reached the motel, in downtown San Francisco, about 8 p.m. After dinner in a local German restaurant and after making initial attempts to orientate myself to the city, I slept soundly.

7.6.68 (Friday).

On Friday morning, the 7th June, I took a taxi to the magnificent address "800 Parnassus" This is, in fact, the San Francisco Medical Center and is on a hill on the edge of one of the San Francisco parks. In includes the Langley-Porter Neuropsychiatric Institute or Clinic, of which the Youth Drug Study Unit is a part. I spent the day in this Unit. It proved to be quite a phenomenon.

Harry Wilmer is a man between 50 and 60, grey-haired, stout, with a grey beard. The whole image is friendly, and Christian names are used by everybody. There is a pleasant chaos about the place. The unit consists basically of two square rooms and some service corridors, including kitchen, dining room and so on, and an office. In each of the square rooms there are 8 or 9 day beds converted into couches by day, and occupied by patients, male and female at night. Their ages range from 17 to 25. I took a folder giving information about the Unit with me, and this provides details. The key feature of this Unit, however, is the use of videotape and film, as part of the community procedures. The room used for group meetings includes also a videotape camera and recording equipment. It is operated by a technician, who also functions as a therapist. Sometimes two cameras are used. Various techniques for combining pictures are available. I was supplied with a heavy collection of reprints.

I shared the morning seminar with an artist who gave a personal exposition of his progress as an artist, in relation to considerable difficulties in his personal life. There was, in fact, a covert problem in the Unit in that one of the patients, David, had "blown up" and walked out in anger, reducing a girl he had been associated with to tears. How to deal with this gradually became the main preoccupation of the group. David turned up again later and the morning thereafter was given over to a typical therapeutic discussion, after my short introductory account of what we did at the Ingrebourne Centre, which was video-taped.

The video-tape was played back to me in the afternoon., with other members of the community there. It was certainly instructive to see oneself objectively. I seemed to be very slow in delivery, although reasonably effective, and people certainly listened with close attention. My contributions were interpretive and greatly valued. At lunch Dr. Wilmer congratulated me and I was able to convey something of the hypotheses that we have been using, and the methodology, in discussion.

In fact, however, all this was at a relatively superficial level, by our standards. I do not really think that Dr. Wilmer has worked out with insight what he is doing any more than the other units I have been visiting. The points about drug therapy and psychotherapy are just not understood. The Center is really very much an expression of Wilmer’s own personality. He talks about "the kids" all the time. He has a family of his own; and his son John was, in fact, participating in the community. He is about 22, an artist, interested in producing films. He had already shared at an earlier stage in the work at the Center. He is a quiet young man who did not say much, I thought partly because he also did not really technically understand what was going on, although he was quite at ease amongst it all. Laurie, the young technician, is completely identified with what he is doing, and was quite unable to be detached about it intellectually.

The main value of the video-tape seemed to me to be in the provision of opportunities for "feed-back". Techniques used include letting new arrivals at the Unit use the video-tape in order to familiarise themselves with their own appearance and so on. Highlights of groups are reproduced and talked over after the event. Another practice is to provide each new arrival with some 20 minutes of film, to make a film as they wish. Some of them do this with great skill, and it was apparent that Dr. Wilmer got great pleasure from a successful production on the part of one of the patients. He not seem to realise that this could be anti-therapeutic, although I tried to convey this by discussing our problems over magazine production at the Centre. These are expensive and elaborate procedures and they seemed to me to give very little additional opportunity for interpretation or treatment, other than the kind of opportunity presented, for example, in an art group. But here these productions were being valued in their own right, rather then as therapeutic agents. Similarly, the whole unit views historical commercial films, which are presented as great works of art, each week. They go through seriatim all the works of a particular producer, such as for example, Bergman or Fellini. Wilmer seemed to think that by discussing these fantasy productions, the pabulum of the masses, some form of therapy was being offered to his patients, He did not really seem to understand transference feelings, or the highly selective and personalised procedures in use. As at W.P.S.I., I had the feeling that although there was certainly a strong community element present, it was being evoked and used intuitively, and without much insight. From my point of view, the relaxed atmosphere, the chaos and casualness with which people were living together, reflected lack of therapeutic understanding.

Additional problems apparent in the Unit related to the training programme. Three residents take over for three months, and run small groups within the community. In other words, the treatment of patients is subordinated to training. Wilmer accepts this dilemma because of administrative requirements, in that if he challenges the academic establishment the Unit may not be able to be so effective, or even able to survive in this particular setting.

He has obtained the use of some 10 acres at the back of the hospital, on the hill, for psycho-drama purposes, and general outdoor activities, and quoted its value for therapy. This is very understandable, but again he did not seem to realise that unless one can relate his way of using such provisions to a therapeutic principle, there is no real significance in what amounts to the provision of amenity and luxury facilities.

After lunch. and seeing myself on video-tape, and taking part in the ensuing group, we had a further seminar with a journalist, a local columnist who was supposed to give an account of his work for educational purposes. This again revealed limitations in the community in that it was not understood, I thought, that this could divert from treatment in the affective sense. But the journalist had been writing about Kennedy’s death and the things he had to say were certainly relevant, even if not used. Kennedy’s death has, in fact. shaken the young people in the community considerably, although the staff expressed surprise that they were so casual about it (they should not have been surprised).

This unit has been established, it seems, for about two years, and I am not sure whether it will continue much longer. It has really provided a vehicle for Wilmer to indulge his interest in art and ciné-photography and become an expert in the uses of video-tape. He is a man who has charisma, like so many people concerned with therapeutic communities. He writes with facility. But he is not a scientist.

After an exhausting day with the Unit, I took a walk through the shopping centre of San Francisco in the evening, and along Grant. This is the main street running from Milton Square in downtown San Francisco, through Chinatown. It was all lit up, thronged with people and very much a tourist sight, or so I thought. I had dinner in a Chinese restaurant, dark like all other American restaurants.

8.6.68 (Saturday).

This morning, after reviewing the time schedule, I rang Big Sur. I have arranged to hire a car and go the 175 miles South to the other side of Monterey to visit Esalen Institute there, on Monday morning. This will allow me to get back to Paolo Alto for my commitments there on Tuesday. Unfortunately, I have not yet been able to contact Dr. Syz’s son in Berkeley. I have also failed to contact the man responsible for Ampex Foundation, who provides video apparatus for Dr. Wilmer’s use.

(10. 6. 68 (Monday morning). .

I am sitting at the plate-glass picture window of my motel, 400 ft. up, looking out over the Pacific at the morning sun striking the mist, and pale blue, calm sea. A sparrow is hopping about outside on the verandah, untroubled by my presence.

I drove down here yesterday in a little Volkswagen which I rented in San Francisco on Saturday evening. It does make a very great difference to have a car, since in fact so much of American life is geared to this. There is no public transport here, for example. In a city, in any case, if one does not know the transport system, it is very time-consuming to learn it, in relation to getting from one place to another. San Francisco is built on hills, and is specially difficult. However, with the Volkswagen I was able to get all around, and in due course carry out the programme yesterday, which brought me here. On Saturday evening, I was able also. although considerably footsore from slogging up and down San Francisco streets, to find Fisherman’s Wharf on the front; and to have a magnificent meal with a friendly American businessman as the sun set over the harbour. Although very much a tourist attraction now, like Chinatown, the Fisherman’s Wharf does retain some significance, since the fishing boats still go out to collect the local crabs and lobsters from there, and the commercial element is basic to the existence of the Wharf. All along the harbour there are little stalls selling crabmeat in various forms, freshly cooked on the spot).

9.6.68 (Sunday)

After packing on Sunday morning and arranging my air reservations to Vancouver via New York, I made a long ‘phone call to Stephan Syz and the ‘phone was answered. It seems he lives in a "students’ co-operative". The students themselves run the place, which is a large building close to the University of California campus. I therefore drove across the 8-mile long Cole Bridge from San Francisco to Oakland and along to Berkeley, and took him out to lunch in the students’ quarter there. He proved to be a thin, bespectacled young man who, as one suspected, has clearly become interested in what he calls "Intentional communities" as a rationalisation of his feelings about the community he was brought up in. His interest has been to try to discover why they persist, when they do. His approach has been through "encounter groups", while studying psychology, which he has now, however, given up. His move to California has been to enable him to continue his studies in zoology, as a more concrete subject in place of psychology; and I suspect this is because of difficulty with the abstract science of psychology. His visits to communities have been on a personal rather than on an academic basis. Nevertheless, he was able to put me in touch with a number of references which I shall be able to follow up. His idea about the nature of communities were untutored, from my point of view.

I then set off on the freeway for the 175-mile drive to Big Sur. Monterey proved to be an attractive little town, spread out on a small peninsula, jutting out into the Pacific. It is primarily a resort with many golf courses, set among the pine trees, cabins and holiday houses scattered on the hills and round the beaches and coves with rocky enclosures. It was here that Robert Louis Stevenson worked in a house which is preserved as a memorial to him. The countryside is very like Scotland both from the appearance of the hills rising from the sea and the pine trees which grow freely on the coast here. From Monterey to Big Sur, a drive of some 40 miles, proved to be a winding but excellent road along the coast and in and out of forest., both picturesque and impressive. It is a somewhat isolated spot except for some motorists; who come here mainly at weekends for camping and outdoor sport of all kinds, in the State Reservation which controls the whole area. The motel here, two miles from Esalen, is the most comfortable I have found yet.

10.6.68 (Monday).

Had supper last night in a rustic inn some 10 miles away, filled with young people in a most motley garb, having dinner to the strains of Bach, and later an operatic aria. It was non-alcoholic. The food was quite excellent and I was served an aromatic China tea with it, in place of wine. Am off now to have breakfast at Esalen.

12 mid-day .

Am now paused on the edge of a cliff on the way from Esalen further South, in order to try and strike a mountain road across to the freeway back to San Francisco. This is a gloriously beautiful spot. The early morning mist down on the sea has lifted and revealed a calm blue sea. very like the Mediterranean with the mountains coming down to the shore.

Esalen itself is a cabin camp, nestling down a steep slope, on a small plateau about 200 ft. above the sea. On my arrival I was stopped by a doorman in a little gate, who explained that he was new there, starting that day, and asked my business. This seemed a little out of place in such a small entity. However, I then made my way to the office There a girl was typing and on her direction into the dining room to find Ben Weaver, the administrator, who was said to be at breakfast. The dining room was half filled at some three or four wooden tables, each accommodating about 12 people, on wooden benches. Everybody was dressed quite informally, the men often with beards, hair somewhat longer than is the American custom, and so forth. There were women and children, mostly in their twenties I would think. Having found Ben Weaver, I went and walked round the grounds of the Institute while awaiting his return from breakfast. There is a stretch of grass down below the main house with an agreeable modern swimming pool (presumably the site of the notorious nude psychotherapy!) I had the opportunity of talking casually to a young man and woman who were sitting on one of the stone walls. It emerged that he was a doctor, and that doctors were rather rare in the Esalen milieu. He had been there previously, and his appearance now was in seeking a position on the Resident Training Program, selections for which were under way this weekend. The problem had emerged that the girl who was with him was not entirely identified with the arrangements and he had been faced with the dilemma that if he were to go on a Program, she could not be part of it or be there. In spite of his relationship with her, and of his commitment to her, he was seeking to be "on the Program". Esalen was resisting, I think, because they find that splitting of this kind is damaging. I noticed as people came by that they passed freely between us, instead of going round as one might expect; and the interchanges were of a very relaxed supportive kind. One or two girls accompanied the men, and there was a definite tendency to touch as part of communication, the girls kissing and caressing, although not invariably, when arriving or leaving, all presumably part of the sensory expression practised in this milieu.

Ben Weaver approached in due course with a grey-bearded man who turned out to be Dr. Frederick Perls, whom I readily recognised from his photographs. He is 75 years of age and the apostle of what is known as "Gestalt Therapy". After a brief introduction he invited me up to his house. He took me up in an aged small Volkswagen, uncleaned. His house proved to be circular, wooden; pleasantly furnished, with a balcony facing out over the extremely beautiful scenery to sea. Everything was in excellent tastes and there were many paintings, not only on the walls but also on the ceiling; and sculptured objects around. We settled in two comfortable chairs and he told me about Esalen.

He himself does not regard himself as part of Esalen, but, as he said, lives there in "symbiosis" with it. The two main people concerned are Mike Murphy and Dick Price. The former he described as a "fall-out" from psychology who went to India and became interested in meditation. Dick Price is apparently a man of some money who had a severe mental illness and spent some time in a mental hospital, but has been rehabilitated through treatment by Dr. Perls, and is willing to invest money in these ventures, which have been very therapeutic for him. The Institute has had difficult times, especially financially; and at this moment is facing reorganisation, rather like W.P.S.I. I inferred from Dr. Perls’ comments that they have had difficulty the last year or two with the Resident Program, since the kind of people who tended to present were "lazy bums", who simply wanted to escape responsibility. He said that Mike Murphy does not have much judgement about people of this kind. This is presumably because of something in himself of the same order.

The Institute is a money-making concern primarily, and Perls does not see it as a community. At the same time, in discussion, he did agree that there was a community element and that the distinction that it is out to be a profit-making body, did not necessarily invalidate its community status.

The Institute puts its resources at the disposal of individuals who can offer something along the lines of group experience. It does not necessarily endorse these people who at times have been very exotic and out of line with orthodox thinking.

The staff work for very small wages and make use of the community as part of their gratification. This is obvious. There are about 50 in all on the staff. A ‘bus calls to take children to school and so on, and this aspect of the venture is now well organised. There is no formal Staff Group Programme but there are regular group meetings which I gather from Dr. Perls tend to be dull and uninteresting, so that I assumed they do not have therapeutic intent.

I left Dr. Perls in his circular house and walked down the path to the main building again. The office was closed. On the lawn in front an Indian women was playing a flute accompanied by some sort of native instrument and three drums, and people were sitting around informally, some of them moving their hands and arms rhythmically in time to the music, others their heads and others simply lying apparently relaxing with eyes closed. One woman with a very young baby in her arms was suckling him in a shawl. Another group elsewhere in the garden was clustered round a ciné-camera and apparently discussing the use of this, in some sort of activity sense. Other people were sitting or walking around in ones and twos and one or two people were occupied in tasks such as making steps in part of the garden corner, dealing with kitchen affairs behind the building, and so forth.

I gathered from Dr. Perls that sexual relationships amongst the staff and clients are uncensored and not subject to any kind of special comment. Some are promiscuous, some not. Some marry or are married and some do not, or are not. This is not on the basis of any kind of philosophy, but just that the way people conduct their personal lives is left to them entirely, and this is the way it is in the community. Some staff members, in fact, although they apparently enjoy working in the community, and stay because of this, do not identify with the programme at all.

While waiting for Ben Weaver to appear earlier, a family group emerged out of the dining room and rather hit the eye, since the father, a mild-looking, bespectacled man, was wearing the suit of a clown, or a fool, with red and blue trousers and tunic, and a fool’s pointed peaked hat. There were two small children. He passed on his way with the family group, up towards one of the cabins. A staff member passed at this point and when asked who the fool was, by the doctor I was speaking to, spoke about the significance of being a fool, and how the man who acted the part of a fool might be the wisest person participating in a group. But he suggested that this particular person was probably a business man escaping from his office with his family, but at the mercy of his family, and really dominated by the demands of business life. Anyone could sense the pity in his voice as he spoke of him, and this provided food for meditation. I propose now to try to meditate while crossing the mountain road.

Later.

Not much meditating so far. I am dictating this having got over the crest of the Pass. I can understand now why they tried to dissuade me at Esalen. The road rises, a dirt track, often no wider than the car itself, from sea level to some 4,000 ft., twisting and winding and always going up, passing through forest with deep, over-hanging tunnels of vegetation in between sweeps of exposed track, circling and winding on the bare mountain-side. Clouds of dust rise behind one. I passed just one car. It is hot - tropical in its intensity - and very dry. There are multi-coloured butterflies and dragonflies; and the occasional grey squirrel (very grey compared with the dirty-grey one is accustomed to elsewhere) runs across the road and up the trees without showing any concern for one. It seems quite fantastic that all this, with the glimpses of the Pacific down below and looking down on flying wisps of white cloud in between should be just 4 days from my prospective arrival back in London.

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