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Articles by Paul David Roberts
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Music - A Realm Beyond Sickness
Creative Expression Through Music
Bringing Joy to Learning Through Music
                            Ethel the Pioneer

Original Articles About Morrie Schwartz :
Morrie Music Therapy and Me
Morrie Hits the Big Time
The Compassionate Male        

Music - A Realm Beyond Sickness
By Paul David Roberts © 2007

“Who is there that – in logical words – can express the effect music has on us,” asked Thomas Carlyle, a 19th century Scottish writer.

Understanding how music is helping more and more people overcome emotional, physical, and cognitive difficulties - the subject of a recent wave of news articles and television specials - is bringing us closer to answering the question Carlyle posed over a hundred years ago.

CBS Sunday Morning - “If music therapy only makes treatment less painful and sickness more bearable, it would seem to be enough. But music therapy does more: it sometimes can save lives.”
BBC News - “There is emerging evidence that [music] can bring about physical changes to the body that can improve our health.”
Forbes.com - “Today, music therapy's applications are almost as broad as the number of conditions that people suffer from.”
Star Bulletin - “It addresses physical, emotional, cognitive and social needs of individuals.”

In 1967, I was hired as a music therapist by the renowned McLean Hospital of Massachusetts. My task was to discover ways in which adolescent psychiatric patients could utilize music in order to promote their emotional and psychological healing.

For Ronnie, music was a life raft to sanity. “I’m not sick when I play music,” Ronnie said. “It’s a realm that’s beyond sickness. It’s separate from sickness so that it’s marvelous for me. It’s magic almost. I have said that I’m going to kill myself in the morning and then in the afternoon I’m singing my heart out. It’s brought me - time and time again - out of depression.”

Morrie Schwartz - a sociology professor from Brandeis University, who later became immortalized as the subject of Tuesday’s With Morrie - was my mentor during the time I worked at McLean. “Music can be a bridge between this kind of disconnected person and those who have access to both the ordinary and nonverbal modes of communication,” Morrie observed.

Through the language of music, patients can access a path to self-expression, self-discovery, and self-recovery. In this way music can act as a catalyst for reversing emotional and psychological problems and lead a person from disturbance to balance.

“I feel creative when I’m doing music,” Ronnie said. “Right now in my life I don’t feel very creative or spontaneous. I’m depressed and as a result of it, I don’t feel the spontaneity that you do when you’re not. But in music, it’s almost as if I’m normal.
Music is a great release for me,” she said. “For me, it’s the easiest kind of communication there is. It’s very beneficial for me because I have an outlet for my emotional buildup, which I am having trouble expressing in other forms. When I please myself musically, then I please myself all-around.”

There is a mysterious quality about music that cuts through our rationality to our gut-responses. Ronnie’s music therapy sessions gave her a chance to concentrate on an involvement that was vitally important to her and which made her feel good about herself.

“One of the most important things about this involvement,” according to Morrie, “is the fact that these patients are creating something. So many of the patients in the hospital feel empty and useless - as though they have nothing to contribute... when a patient is confronted with the reality that he’s created a sound that other people are enjoying…it becomes harder to continue those negative attitudes.”

People are innately responsiveness to music. Used as therapy, it opens up receptivity to positive change.

“If I’m playing the guitar because I have a particular emotion, playing this type of music sort of vents a lot of feeling,” said a member of one of my musical ensembles at McLean. “It sort of brings me out of the bad thing and turns it into something tangible that I can work with, something very solid: hearing it - just having it there instead of running around in my head. To have it go through my fingers into the amplifier and out into my ears. Dreaming into the fingers and letting things come out at the spirit of the moment.”

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Creative Expression Through Music
By Paul David Roberts © 2007

A recipe for a meaningful and fulfilling life should include a feeling of connection with:

Emotional isolation from oneself and others, and estrangement from the natural environment are artifacts of living in contemporary urban-industrial society. Missing in many people’s lives, are opportunities for establishing meaningful relationships and situations that encourage inner exploration and growth, leaving them feeling out of touch with themselves - strangers in their own world. 

Using music for creative self-expression can be a powerful tool for overcoming a sense of alienation and developing a more connected feeling.

As more and more information comes out about the health and educational benefits of music, people are learning that music can be an important key in unlocking their potential for well-being and personal growth. As someone whose life work has been in music therapy and music education, it is encouraging for me to see this information, about the healing and transformative effects of music, becoming so widely recognized.

I think it’s very important to keep a lively discussion going about ways music can be used to help people. Even with the current enthusiasm about the widespread benefits of music in the healing arts, I believe we’re only just scratching the surface in terms of the ways it is currently utilized.

My career in music has focused on - what my mentor, Morrie Schwartz, put in terms of - “the significance of music as a real life experience.” This has involved me in two main areas: exploring ways psychiatric patients can be directly involved in a musical experience, and bringing participatory music assembly programs to schools. In reference to my work with psychiatric patients, Morrie said, “For them it may be more important than psychotherapy.” Encouraging me to explore the subject of using music to benefit people, he said, “The question is, how much importance and relevance and real personal change can evolve from this type of experience?”

Here are some questions I’d like to ask YOU:

 

One last thought: Listening to music is one way to experience it. Singing, playing instruments and dancing to music involves a much more direct participation in the experience.

We’ll return to this topic in other articles. Please share your thoughts with me about this and I’ll share mine.
Thanks for tuning in.

 

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Bringing Joy to Learning With Music
By Paul David Roberts © 2007

Music is an ideal modality for stimulating the imagination and promoting the love of learning.

My own dream began with music. As a toddler playing with my blocks, I remember the tingling sensation going up my spine while listening to my father play the mandolin. No doubt this fueled my drive to pursue a career in music - a career in which I have explored my fascination with music as a mental health professional, performer, educator and director of an arts organization.

I believe that music is a language, innate to humans. For some, the development of this language is encouraged. For others, it goes neglected or is smothered.

If we knew the secret behind the universality of music - the way it speaks to all of us - perhaps we could understand why it is an important key to unlocking dynamic potentials in people, and why it holds so much promise in the education of children. What is it about music, a nonverbal form of communication and self-expression, which allows it to be so transformative?

A simple answer is that playing and listening to music is fun. It feels good, so it greatly improves the atmosphere for enjoying life and relating to others. In this way, music is a natural mood-enhancer. I have always noticed how music uplifts a social gathering. The difference between how people relate to each other before and after music is played is palpable.

The idea that music has benefits for children that extend to many areas of learning is an idea of very long standing. “Music,” according to the brilliant Greek philosopher, Plato, “is a more potent instrument than any other for education.”

Over two thousand years ago, Plato knew what our current brain science and education researchers are trying to tell us: music contributes significantly to childhood development by improving intellectual and motor skills and social abilities. Nowadays, it doesn’t take a Plato to know it: the word is out about all kinds of great ways music contributes to education and childhood development. “It’s what gives the kids their brain power,” said a lady with whom I was having a casual conversation in an RV park.

According to neuroscientists, music strengthens brain circuits used for learning. Perhaps this has something to do with the fact that music is fun. When children are having fun, they’re more receptive to all kinds of learning; and when they’re having fun, the reward is in the doing. That’s what educational psychologists refer to as intrinsic motivation - engaging in an activity for its own sake. Intrinsic motivation is an important factor in high levels of educational achievement and enjoyment.

Here are some of areas of childhood development shown by scientific and educational research to benefit substantially by the use of music:

* Sustained attention and focus
* Reading skills
* Language development
* Writing skills
* Abilities in mathematics
* Listening and memorization skills
* Motor and rhythmic development
* Social and group skills
* Developing an aesthetic sense
* Physical and emotional health
* Self-esteem
* Self-expression
* Creative pleasure
* Inspiration
* Lower dropout rates
* Lessening violence

A renowned Japanese master mathematics teacher, whose nearly two million students have demonstrated incredible math ability beyond their years, was asked the following question. "What would you say is the most effective way of heightening children's mental ability at the earliest possible stages?" He answered, "The finest start for infants is to sing songs. This helps to elevate their powers of understanding, and they register astounding speed in learning math and languages."

Children are naturally responsive to music. Music is fun for kids and brings joy to their lives. It brightens up their day and makes learning fun. Let’s encourage children to grow to their highest capacities by bringing joy to learning with music!  

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Morrie, Music Therapy and Me
By Paul David Roberts © 2007

Music therapy is a field whose time has come. A broad range of health practitioners and researchers are trumpeting its successes, and although we might not yet fully understood the dynamics behind how music therapy works, its many positive and dramatic effects are gaining widespread recognition.  

I began working as a music therapist at McLean Hospital in 1967, using music as an adjunct to the psychiatric treatment of adolescents. Struck by the improvements that music was bringing about in a number of patients and the positive effect it was having on the social atmosphere of the institution, I began studying the process as it was unfolding.

I developed a friendship with a sociology professor at Brandeis University who became my mentor during the years I worked at McLean. That professor’s name was Morrie Schwartz. In the early 1950s, Morrie had done important research on the treatment of patients in mental hospitals and co-authored a book, entitled The Mental Hospital, which was considered an authoritative text for many years.

As many people know, Morrie had a wonderful way of imbuing words with deep meaning. A highly empathetic and compassionate person, Morrie’s words touched millions of lives when he appeared on “Night Line,” Ted Koppel’s popular television program. Mitch Albom celebrated him in the best-selling book, Tuesday’s With Morrie, which was later turned into a movie starring Jack Lemmon, and adapted for the theater. 

Morrie was completely in tune with what I was doing at McLean and I benefited enormously from the warm, supportive relationship I had with him during the years I worked there. During our regular consultations, he helped me conceptualize some of the social psychological dynamics surrounding the use of music therapy with psychiatric patients. I continue learning from his insights to this day.

One of Morrie’s teaching techniques was to mirror back to me, in his own words, what I was describing to him. I taped some of his words at that time and, today, nearly forty years later they still offer a useful perspective on what has become a hot topic.
Morrie’s words help us understand something about the possibilities that music affords, not just in the manner in which I was using it, but also in ways limited only by our imaginations. In my safekeeping for all these years, I’m glad that Morrie’s words now take their rightful place in the current discussion of music therapy:

The years of consultations I had with Morrie helped me lay the groundwork for a multimedia presentation I did at McLean on the subject of music therapy, in 1969. At the end of the presentation Morrie made the following remarks:
Morrie: “One of the things I kept wondering as Paul would describe to me his experiences with the patient bands was ‘how come a bunch of presumably disturbed people (who have a great deal of difficulty organizing themselves, interacting with other people, integrating their own performances with other people’s performances) somehow within this context, under these circumstances, are quite able to do something remarkable?’ That is, produce a collective experience, which many so-called normal people are incapable of producing. And develop a community."

“Well, I heard a lot of what was going on through Paul’s words and through his eyes, but I really didn’t see what was going on, until just a few weeks ago, when they had a dance. Then all this came alive and was real for me. There was a tremendous sense of community both within the band and the audience.”

“I think a number of things happen which are very important here. They may go contrary to your ordinary expectations or your ordinary orientations.”

“I would say that it is terribly important to separate these patients off from their patient role, as is done in music therapy. Not to have them embrace it so fully, as the hospital seems to demand, but to encourage the separation; to give them a completely different area which is their own and in which they can live and create and produce in a way that is uniquely responsive to and evocative from their own experiences as young people - their own inclinations to express themselves in their own individual ways.”

“If you get it all wrapped up in whether it’s therapy or not, I think it loses the significance of it being a real life experience. For them it may be more important than psychotherapy, even though we may hate to admit this. That, I think, is one major point you might want to focus your attention: how much importance and relevance and real personal change can evolve from this kind of experience. I’m sure it could be duplicated in many areas of the hospital: a separation from their role of mental patient. Here they are behaving in the role of musician and ordinary human being.”

“There is something very human there, that is not often captured in the hospital. One of the words that Paul used was ‘joyous.’ There are very few sustained joyous occasions for patients in the hospital, unfortunately. This music group, at least, manifested this to me when I heard them. This dance was a real joyous occasion.”

Information about the healing powers of music is popping up all over the place.

In its April 16, 2006 broadcast, CBS Sunday Morning aired a story titled, “Musical Healing” on the subject of music therapy with hospitalized children. The program highlighted how music therapy makes treatment less painful, illness more bearable, and may even save lives.

A recent Forbes.com article, “Whistle While You Recuperate,” states, “As a therapeutic tool, music has been shown to impart numerous emotional and physical benefits. Treatments can be designed to relieve stress, reduce pain, ease depression, alleviate nausea and improve sleep. Today, music therapy's applications are almost as broad as the number of conditions that people suffer from.”

A July article, appearing in US News and World Report, reports that music is so powerful it may cause cells to release substances such as endorphins, which suppress pain, and immunoglobulins, which help fight disease, according to Mark Jude Tramo, neurology professor at Harvard Medical School.

Hopefully, we’re getting closer to understanding how King Saul was cured through music and the secret behind the use of music for healing in ancient civilizations, as well as in the traditions of many tribal cultures. 

Morrie once said to me, “You know, every culture that has ever been looked at has had some form of music.” Perhaps this holds a key to something intrinsic about human beings. After all, mothers don’t need to be taught to sing lullabies to their babies to calm them down. They’ve done it, instinctively, since the beginning of time. So, while researchers and theorists attempt to unravel the mystery of how music contributes to the healing process, let’s continue exploring more and more possibilities of using it to benefit health.  

In 1980 Morrie wrote to me, “It’s not often that one can combine love of music and therapeutic activity, in such a way as to really make a difference. I’m glad you’re doing it and that I had some part in facilitating that activity.” Me too.

 

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The Compassionate Male
By Paul David Roberts © 2007

“Without love, we are birds with broken wings.” 

“The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.”                   Morrie Schwartz from Tuesday’s With Morrie

 

Morrie Schwartz catapulted to superstardom in the last chapter of his life. An unpretentious professor who spoke openly about his feelings and experiences, Morrie evoked an enormous compassionate response during his final stages of a degenerative disease.  

If you had known Morrie many years ago, it would have been impossible to imagine that such a gentle unassuming man would become a cultural icon. But the shining light from his kindness and wisdom was always apparent to those of us who knew him.
       
A counterbalance to the prevailing notion of the male role in our culture, Morrie epitomized the archetype of a compassionate male. Instead of the version of masculinity based on competition and domination, his was based on nurturance towards others. It’s heartening to see that his words still touch so many lives so deeply.

As Paul Solman put it in his introduction to Morrie’s book, Morrie: In His Own Words, Morrie’s message was “not only for the sick and those close to them, but for the healthy as well.”  

In the book, Morrie writes, “People refuse help because they feel their self-esteem depends on their being ‘independent.’ We fear that somehow or other we have been diminished because we need, want, and desire another person’s help. That’s because of our independent, individualistic culture. We have a sense that we should be like the mythical cowboy. Free, easy, able to do anything, able to take on and conquer anything and live in the world without the need for other people. The Lone Ranger type.”

“That’s an image a lot of men, especially, carry around. They don’t allow themselves to develop a sense of their interpersonal needs. I think it’s very unfortunate. For we need each other more than we know.”

“In fact, these needs are very great on an emotional, psychological level, as well as on a physical level. But we tend to avoid exposing these needs like the plague. From my point of view, it makes so much more sense to be clear about your needs and realize that you need others, just as they need you.”

Morrie was one of the world’s most eminent authorities on the treatment of mental patients. Long before I met him, he wrote a book, entitled The Mental Hospital, considered a classic text for many years.

Solman:
“Morrie began working on a ward in a nontraditional psychoanalytic mental hospital, watching the troubled and tormented, observing the staff and their relationships with the patients. Morrie was there to observe and talk with everyone – even those patients crouching alone in the corners. He related to them civilly, humbly. He opened his heart as best he could. Gradually, he got them to respond.”

Morrie was my mentor during the time I worked as a music therapist at McLean, a mental hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts. His enthusiastic support for my work and the way he reached out to me on a personal level was a huge source of encouragement.

After a mixed-media presentation about music therapy that I did at McLean in 1969, Morrie gave his perspective to the staff. I captured his remarks on tape:
“One of the things I kept wondering as Paul would describe to me his experiences with the patient bands was ‘how come a bunch of presumably disturbed people who have a great deal of difficulty organizing themselves, interacting with other people, integrating their own performances with other people’s performances - somehow within this context, under these circumstances, are quite able to do something remarkable - that is, produce a collective experience, which many so-called normal people are incapable of producing; and develop a community?"

“Well, I heard a lot of what was going on through Paul’s words and through his eyes, but I really didn’t see what was going on, until just a few weeks ago, when they had a dance. Then all this came alive and was real for me. There was a tremendous sense of community both within the band and the audience.”
“I would say that it is terribly important to separate these patients off from their patient role, as is done in music therapy; not to have them embrace it so fully as the hospital seems to demand but to encourage the separation - to give them a completely different area which is their own and in which they can live and create and produce in a way that is uniquely responsive to and evocative from their own experiences as young people; their own inclinations to express themselves in their own individual ways.”

Having the validation of this great teacher has had a powerful effect on my life. A gift of nurturance from a compassionate male.

Without courting fame, Morrie reached out to humanity and was embraced by millions who were deeply moved by his message of love. Hopefully, that message will echo down through the ages.

Peter Santilli of the Associated Press wrote, “Morrie Schwartz never had a problem with grown people crying, so he probably wouldn't have minded that… years after his death, his lessons…are still bringing people to tears.”

Again, from Paul Solman’s introduction to Morrie: In His Own Words:
“To Morrie, life was a process of opening oneself lovingly – to other people, to the world…to something larger than ourselves.”

What a wonderful world it could be if those words - “He opened his heart as best he could” - were an accolade to which more men aspired.

 

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Morrie Hits the Big Time
Compiled by Paul David Roberts - from NPR, The Boston Globe, Morrie: In His Own Words, Wikipedia and Tuesday’s With Morrie.

“The retired Brandeis University sociology professor dying of Lou Gehrig's disease decided to make the subject of death his final lesson, and his classroom keeps growing… years after his death.” ~ Richard Harris
In a Boston Globe articled entitled, “Remembering Morrie Schwartz,” Stephanie V. Siek writes, “Retired sociology professor Maurice Stein, it could be said, started the Morrie phenomenon. He had been invited to a party at the house of Globe editorial writer Alan V. Berger. ‘I was telling Alan about this crazy colleague who was dying, and he wanted to teach,’ Stein said. Berger then spoke to… Jack Thomas, who in March 1995 wrote an article headlined: ‘A Professor's Final Course.’ The article caught the eye of a producer [Richard Harris] for ABC's Nightline with Ted Koppel. That led to three interviews with Schwartz that attracted millions of viewers.”
In an interview on NPR, Harris said, “When I first called Morrie Schwartz to appear on Nightline after reading a profile of him in The Boston Globe, he had hardly heard of Ted Koppel or our nightly news broadcast. He had never been much of a television watcher. But as soon as I mentioned that Ted Koppel was also concerned that Americans didn't like to talk about death, he said, ‘If I can interview Ted, I'll let him interview me.’ And that's what happened. Ted and Morrie struck up a relationship. Mitch Albom happened to see Morrie on Nightline. He got reacquainted with his former sociology professor and wrote the book [Tuesday’s With Morrie] that was later made into a TV movie with Jack Lemmon as Morrie. All this because Morrie Schwartz was dying and he said he had some things to offer the world. Did he ever.”
“As a people, Americans don't deal with death very openly,” said Harris. “We speak in hushed tones or with gallows humor. It's not a topic families like to discuss until a loved one's time is near. In ways large and small, Morrie Schwartz changed all that.” 
Ted Koppel introduced the Nightline programs with these words: “Who is Morrie Schwartz and why, by the end of the night, are so many of you going to care about him?” Morrie spoke movingly about his impending death on three editions of Nightline in March, May and October of 1995.
“And people responded, powerfully,” wrote Paul Solman, in his introduction to the book, Morrie: In His Own Words. “Morrie struck a nerve. Hundreds of viewers, listeners, and readers wrote to him – for advice, for comfort, but most of all to thank him for giving a voice to issues they have been struggling with in silence.”
Gordon Fellman, a colleague of Morrie, said that after the Nightline series, he and three other friends would go over to Morrie’s house to help answer a deluge of mail. “The ones that really got to him are the ones that said, ‘My mother died recently; I wish I had known that I could talk to her about dying.’ Morrie was moved by the fact that even as he was dying, he was still fulfilling a need.”
Here’s Albom’s description of Morrie’s first meeting with Koppel (from Tuesday’s With Morrie):
~~~~~Begin excerpt~~~~~
In March of 1995, a limousine carrying Ted Koppel, the host of ABC-TV's Nightline pulled up to the snow-covered curb outside Morrie's house in West Newton, Massachusetts.
Morrie was in a wheelchair full-time now, getting used to helpers lifting him like a heavy sack from the chair to the bed and the bed to the chair. He had begun to cough while eating, and chewing was a chore. His legs were dead; he would never walk again.
Yet he refused to be depressed. Instead, Morrie had become a lightning rod of ideas. He jotted down his thoughts on yellow pads, envelopes, folders, scrap paper. He wrote bite-sized philosophies about living with death's shadow: “Accept what you are able to do and what you are not able to do”; “Accept the past as past, without denying it or discarding it”; “Learn to forgive yourself and to forgive others”; “Don't assume that it's too late to get involved.”
After a while, he had more than fifty of these “aphorisms,” which he shared with his friends. One friend, a fellow Brandeis professor named Maurie Stein, was so taken with the words that he sent them to a Boston Globe reporter, who came out and wrote a long feature story on Morrie. The headline read: A PROFESSOR'S FINAL COURSE: HIS OWN DEATH
The article caught the eye of a producer from the Nightline show, who brought it to Koppel in Washington, D.C.
“Take a look at this,” the producer said.
Next thing you knew, there were cameramen in Morrie's living room and Koppel's limousine was in front of the house.
Several of Morrie's friends and family members had gathered to meet Koppel, and when the famous man entered the house, they buzzed with excitement - all except Morrie, who wheeled himself forward, raised his eyebrows, and interrupted the clamor with his high, sing-song voice.
“Ted. I need to check you out before I agree to do this interview.”
There was an awkward moment of silence, then the two men were ushered into the study. The door was shut.
“Man,” one friend whispered outside the door, "I hope Ted goes easy on Morrie."
“I hope Morrie goes easy on Ted,” said the other.
Inside the office, Morrie motioned for Koppel to sit down. He crossed his hands in his lap and smiled.
“Tell me something close to your heart,” Morrie began.
“My heart?”
Koppel studied the old man. “All right,” he said cautiously, and he spoke about his children. They were close to his heart, weren't they?
“Good,” Morrie said. “Now tell me something about your faith.”
Koppel was uncomfortable. “I usually don't talk about such things with people I've only known a few minutes.”
“Ted, I'm dying,” Morrie said, peering over his glasses. “I don't have a lot of time here.”
Koppel laughed. All right. Faith. He quoted a passage from Marcus Aurelius, something he felt strongly about.
Morrie nodded.
“Now let me ask you something,” Koppel said. “Have you ever seen my program?”
Morrie shrugged. “Twice, I think.”
“Twice? That's all?”
“Don't feel bad. I've only seen ‘Oprah’ once.”
“Well, the two times you saw my show, what did you think?” 
Morrie paused. “To be honest?”
“Yes?”
“I thought you were a narcissist.”
Koppel burst into laughter.
“I'm too ugly to be a narcissist,” he said.
Soon the cameras were rolling in front of the living room fireplace, with Koppel in his crisp blue suit and Morrie in his shaggy gray sweater. He had refused fancy clothes or makeup for this interview. His philosophy was that death should not be embarrassing; he was not about to powder its nose.
Because Morrie sat in the wheelchair, the camera never caught his withered legs. And because he was still able to move his hands - Morrie always spoke with both hands waving - he showed great passion when explaining how you face the end of life.
“Ted,” he said, “when all this started, I asked myself, ‘Am I going to withdraw from the world, like most people do, or am I going to live?’ I decided I'm going to live - or at least try to live - the way I want, with dignity, with courage, with humor, with composure.
“There are some mornings when I cry and cry and mourn for myself. Some mornings, I'm so angry and bitter. But it doesn't last too long. Then I get up and say, “I want to live . . .”
“So far, I've been able to do it. Will I be able to continue? I don't know. But I'm betting on myself that 1 will.”
Koppel seemed extremely taken with Morrie. He asked about the humility that death induced.
“Well, Fred,” Morrie said accidentally, then he quickly corrected himself. “I mean Ted . . .”
“Now that's inducing humility,” Koppel said, laughing.
~~~~~~~End excerpt~~~~~~~~~

From Wikipedia:
On November 22, 2005, Koppel stepped down from Nightline after 25 years with the program and left ABC after 42 years with the network. His final Nightline broadcast did not feature clips highlighting memorable interviews and famous moments from his tenure as host, as is typical when an anchor retires. Instead, the show recalled Koppel's 1995 interviews with retired Brandeis University sociology professor Morrie Schwartz, who was dying of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, more commonly known as Lou Gehrig's Disease). For this broadcast, Koppel interviewed sports journalist Mitch Albom, who had been a student of Schwartz. Albom talked about how the Nightline interviews led to him contacting Schwartz personally, visiting him weekly and eventually publishing the book Tuesdays with Morrie, chronicling lessons about life learned from Schwartz.

 

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Ethel the Pioneer
By Paul David Roberts © 2007
Half a century ago, my mother, Ethel, touched off a self-discovery movement in my family when she became intrigued with the concept of a mind/body connection. “I was so fascinated, it just struck such a chord in me, the idea that your mind, your emotions, your experiences could have an effect on your internal organs and your general health,” she said.
The writings of Carl Rogers and Erik Erickson had a profound effect on her. “The whole idea of exploring what has happened to you, your reactions to what happens to you and how it connects with everything in your life was very interesting to me and became an important part of my thinking.”
In the mid-‘50’s, Ethel, went into psychoanalysis. “One morning I couldn’t get out of bed. I thought that I could claim to have the flu and I had to stay in bed, but I knew that I didn’t have the flu,” she said.
“I immediately felt that it was important for me to do this kind of exploration and discovery. And for me, it worked.”
For many people, seeking psychological help has a stigma attached to it. I inherited quite a different orientation, because my mother realized that self-understanding is an important road to travel in the quest for a meaningful life.

 

 

 

 

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