2009 Commencement-Faculty Address

Bob Lichtenstein, PhD

Dear Graduates,

I have a story to share with you, more of an anecdote really.  And I kid you not, I’ve been waiting 30 years to have an occasion to tell this story.  But I never would have imagined I might be speaking at such an extraordinary occasion.

Let me first make a few comments about this occasion.

This is an MSPP graduation unlike any other, for several reasons.  Starting with the obvious: this is a milestone event for MSPP.   This graduating class of PsyD students is joined by our first-ever recipients of the Master’s degree in Organizational Psychology, and by our first ever recipients of the Master’s degree in Counseling Psychology, and by our first ever recipients of the Certificate of Advanced Graduate Study in School Psychology.  For all of you, I expect the changing landscape at MSPP affected your experience in one way or another.  You may have felt the strains of blazing new territory, much as our pioneering PsyD students did 35 years ago, as policies were hammered into place around you, and plans were devised and revised; you may have felt anxiety over program approval or eligibility for professional credentials.  You may have found it increasingly difficult to find a quiet place to study, or a parking space within sight of the front door.  You may have felt the sense of community wear a bit thin if you arrived late for lunch on Community Day.  You may have been a hit-and-run victim of those wheels of progress, as you encountered glitches in SSIG or Wimba or the searchable field placement online database or any of those new technologies that, now that you’re graduating, will work like a charm. 

Then again, you may have been one of those pioneering souls who discovered that those new faces in our hallways brought with them exciting new learning opportunities, on topics like eating disorders (courtesy of Ali Cherkowski), and child and adolescent psychodiagnostics (courtesy of Bruce Ecker), and substance abuse (courtesy of Gary Rose).  You may have taken advantage of new training opportunities in bilingual assessment through the Brenner Center, or cross-cultural immersion experience through the Latino Mental Health Program, or parent education through the Freedman Center for Child and Family Development.  You were part of a transforming environment; you were there as a school of psychology metamorphosed into a college of psychology.

But the most important reason this is an MSPP graduation unlike any other is because it’s your graduation.  This is the only day that you will reach this particular milestone, just as you’ve only known MSPP at this particular period of time. 

They say a river is never the same twice.  To the observer, it’s the same river, but the water you see only flows by each mile marker once.   And so it is with graduate school: you know it as it was when you were passing through; you experience it as a constant.  But in reality, it changes with every student that passes through it.  Not only has MSPP changed in character with the addition of new programs and with the evolution of the PsyD program, it has been changed by the character of you students who have come through those programs.  And that process continues.  You may think you’re done with us, but our futures are intertwined.  A professional school is known as much by its graduates, as by its faculty.  You want people to regard that diploma of yours in high esteem.  But that will be determined as much by how you-all do from this point on, as by how we carry on at MSPP.  The reputation of the school is, to a large degree, in your capable hands.

Which brings me back to that story—a story that has a certain urban legend quality to it, which is to say, I don’t know the exact who or when or where, but the story goes like this:  The dean of a medical school is speaking to the graduating class at an occasion much like this one, and offers this sobering message:

“You who are about to graduate today, who have studied so long and hard at this institution for so many years, I have bad news for you.  Half of everything we’ve taught you is wrong.  And what’s worse: we don’t know which half.”

These are words that would ring true at graduations across the country in most fields of study, and certainly, for the field of psychology.  We are told that the half-life of scientific knowledge nowadays is about 7 years, which is to say, 7 years from now, half of the research-generated information you learned at MSPP will be out of date, and there will be half-again that amount of new information to take its place.  That’s a sobering message, that we’re never in a position to coast if we’re committed to doing our best work.

So, I wait 30 years to tell this story and… it’s wasted.  Why do I say that?  Because this sobering message doesn’t hold true for MSPP.

Now don’t get me wrong.  You did study that technical stuff, that scientific-based research.  But the most important thing you learned, what MSPP emphasizes like no place else, is guaranteed not to be in that half that proves to be wrong over time. 

I’m referring to something you’ve been hearing from the first day you walked into that humble building in West Roxbury. It’s what Alan Beck was talking about at the Open House or Interview Day you may have attended, when he explained that our curriculum is deeply concerned with your development as a person, and that you, with the personal characteristics you bring to your clinical work, you are the agent of change.

It’s what Ken Hopkins was talking about at Fundamentals Week when he referred to “development of the professional self,” and the importance of presenting yourself to the people you serve in a manner that inspires their trust and confidence.

It’s part of the mission statement adopted by our Board of Trustees, with that reference to “close attention to professional development.”  And it couldn’t be more clear from our stated core values of Experiential Education, Social Responsibility and Personal Growth. 

Most important, it’s not just talk.   Experiential education is the bedrock principle behind our approach to training practitioners.   Experiential education not only pervades our classrooms, it lives and breathes with Primary Project, and the Lucero Center, and the Red Baton Initiative, and student participation in school governance; and those field placements of yours that began on Day 1. 

Experiential education is a long and arduous path—much longer than the course of study you’ve just completed.  We hope we’ve equipped you with an internal compass to stay the course, because you haven’t arrived yet.  Any good mental health professional will tell you that developing as a professional is something you’re always working toward.  Anyone in this business who says they’ve arrived, that they have fully developed their professional self, is unclear on the concept.  Or, to put it in Rogerian terms, anyone who lays claim to being self-actualized, quite obviously, is not. 

Becoming a practitioner takes… a lot of practice.  I’m reminded of something I heard as a graduate student from Paul Meehl, the legendary University of Minnesota psychologist, champion of dustbowl empiricism, co-author of the MMPI, the same Paul Meehl who wrote a well-known article entitled “Why I Do Not Attend Case Conferences.”  What he said, to my surprise, is that it’s not all that long a reach to conduct groundbreaking research in the field of psychology, you can learn all there is to know about most topics in the space of a year or two, and then be in a position to expand the frontiers, to move the science along the next few steps.  But, it takes many long years to become a chess grandmaster, a concert pianist, an all-star shortstop.  His point was, to become a truly accomplished practitioner in any field, takes a phenomenal amount of practice.

This is the theme of Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book, Outliers, in which he debunks the notion that the most successful people get where they are because they have exceptional ability.  Gladwell’s point is that many people have the potential, but the ones who rise to the top do so by investing vast amounts of time in an activity—by learning and improving through long experience.

There’s a study I like to refer to, conducted by a colleague of Carl Rogers in the days when psychoanalysis and behaviorism and humanism were slugging it out over what’s the best way to do therapy.  This researcher decided to analyze therapy sessions to compare what expert therapists from different theoretical camps actually do in therapy.  And he made a marvelous discovery.  While there were differences in the tactics they used, what was more striking were the similarities in their actual behavior.  They all recognized the importance of forming a relationship, of listening, of encouraging the best aspects of the client, and of treating the client with equanimity and respect.  These are key components of that half that’s always true, those essential skills at the core of professional behavior. 

Now, it may seem to our guests that these are skills that any sensitive, caring person can master by reading a good self-help book, or attending a weekend workshop on “How to win friends and influence people.”  How complicated could it be to get along with other people, to form relationships, to listen and sometimes talk, to treat people with respect.  And I suppose it would be pretty simple…if everyone behaved the same way, and had similar life experiences.  But you’re going to be dealing with diversity to the max, and that makes for a long, steep learning curve.

You’ll be dealing with people who speak Spanish, with people who have physical and mental disabilities, with people grew up in poverty in the inner city or in rural America. You’ll deal with people who feel chronically deprived, or at loose ends, or resentful or entitled.  You may even be dealing with child molesters, or Yankee fans.  But no matter how much you know about a given subject, no two depressed patients, no two children with learning disabilities, no two dysfunctional organizations are exactly alike.  One could argue that this is ultimately what we mean by diversity: that we need to understand the multiple externally-shaped facets of each individual’s identity.  So when you sit down to talk with that Dominican war veteran with ADHD, you’ve never read a book about it, but you’ll have a clue about what to do…and you’ll know even better afterwards.

While MSPP is changing in character, we hold fast to the notion that it will never change with respect to that bedrock philosophy of learning through reflective experience.  We’re counting on you to be that non-change.  We’re counting on you to stay the course of continuing to evolve as professionals.  And, we’re counting on you to bring those personal qualities that we care so deeply about at MSPP to your clients, to your colleagues and to your loved ones.  I thank you in advance for the good work you will do.

Updated 6/8/09