cftPUBLIC HEALTH

Official Monthly Publication of the American Public Health Association, Inc.

Volume 46 February, 1956 Number 2

Creative Health and the Principle ofHabeas MentemFILLMORE H. SANFORD, Ph.D.

My first reaction to the question,"where are we going in public health?,"is a feeling of very considerable pridethat I, if only through the desperationof your program committee, am in-cluded temporarily in the "we." I amaware, of course, and gratefully so, thatpublic health people, because of thenature of their concerns and the mag-nitude of their aspirations, do not oftenuse "well with the exclusiveness I havejust implied. The best thing I knowabout the profession of public health isthat when it says "we" it includes allmankind. As a beneficiary of yourvision and of your accomplishments Ican say loudly, both as a comfortingprediction and as an expression of faith,"Whither thou goest, I will go."

But neither faith nor comfort can pre-vent an American citizen from tellinghis betters exactly how to run theirbusiness. During the next few minutesI want to trace out what seems to mesome significant long-term trends in oursociety; then, descending a bit fromthese clouds, I hope to talk about somegeneral implications for human welfare;and finally, I will put together somehesitant declarative sentences aboutways in which the public health profes-sion might, if its pooled wisdom dic-tates, bring itself to confront what mayturn out to be the coming century ofthe psychological man.

My diffidence, which I will try tohandle sometimes by apology and some-times by making statements with spec-tacular assurance, now leads me to tell

Dr. Sanford is executive secretary, Ameri-can Psychological Association, Washington,D.C.

This paper was presented before the As-sociation Symposium at the Eighty-ThirdAnnual Meeting of the American PublicHealth Association in Kansas City, Mo.,November 14, 1955.

139

Many will note and frequently re-call this prophetic phrase, "therewill be more education and lespriestly mandate, more advice andles control, more consultation andless prescription, more facts andfewer arcane pronouncements."

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you that I am equipped for the task Ihave chosen by virtue of the fact that Iread the papers, I have regular contactwith Washington taxi drivers, and Ihave recently paid a visit to the largestcrystal ball in the world, now housed inthe Smithsonian Institution. And I amopposed to disease. You will also seethat my few years of involvement withthe strange, young, and burgeoning pro-fession of psychology will introducesome biases - sometimes charitablylabeled perspectives-into my para-graphs.Now-off to the clouds! I want to

attempt the delineation of four majortrends in our changing culture, fourtrends likely to affect the way life islived in 1975 and likely to have signifi-cant implications for any who chooseto concern themselves with the advance-ment of human welfare.

1. There will be increasing freedomfrom drudgery. Atomic power is com-ing. Automation is coming. The four-day work week is not far off. Theguaranteed annual wage is at least par-tially here. Leisure replaces drudgery,and a worry about the second loaf ofbread gives way to a worry about thesecond television set.

2. There will be an increasing free-dom from the major killing diseases.It is already true that anyone who per-sonally remembers typhoid or smallpoxor yellow fever is as "dated" as anyonewho remembers Theda Bara or Caruso.One is not being too starry-eyed to ex-pect that we will, in the foreseeablefuture, be able barely to remembermany of our chronic as well as our com-municable diseases.

3. There will be an advancing levelof general education. There has beena tremendous increase in the proportionof our population graduating from highschool and from college. And there hasbeen an increasing flood of educativematerial pouring into American homesthrough radio, television, magazines,

and newspapers. We can expect theaverage man of 25 or 50 years from nowto know much more about his worldand about those aspects of it having adirect bearing on his own welfare.

4. There will be an increase in scien-tific knowledge of the world, perhapsparticularly about the world of humanbehavior. The progress of science seemsto be geometric-it snowballs! The morewe know, the more we are equipped tolearn. In the next 25 or 50 years we canexpect natural science to open up newworlds to us-and that may not be afigure of speech. Perhaps equallygeometric and at least equally startlingwill be our progress in the scientificknowledge of human behavior. Fiftyyears from now such primitive notionsas the unconscious, conditioning, andthe I.Q. will be old hat and we will becontending as best we can with newerways of making better predictions abouthuman behavior.

These general developments, whichwe can abbreviate as trends toward free-dom from drudgery, freedom fromdisease, and freedom from ignorance,seem to have a degree of genuine valid-ity. If so, it is extremely likely thatthe world of health and welfare is infor some very genuine evolution.

Relying again on enumeration, letme set down three statements aboutproblems or challenges or-more neu-trally-developments, that will confrontthose who concern themselves with thehealth and welfare of human beings.After making these three skeletonizedstatements I will come back to put whatmeat I can on each of them.

There will be an increased, and anincreasingly effective, concern for posi-tive or perhaps better-creative health.

There will be increasing pressure forthe human welfare professions to changethe character of their roles.

There will be an increasing, and in-creasingly effective, concern with thepsychological welfare, or the behav-

WHERE ARE WE GOING IN PUBLIC HEALTH? VOL. 46 141

ioral health, of the human individual.Each of these lower order trends is

tied in its own way to the four trendsenumerated earlier. Perhaps it is best,however, in view of the level of fantasyat which we are operating here, not toencumber ourselves with either attemptedlogic or the tracing out of sequences. Letme instead take each of these threepoints and belabor it a little.

Creative Health

The history of man's dealing with hisown health can be talked about, if oneis not too picayune about standards ofscholarship or the need for precise defi-nitions, in terms of four delineablephases. The first of these we might callthe phase of passive acceptance. At onetime, in his ignorance and in his en-grossing preoccupation with the diurnalgrimness of survival, the most man wasable to do about his health was toreconcile himself as gracefully as pos-sible to its imminent cessation. We neednot concern ourselves here with the waysearly man-and some not so early-went about achieving his comfort in theface of the grim inevitabilities. Sincewe are not entirely out of this phase andsince none of us expects to live forever,we can examine our own behavior andfind there some time-tested mechanismsfor achieving a dignified if not a com-fortable meeting with death. A secondphase is the phase of cure. As knowledgegradually advances and as there areavailable resources for applying it, manlearns to patch himself up after he hasbeen victimized by some force of nature.I need not dwell on this phase either,since each of you is a better medicalhistorian than I, and since each of ushas had personal experience, upon oc-casion, with this phase of health history.

Phase three, the phase of prevention,comes as we learn more about thecauses of debilitation and as there aremore people around-professionals and

otherwise-who can take an active handin developing human well-being. In thelast few decades, to speak in strictlychronological terms, our society seemsto have made great progress into andthrough the phase of cure and into thephase of prevention. For this progressthe profession of public health, and theAmerican Public Health Association asits effective mechanism, can take asmuch pride as needed to keep its moralehigh. Now for phase four-the phaseof creativity. Though we are not yetentirely passed through the phase ofpassive acceptance, and only really be-ginning to move from cure into preven-tion, there seem to be around a numberof signs that the phase of creative healthwill soon be upon us. Knowledge isadvancing and its advance seems to bemore geometric than arithmetic. Society,at least in peacetime, is willing to devotemore and more of its resources, humanand otherwise, to the advancement ofhuman welfare. As we gain freedomfrom ignorance, from drudgery, andfrom the great killers, we will gain theknowledge and the energy necessary toexplore the limits of man's creativityand vitality, to find means wherebyevery man cannot only avoid diseaseand debilitation but can rise to his ownbest level of energy and vigor, of spon-taneity, of creativity, of enjoyment.As we gain greater knowledge, as that

knowledge is more widely shared, as wehave more time and energy available tous after mere survival is achieved, andas we are required to devote less energyto mastering the chronic and communi-cable diseases we may face the need fora new concept of health. My own fan--tasies say that health will become some-what less a matter of urgency and morea matter of thoughtful organized plan-.ning. It will become less a matter oflife and death and more a matter ofreally living. It will become somewhatless a matter of structure and somewhatmore a matter of function. We will be

142 FEBRUARY 1956 AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

less concerned with maintaining suffi-cient health to stay out of bed, to keepup productivity, to pass as normal, andmore concerned with maintaining sucha level of vitality that each human indi-vidual can have the best of all possiblechances of pursuing, at his own uniqueand individual peak of effectiveness, thegreat adventure of living.

Between these lines you can seecreeping in my own feeling that we willmove also toward serious and increas-ingly effective attention to the psycho-logical or behavioral vitality of thehuman being. I wish to return to thistopic a little later. You can also see inand between my sentences a tendency tothink in terms of the welfare of the indi-vidual rather than in terms of health asa community or public matter. Let mestate my underlying assumption, whichyou may or may not share, that whenmany individuals in a community areconfronting the same problem, thatproblem is a community problem. AndI would argue that if chronic disease isa public health problem, so is chronicvitality.

Changing Role of Professions

My general thesis here, firmly unsup-ported by fact, is that along with thetrend toward creative health we are dueto see what we might call a democratiza-tion or secularization of the health andwelfare professions. As people less fre-quently encounter life-and-death ur-gency in the area of health and whenpeople possess more general knowledgeabout the problems they do encounter,there will be a reduced inclination to letprofessional people plant themselves onpriestly pedestals or to play the role ofmagical fixers.

Already we can see many signsamong the more educated segments ofsociety of a hostility to the expert whoplays his role directively. To my mindthe future will bring increased pressure

on teachers, lawyers, physicians, den-tists, psychologists, engineers-and onIndian chiefs, too-to work out a some-what revised professional role. Theignorant and dependent man with anurgent problem gives himself gladly,body and soul, into the hands of anexpert who can solve his problem. Andthe more God-like the expert, the greaterthe comfort in the dependency. On theother hand, an informed and inde-pendent man with a nonemergencyproblem will not take gracefully to themagical fixer, whatever the label in thefixer's professional hat. Such a citizen-and his tribe will increase-wants tosolve his own problems in his own way.He wants a highly competent expert togive him information rather than pre-formed answers. He wants facts andcues about alternative ways he can in-terpret them. He will be resistant toprefabricated solutions handed him ona ritualistic platter. He wants to makehis own decisions about his own welfare.And once he makes his own decision hewill be much more inclined to act on itthan on decisions handed down fromabove.

In the years ahead all the health andwelfare professions will have to movealong a road already being explored bypublic health. Down this road there willbe more education and less priestlymandate, more advice and less control,more consultation and less prescription,more facts and fewer arcane pronounce-ments.

In this general connection let medescribe what seems to be the evolvingand necessary professional role of thepsychologist. Psychology, by its nature,is a relatively strange profession, but alook at the psychologist's relation tothose he serves may have some value asan illustration of something. And it maybe a welcome variation, about now, forthe speaker to walk a bit in his ownyard rather than roam the randomcountryside.

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It seems to me vitally important thatthe psychologist behave neither like thephysicist nor like the physician. If thisadvancing young science and thisbustling young profession is not to missits own boat and fail to make its bestcontribution to the human enterprise,it must find its own way of advancing itsown science and of rendering its ownunique professional services.The psychologist-when he adopts a

service role deals almost exclusivelywith problems falling over towardthe creative end of the four-phase con-tinuum we have talked about. At leastmost of the time the problems are non-emergency, though they may appearvery urgent to the person who suffersthem. He deals with problems of be-havior, and it seems to be in the natureof things that behavioral problems mustbe solved by those who behave-humanbeings. Some day it may be possible tosolve problems of learning or percep-tion or emotional chaos or leadership ormorale through the administration ofwonder drugs, but it seems highly im-probable. The behavioral problems ofan individual, the management prob-lems of an administrator, the militaryproblems of a general, the child-rearingproblems of a parent, the educationalproblems of a teacher-all must be ac-tively dealt with by the individual, theadministrator, the general, the parent,and the teacher. The psychologist canbe useful to each of them. He can,through calling on his technical knowl-edge or through conducting tailor-maderesearch, give them facts relevant to theproblem. And what is often more im-portant, he can give them alternativeways of viewing the problem, of castingit into manageable terms. He can serveas a technical resource, feeding care-fully selected and skillfully presentedin-put into the integrating and decisionmaking mechanisms of another humanbeing. And, too, he can be a mightyinstrument whereby the client learns the

client's way through the client's problem.He cannot apply magical formulas,

administer drugs, assume control, solveproblems, or make decisions for an-other human being. He cannot assumecomplete responsibility for anotherhuman being unless that human beingis patently unable to assume responsi-bility for himself. He must most oftenbe responsible to, not for, a person.The person he serves is not a patient,sitting quietly while something is doneto him, but a buman being who is anindependent entity-or capable of be-coming so-a human being who has thepotential of being his own best experton his own behavioral problems.The psychologist's role, then, is close

to that of the teacher. He is, in a way,a translator of behavioral science, busyfinding ways to take knowledge out ofscience and put it into the nervous sys-tems of all who can profit by that knowl-edge. In the realm of behavioral health-or behavioral vitality-he is some-thing of an exponent of the do-it-yourselfmovement. Of course, I am oversimpli-fying things here and perhaps sayingthem awkwardly, too. Anyone who hasbeen involved on either end of a courseof psychotherapy will recognize asvery shallow the description I have givenof that enormously intricate process.But shallowness is by no means totalinaccuracy.

Psychotherapy, like consultation, isteaching and learning. The client mustlearn his way out of his problem andinto independence. He must control him-self, make his own decisions, be hisown boss, run his own life. He mustnot learn long-term dependency on thecounselor. The counselor, through thesubtle application of knowledge andskill, helps the client free himself, for-ever, from counselors.Not very well hidden in this descrip-

tion of the psychologist's professionalrelation with other human beings is animplicit thing that might well be called

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the principle of habeas mentem-theright of a man to his own mind.* Inour system of justice we have, by build-ing the principle of habeas corpus intoprecept and precedent, protected theright of a man to his own body. Inthe coming years, in order to keep ourexperts from imposing their own ideasand values on the not-so-expert, we mayneed to weave into all codes of profes-sional conduct the principle of habeasmentem. This principle becomes moreand more important, it seems to me, aswe devote more and more professionalskill to the solution of nonemergencyhuman problems. And it takes on greatsignificance as the potency of ideas ap-proaches that of drugs.

Before letting go of the tail of myfantasy about the role of the psycholo-gist, let me make two more brief pointsthat seem to have relevance for thepartnership of psychology, and perhapsof other professions, with a supportingsociety. First, I would say that theidealism creeping into my description,an idealism emphasizing brotherly giv-ing rather than fatherly fixing, is arealizable ideal for a profession onlyso long as that profession is firmlyrooted in an ongoing science. If thecreators of knowledge are continuallycreating, he who translates knowledgeinto utility has a continuing and chang-ing j ob. He can freely give awayknowledge because tomorrow he willhave more and better knowledge. Ifthere is no advancement of knowledge,the professional person, for his ownsurvival, will feel the pressure to keepsecrets, to hoard technics, to protect hisposition of power, and to cultivatedependency.A second point is this. It seems a

practical necessity for psychology to

* The term habeas mentem was first used, asfar as I know, by George Kelly in an in-formal presentation at the 1955 Annual Meet-ing of the American Psychological Association.

take definite steps to insure that tech-nical knowledge about human beings ismade widely available to human beings.Knowledge is power. Those who haveknowledge are perceived as powerful.Powerful people are always potentiallythreatening people. All knowledgeablepeople in a society, particularly in aninformed and democratic society, musttake steps to convince society that thepower of knowledge will be used for thepublic good. The best long-term way toinsure that power will be used for thepublic good is to invest the power inthe public. The power of knowledgecan be invested in the public throughthe free and effective dissemination ofknowledge.The above sentences, while they relate

initially to psychology, deal with knowl-edge in general. Perhaps they havesome meaning for professions in general.They seem to me to have particularlysalient meaning for psychologists be-cause knowledge of human behaviorhas-or at least is publicly perceived ashaving-very tremendous power. Ifthe psychologist or any other behavioralscientist is seen as hoarding his knowl-edge he will become a serious threat andwill be the victim of hostility-probablyjustified. Already, even with his smallknowledge of human behavior and evenwith his inherent readiness to tell any-body more about this knowledge thananybody wants to know, the psycholo-gist is the object of considerable suspi-cion. Both as a scientist and as a pro-fessional person, he must take steps toinsure that knowledge of people isknowledge for people. This to my mindis a very practical consideration. Butin it, mundane practicality coincides withthe values of democracy, the traditionsof liberal education and our deep beliefin the infinite worth of the independenthuman individual. I will not talk moreabout the profession of psychology orabout behavioral science in society. Ifthere is a point here for public health

WHERE ARE WE GOING IN PUBLIC HEALTH? VOL. 46 145

you already have seen it more clearlythan I can articulate it.

But one more general point on therole of professions. In the long runwe can count on it that our dynamicculture will change and that there willbe changing demands on all professions.The sort of changes I have talked aboutmay be the veriest of fantasy, but somechange will occur. And there is somepoint in asking about the general abilityof the profession of public health tochange with the times. While no onepossesses either the knowledge or theconcepts to diagnose the flexibility andviability of a profession, I hope thatyou have the wisdom to continue in thecoming years to grow and change insuch ways as will let you make yourgreatest contribution to mankind. Someinstitutions appear to have a built-inreadiness to evolve. Democracy itselfis such an institution. Other institu-tions ossify. They come into being as

mechanisms to serve a social need. Theydo serve for a while. But after a whilethey seem to become more interested intheir own survival than in serving theirpurposes. They reach a stage in whichtheories become dogma, pioneers be-come old fogies, yesterday's solutionsare rigorously imposed on today's prob-lems, and society is berated because ithas not the sense to be served in theway it ought to be. Such an institu-tion, though it may show remarkabletenacity, will eventually disappear, what-ever pious noises are made about itstraditions and its sanctity. How doesan institution avoid encrustation andeventual death? I wish I knew, but Ido not. But I somehow have a faiththat the profession of public health hassufficient vigor and viability now tobuild into itself, in ways its own wisdomwill dictate, mechanisms for perpetualevolution. As one with an investmentin the future of public health I need sucha faith and am comforted by the factthat I have it.

Increasing Concern withBehavioral Health

Most generally, when we speak ofhealth, we speak in terms of the body.And we think of a healthy body as oneable to stay out of bed and perform atsome moderate level of effectiveness itsdaily chores. I have, with temerity,predicted that in an era of creativehealth we will not be satisfied to thinkof health in terms of the body's abilityto operate at a moderate level of effec-tiveness. We will start thinking aboutways in which the body can function atits own built-in best. And along withthis change in our level of aspirationfor the body will come, it seems to me,an increasing desire to have every hu-man being characterized by behaviorof creative vitality. We will worry ifthe individual's pattern of behaviorshows disorganization, debilitation, dis-ruption. We will worry about all thosewho fail to live up to their own capacity,who have healthy bodies but do not usethem to their own satisfaction, who areadmirably equipped for physiologicalsurvival but who do not achieve psycho-logical vitality.

Already there is afoot a very signifi-cant and visible mental health move-ment. We are successfully directingpublic attention to the "nation's num-ber one health problem." We are tryingto recruit and train a vastly increasednumber of professional people to helpus deal with mental illness. The na-tional and state governments are pour-ing millions of dollars annually intomental hospitals and into programs ofresearch and training. Society hasrecognized mental health as a problemand has begun to marshal resources todo something about it.The mental health movement is pres-

ently characterized by a focus on the700,000 people in our mental hospitals.In terms of the four phases enumeratedearlier, we have moved out of passive

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acceptance and into the phase of cure.We will be in this phase for some time,probably, because we have not yetlearned very effective or economicalways to cure mental illnesses. Bettercures will be found as we continue ourstepped-up programs of medical andbehavioral research.

There are also obvious signs that weare moving into the phase of preventionof mental illness. Both professionalsand laymen talk more and more oftenabout the 7,000,000 living Americanswho may be future candidates for ad-mission to our mental hospitals. Andoccasionally we hear a kind word saidfor the 70,000,000 or more Americanswho may not be living up to their ownbest psychological snuff, who are tied inemotional knots, who cannot handlewell their vocational or marital or child-raising problems, who somehow getalong in life but in a limping, low octaneway which they do not like at all. Thecreative phase seems not too far away.As a matter of fact, if we look out-

side the realm of official and professionaldealings with health, we may becomeconvinced that the creative phase isupon us. Parents and teachers andministers by the tens of millions arealready actively involved in attempts topromote creative behavioral health-or creative behavioral vitality. A perva-sive trait of our culture has come to bea belief that the human personality doesindeed grow, that it has the capacity toachieve both happiness and maturity.We all raise our children and teach ourstudents and even interact with ourneighbors in ways we feel will helpthem become good, healthy personali-ties. Our efforts are characterized bygood will and hostility, wisdom andignorance, common sense and bigotry.But the efforts go on. Our belief in theinherent worth of the human individual,our refusal to accept a deterministicphilosophy of life, and our high stand-ards of living make it possible if not

inevitable that we turn our energies tothe achievement of behavioral vitalityfor every individual.

In a sense, then, the layman is farahead of both the professional and thescientist in the area of behavioral health.There seems to me good reason to be-lieve that, barring major economic orsocial upheaval, the public will go rightahead with its varied and highly moti-vated attempts to produce personalitiescharacterized by maturity and vitality.Such a situation seems to me to presentexciting and potentially explosive pos-sibilities.

There very probably will be a con-tinuing and expanding support forscientific research on the behavioralsciences. There will be an increase,perhaps geometric, in the scientificknowledge of human behavior. Therewill be an increasing demand for pro-fessional people to serve as middle-menbetween the scientist, who is the creatorof knowledge, and the ordinary citizenwho is the consumer and applier ofknowledge. Actually, these sentencesshould not be phrased in a future tensefor the trends are upon us. In psy-chology, for example, the level of re-search effort in all fields has increasedmightily in the last decade. The bodyof hard scientific knowledge about hu-man behavior, though still small, hasgrown. The membership of the Ameri-can Psychological Association has in-creased from less than 3,000 in 1940 tomore than 14,000 in 1955 and is stillgrowing. The average American citizen,through formal education and massmedia of communication, has easy-some think too easy-access to the factsand theories of psychology. There isa reality already here-a grim realityto some who basically disapprove ofletting man learn too much about man,but an exciting reality to others whosee a hope that behavioral science andlife will overtake nuclear science anddeath.

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Does all this have anything to do withhealth? Probably not, if we find it bestto keep the concept of health encapsu-lated in its present semantical bindings.Probably not, if the concept of healthneeds to carry on its back the presentrelated concepts of "patient," of the"doctor-patient relationships," and "totalresponsibility." These health concepts,so vitally necessary in the realm ofurgency, may have a straight-jacketingeffect on our attempts to solve the prob-lems of creative health, particularly theproblems of creative behavioral health.Coming concerns and coming opportu-nities to advance welfare should not andcannot be avoided on the grounds thatthey do not fit into existing conceptualpigeon holes or into existing institutionalniches.

It seems desirable, and probably in-evitable, that we either will need torevise our concept of health or findentirely new concepts to deal with thestrange and challenging things that arecoming.

Does all this have anything to do withpublic health? I do not know, but Ihope so. I have the impression that theprofession of public health, even thoughit has people in it, is less likely thanmost professions to achieve ossification,more likely than most to maintain itstradition of avoiding any paralyticeffects of tradition. And I have theimpression that the values and aspira-tions of public health equip it morethan most professions to assume a lead-ership in the movement toward crea-tive health and behavioral vitality.

Before concluding this perilous jour-ney through the clouds, I would like tomake one additional point. I wouldfeel disloyal to my 14,000 employersin the Psychological Association if Idid not engage in just a little bit ofguild building by suggesting to you thatpsychologists of today can be of con-siderable use to you today as you goabout your business. Most of you

spend a tremendous part of your pro-fessional day dealing with human be-ings. You deal with them in the lightof your own theories of motivation, oflearning, of group processes. Youformulate hypotheses about the best waysto achieve a certain desired effect and,in essence, you conduct experiments tosee how your hypotheses hold up. Onthe basis of your views about humanbehavior and what makes it tick, youdecide on courses of action. You carrythem out and you gather evidence abouthow they work.

In this respect you are doing prettymuch what the psychologist does. Butthe psychologist may have some knowl-edges and skills to help you do it better.The psychologist will not have the skillsor experience or the wisdom to makethe decisions you make or to carry outthe programs you design. But he canfeed into you some facts and some alter-native points of view-some enlightenedconfusion, I like to call it-which maybe of assistance to you. And you maycall upon his research skills to help youdesign your programs and to evaluatetheir effectiveness.

I have a strong suspicion that there'now lies on library shelves a good dealof material in psychology-and in otherbehavioral sciences-that could, if some-how made properly available, be ofgenuine usefulness to you. Somehowit just lies there, immobilized in gen-eralizations and hidden by a screen oftechnical language. This material needsto be put into such a form that youcould tell whether or not it has rele-vance for you.

Perhaps the research people them-selves could do more to bring theirknowledge out from under the bushel.But this is probably an unrealistic hope.Research is a very full-time job, requir-ing highly unique skills. The job oftranslating is also a full-time job, re-quiring other unique skills. Perhapsthe best way to examine the utility of

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behavioral science in the ongoing pro-grams of public health is the way pub-lic health itself is going about it. Youhave taken into your field a number ofpsychologists, you are teaching themyour problems and you are seeing ifthey can turn their skills to the achieve-ment of your own ends. Personally, Ithink these people will be useful to you.I think they already are being useful.The personnel and testing project in theAPHA central office (the ProfessionalExamination Service), for example,seems to me to have significant utility.So do the varied studies now in progressin the Behavioral Studies Section andin other places in the Public HealthService. Some of you know of this

applied research. Many of you will hearof it. In this general connection let mesay that the newly formed Joint Com-mittee on Behavioral Science in PublicHealth is both an encouraging indicatorand a mechanism whereby the behavioralscientists and the profession of publichealth may profit through a joint lookat common problems and shared goals.

In conclusion-at long last-let meexpress to you my gratitude that youexist, and my very warm hope thatwherever you go in public health, youwill find both the direction and distanceto your liking. My impressions of youlead me to the belief that humanity willbe well served if your values are ad-vanced and your aspirations realized.

Training Courses for Diabetes WorkersA series of four courses in various aspects of diabetes is being offered in 1956

for the fourth consecutive year in its Boston Diabetes Research and Training Unitby the Public Health Service. Patient education, nursing, clinical, community, andnutritional aspects of the disease will be discussed.

Each course of five full days is limited to a small group of from 12 to 20. Thereis no tuition and information on living arrangements is provided when applicationis received.

The courses with their dates, the group designed for, and the limitations as tonumber follow:

Patient Education in Diabetes, February 27-March 2-"for those concerned with individualand group instruction of persons with diabetes." Twelve persons

Nursing Aspects of a Diabetes Program, March 19-23-"for nurses who work in officialand non-official agencies . . . hospitals . . . clinics, schools, and industry." Fifteen persons

The Clinical and Community Approach to Diabetes, April 2l-27; October 1-5--"for pro-fessional workers . . . interested in diabetes programs." Twenty persons

Nutritional Aspects of a Diabetes Program, May 21-25-"for dietitians and nutritionistsin public and private health agencies, clinics, hospitals and other institutions." Fifteen persons.

Address applications and inquiries to the Public Health Service, Diabetes FieldResearch and Training, 639 Huntington Ave., Boston 15, Mass.