Word: scarfe
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Scarf spent three months working on the article, a time, she says now, when she felt totally lost. "At first I didn't understand what was happening, and then I started to realize I was on the track of something interesting and totally new," but she didn't know where to go with it. So she called the New York Times "and talked to a woman about my article," she says, leaning forward eagerly. But despite Scarf's own enthusiasm, the initial reception from the Times was "frosty." She submitted the article anyway and a week later the same woman...
Although her work has centered on the behavioral sciences, Scarf, having majored in French literature at Temple and Stanford as an undergraudate, had no previous experience in psychology. Her more recent article are on such topics as: "Goodall and Chimpanzees at Yale," "Normality is a Square Circle or a Four-Sided Triangle," and "He and She: Sex Hormones and Behavior." Like her experience with the New Haven mental health program, when Scarf finds a subject which interests her, she'll immerse herself in it totally--what she calls a sort of "autodidactic" approach...
...Since Scarf's work is for general audiences and not scientific publications, she says she translates her interviews with experts, and the technical, more scientific information she collects, into lay language. "Writing is a part of learning what you've learned about," Scarf says. It's the actual writing, Scarf maintains, that clarifies the reasearch she has done. When writing for the more traditional women's magazines, Scarf says the issues not only have to be clarified, but over-simplified as well, because the editors, Scarf feels, "do not give enough credit to their readers. The New York Times feels...
...Scarf's most recent research--on depression in women--grew out of her curiosity over why people--both men and women--commit suicide. A large percentage of women who attempt suicide are between 18 and 30, but most of them do not succeed. A large proportion of men who attempt suicide are in their early 50's and late 60's, and they do succeed. "Women take pills and ingest things. Men use guns and more violent means," Scarf says. "I'm interested in the active versus the passive aspects." She wrote articles on all these aspects of suicide...
...research on depression in women has led Scarf to believe that the women's liberation movement has created entirely new problems for women to deal with. When observing women at a psychiatric hospital this summer, Scarf found many of them to be frustrated by the conflict between traditional societal positioning which requires "nice, soft-spoken women" and the demands of new consciousness. One encounter this summer that Scarf said jolted her was with a bright woman, who from appearances, should have been very contented. The woman confided to Scarf that "If I kill myself, I won't have to find...