The Academic Suicide: Escape From Freedom

In Childhood and Society, Erik Erikson describes the American adolescent:

"Adolescence is the age of the final establishment of a dominant positive ago identity. It is then that a future within reach becomes part of the conscious life plan. It is then that the question arises whether or not the future was anticipated in earlier expectations.

"The problem posed by physiological maturation has been stated forcefully by Anna Freud. '. . . Aggressive impulses are intensified to the point of complete unruliness, hunger becomes voracity and the naughtiness of the latency-period turns into the criminal behavior of adolescence. . . . Habits of cleanliness, laboriously acquired during the latency-period, give place to pleasure in dirt and disorder. . . ."

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Erikson continues:

"What the regressing and growing, rebelling and maturing youths are . . . primarily concerned with is who and what they are in the eyes of a wider circle of signficant people as compared with what they themselves have come to feel they are; and how to connect the dreams, idiosyncrasies, roles, and skills cultivated earlier with the occupational and sexual prototypes of the day.

"The danger of this stage is role diffusion; as Biff puts it in Death of a Salesman: 'I just can't take hold, Mom, I can't take hold of some kind of a life.' . . . Youth after youth, bewildered by his assumed role, a role forced on him by the inexorable standardization of American adolescence, runs away in one form or another: leaves schools and jobs, stays out at night, or withdraws into bizarre and inaccessible moods. Once he is 'delinquent,' his greatest need and often his only salvation is the refusal on the part of older youths, of advisers, and of judiciary personnel to type him further by pat diagnoses and social judgments which ignore the special dynamic conditions of adolescence."

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"His goals are vaguely defined. They have something to do with action and motion."

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"How does his home train this boy for democracy? If taken too literally, one may hardly dare to ask that question."

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"This American adolescent, then, is faced, as are the adolescents of all countries who have entered or are entering the machine age, with the question: freedom for what, and at what price? The American feels so rich in his opportunities for free expression that he often no longer knows what it is he is free from."

A law "to provide for the Instruction of Youth, and for the Promotion of Good Education" was passed by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1789. The following paragraph from this law, which applied to Harvard University, is still in force:

"Be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, That it shall be, and it is hereby made the duty of the President, Professors and Tutors of the University at Cambridge, Preceptors and Teachers of Academies, and all other instructors of youth, to take diligent care, and to exert their best endeavours, to impress on the minds of children and youth committed to their care and instruction, the principles of piety, justice and a sacred regard to truth, love to their country, humanity and universal benevolence, sobriety, industry and frugality, chastity; moderation and temperance, and those other virtues which are the ornament of human society, and the basis upon which the republican Constitution is structured; and it shall be duty of such instructors, to endeavour to lead those under their care (as their ages and capacities will admit) into a particular understanding of the tendency of the beforementioned virtues, to preserve and perfect a republican Constitution, and to secure the blessings of liberty, as well as to promote their future happiness; and the tendency of the opposite vices to slavery and ruin."

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Between Erikson's adolescent and the Commonwealth's responsible man stands Harvard University in all its flawless glory. She has stood for three hundred and twenty-five years and shows no sign of weakness. Time has given her a certain grace and even gentleness; she is too self assured not to be humble. But the adolescent freshman learns very quickly that if he wants to play her game, he must play by her rules.

For some Harvard men the sudden acquisition of responsibility--the responsibility to choose courses, to arrange his own finances, to keep his laundry clean, to discover friends, to choose a major, to decide what he will be for the rest of his life--is not the spark to academic action but to contemplation. Unless he is driven by a need to achieve (usually inspired by his parents), and unless he has the strength to persevere in his work while he follows his thoughts, he is likely to commit what will turn out to be academis suicide. (Of all colleges, Harvard grants the greatest freedom, and is therefore the cause of the deepest irresponsibility.)

If he is frightened enough to pass, his grades are still likely to fall far below his potential. His confrontation with the CRIMSON or the HDC or the Bick or Widener is likely to open a path of socially acceptable indifference to academic work, to help him form the habits that turn him into what Amherst calls a consistent "under-achiever."

"Why," he wants to know, "should I work at all?" He wants to know the "meaning" or "the intrinsic value" of his "General" Education courses, of the Physical Training Program, of work in general. Indifference breeds contempt. About what does his freshman advisor advise him? It is likely that the advisor won't know much about undergraduate courses and won't care much about undergraduates. And there is no reason for him to care; he is worried about writing a thesis, advancing academically, and getting married.

The student may feel he should begin to learn what a mature relationship with a female is. The complexities of the necessary self-flagellation and perhaps even experience are enough to keep him from treating Gen Ed A with all the seriousness it deserves.

His course papers begin to be late; he is overdrawn at the bank; his room starts to look like a laundry bin; overdue library books pile up in corners; study cards aren't handed in; he has given way to his suicidal urges.

If he doesn't actually fail out of school, he is still likely to have a series of interviews with a member of the Administration, probably a Freshman Dean or a Senior Tutor. It is unlikely that his interview will be especialy revealing:

"John, I've been looking over your record, and you must realize that your work isn't up to the standards we expected of you. . . ."

"Yes, sir."

"Well, what do you think the reasons are?"

"I don't know. I guess I've had a hard time getting adjusted."

"Do you think your work will improve?"

"Oh, I think so, sir."

"Well, remember, it may be a big help to talk your problems out. If there's any tutor you're close to, or if you'd like to see a psychiatrist . . ."

"Yes, sir."

The student feels that he has been insulted, treated as a child. He has been unable to explain that his work simply doesn't mean anything to him. Obviously, the University means a good deal to the Administrator; after all, he has committed himself totally to it. He has too much invested to ask questions of basic value.

Professors exist at too great a distance to be approached; tutors are likely to be impatient with embarrassing confessions. They have too many problems of their own to want to be amateur psychoanalysts can do irreparable damage.

After a year or two, the student who has succumbed to his suicidal drives has established a pattern of avoiding his work. He may begin each term with a firm resolution to work and proceed to kill the semester reading irrelevant books, writing, painting, working on drama, playing the guitar, or just hanging around the Bick. A few days of agonizing cramming, and perhaps his grades are high enough to allow him to continue.

He can't attain all knowledge, so he satisfies himself with learning as little as he can, except in fields where he won't be tested. And he'll have no trouble finding an in-group which approves.

If the student visits a psychiatrist, it is likely that his troubles will be treated as symptoms of a deeper disease. By rejecting academic work, he is undergoing a symbolic rejection of his father, who has always wanted him to be a success. He is afraid to test his full power, for fear that he will fall short of the goals he has set for himself--to be the very best. The psychiatrist is probably right at least as often as he is wrong, but the answers he provides are not what the student wants to hear. He wants to be convinced that his work has religious value; it must be something personal, to which he can be committed with the same degree of passion with which he is committed to himself.

The experience of the suicide student is obviously not universal. There are some students for whom studying is never a problem. They have decided very early on a professional career and go about methodically achieving it; or they never challenge the authority of their parents; or they have a terrible fear of failure. Others manage their growing up while still succeeding academically, if necessary treating courses simply as an unpleasant job that must be done.

Harvard University has no adequate machinery for dealing with those who follow their thought to its conclusion in inaction. And it needs none. Some students will never be the mature citizens that Erik Erikson and the Commonwealth of Massachu-9Psychiatrist may deliver accurate answers to the undergraduate's problems; but they are rarely what he wants to hear.