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VOLUME 3, ISSUE 2 PSYCHNEWS INTERNATIONAL July 1998
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SECTION F: PEOPLE ON THE NET
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Note: Robert Zenhausern, Ph.D., now Professor of
Psychology Emeritus, will undoubtedly use this new
opportunity to create more cybercommunities at an
exponential rate. After all, during the past eight
years, he created 740 mail lists, serving 203,000
subscribers, allowing almost one million messages
per day to be processed through St. John's University
-- not to mention all the web sites and trouble-shooting
listowners! And that was in his spare time! Dr. Z, as
he is known by his colleagues, has transformed the
world of cyberspace for those in psychology and related
professions. Psychnews International salutes you
Dr. Z for your vision, outstanding leadership, and
exemplary public service.
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HAPPY TRAILS . . . UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN!
Marlene M. Maheu, PhD
Bob Zenhausern came my way through one of those early
Internet psychology lists, back when I was trying to figure
out what dynamics were present online, and who the other
psychologists were out there.... There must have been a
hundred of us milling about back then, bumping into one
another on one list and then another. After some back-and-forth
backline emailing, in 1994, he accepted my invitation to serve
on a Task Force for Div. 46 of the APA - Media Psychology.
We discussed online ethics, and were trying to let the APA
know we needed their direction.
After brainstorming an reviewing documents for the APA, Bob
and I became sort of online buddies. He began revealing his
plan for Saint John's University, making it a center for
mental health online. He then detailed the JUPR - Journal of
Universal Peer Review, and asked me to be editor for its Ethics
Journal.
Enthusiasm for innovation ruled, and he offered to support
my new mailing lists on his listserv at SJU, and before we
knew it, we had started SHPM, PsyCa, PsyUSA which I was
starting with John Roraback, PsyBus, NetPsy, and the forums
just increased in number as the years rolled by.
One of my most memorable exchanges with him was when he gave
me a tour of his MUD - where we played with text-based
exchanges in a way that made me see his vision of how
group work could be conducted in email. Many discussions of
ethics ensued, drawing on the richness of his knowledge and
the spark of his creativity.
Bob's vision of psychology in the future of the Internet
was always crystal-clear; his even-temperedness remarkable,
and his generosity unsurpassed online - anywhere. He seemed
to rise to the occasion when controversy broke out, and
always managed to act to best serve the needs of St. Johns
and the community as a whole. I wish him more than the best
- which is what he always gave.
Although we have never met face-to-face, I feel much gratitude
for Bob's gifts, and know we would be even better friends
offline. It has been an honor to work with such a great visionary!
Best of luck to you, Bob!
Marlene M. Maheu
Marlene Maheu, PhD
Self-Help & Psychology Magazine
http://cybertowers.com/selfhelp>http://cybertowers.com/selfhelp
PSY#11921, Email: drm@telehealth.net
http://cybertowers.com/selfhelp/about/staff/drm.html
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DR. Z's TECHNOLOGY FOR ALL SEASONS
Steven L Dubovsky, MD
He may not be aware of it, but Dr. Bob Zenhausern has had a
profound impact on the development of an international setting
in which mental health care has flourished. InterPsych (IP),
a confederation of forums in which professionals and patients
discuss theoretical and clinical issues ranging from psychoanalysis
to post-traumatic stress disorder to psychopharmacology, would
not exist today without Dr. Z's gracious and patient assistance.
IP was born in the United Kingdom and its forums relocated to
Netcom, but time came that Netcom became inadequate and IP
rapidly outgrew its origins and needed a home that could manage
its increasingly complex needs. With a growing sense of urgency
and then panic, we looked frantically for help moving a large
and complex system.
Dr. Z came to our rescue. With amazing patience, he oversaw
the move of each forum to its new, and much more secure home.
St Johns is home to most of InterPsych's and many other forums,
and Dr. Z has always been available to all of these to solve
problems that range from the most mundane to the most esoteric.
He has been known to provide intelligent answers to the same
stupid question numerous times, and he is always available to
keep us moving forward.
At the forefront of the application of technology to the
dissemination of knowledge, Dr. Z has been a unique resource to the
international mental health community. thanks to Dr Z, IP and the
other forums that make their homes at SJU have flourished,
collaborations have grown, research has been developed, and patient
care has been improved. We all owe him a tremendous debt of
gratitude.
Steven Dubovsky, M.D.
Past President, InterPsych
Professor of Psychiatry and Medicine
University of Colorado School of Medicine
steven.dubovsky@uchsc.edu
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PREFACE TO THE MEMOIRS I WILL NEVER WRITE
Robert Zenhausern, PhD
drz@rdz.acor.org
Chief Information Officer
Enabling Support Foundation
I am a Professor of Psychology at St. John's University in New York
City where I have taught since 1963. On July 1, 1998 I will officially
retire and leave the academic cocoon for the world of the Not for
Profit. When I was offered the opportunity to write on my 20 years of
experiences in Cyberspace, it provided me the impetus to share some
reflections on the impact the Internet has had on our lives, how we
can use it more effectively, and try to predict its future course.
THE PAST
I received my doctorate in Experimental Psychology from Fordham
University in 1969 and spent my early academic years investigating the
esoteric parameters of the Ames Trapezoid Illusion. Unfortunately,
this did not attract the interest of Clinical and School Psychology
students and my research shifted to the Neuropsychology of mental
disorder and learning disability. A summary of the research on
Learning Disability is available at
(http://rdz.acor.org/drz/papers/unpaper.html). It traces a
neuropsychological theory of Reading Disability from initial
formulation, reliable verification, to the development and evaluation
of an approach to reading. Although the Direct Access approach to
reading was effective, motivating and inexpensive, I did not pursue
this line of research. I was attracted by an emerging giant, the
Internet.
I bought my first computer in 1979, the Epson QX-10, an 8 bit machine
with 256k Ram and no hard drive. The Epson used CPM, an operating
system that predated MS-DOS. (When the IBM 16 bit machines arrived in
1981, there was a choice of the CPM or the MS-DOS operating systems,
and in its infinite wisdom, IBM supported MS-DOS. And so are born
billionaires.) The Internet existed as a government project and was
not generally available during those early years, but online activity
was alive and flourishing. The Epson came equipped with a 300-baud
modem and phone numbers for Computer Bulletin Board Systems (BBS),
computers with a single incoming phone line that acted as a host for
the early users of on-line communication. The BBS served as a mail
drop, a forum, a library for software, and resources that reflected
the interests of the SysOP or System Operator. Some BBS were purely
social, some were repositories of software, and some were area
specific. My first experience with on-line Psychology was with Marc
Martin, a clinical psychologist in New York City, who ran a Psychology
BBS in the early 1980s. The BBS had local newsgroups and software
related to Psychology and provided a multi-user chat forum for
scientific discussion. I remember an online seminar given by Ivan
Goldberg before the first IBM computers hit the market in 1981.
During this same time, I discovered the Ailanthus Tree, a multi-user
BBS that was run at night on a Commercial Computer. The A-Tree was
pure Unix with a complex directory structure the users were constantly
expanding. It provided multi-user chat that was essentially the same
as IRC and the extensibility of the directory system was a precursor
of Text-based Virtual Reality (MOO, MUD, etc.) The A-Tree was followed
by commercial services such as The Source and Compuserve, which led to
AOL. Perhaps the most telling fact is that before there was an
Internet enough people wanted to be on line to make it commercially
profitable. This becomes more impressive as you look at the type of on
line connections. My first connections were at 300 baud, and 1200 was
financially out of reach. There was an hourly rate for connection and
some had to pay additional phone charges for non-local calls. This led
to the development of offline mailers that had essentially the same
features as Pine, Pegasus, and Eudora. Perhaps the most important
limitation, however, was the lack of communication with the world
outside a particular site.
I first learned of the Internet on Compuserve where it became possible
to send email and subscribe to Mailing Lists and the Big Bang of the
Information Universe was already milliseconds old. Computer usage grew
exponentially in Business and Education and the Home. Internet service
providers proliferated and simplified access. The same motivational
forces drove the few toward the BBS in 1980 drove the many in 1995.
The awesome emergence of the World Wide Web lured users with its
access to multimedia and GUI interface almost masking its much more
valuable hypertext and programming capacity.
The newsgroups were available even through the BBS, but they were not
a favorite online activity, but as soon as I subscribed to my first
Mailing List on Compuserve, I was addicted. When Bitnet and then the
Internet was installed at St.John's, I was already a heavy subscriber.
A turning point that was to play the major role in my career from then
until the present was the creation of my first List, Altlearn in 1990.
THE PRESENT
The Altlearn List (Alternative Approaches to Learning) combined my
growing interest in Learning Disability with my long time interest in
on line activities and marked my transition from consumer to producer
of Internet resources. During the next 8 years the number and scope of
Lists increased until today there are over 740 Lists hosted at St.
John's University, serving 203,000 subscribers and sending almost 1
million messages per day. The major portion of these lists dealt with
the Human Services including Education, Disability, Support, Wellness,
and especially Psychology with approximately 200 Lists dealing with
professional, support, and consumer issues. The large number and broad
range of topics on these lists has led to a concentration of
information and individuals.
The archives of the Lists are stored and an efficient search engine
provides access to individual posts indexed by date, author, or
string. The information contained on these Lists may not have been
subjected to the peer review system, but neither were they subjected
to the typical 2-year publication lag. They provide a preview of the
latest thinking in an area and an opportunity to become involved in
that thinking. The archives of many Lists are limited to subscribers
or Listowner, but many are publicly available at
http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/index.html
The interface to the information available from the Lists is not
particularly useful and presents an alphabetical ordering of
accessible Forums. The Human Services Resource Center
http://rdz.acor.org/hsrc provides a more accessible organization. Each
List has been provided its own web page, which not only provides
information about that list and access to the archives where
available, but includes links to related resources. This Mailing
List/Web Page integration provides a dynamic summary of the area that
reflects the Zeitgeist, and at the same time points to more
traditional resources. As part of an ongoing effort to provide easy
access to the available information, the individual pages have
organized into a ListWeb. It is possible to search on the basis of
List Name or specific topic areas. More sophisticated procedures are
currently under development.
A second organizing structure exists on HSRC in the form of Knowledge
Centers and Independent Affiliates. Knowledge Centers are coordinating
pages that provide links to a series of related List Pages. For
example, WebSight is a page with links to 20 lists that deal with
visual disability. An Independent Affiliate is an organization that
exists independently of the Mailing Lists, but is currently
collaborating with HSRC. Gestalt Therapy, PostTraumatic Stress
Disorder, International Society of Spiritual Psychiatry, and the Szasz
Page are examples of Independent Affiliates.
Storm King has created The Center for Distance Psychology and
Psychiatry that provides links to some innovative on-line Psychology
pages that are summarized below. The page can be found at Storm King
has created The Center for Distance Psychology and Psychiatry that
provides links to some innovative on line projects, including his own
page for Resources in the Study of On Line Communities. The page can
be found at http://rdz.acor.org/hsrc/kc/psy.html and, in addition to
Storm's pages, features the following.
GrassRoots
http://health.acor.org/grassroots is a virtual world created in the
Multi-user Object Oriented (MOO) programming language. GrassRoots
provides real-time communication in the same way as IRC, but provides
a way to create your own personal space through the use of Text-based
Virtual Reality. An individual is able to "build" his or her home,
office, playpen, etc. by just writing a text description. It is
possible to include functional seats and fireplaces and even teach a
virtual pet to do tricks. GrassRoots has been used for virtual Support
Groups and as a highly motivating way to teach literacy to learning
disabled students. From a psychological perspective, GrassRoots can be
viewed as rich source of projective material and initial steps have
been taken on the development of a projective test based on the
creations of Text-based Virtual Reality.
PsyUSA
is an organization dedicated to advancing psychological health, the
profession of psychology, and providing information to the Psychology
Community. John Rorabach has created this network whose resources
include individual Lists for each State which are devoted to
Psychological Issues in that State.
During the summer of 1997, Michael Benjamin and myself ran a Group
Therapy simulation, using a combination of private Mailing List and
GrassRoots Virtual World. A summary of that project is available at
http://rdz.acor.org/group
The Journal of Peer Review
is an experiment in an alternative format for Peer Review in
scientific articles. There are biases inherent in the existing system.
The theme of the journal is a clear bias and an article that is
inconsistent with that theme stands a small chance of acceptance,
separate from the scientific integrity of the study. New ideas by new
researchers have a more difficult time than the same ideas by someone
more well known. Reviewers are not responsible to defend their
criticism and blind review sometimes only means that the author is
blind as to who is the reviewer. The scientific accuracy of the
procedure is open to question as evidenced by the number of courses in
Research Methodology that have a course requirement to find 5
violations of Experimental Methodology in the current literature. The
Journal of Peer Review (JUPR) uses a combination of Mailing List and
Web Page to provide a wide review base for its submissions.
These are the step for JUPR publication and peer review
* An author submits an article for publication, along with the names
of two potential reviewers, at least one of whom would be
antagonistic. Other reviewers may be added or substituted.
* A copy of the article abstract, the URL for the full article and
the critical reviews, along with the instructions on subscribing
to the discussion list for this article, will be sent to the
subscribers of the JUPR List.
* The discussion list will start with the author's response to the
reviewers and the ensuing discussion. At some point, readers will
be invited to participate in the discussion.
These are possible objective and subjective criteria a promotions
board might consider in evaluating this article
* How many reviewers were involved
* How many people visited the web site and how many got copies of
the material
* How long was the discussion among the author and the reviewers
* How long was the general discussion and how many people became
involved
* What was the consensus on the outcome and were there minority
opinions.
During the spring 1998 semester I taught my last Graduate course,
Behavioral Neuropsychology and I used a series of on line projects as
course requirements.
* A Mailing List for the Class was created and after each class the
students posted a summary of what they learned from that class.
* Each student selected a brain injury or dysfunction and searched
for information and individual patients, family, and
professionals.
* The students then created Mailing Lists for their selected
disorders with the goal of creating a new and dynamic knowledge
base. This underlines the use of a List to concentrate
information.
* In conjunction with the List, the students created a Web Page
coordinating on line resources in that area.
* Each student submitted a case history of an individual who
suffered from the particular disorder based on email
communication.
I cannot leave this section of the Memoirs without mentioning
Interpsych, the first and largest on line group devoted to Psychology.
Ian Pitchford conceived Interpsych in 1993 and was a pioneer in
Psychology on line. There are more than 45 Lists associated with this
organization with more than half of them located at Maelstrom. One can
visit the Interpsych web page at
http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html
On July 1, 1998 I will no longer be affiliated with St. John's
University and I will assume the responsibilities of the Chief
Information Officer of the Enabling Support Foundation.
THE FUTURE
Robert Ambrose incorporated the Enabling Support Foundation in 1994
after several years of operation. ESF was dedicated to enhancing the
life style, educational opportunities and employability of persons
with disabilities through the use of on line activities. Robert
accepted used computers, refurbished them, and gave them and training
sessions to the disabled. Through St. John's University, I provided
them with Internet access via the rdz.stjohns.edu server, which will
be retired on July 1.
A new server is emerging at http://rdz.acor.org/esf and is under
constant development. (When you visit, bring your hard hat.) . As the
site develops it will encompass some exciting projects.
ListWeb Information Center
will be an expanded and upgraded ListWeb that originated at the Human
Services Resource Center. This expansion will include more
standardization, better search and retrieval, and a List base that is
not limited to the Lists at St. John's. The number of Mailing Lists is
growing and the potential of such an Information Center is unlimited.
Education Projects
will explore the use of on line resources in satisfying existing
educational goals and developing new goals for the 21st Century. ESF
has a pending grant proposal that describes a plan of workshops and
daily on-line consultation for teachers and parents in New York City.
A copy of the proposal can be found at
http://rdz.acor.org/esf/aolgrant.html A mailing list has been created
for Special Education teachers in the Boston area to discuss dealing
with Learning Disabled children and children who are homebound.
Psychology
will be represented projects involving the use of Leaderless Virtual
Groups modeled on the Virtual Group run by Michael Benjamin. There is
a plan to develop a treatment for Internet Addiction based on such a
group. GrassRoots will be used to provide a private and congenial
atmosphere for real-time interaction for group members. We will also
explore its potential for the development of unique projective
techniques and in Psychodrama. The Special Education projects using
GrassRoots can be used as a virtual externship for graduate student in
School Psychology.
Survey Center
will provide a WWW page to put tests, questionnaires, polls, etc. and
create a database that can be downloaded for analysis and which can be
used to generate a report on the spot. This can provide a resource for
test development by providing broad based norms, reliability, and
construct validity.
Support and Advocacy
for the ill and disabled are well represented on the Human Services
Resource Center and many Lists and Web pages will move to the Enabling
Support Foundation site. An important project involves the development
of a keyboard-oriented Digital User Interface that will be more
accessible to the blind and mobility impaired than the mouse-oriented
Graphical User Interface.
That was 20 years of living compressed into 2500 words of text. There
is much more to write and I welcome collaborators who want to write it
with me.
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