What's Wrong with the Poor?: Psychiatry, Race, and the War on Poverty

Introduction

1 Introduction At a White House afternoon tea in February 1965, Lady Bird Johnson announced the establishment of Project Head Start, an early childhood educational program that would serve children—many of them African American—from low-income homes. Designed and administered by the Office of Economic Opportunity, this new program drew much media attention . Moved by the educational opportunities these children would be affordedbutdistressedattheirmeagerbackgrounds,theFirstLadydescribed how some of these children had never seen a flower, had never sat in a chair; some did not even know their own names.1 Today, these clearly erroneous perceptions of children from low-income and minority backgrounds seem misguided, even comical. Why would a well-intentioned public figure such as the First Lady display such a negative perception of children from low-income homes? What did she think their homes were like—isolated dungeons? As a matter of fact, she did, and she expectedmanyofherlistenerstothinkthesameway.Imagesofextremeisolation shaped the prevailing perception of the family life in low-income homes, and throughout the 1960s, politicians and child mental health experts alike viewed the lives of low-income children and their parents through a focus on what was missing. Relying on experimental research and infant-observation studies, liberal policymakers and mental health experts alike were confident in their knowledge that the poor had very little indeed. Much of the expert knowledge that provided the scientific basis of this view of low-income homes was derived from experiments in sensory deprivation . These experiments, first carried out in the laboratory of eminent psychologist Donald O. Hebb at McGill University in Montreal, were designed to examine the effects of reduced external stimulation on behavior, cognitive ability, and psychological makeup. Differing in protocol and methods, these experiments shared the goal of reducing external stimuli, an objective that 2 Introduction definedthemasbelonging to anemerging fieldofscientificinquiry. Donning goggles, earmuffs, and mittens, subjects spent hours and even days in dark, empty rooms. Before and after the experiment, they completed memory and learning tests and psychological evaluations. Hebb had long been interested in the effects of the environment on the brain. His 1936 doctoral dissertation, advised by psychologist Karl Lashley, examined the learning abilities of rats raised in complete darkness. Upon graduation, Hebb took on different junior research posts that led him away from his original research interests. He cobbled together a position as a research assistant at Harvard and later worked with pioneering neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield at the Montreal Neurological Institute. Hebb evaluated Penfield’s postoperative patients to define the cognitive and psychological effects of brain surgery. In 1942, Hebb accepted a research position at the Yerkes Primate Lab in Florida, where he carried out psychological and cognitive assessments of primates.2 There he worked alongside experimental psychologistAustinRiesen,whoexaminedthedevelopmentofchimpanzees raised in darkness, and became a leading expert on deprivation experiments in animals.3 In 1947, Hebb was appointed professor of psychology at McGill University, and he remained there for most of his career. His interest in the interaction between environment and neurological development and his experience in assessing cognitive and psychological abilities culminated in his widely influential 1949 monograph, The Organization of Behavior.4 Proposing an innovative theory of behavior, Hebb’s work was unique in its focus on how the environment and past experiences shaped neural connections. In a continuation of this study, as professor of psychology at McGill, Hebb embarked on a series of experiments examining animals raised in enriched orrestricted environments. In theearly1950s,Hebbstartedexaminingtheeffectsofrestrictedenvironmentsonadulthumanvolunteers ,andthisresearch became caught up in government intelligence concerns.5 In June 1951, Hebb, as chair of the Human Relations and Research Committee oftheCanadianDefenceResearchBoards,metwithseniorresearcher Cyril Haskins of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency; Ormond Solandt, chair of the Canadian Defence Research Board; and other leading Canadian scientists. At this meeting, Hebb suggested that by sensory deprivation, the “individual could be led into a situation whereby ideas, etc. might be implanted .”6 Hebb later publicly recalled that the work at McGill University began “with the problem of brainwashing.” Although “we were not permitted to say so in the first publishing,” he explained, the “chief impetus” for 3 Introduction this research “was the dismay at the kind of ‘confessions’ being produced at the Russian Communist trials.”7 Scientists and intelligence officials saw sensory deprivation research as having the potential to explain extreme cases of changes in attitude, in particular, false confessions and “brainwashing.” From 1951 to 1954, Hebb received funding from the Canadian Defence Research Board for his...