Behavioral science research; Behavioral science and law, part three

The following program is produced by the University of Michigan broadcasting service under a grant he made from the National Educational Television and Radio Center in cooperation with the National Association of educational broadcasters. The doctor and the lawyer view the law as a program from the series of human behavior social and medical research produced by the University of Michigan broadcasting service with special assistance from the Mental Health Research Institute of the University of Michigan. These programs have been developed from interviews with men and women who have the too often unglamorous job of basic research. Research in medicine the physical sciences social sciences and the behavioral sciences locational you will hear what may seem like strange or unfamiliar solved. These are the sounds of the participants office laboratory or clinic where the interviews were recorded. The program you will hear today is the first part of a discussion held between husband and wife Dr. Bernard L. Dimond a psychiatrist and Mrs Anne

Diamond a lawyer both practicing in San Francisco and both with keen interest in the legal code and legal education in the United States today. And my name is Glenn Phillips. The first question was addressed to Mrs. diamond regarding the teaching of lawyers particularly the psychological aspects of that education. What interest develop. Practicing that particular thing as far as. My own. With respect to my professions and it is. My particular subject of family law as well as all other aspects of law human behavior is a. Raise serious one. Very happy to know that.

Serious work is being done. Some parts of the country with respect to that there's something wrong. Two major aspects of law that deal with their human relations and I. Would. Press these Where are you in the profession. Well the choice of the particular specialty in the profession as a sort of. Back room or basement. Very much neglected fear specifically. The feeling over me that he is handling a divorce case.

Is quite distasteful the feeling in judges in general although there is nothing more. Unpleasant that could happen to them. To be. Aside. It would have a few exceptions of course in both cases but judges to almost uniformly seem to feel they have to be assigned to a domestic and domestic relations cases for a particular period of time is one of the least desirable assignments. That about not being in this unique position of a wife who is an attorney. Interested in this particular aspect and has recognized the need for more of the psychological training in her particular profession. Now you as psychiatrist. But do you feel. Can psychology psychiatrist offer to this area of law.

Well of course law. Must basically deal with human behavior and interpersonal relations law and a certain chance could be considered at a type of Applied Psychology and a relationship between people between society as a whole and individuals which has certain purposes for it. And just like all other human psychology and all other human psychological reactions must Rast upon certain basic principles of psychology. And I agree completely with and in the two areas of the law as criminal law and family law which are most intimately concerned with human psychology the lawyer somehow tries to to steer away from this behavioral aspect. You can do to deal with the law as something abstract something disassociated from human behavior from

psychology. And he seems from my viewpoint to be very much afraid of psychology human thoughts feelings and emotions and tries to deal with it as an abstraction. So to my way of thinking the contribution that someone in the behavioral sciences could make to the law would be to bring it back. To the area of human behavior to attempt to defeat any effort to deal with human problems in abstract legal terms. And so from my. Special perspective. Criminal damage and so forth which would seem to be much more important than some of the things like corporate law which I would regard as very sterile. Well we know that every person chooses his occupation are to fill certain definite emotional needs. For example many people

become. Many children decide to grow up to become doctors because they have certain secret curiosity sexual curiosity and they unconsciously hold that by learning all about anatomy and physiology and the mechanism of the human body that they will discover the ultimate secrets of sex and so you can say they became a doctor in order to satisfy their sexual curiosity and that a child might become a surgeon an r.e to sell them a certain sadistic urges it has because surging around Cup people. Mutilate them and same time serve a very useful social function. And then there are thousands of different reasons why children would choose a profession like medicine. Well the same type of reasoning I think would hope for a law that one person could be attracted to the field of law because he is searching for some kind of absolute authority

something which is superhuman which would determine human conflict human behavior regulates human behavior and give him principles to do to guide his own lives. He my view of the law is something abstract over and above set apart from human behavior. And he searches within the law for for these rules of conduct. Of course like the. Boy you have become to doctor an art to solve the ultimate mysteries of sex and maybe very bitterly disappointed and he learns to transfer his childish interest in to a more immediate more realistic goal in terms of his own profession. So the person who seeks extra human superhuman rules of conduct. May have to to

be just accepted supply and then deal with the law in practical terms. Actually nuff investigation we haven't psychoanalyzed enough lawyers know for sure if there are any dominant trends but we do have some hints. And one hint that we do from knowing that many attorneys in psychoanalyzing saw is that going into the law can be a way of running away from. People on an emotional level of seeking the answer to some of the most pressing and the most highly charged him in a personal relationships on some kind of an abstract level. And I see do see a very striking tendency among liars to disregard people as people and deal with them as as legal abstractions. Obviously this is a

generalization it can apply to each and every case but then there are these trends. Now what we don't know is how much the Study of Law actually contributed to this. I would be very interesting to have a study out of say freshman law students and see what their attitude towards human psychology Ezzy towards whether they have this avoidance of an interest in and interpersonal emotional relationships and so forth. And what about the time they graduate. This is all been driven out of them. From my own contact with law students I suspect that the freshman students are very much interested in the psychological approach and that they lose it somewhere along the line during the course of their careers education something happens to depersonalize their interest and that this represents a

very real loss. Cause you might want to go back a step further and take a second look as to who is teaching law. Why is it they're opposed to many other color most of the other technical schools that I know of. In law school in the law schools you will find a great majority of the law school professor. There's no have been lost to dence and law professors who have not practiced or have not practice more than a very small very shortly or cannot practice law. Not. Those who teach in medical school. Even though they are not in private practice they do constantly they are involved in clinical work but I hesitate to label it a movement but perhaps it is a movement to get into the

law curriculum. More of the psychological approach the humanistic approach. It is being done now I hear on a panel Michigan as far as I know those are the three law school of the only three law schools where such an experiment are being I think it's a wonderful thing it is happening. Of course and the results of it will be it's going to take a long time before. Do you see any anyone benefits car saleman else. Three schools. The. Psychological approach of speaking is very minimal knowledge about the bucket compared to the total curriculum and is not to be compared with a system in a medical school where after most a year of. Laboratory and didactic work the medical student is plunged into the

actual practice of medicine taken to hospitals and from then on he learns from his patients who actual work directed by people with vast clinical experience who are and in contact with patients so that it's. Hard to even imagine a medical school that does not have as its core a hospital. And yet the no law school as it has at its disposal the analogous social institution. Which would be pertinent in the practice of law and I thinking the law should be taught in conjunction with courts of law. Conjunction with law offices conjunction with prisons legal aid societies and so forth. But instead of that you find the law is largely taught by tactical level. It's almost entirely so. And.

You can see what happens to the young lawyer today as far as I know courses at all and no training at all in the actual dealing with the client in the actual dealing wit. In the courtroom appearance and all those I picked up on a hit or miss basis by the lawyer and he gets into law practice. Now forest mistake. Interesting. And to my mind terribly important to do your week. The lawyer the social worker from the beginning of her training has fought hard to see you cry. The doctor from the very beginning of his training is taught how to

deal with his patients. The lawyer after getting out of law school on the I'll have a patient client come into his office and be entirely on his own in developing this most important tool. So it is not surprising that in those fields of human behavior and human emotions have such a large part of why a lawyer will be unable to develop facts fully now we are very good. Generally we have gone through a lot of good law school that have had good training in being able to work with facts when the facts are being dug out of written instruments reports etc. or from the books. But in

getting facts. The cry. I think that lawyers are. Much less. So in general much less keep a bond than. Almost any of the. Professions connected to social sciences. I don't wish to change the point and it's not I don't want to do it all but I just establish a point if it's possible. Isn't it true that even medical schools have just recently begun to really to recognize the fact that they must teach some psychology to their medical students you know I think it's true. Twenty years ago when I went to medical school we got practically nothing in the way of either psychology or psychiatry. And deduction of the subjects at formal level and labeled as such is fairly recent. But I don't think that you know important because even

before these subjects were taught as. Pacific subjects in psychology and psychiatry and human behavior. The medical student was still brought in of and contact with the patients and hospitals have been the core of the very nucleus of the medical school for a good many years now about 100 years ago. Oh and certainly I did 50 years ago medical schools were at about the same position the law schools are today at that time medicine was taught as a didactic process to lectures and the medical students never really had any. Person to person dealing with any patients except demonstrations or exhibits. And how after he graduated and this lad do a doctor who was peculiarly and skilled in dealing with

patients as people. Had learned to a completely different approach to their patients. The modern doctor. I wouldn't put too much emphasis on the label that you attach to the particular course you're given either medical or law school. I would pay more attention to the content of that course. I don't care whether a law schools that say you know that they don't want to give courses in psychology to loss students if they are willing to give the law student actual training and experience in interpersonal reactions relationships that are pertinent to the field of law. Yeah I'm listening to it actually was. In law it has been going good the other way. 100 years ago and before that it was a tiny percentage of the lawyers who were trained in law school didn't think this law

clerk and I'm quite sure someone told me I think when in war you are having law clerks in his office would give a great deal of training in first nations. Now this apprenticeship training that one time I just managed to have an advantage is to actually experience the individual learned to deal with people as people. I'm not so sure that this is adequate to modern times or is very essential in any highly trained professional person be able to generalize his experience as you must know not only the practical techniques of relating to people but he must know the theory behind these techniques so he can interpret or extrapolate on his own and even create a new avenues of approach which are desirable in his particular

practice so that we have reach a stage where we can go beyond the apprenticeship level. And deal with these things on both theoretical and practical terms. But I wouldn't care very much whether this is part biased psychologists or psychiatrists. The last school for example would not want such versions on their faculty and it is our right and I have some very highly experienced. Professor of Law who is familiar with the techniques of interpersonal relationship with the practical aspects of human psychology who would teach the law student the tricks of the trade for this FREE. Might there be some. Lofty. Academicians who might still feel that by putting this into the curriculum that it might tend to draw the.

Lawyer the attorney out from the interpersonal and not making him rather not make it too personal for the lawyer with the clutch. So I'm not going to discuss this a little bit ingested very strongly but yeah. I would. My guess would be by the vodka law school professors. I mean this is quite contrary to their own interest is quite contrary to their own. Operating as. It's going to be and take a whole long time before it becomes accepted that if it ever does then my own feeling is that. For one thing it is the most perceptive and most sense that they have. Individual all those who are into profession are practicing law

and when they are involved in. The personal relations on a divorce case they are the ones that become. Most unhappy in handling a divorce problem. The very ones who would have the sensitivity and the understanding. To handle it that way because. I think it highly a lack of training or a lack of understanding of why they feel the way that they do they are uncomfortable sometimes so uncomfortable as to become. Almost unbearable and giving up such cases altogether.

And I'm sure that if a certain amount of training has been given to them in the beginning back in law school shouldn't take place with a plan at the end of the psychological the approach humanistic approach to the law practice. Let's try to look at the results of that is possible or might be too early to tell you. Is it possible to save the marriages perhaps in cases so it's a very can't be saved or is it better at a later time to. Help bring up what children may have resulted from the union. Well it's. Very difficult to generalize. Let me put it this way. By understanding the forces that are immoral and. By having for factual information. It is possible for me a lawyer to regard this very

important happening in our family which in divorce always errs. In all its aspects. And to reach a decision as to what should be done. It means going ahead. In the process temporarily to try to channel and get help from other professions in. Making adjustments. In other words to handle the thing as a whole instead of having a client come in justice someone can go in the paint store and order so much painting to paint the house blue. The client comes in and says I want this and this and this divorce and the lawyer feels it's his obligation to go ahead and do it. The

devolvement of the whole picture and the whole family. A lot depends on how the lawyer visualizes his role in society if he conceives of himself as a sort of technician. Rather than as a professional man he will approach a divorce on strictly legal estate grounds and if the patient says if a client says she wants a divorce and he looks up at the law books and sees it there are certain legal requirements for divorce in a particular state and that this woman meet see requirements that he goes through the appropriate ritual before courts and gets her a divorce. To my way of thinking this is not professional conduct this is being a technician of stars. I would conceive of the lawyers role in a divorce and a much broader one in which divorce would be regarded as

the most serious of all. Social crises can occur to the family which in our society is a unit of our society and that he must approach just down this crisis from the broadest possible viewpoint you have to take into consideration the economic social psychological and psychiatric factors as well as the legal factors and to make the decision to plan the strategy and the case on the basis of the overall picture. Now to do this you must know a great have to know a great deal about these other fields. You can't know everything he may wish to call an experts and one or another area for help but he must have sufficient knowledge in all of these fields so that he can judge what is important and what is not and what requires further investigation and what not

and a sense he could become a true professional. Next week you will hear Dr. and Mrs. diamond on the second part of this discussion as a doctor and lawyer view of the law. The next program from the series. Human behavior social and medical research consultant for this program was Dr. Andrew Watson of the University of Michigan. We extend our special thanks to the Mental Health Research Institute of the University of Michigan for their assistance. We would like to take this opportunity to call to your attention to forthcoming segments of this series which will soon be heard. They are aspects of mental health and the challenge of aging on those programs we will hear these topics explored first under the segment entitled aspects of mental health. We will hear a program entitled new approaches to mental health. The highlight of this particular program will be a discussion by Dr. each of the vagaries of Maryland who will discuss the new existentialist theory in mental illness. On another program the

safeguards against mental illness we will hear the renowned surgeon Dr. Paul Dudley white to Boston Massachusetts and then a panel of the nation's leading doctors as they discuss biochemistry and mental health under the fourth and last segment of the entire series. The challenge of aging. We will hear Dr. Edward L. Boortz who is chief of the medical service at the Lincoln now Hospital in Philadelphia Pennsylvania disguise. Why is aging a challenge. We invite you to listen to these programs and other programs from our series on human behavior. Glenn Phillips speaking asking that you join us next week and thanking you for being with us at this time. This program has been produced by the University of Michigan broadcasting service under a grant in aid from the National Educational Television and Radio Center in cooperation with the National Association of educational broadcasters. This is the end of a E.B. Radio Network.