Past Racism in the University of Michigan Clinical Psychology Program
Part I. A personal account of a woman who is black and indignant but who can't be pegged as #AngryBlackWoman
Jacquie Matte’s poignant narrative is best understood in the context of my last Substack article.
Background
The March 21 article is a mashup of an account of the systematic mistreatment of minority and LGBT students in the University of Michigan Clinical Psychology Program and an account of my father’s alleged involvement in the Mob. A U of M psychiatrist, Elizabeth Young, drew the connection. She was in the process of creating hateful material for anti-psychiatrist David Healy, who was passing around information to be available to anyone wanting to discredit me. Elizabeth furnished a warped account of my father’s alleged involvement in the Philly Mob. In return, Healy provided information alleging that I am a major player in Pharma’s influence on psychiatry. As Healy calls such persons, I was a big-time Key Opinion Leader, a KoL.
What a nice couple, Elizabeth Young and David Healy make, at least for a brief fling.
I could not fathom how angry Elizabeth was about my small but strategic role in bettering conditions for these students in the internship at the Department of Psychiatry, which was a captive of the staunchly psychoanalytic faculty of the clinical program. Elizabeth was saying that only someone with the genes of a mobster would be so treacherous.
She should be careful with the illogic that the offspring of the fanciful Mob all carry bad genes and can be expected to be treacherous. Dr. Myrna Wiessman was still alive back then, and her husband, Dr. Gerald Klerman, had just passed. In his day, Myrna’s father controlled the distribution of magazines and newspapers in mob-infested areas around Boston. He was so successful that his family could move out of Chelsea, MA. My father was young and unsuccessful. I started my life in Chelsea.
Does Elizabeth want to argue that we should also worry about Dr. Weissman being treacherous and going somewhere and stirring up student unrest? I did not need to stir up student unrest at Michigan because it was already bubbling. Yet, the opening of the report signed by the Chairs of Psychology and its clinical Program prominently refers to me.
The letter is self-incriminating and refers to another report, a June 1993 response to APA that reported “following charges by Professor Jim Coyne.”
The memo reproduced below is from the Black Student Representative to the Faculty, Ms. Jacquie Mattis.
Even if you care nothing about race or racism in American universities, the memo is still worth a careful read. You could feed it to ChatGPT with the instruction, “Please rewrite my memo in the manner of Jacquie Matte.”
Although a grad student at the time, Jacquie’s rhetoric is so wonderfully crafted in a style that reflected who she was—dignified. What she says should inspire indignation and maybe outrage in a reader, yet she is sparse on references to emotion. That keeps the reader focused on the conditions in the clinical program, not on Jacquie. She is a person, for sure, but in the context of this brief memo, she is a narrator talking about the program, not her internal state.
The memo refers to materials I sent Jacquie that she had not previously seen. For strategic reasons, we kept our distance.
Its date of April 1993 suggests I was probably commenting on materials in my home mailbox, where interesting things were often left in the middle of the night. I was unsure of where they came from, maybe the trashcan of the Chair of Psychology. I was never a member or affiliate of the psychology department, and although I had some friends there, I did not want to get them involved. Communication with me this way worked well until someone left a small paper bag with dried, smashed small animal parts and a scribbled one-word note, “Squirm.”
Jacquie Mattis’ memo to me
TO: Jim Coyne
DATE: April 21, 1993
From: Jacquie Mattis
Jim,
Thank you for the materials which you made available to me. Sadly, I have to acknowledge that there is nothing in your letter that is not, in my experience, true. There are points of expansion and addition which I did, however, wish to raise.
1. What has been framed as a battle over issues of orientation is, from my perspective as a Black student, at core, a battle over what constitutes ethical practice. I (and other students of color) have stressed this point to both faculty and students but it became clear early on that this was falling on deaf ears.
In my classes and in my clinical work I (and other students) have be instructed
a) not to include the cultural/ ethnic background of clients in written diagnostic assessments unless it is "applicable"; and b) not to alert clients to the fact that we are tenured as interns for a limited time (i.e., 1 year). I have repeatedly raised the point that as a Black woman I am keenly aware of the myriad ways in which historically undeserved cultural groups are alienated, abused and deceived by institutions purportedly designed to be helping institutions. The fact of deceptively encouraging attachment between client and therapist borders, for me, on the unethical. The fact of claiming these practices as part of psychoanalytic technique seems, to me, not only dubious, but it does not erase the fact that such practices have serious ethical implications.
The same holds for failing to identify the cultural background of clients in written psychodiagnostic assessments. Given that the standard battery of assessment tools which we are required to use have long been identified as culturally insensitive (i.e., biased), failure to acknowledge the culture of a client, and failure to identify the limitations of the tools used and the limitations of the results which they yield, leaves these clients open to potential misdiagnoses, mismedication, and inappropriate treatment.
The issue, again, is ethics.
2. While it is the case that some students, like myself, choose to go to the only approved site in Detroit (the Detroit Psychiatric Institute (DPI)), and while it is indeed a less prestigious site, there is an important element that one discovers once there. The incestuous relationship is no foreigner to that site. The director of the institute and a significant percentage would venture to say the majority) of the supervisors at DPI are graduates of the Clinical program of the UM. Further, the lines of informal information flow between these supervisors, and consequently the lines of influence over students' lives are disconcertingly and powerfully intertwined. Additionally, at least one member of the DPI staff is also a member of the staff of the Psychological Clinic and a teaching member of the UM faculty. I have, in my short tenure at DPI, found this state of affairs so difficult to deal with that it is virtually paralyzing.
3. I expressed to the Acting Chair of the Clinical Area, that I did not wish to have my files reviewed by students on the Records and Evaluations (R&E) Committee. While I am acutely aware of the practical and political ramifications of this decision, I made the decision because I have been privy to uninvited second and third hand information that derives from what should have been confidential materials from student's files.
Also a part of my decision was my discomfort with the fact that students (notably the class entering in 1991) have been assigned "advisors" who are their peers. The complications of this kind of situation are manifold when one considers 1) the often delicate nature of materials in students' files; 2) the fact that students will very likely find themselves working side by side in internships with "advisors" who have been privy to materials in their files; and 3) the inappropriately free flow of information which is the norm in the Clinical Area.
It appears to me that in cases in which students are facing extreme difficulties (i.e. racial or sexual discrimination) the information that is included in their files--information which should remain outside of the public domain for the sake of the safety and right to privacy of the 'victim'- become food for gossip. While I think that it is important to have student representation on committees which make important decisions, it is my belief that there are inappropriate mechanisms in place to ensure the safety and privacy of students. Again, given the loose boundaries, and the tendency for students and faculty to "choose sides", confidential information about students can be used as ammunition in the Clinical Area's war.
4. I have noted that area accolades (nominations for Departmental Fellowships, awards etc.) are "disproportionately" granted to those who side with old guards in the Clinical Area, and those whose choice of internship placements reflect that siding.
5. While the Department (and the Clinical Area) claim success for the recruitment of African American and other students of color, it is to be recognized that that success owes to the efforts not of these areas, but to the Recruitment Weekends developed, run and carried out by BSPA, LSPA and AISPA. The Clinical area has no formal or informal recruitment program. BSPA, LSPA and AISPA contact hundreds of students each year, and attempt to educate them about the graduate application process, and about the UM's graduate programs in Psychology.
It is my hope that there will be some constructive resolution to the problems that have plagued the Clinical Area. I am also interested in drafting a letter to the APA from the Black Student Psych Association (BSPA) stating the a) concerns of Black students in the Area and b) acknowledging our support of Ken and XX. Again, thanks.
Jacquie’s memo refers to how the conditions of the University of Michigan Clinical Program affected minority students. Imagine how what is said must reflect the larger system of psychoanalytic faculty’s exerting control of what psychology grad students see, think, and do.
I give hints by highlighting two sections.
The memo ends by mentioning coming to the aid of Ken and XX, who are under great stress as the focus of unwanted attention from the white psychoanalytic faculty, but in very different ways.
Ken had brought down their wrath by showing around my notice of award for his minority supplement to my grant and pleading that he should be allowed to accept it.
XX did not do or say anything that would upset me. A white psychoanalytic faculty member could not take his eyes off XX’s hair, face, and body during supervision. He acknowledged his difficulty and asked whether her white male patients ever commented about similar problems. She apparently said “no” or shook her head. He followed up with either a question or an accusation about her not doing all she could to cultivate a transference. After all, he assumed, she was the first attractive Black woman they probably had in their lives. She became upset, and he offered her a referral.
My strategic move was to express outrage to the appropriate authorities and call for another investigation. The Chair of the Clinical Psychology Program immediately turned in his resignation, which the Chair of Psychology refused to accept. He stayed on to sign the letter, but the department immediately hired Chris Peterson, so that he could assume the chair as soon as this all died down.
Outa here, damned troll.
In Dr. Young’s exchange with David Healy, my offensive behavior was viewed as reflecting the bad genes I was passed from my father, the Philadelphia mobster. Somehow, Elizabeth got the Philly connection wrong, like many things. My father would never have been caught dead in Philly. I doubt he had ever visited Philly, and he was dead when I finally made it here. However, Healy only required Dr. Young’s report to be suitable for creating outrage about me, not that it be true and nothing but the truth.
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What an absolute cesspit if a place.