MY NAME IS IMPORTANT

Some years ago, an experiment was conducted in a mental hospital (in California, I think). All the patients were assigned to various small therapy groups, which met regularly for a number of weeks.  Leadership of these groups was divided among ALL the staff: psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, chaplains, nurses, secretaries, cooks, janitors and so forth. 

Each patient was carefully evaluated before and after the program. 

Most of the patients benefited from these groups. Surprisingly, the groups led by low-status leaders (janitors, cooks, etc.) benefitted more than those led by high-status leaders (psychiatrists and psychologists).

Why???

Each session had been tape recorded. When the tapes were studied, the main difference seemed to be that the low-status leaders spoke the patients’ names more often than the high-status leaders.

 This brought to mind an incident told to me when I was chaplain in a mental hospital. A patient told of a dream in which her abusive father shot her with a pistol. She turned into a dog and ran down to the creek to where her therapist was sitting on a rock. When she jumped into her lap, the therapist called her by her name. At that, she changed back into a person.