Word: scarfs
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...daughters there.) I did a program on mental health in a New Haven asylum where they were using a milieu therapy, which was totally new at the time. I thought it was a terrific program but the director didn't like it and it was never used." So Scarf received the asylum director's permission to write an article--even though she had written only one article before, for Yale Magazine--and subsequently spent three months in the asylum gathering information for her article, which as yet had no publisher...
...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...