A CRITIQUE OF SOCIAL BONDING AND CONTROL THEORY OF DELINQUENCY USING THE PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY OF MIND.

This paper first describes the refined principles of Psychology of Mind (POM) and shows how their logical interaction can help explain the comparative amounts of both deviant and conforming behavior engaged in by youthful offenders. The logic of these principles is then used to examine the major assumptions of social bonding and control theory of delinquency focusing predominantly on the formulations of Walter Reckless (1956) and Travis Hirschi (1969).
Psychology of Mind (POM) is a new psychological theory derived from the work of Banks (1983, 1989); Mills (1990a,b, 1993); Mills & Pransky (1993); Suarez (1985); Suarez & Mills (1982); and Suarez, Mills, & Stewart (1987). In a recent article (Kelley, 1990), the author described the principles of Psychology of Mind and revealed how virtually all forms of delinquent and criminal behavior could be explained using the logic of these principles. In additional writings (Kelley, 1993a,b,c), the author applied these same principles to prevention and early intervention programs with at-risk youth and suggested how an accurate understanding of POM could advance the field of criminology.
Since these writings, the distinctions of Psychology of Mind have been clarified and simplified into three major principles: Mind, Consciousness, and Thought (Mills & Pransky, 1993). The present paper first describes the refined principles of POM and shows how their logical interaction can help explain the comparative amounts of both deviant and conforming behavior engaged in by youthful offenders.(1) Then the logic of these principles is used to examine the major assumptions of social bonding and control theory of delinquency focusing predominantly on the formulations of Walter Reckless (1956) and Travis Hirschi (1969).
The Principle of Mind
According to POM, mind is the source of an offender's thinking (how he interprets life), his emotions (how he feels about life), his perceptions (how things look to him), and his ability to experience his world through his senses. Practically speaking, the mind, according to POM, works like a movie projector through which an offender's thoughts are projected from the inside out to form his moment-to-moment idiosyncratic experience of life. Mills and Pransky (1993) warn of the difficulty in grasping a complete understanding of mind:
It is impossible to provide an easy-to-grasp description of the mind, because mind is the source of how things look to us. As such, it generates how we think about things. It operates before our thinking. Therefore, it is impossible to intellectually have a complete picture or accurate model of the mind. Such a model would be a product of the mind's workings (p. 5).
Psychology of Mind defines an offender's mind as the neutral projector of all of his thoughts. POM proposes that, left to its own devices, each offender's mind is designed to work in a healthy way, operating as a neutral force toward innate mental health, which includes a natural wisdom, intelligence, intrinsic motivation, and high self-esteem.
The Principle of Consciousness
According to POM, consciousness is the offender's ability to be aware of external reality. Consciousness brings an offender's thoughts to life via his senses. Through consciousness, his thoughts are converted into his experience. Consciousness would be similar to the light in an activated movie projector. Thought creates images in an offender's head. Consciousness is the faculty or the power that makes these images appear real to his senses. The mind combines consciousness with thought to produce his ongoing moment-to-moment reality. Consciousness goes where an offender's thoughts go via his senses. It always brings to light what an offender is thinking.
The Principle of Thought
The power of consciousness would not exist without thought, or the offender's ability to think, sourced by the mind. In the POM paradigm, mind is a constant as the source of his thinking and experience. Consciousness is also a constant, as it brings to life whatever he is thinking. Thus, according to POM, the only variable in an offender's psychological functioning is thought. If mind is the projector, and consciousness the light, then thought represents the film which comes to life when the light shines through it. Psychology of Mind defines thought as an offender's ability to create images within his own head. For all human beings, including offenders, thinking, like breathing, is a natural life function. This continuous process of thought is the source of his changing experience of life from moment to moment.
Unconditioned and Conditioned Thinking
POM proposes two different and observable modes of thinking by which thoughts are generated and used by all offenders. These two distinct thought processes are called original or unconditioned thought, and reactive or conditioned thought. Original, or unconditioned thought is an innate, rational, and insightful thought process. It is also the source of positive change, high mental health, perspective, common sense, and understanding. Mills and Pransky (1993) describe their recognition of this thought process:
From observing the ups and downs of our clients, we concluded that there are two noticeably different processes by which thoughts are generated and used. People at times exhibited a rational, common sense, insightful thought process. This natural flow of thoughts that occur to people and simply come and go, appeared to be virtually unnoticed by most people. In that thought process, people experience insights and practical ideas about their lives. They have perspective and an intelligence that leads to understanding. They take for granted the wisdom available to them. They might make the observation that they have "nothing on their mind" because their thinking is effortless and objective. This is the thought process we refer to as "original thought." Peoples' experiences from this original thought process will be fresh, impersonal, and interesting (p. 8).
According to Psychology of Mind, the original or unconditioned thought process has generally been overlooked and unacknowledged by most researchers because it is innate and ordinary. However, according to POM, original thought represents the way an offender's mind was intended to work. When engaged in this thought process, the offender learns primarily by a process of insight and realization. Once something is understood, his mind will utilize the brain's information processing, storage and retrieval mechanisms, in an objective and functional manner to store learned information in memory for later use at an appropriate time and manner. When original thought predominates, the primary process of learning is unconditioned (by insight).
Mills and Pransky (1993) describe the second process, which they refer to as reactive or conditioned thought:
The other thinking process, when people are actively drawing on experience or memories or attempting to apply their conditioned learning to circumstances, is what people generally describe as "thought" because it is noticeable; it requires deliberate effort. In that thought process people are working to find understanding and solutions, but they are not assessing creative ideas, objectivity, or a clearer perspective, because they are focused on what they already know, on what we would call their personal frame of reference. This is the thought process we refer to as "conditioned." Peoples' experiences from conditioned thinking process will be redundant and predictable. . . . The conditioned thought process, however, is that which has, singularly, been acknowledged and described as thought because it is how we learned to "use" our mind. Researchers focus on that thought process because it is apparent - and because it is, indeed, the way we were trained to think and what we have been taught to recognize as thinking (pp. 8-9).
When engaged in the conditioned or reactive thinking process, learning requires more deliberate or conscious effort and is generally more forced and stressful. In this mode, an offender will tend to process and store information in a more personal or idiosyncratic manner. In this mode, his learning is based more on interpretation or apparency than on insight and objectivity. Put another way, through conditioned habits of thinking, each offender develops an idiosyncratic view of reality or personal thought system. According to POM, a thought system is a sophisticated, interwoven, interdependent, network of conditioned thinking habits which take the form of fixed attitudes, preconceptions, expectations, and prejudices. An offender's thought system operates much like a psychological force field which, when engaged, will selectively and predictably organize external events and circumstances into specific perceptual patterns.
POM proposes further that offenders are mostly unaware of thought systems and their screening and translating function. Thus, most innocently believe that their thoughts, beliefs, and prejudices provide them with "true" representations of reality rather than idiosyncratic interpretations or apparencies. Therefore, according to POM, most offenders are prone to misuse a neutral function, their ability to think about their lives. As Suarez (1987) points out:
One basic premise of this principle is that people create their own thoughts and thought systems but are, to varying degrees, not aware of doing so. Thus, it is possible for people to experience reality, to varying degrees, only in terms of the end products of their thinking (images, beliefs, interpretations, expectations, etc.) and their associated perceptions, feelings, and behaviors. In other words, people can experience reality as being relatively independent of their functioning (pp. 5-6).
POM proposes that every offender has the capacity for both responsive (unconditioned) and reactive (conditioned) thinking. POM further states that it is the percentage of an offender's responsive vs. conditioned thinking that is the major determinant of his level of mental health, happiness, personal effectiveness, and, conversely, his level of risk for delinquency or criminality.
Feelings of Insecurity
According to POM, the factor that predisposes an offender toward one type of thinking or the other is his feelings of insecurity. POM proposes that the degree of reactive or conditioned thinking engaged in by an offender correlates directly with his experience of insecure feelings. According to POM, it is this relationship of conditioned thinking and insecure feelings through which all forms of delinquency or criminality are fostered and maintained. When an offender feels secure, having his emotional bearings, he will think more responsively using information and insights appropriate to the situation at hand. When an offender feels insecure, he will think more reactively and tend to experience urges to engage in some form of delinquent or deviant behavior either to bolster his diminished sense of self-worth or to temporarily relieve his insecure feelings (e.g., drug use).
In virtually every instance, POM proposes that insecure feelings and conditioned thinking are the forces behind delinquency and criminality in its many destructive varieties. When he is feeling insecure and fully engaged in conditioned thinking, an offender will feel compelled to do whatever it takes to prove or validate his personal view of reality. Being locked into this vicious circle, an offender will feel compelled to fight, steal, hurt people, set fires - to do whatever is necessary to be right.
Moods
The final question to be answered by POM is the source or origin of an offender's insecure feelings. POM proposes that an offender's insecurity is not a function of his life events or circumstances, even such extreme conditions as poverty, racism, drug-addicted parents, and unsafe neighborhoods. Simple observation makes it clear that faced with such living conditions, offender "A" will remain secure and in responsive thinking, while offender "B" will lose his emotional bearings. Yet, offender "B" will keep his bearings under the same conditions at some later time. Thus, POM proposes that the origin of insecure feelings is inside the mind of an offender and occurs as a function of the phenomenon of moods. Mills and Pransky describe this final piece of the equation (1993):
The phenomenon of moods provided the remaining answer. Moods explained why person "B" got insecure in one instance and kept his bearing later under identical circumstances. We noticed that peoples' sense of well-being, their level of security, would vacillate dramatically even as their circumstances remained the same. . . It was apparent that everyone had moods and everyone's moods were shifting up and down, however slightly, throughout the day. . . . When a person's mood dropped, he would feel less secure and would be tempted towards reactive, habitual thinking. When his mood rose, he would feel more secure, more relaxed mentally, and return to a responsive thinking mode. Responsive thinking could produce conditioned ideas, or it could produce original, unconditioned thought. What mattered was that the person's mood and level of security produced thinking that was responsive to the situation at hand, rather than being controlled by habit and conditioning (p. 22).
Thus, according to POM, the combination of moods, insecure feelings, and conditioned thinking creates a vicious cycle which explains virtually all forms of delinquent and criminal behavior. In lower moods, an offender will feel less secure and move into the conditioned thinking mode, which activates automatic thoughts and conditioned beliefs. In this mind state, the offender will experience a self-generated negative reality with little or no awareness of what has happened or how to stop it. It is in this condition that the likelihood of some form of delinquent, criminal, or self-destructive behavior increases markedly.
POM and Social Control Theory
Social control theorists assume that all youth would violate the law if they could just get away with it. Thus, control theory treats conformity as the real problem to be explained and focuses on investigating why youth do not engage in offending behavior. Put another way, control theorists assume that delinquency and crime are destined to occur for all persons unless they are prevented by strong social and personal controls. Control theories tend to focus more on social factors that curb delinquency than on those that promote delinquency, as do the positivistic theories of youth crime. Thus, control theories all assume that there are internal and external mechanisms which have the power to control a potential offender's behavior (Akers, 1994).
Psychology of Mind challenges the fundamental premise of control theory - the innate motivation in human beings to commit criminal and delinquent acts. In fact, POM proposes just the opposite innate human propensity. According to POM, every physically healthy youngster begins life with a natural, inborn capacity for healthy psychological functioning. That is, at birth, youth do not have mind-sets which point them toward delinquency, drug use, or other forms of deviant behavior. On the contrary, each youth is born with an innate set of healthy attributes which include common sense, unconditional positive self-worth, a desire to learn for the satisfaction of learning, and a natural joy in the understanding and pro-social mastery of the environment (Suarez, 1985b; Suarez, Mills, & Stewart, 1987; Mills, Dunham, & Alpert, 1988; Kelley, 1993b).
According to POM, from this innate, healthy, psychological perspective, high self-esteem is automatic and effortless. It need not be taught, developed, or strengthened (Mills, 1990a,b; Mills et al., 1988; Kelley, 1993). Self-esteem in this mind state is not derived from outside activities or accomplishments, but serves instead as the motivation behind the desire to achieve. In this natural perspective, thinking is responsive and unconditioned, resulting in good common sense, a high capacity for insight, and genuine peace of mind. Furthermore, learning and performance are experienced as natural and effortless. According to POM, in biologically healthy youngsters, all of these capacities exists at birth in one cohesive package (Mills et al., 1988; Peck, Law, & Mills, 1987; Mills, 1987, 1990a,b; Kelley, 1993b).
Contrary to control theory, POM proposes that it is only in lower moods when youth feel insecure and begin to think reactively more of the time that their natural healthy functioning becomes compromised and the probability of deviant behavior increases. If our youth were taught to understand lower moods and to correct for the perceptual distortions, insecure feelings, and dysfunctional conditioned thought which occur during these times, then their urges toward deviant behavior would be both greatly reduced and less likely to be acted upon.
POM and Containment Theory
In his containment theory, Walter Reckless (Reckless et al., 1956; Reckless, 1961, 1967) refers to "pushes" and "pulls" toward delinquency, which he says must be countered by "inner" and "outer" containment if crime is to be prevented. According to Reckless, examples of "pushes" are inner psychological impulses and drives such as discontent, hostility, or aggressiveness, or environmental pushes such as poverty, deprivation, or blocked opportunities. Pulls would include bad companions, gangs, and delinquent sub-cultures. Outer containment devices might include parental and school supervision and discipline, strong group cohesion, and a consistent moral front (Akers, 1994).
Reckless places special emphasis on a good self-concept, which he says is the primary inner containment. Self-concept, therefore, is a key aspect of containment theory; good kids develop "insulated" self-concepts with which to withstand the influences that lead other peers into delinquency.
POM views Reckless's control mechanisms (e.g., pushes, pulls, inner, and outer containments, self-concept) as having no constant meaning outside of personal interpretation. Put another way, the significance of these concepts is invented or "made up" through each person's thinking agency. For example, pushes, such as hostility, aggressiveness, and discontent, are simply the insecure feeling products of believed conditioned interpretations which occur in lower moods and more insecure states of mind. They are not, as containment theory suggests, the expressions of fixed inner psychological impulses and drives, just negative feeling habits kept alive moment-to-moment by believed conditioned thought. Likewise, the meaning of environmental pulls such as poverty, deprivation, and blocked opportunities is not constant. The significance of each will be different for each offender and for the same offender in different moods and states of mind. According to POM, pushes and pulls have no power to control a potential offender's behavior independent of his thinking and believing that they do.
Likewise, pulls such as bad companions, gangs, and delinquent sub-cultures only have power over youths who have acclimated to the distorted perceptions in chronic lower mood states and thus begin to view these associations as ways to cope with insecure feelings and blocked self-esteem. Nonoffending persons, values, and institutions tend to be rejected, as they are innocently misinterpreted by youthful offenders as being responsible for their insecure feelings. Viewed through a conditioned belief system, gang membership becomes desirable as a way to enhance self-image and reduce or avoid insecure feelings. Within the POM framework, the attraction to delinquent peers is predictable as a source of self-concept validation through shared dysfunctional conditioned attributions.
Reckless states that when motivations to deviance (i.e., pushes and pulls) are strong and containment is weak, crime and delinquency are to be expected. Inner and outer pushes and pulls will produce delinquent behavior unless they are counteracted by inner and outer containment (Akers, 1994). POM, on the other hand, would suggest that urges toward deviant behavior occur in lower moods or lower levels of mental health. POM proposes that the best way for offenders to avoid acting on such urges is to teach them that they are the product of conditioned thought and occur only temporarily in lower moods. When offenders genuinely understand this distinction, they can begin to intelligently avoid giving their dysfunctional thoughts power by believing them. By so doing they can more quickly regain their psychological equilibrium and avoid much destructive behavior. With such awareness or understanding, offenders will have less need for external supervision, threats of reprisal, or punishment (i.e., outer containments) to control their behavior. With such knowledge, offenders will be empowered to correct for their perceptual distortions and avoid the destructive urges that arise in lower moods.
It is not that POM sees no value in outer-containments (i.e., deterrents) such as supervision, restrictions, or threat of punishment. However, POM proposes that without an accurate understanding of its principles by offenders and criminal justice personnel alike, such containments will be used less sensibly and effectively. An example involving one of the author's psychotherapy clients is illustrative. David M., age 19, was referred by a district court for criminal sexual conduct, forth degree. While intoxicated, David walked through a shopping mall and grabbed the buttocks of a passing female patron. Mall security responded and David was arrested. Ultimately, he was placed on two years probation, six months of electronic monitoring, random drug screening at home, and mandatory psychotherapy. This was the second such incident for David involving sexual misconduct and he had several prior unreported incidents of drunk driving and aggressive/assaultive behavior.
When David first came to treatment, he was extremely angry about the "outer-containments" applied by the court. He felt they were vindictive and unfair and stated that the court treated him "like scum." Nevertheless, David followed the rules to the letter, motivated by his fear of having his probation revoked and going to jail. However, it seemed quite clear that when these containments were removed or when David's mood got low enough, he would surely revert to his old behaviors.
In treatment, I worked with David in a very relaxed, nonthreatening, and respectful manner using the principles of POM to help him understand how human beings function psychologically. Slowly, David began to catch on that his drinking and acting-out behavior were expressions of his believed conditions thoughts and the insecure feelings (e.g., depression, anger, agitation) which he experienced in his chronic low mood states. He began to see that in these states, he tended to think reactively almost all of the time and therefore frequently misinterpreted the intentions of others around him. Having little awareness of his mood-related perceptual distortions, David innocently learned to interpret his world as a very dangerous place, had little trust of anyone, and related to the life he saw as a perennial victim.
As treatment progressed, David began to see more clearly this vicious cycle of insecure feelings, selective perception, and self-destructive behavior. Furthermore, we discovered that David had a bi-polar mood disorder. When he understood the impact of his bio-chemistry on his moods, he could see the value in taking anti-depressant medication. Also, he saw in a more detached manner the tremendous strength of his conditioned thoughts about alcohol and how they were so easily triggered by his past conditioning, especially during low moods. David described, for example, how his mouth would start to water when he would pass by the beer and wine section in a supermarket.
Finally, David began to understand how his Native American heritage had most likely predisposed him genetically to tolerate and crave alcohol differently from most people. With this understanding, David volunteered to take Antabuse and devised a plan by which his parents supported him daily in taking his "deterrent" medication.
Most importantly, David began to catch on to the fact that there was nothing wrong with him personally and that much of his natural capacity for mental health had been suppressed by some inherited biological glitches and his innocent misunderstanding of moods, insecure feelings, and conditioned thinking. With this awareness, David rapidly regained much self-esteem and began to use more common sense to find ways to correct for his mood-distorted perceptions when they occurred. As a result, his personal relationships improved dramatically, as did his work performance. Furthermore, he began volunteering to do community service as a way of distracting his attention from self-conscious thoughts. Also, he began to understand his ex-wife's angry behavior toward him and his role in perpetuating it. Finally, understanding the incredible power of his moods, David requested that the court extend his probation period so that he could use the strength of his interpretations about jail to help override his mood-related urges to drink.
This case illustrates a whole new dimension of how what Reckless calls "outer-containments" could be used more wisely and responsibly by offenders and criminal justice personnel who understand the principles of POM. POM proposes that without these understandings, outer-containments will, at best, be temporary fear-producing deterrents which will lead to little or no intrinsic responsibility for offenders.
The idea of self-concept as Reckless's primary inner containment deserves special attention. POM distinguishes between self-concept and self-esteem. POM defines self-concept as a set of idiosyncratic beliefs and standards to which an offender, through conditioned thinking, learns to attach his personal worth and identity. POM views self-esteem as the innate healthy experience of competence and well-being that exists naturally in the presence of original or unconditioned thinking. POM points out that when people are in high moods, thinking primarily in the unconditioned mode, there is little or no awareness of self or self-concept. Put another way, when engaged in responsive thinking, an offender has little desire to prove anything, is not dependent or needy, and generally feels fulfilled. In this mind state there is minimal thinking about or purpose for delinquency or, for that matter, any other form of deviance. Here, crime, delinquency, and drug use would just interfere with the offender's moment-to-moment experience of natural self-esteem, peace of mind, and fulfillment.
It is only in lower mood states, when misunderstood by offenders, that the experience of self as a concept or object comes to life through conditioned thinking. In lower moods, unrecognized by offenders, enhancing self-concept is naively seen as a solution to insecure feelings and blocked self-esteem. Here, unenlightened offenders innocently misinterpret lower moods and insecure feelings to mean that there is something wrong with them, other people, the world. Not understanding that they are being deluded by mood-related perpetual distortions which would quickly pass if they would only relax and not take them seriously, most misuse their conditioned thinking to figure out how to right themselves when there is actually nothing wrong! By so doing, offenders innocently begin to design their lives more and more to cope with insecure feelings and perceptual distortions taken seriously. This process slowly builds on itself and the vicious cycle is generated. Ironically, the use of conditioned thinking to design a self-concept keeps offenders stuck in lower moods, which perpetuates insecure feelings and reactive thinking, which leads to more self-concept building or strengthening. Paradoxically, the stronger an offender's self-concept, the less time that offender will spend in healthy mental functioning!
Thus, POM would suggest that Reckless's proposal to strengthen or build an offender's self-concept will have the unintended effect of increasing the time he spends feeling insecure in lower moods, and therefore the likelihood of his involvement in deviant or criminal behavior. POM proposes that when an offender connects, through conditioned thinking, his appearance, toughness, power, money, influence, attractiveness, and possessions with his personal worth or self-concept, he inadvertently sets himself up for feelings of insecurity and self-consciousness. Thus, when his mood goes down he will feel less secure and worthwhile and will be inclined to do whatever he thinks it takes (often delinquency) to get more, better, or different things to which he has attached his self-worth.
This important distinction helps to explain several previously confusing facts, such as the criminality of white collar offenders, many of whom supposedly have good self-concepts as well as strong outer-containments during both childhood and adulthood. Paradoxically, it is the strong self-concepts or egos of these individuals which, according to POM, block out their natural, healthy functioning and lead to strong conditioned urges to do whatever it takes (including crime) to maintain or increase their wealth, power, or control.
POM and Social Bonding Theory
Hirschi's (1969) social bonding theory has become what most criminologists refer to today as the major control theory. It has come to occupy a. central place in criminological theory and is probably the most frequently tested and discussed of all contemporary theories of crime (Stitt & Giacopassi, 1992). According to Akers (1994), it has been the dominant theory of delinquent and criminal behavior for almost three decades.
The main proposition of Hirschi's theory is that delinquency is the result of weak or broken bonds between the individual and society. These bonds are composed of four major elements - attachment, commitment, involvement, and beliefs. Hirschi defines attachment to others as the degree to which we admire others, feel affection for and identify with them, thus caring about their expectations. Commitment is the personal stake or investment of an individual in conforming and the perceived costs or losses suffered by involvement in deviant or law-violating behavior. Involvement refers to the level of one's participation in pro-social activities such as family functions, schoolwork, job, or church. Belief, according to bonding theory, refers to an individual's credence in societal norms and values - that laws and rules are necessary and should be followed. The stronger these social bonding components with pro-social significant others (e.g., parents, teachers) the more an individual's behavior will be directed toward conformity. To the degree that these elements are weak, the individual will be more likely to violate the law. Hirschi views these four elements as highly intercorrelated.
Within the POM perspective, a qualitatively different and distinct form of each of Hirschi's "elements" is part of the cohesive package of natural capacities that exists innately in healthy human beings. According to POM, mentally healthy human beings naturally express each of these characteristics most of the time. However, unlike social bonding theory, POM would not view the natural expression of these attributes as important in controlling delinquency or maintaining conformity. According to POM, in healthy individuals these attributes and conforming behavior exist and co-vary together, but do not cause or determine one another.
Consider, for example, Hirschi's first element of social bonding: attachment. According to Hirschi, attachment is the extent to which a person has close affectional ties to others, admires them, and identifies with them so that he cares about their expectations. The more insensitive a person is to others' opinions, says Hirschi, the less he is constrained by the norms he shares with them; therefore, the more likely he is to violate these norms (Akers, 1994). POM distinguishes between two qualitatively distinct types of attachment which depend upon the type of thinking and learning that prevails (conditioned vs. unconditioned) as an individual matures. If the unconditioned thinking mode is predominant, a person's attachments to others will develop naturally as an expression of healthy psychological functioning which includes a natural capacity for intimacy and empathy. This experience of intimacy and trust forms the context in which healthy attachments effortlessly emerge. This form of attachment will be more unconditional, which means that the person's sense of personal worth or value will be less dependent on his attachments. Put another way, a healthy person, thinking predominantly in the unconditioned mode, will have a naturally high capacity for intimate attachments. Also, his self-esteem will be high, and less affected by fluctuations in his own moods or mental health, or those of the persons to whom he is attached. According to POM, in this healthy mind state, conformity is also present naturally and automatically. It is not caused or controlled by attachments.
On the other hand, if conditioned thinking and learning are predominant, a person's attachments will be more identity-connected - such attachments will be connected through conditioned thought with a person's self-concept or self-image. From this perspective, an individual's attachments are influenced more by moods and feelings of insecurity and are more likely to serve as a strategy for personal validation or approval. According to POM, conformity in this mind state tends to be motivated more by such concerns as worth, rejection, and disapproval, and therefore will exhibit greater mood-related swings.
According to POM, such conditioned identity-based attachments are "normal" in our culture and constitute what Hirschi suggests should be strengthened. According to POM, however, the strengthening of this form of attachment will predictably increase personal insecurity and unhappiness, as well as the likelihood of dysfunctional behavior such as crime and delinquency. According to POM, true conformity and unconditional attachments will both occur more effortlessly by teaching offenders how the mind works so that they can rekindle their natural healthy psychological functioning.
Although he often uses the phrase "attachment to conventional others," Hirschi maintained that it really did not matter to whom one was attached. According to Hirschi, it is the fact of attachment, not the character of the people to whom one is attached, that determines adherence to or violation of conventional rules (Akers, 1994). Thus, even for juveniles attached to peers or persons who are delinquent, the stronger the attachments to these people, the less likely the tendency toward delinquency.
POM would strongly challenge this proposition. According to POM, it is not the fact of attachment that matters, but the type of attachments. It is not the fact of attachment that determines adherence to or violation of conventional rules, rather it is the natural capacity for intimacy, empathy, and trust, plus the common sense to use this capacity in a functional manner (unconditioned attachments), both of which flow naturally from healthy psychological functioning.
Healthy children use natural common sense in picking their friends. They tend to pick healthy ones. The involvement of children with delinquent peers represent the kind of conditioned attachment that becomes desirable only during prolonged periods of mood-related insecurity and dysfunctional conditioned thought. Becoming attached to delinquent peers makes sense only as a solution to the insecure feelings and distorted conditioned thinking which signal less healthy functioning. A physically healthy person will not choose to be close to people with contagious diseases unless his perspective is distorted. So too, conditioned attachments to delinquent peers result from extreme perceptual distortions. Psychologically healthy children may have genuine compassion for their delinquent peers, but they will not see attachments with such children as particularly valuable unless they have lost their own psychological bearings and do not understand what has occurred.
The same is true with regard to parental attachments. The literature is convincing that consistent and fair parental discipline, parents who know the activities and whereabouts of their children, parents who minimize conflict and turmoil, parents with a capacity for love and empathy, are among the best predictors of nondelinquent behavior. These findings would make sense within the POM perspective because they point to generally healthier, higher-mood families.
Commitment has been referred to by Toby (1957) as an individual's investment in or "stake in conformity" that would be placed at risk or lost by engaging in criminal behavior. The greater one's commitment or investment in conventional enterprises (e.g., educational, professional, religious), the greater the perceived risk of crime because one has more to lose. According to POM, it is only when a person's thinking is organized around maintaining a self-concept and coping with insecure feelings that he would tend to perceive things this way. It is only in comparatively low moods, and insecure states of mind that people are motivated by the fear of losing external possessions. It is only in such conditioned states of mind that people perceive their personal worth as connected to externals. In healthy mind states, people will display more self-expression, a natural enthusiasm, and intrinsic motivation to pursue conventional activities of all sorts. Furthermore, they will possess a natural inclination toward honesty, integrity, and inner fulfillment. In such mind states, deviance is less likely to occur as a meaningful possibility.
It is only when people become stuck in lower moods with little understanding of what has occurred that their sense of worth appears to be attached to their conventional endeavors and external possessions. In such levels of functioning, POM would suggest that a person's free will or rational choice is clearly diminished. Put another way, POM proposes that, for the most part, deviant behavior is not chosen freely by its perpetrators. When offenders offend, their natural ability to choose freely and rationally is compromised by their conditioned or reactive frames of reference, a phenomenon powerfully illustrated by the recent O.J. Simpson tragedy. According to POM, within O.J.'s conditioned thought system, his allegedly brutal behavior appeared to make sense and to serve a worthwhile purpose. Believing the distorted projections of his own dysfunctional conditioned thinking, O.J. could not realistically weigh the rewards and costs of his actions. In such mind states, an offender's natural, healthy logic and wisdom are blocked out by his believed conditioned thought.
These distinctions help explain why the magnitude of relationships between social bonding and delinquency have ranged from moderate to low (Hindelang, 1973; Johnson, 1979; Wiatkowski, Griswold, & Roberts, 1981; Agnew, 1985; Liska & Reed, 1985; Akers, 1994). They explain further why high correlations and levels of explained variance are seldom found in the research literature on this theory (Akers, 1994). For the most part, even the healthiest people in this culture have innocently lost much of their natural capacity for healthy psychological functioning. Having little understanding of Psychology of Mind, even our "healthiest" people are often victimized by their ignorance of low moods, reactive thinking, and insecure feelings. This explains why even our most conforming children and adults with strong social bonds can quickly fall into conditioned insecure states of mind and impulsively engage in very serious forms of crime and delinquency. Conversely, it also explains why at certain times even chronic delinquents will behave in more mature, sensible, noncriminal ways (Stewart, 1985; Dodge & Frame, 1982; Patterson, Chamberlain, & Reid, 1992).
Thus, genuine choice or "response-ability" can occur for offenders only when they begin to understand how the mind functions to combine thought (both conditioned and unconditioned) with consciousness to create dynamic personal realities that are only apparencies and not "the truth." Until offenders possess this awareness or understanding, they will continue to experience and be motivated by dysfunctional urges and habits such as delinquency, drug abuse, and other health-damaging behaviors. According to POM, true free will can emerge only through an accurate understanding of these simple principles. Only then will offenders begin to see that they have been innocently deluded into seeing delinquency and crime as sensible behaviors. Only then will they begin to see the huge cost of this unfortunate misunderstanding in lost free will and psychological health.
The purpose of this paper is to describe the three principles of the Psychology of Mind paradigm. For interested readers, a detailed discussion of empirical evidence supporting the principles of this model using relevant etiological studies, cross-sectional research programs, longitudinal studies, and youth panel surveys can be found in the author's previous writings (Kelley, 1990; 1993a,b) and the works of Roger Mills (1987, 1988, 1990a,b) cited in the reference section.

JOHN GARANG

John Garang (June 23, 1945 – July 30, 2005) was the vice president of Sudan and former leader of the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army.
EARLY YEARS
A member of the Dinka ethnic group, Garang was born into a poor family in Wagkulei village, near Bor in the upper Nile region of Sudan. An orphan by the age of ten, he had his fees for school paid by a relative, going to schools in Wau and then Rumbek. In 1962 he joined the first Sudanese civil war, but because he was so young, the leaders encouraged him and others his age to seek an education. Because of the ongoing fighting, Garang was forced to attend his secondary education in Tanzania. After winning a scholarship, he went on to earn a B.A. in economics in 1969 from Grinnell College. He was known there for his bookishness. He was offered another scholarship to pursue graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley, but chose to return to Tanzania and study East African agricultural economics as a Thomas J. Watson Fellow at the University of Dar es Salaam. As a member of the University Students' African Revolutionary Front, a student group at the university, he made the acquaintance of Yoweri Museveni, who would go on to become president of Uganda and a close ally. However, Garang soon decided to return to Sudan and join the rebels.
The civil war ended with the Addis Ababa agreement of 1972 and Garang, like many rebels, was absorbed into the Sudanese military. For eleven years, he was a career soldier and rose from the rank of captain to colonel after taking the Infantry Officers' Advanced Course at Fort Benning, Georgia. During this period he took four years academic leave and received a master's degree in agricultural economics and a Ph.D. in economics at Iowa State University, after writing a thesis on the agricultural development of Southern Sudan. By 1983, Col. Garang was the head of the Staff College in Omdurman.
THE REBEL LEADER
In 1983, Garang went to Bor, obstensibly to mediate with about 500 southern government soldiers in battalion 105 who were resisting being rotated to posts in the north. However, Garang was already part of a conspiracy among some officers in the Southern Command arranging for the defection of battalion 105 to the anti-government rebels. When the government attacked Bor in May and the battalion pulled out, Garang went by an alternate route to join them in the rebel stronghold in Ethiopia. By the end of July, Garang had brought over 3000 rebel soldiers under his control through the newly-created Sudan People's Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M), which was opposed to military rule and Islamic dominance of the country, and encouraged other army garrisons to mutiny against the Islamic law imposed on the country by the government.[1] This action marked the commonly agreed upon beginning of the Second Sudanese Civil War, which resulted in one and half million deaths over twenty years of conflict. Although Garang was Christian and most of southern Sudan is non-Muslim (mostly animist), he did not initially focus on the religious aspects of the war.
The SPLA gained the backing of Libya, Uganda and Ethiopia. Garang and his army controlled a large part of the southern regions of the country, named New Sudan. He claimed his troops' courage comes from "the conviction that we are fighting a just cause. That is something North Sudan and its people don't have." Critics suggested financial motivations to his rebellion, noting that much of Sudan's oil wealth lies in the south of the country.
Garang in a crowd of supporters
Garang refused to participate in the 1985 interim government or 1986 elections, remaining a rebel leader. However, the SPLA and government signed a peace agreement on 9th January 2005 in Nairobi, Kenya. On July 9, 2005, he was sworn in as vice-president, the second most powerful person in the country, following a ceremony in which he and President Omar al-Bashir signed a power-sharing constitution. He also became the administrative head of a southern Sudan with limited autonomy for the six years before a scheduled referendum of possible secession. No Christian or southerner had ever held such a high government post. Commenting after the ceremony, Garang stated, "I congratulate the Sudanese people, this is not my peace or the peace of al-Bashir, it is the peace of the Sudanese people."
The United States State Department argued that Garang's presence in the government would have helped solve the Darfur conflict in western Sudan, but others consider these claims " excessively optimistic".
DEATH
In late July 2005, Garang died after the Ugandan presidential Mi-172 helicopter he was flying in, crashed. He had been returning from a meeting in Rwakitura with long-time ally President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda. Sudanese state television initially reported that Garang's craft had landed safely, but Abdel Basset Sabdarat, the country's Information Minister, went on TV hours later to deny the report. Soon afterwards, a statement released by the office of Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir confirmed that a Ugandan presidential helicopter, crashed into "a mountain range in southern Sudan because of poor visibility and this resulted in the death of Dr. John Garang DeMabior, six of his colleagues and seven Ugandan crew members."[1] His body was flown to New Site, a southern Sudanese settlement near the scene of the crash, where former rebel fighters and civilian supporters have gathered to pay their respects to Garang. Garang's funeral took place on August 3 in Juba.[3] His widow Rebecca Garang promised to continue his work stating "In our culture we say, if you kill the lion, you see what the lioness will do."[4]
QUESTIONS ABOUT DEATH
Both the Sudanese government and the head of the SPLA blamed the weather for the accident. There are, however, doubts as to the truth of this, especially amongst the basis of the SPLA. Yoweri Museveni, the Ugandan president, claims that the possibility of "external factors" having played a role could not be eliminated.
EFFECT UPON PEACE
Considered instrumental in ending the civil war, the effect of Garang's death upon the peace deal is uncertain. The government declared three days of national mourning, which did not stop large scale rioting in Khartoum which killed at least 24 as youth from south Sudan attacked north Sudanese and clashed with security forces. After three days of violence, the death toll had risen to 84[2]. Unrest was also reported in other parts of the country. Leading members of the SPLM, including Garang's successor Salva Kiir Mayardit, stated that the peace process would continue. Analysts suggested that the death could result in anything from a new democratic openness in the SPLA, which some have criticized for being overly dominated by Garang, to an outbreak of open warfare between the various southern factions that Garang had brought together.
REFERENCE
Garang, John (1992): John Garang Speaks. M. Khalid, ed. London, Kegan Paul International.

SMALL COMPANY ATTITUDE TOWARDS ICT BASED SOLUTIONS

Introduction
Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) offer enterprises a wide range of possibilities for improving their competitiveness: they provide mechanisms for getting access to new market opportunities and specialized information services such as distance consulting, continuous training, new advisory modes, etc.; organizations can exchange real-time information and build closer relationships with their customers, suppliers and business partners; immediate customer feedback allows companies to react fast to changing customer demands and recognizing new market niches. This means that organizations that are able to exploit the potentials offered by ICT can handle innovative processes, such as Supply Chain Management, Customer Relationship Management, Knowledge Management, more effectively.
However, if we analyze the present situation of the introduction and use of information technologies in enterprises, and in particular in Small and Medium sized Enterprises in Italy, we can see that in a lot of cases they are used only for basic functionalities, and not to improve internal and external communication, or to activate new information services. In particular, concerning the use of computers and the Internet in SMEs, statistics for 2001 (Eurostat, 2002) reported that 86.4% of firms in Italy use information technologies; of these, 84% are connected to the Internet, mainly by means of ISDN. Of course, we have to distinguish among the different uses of Internet, in relation to the size and the activity of the enterprise. While the percentage of enterprises with their own web site is about 40.1% of computerized enterprises (Eurostat, 2002), we have to emphasize that the web site is mainly used to describe the firm and the products/activities and it is rarely used to manage the relationships with customers; in fact, only one in twenty sites also offers the opportunity of interacting and communicating with the enterprise. According to these statistics it emerges that, up to now, the Internet has been little used by Italian enterprises to activate innovative processes of management. Another important factor influencing the use ICT is the size of the enterprise; in fact, statistics show that in enterprises with more than 200 employees an effective use of information and communication tools is more frequent (Assintel , 2001).
The concepts illustrated in this paper are the results of the research activities we undertook in two EU funded projects. Many results come from an investigation we carried out within the framework of a transnational European network named Neeps (New Eco Enterprises, Products and Services); the network included 9 organizations from 5 European countries (Italy, Germany, Great Britain, Denmark, Spain), and was established within the context of the European ADAPT initiative (European Commission , 1997). Each organization was in turn a consortium of partners at a national level, and was responsible for an ADAPT funded project. In total, 20 public and private organizations joined the Neeps network. Our Institute was part of an Italian consortium that submitted a project, named SOLARE (Support On-Line to Regional Enterprises).
The SOLARE project itself is presented in this paper, since many considerations concerning the attitude of SMEs towards ICT-based solutions arose during the activities related to this project.
Further insights come from a pilot project we carried out, aimed at analyzing the communication, social and technological obstacles to the implementation of effective Supply Chain Management strategies in SMEs. The study was carried out within the framework of a EU funded project named “Supply Chain Partnership”.

Insights from a European framework
The Neeps network involved a diverse range of professionals: human resource development consultants, vocational training agents, research and educational institutions. Some of the partners had experiences of introducing and using ICT in SMEs, and established, in the context of the Neeps partnership, a Focus Group aimed at investigating the perceived advantages and disadvantages of using ICT in SMEs, as well as the barriers to entrepreneurs/managers/workers utilizing these technologies. With this aim, the Focus Group conducted an international survey among the SMEs involved in the national ADAPT projects through a three-page questionnaire to collect necessary data, containing 18 Likert-scale statements.
As far as the perceived benefits are concerned, the improvement of information flow and communication both inside the enterprise and towards the external world is considered a benefit by almost all of the respondents. High consideration has also been given to the creation of competitive advantage provided by ICT, to the reduction of time and space constraints and to the improvement of services to existing customers and suppliers. There were positive responses, though with less enthusiasm than to the previous issues, about the growth of external prestige in the market, the increase in profitability and the reduction of existing core costs. Finally, the increment of motivation and/or satisfaction for employees is perceived as a benefit by 42% of interviewed people, 47% are not able to answer and 11% do not consider it as a real benefit.
The second main goal of the survey was to assess the importance of some issues perceived as obstacles to using ICT in SMEs. Surprisingly, the results suggest that some of the barriers expected by the research team were not perceived as real difficulties by most respondents. In fact, internal corporate problems (e.g. board/staff/union resistance to issues) are not considered a real barrier by most of the interviewed people; similar conclusions can be drawn about fears of ongoing changes and of bad investment; however, the people interviewed have expressed a more decisive opinion on the first issue then on the second one. On the other hand, the lack of initial capital and staff support for implementation and the lack of availability of training services and products (concerning both the technology and its application for enterprises) have been indicated as the main barriers. The first issue indeed indicates two different problems: lack of money coupled with staff support for implementation; however, by considering the second issue, the most important barrier seems to be the lack of training courses and support to use ICT solutions in SMEs. This is confirmed by other answers (Fulantelli, Allegra 2001) that show that the lack of information and advice on relevant ICT solutions and benefits is still considered a major problem.

Technologies for cooperation: the Supply Chain Partnership project
The main objective of the Supply Chain Partnership project was to analyze the communication, social and technological obstacles to the implementation of effective Supply Chain Management (SCM) strategies in SMEs (Beamon, 1998). Specifically, the project investigated whether these obstacles depend mainly on the limited use of the potentials of ICT in SMEs, or if there are further and even more important elements that can seriously hinder the implementation of SCM.
The project involved partners from three European countries: Germany, Great Britain and Italy. A common research methodology was agreed between all the partners: small samples of companies from two different industrial branches were selected in each country; through national workshops with the SMEs, each partner gathered information on the SCM strategies adopted in the selected industrial branches, in order to identify the main obstacles to the application of effective SCM strategies. Afterwards, three one-day training sessions were organized in the SMEs in order to overtake some of the obstacles identified in the workshops; a final national workshop was organized to assess the organizational changes (if any) in the companies related to the training sessions. Transnational meetings among the European partners were scheduled in-between the national workshops in order to compare the different European realities as well as to agree on the common methodological approach to the problem.
In this paper, we focus on the results from the Italian situation, and specifically from two industrial districts located in Sicily that are highly representative of the industry in the southern part of Italy: the marble industry and the clothing industry. It should be said that common conclusions have been reached in Germany and, to some extent, in the UK.
The project has shown different problems; firstly, micro-enterprises (enterprises having fewer than 10 employees, according to the Commission Recommendation of 3 April 1996 concerning the definition of small and medium-sized enterprises) and SMEs do not have full awareness about the potentials of the new technologies, even if the project has shown a very positive trend towards better results: for example, several entrepreneurs are aware that ICT can provide a powerful means for reducing the geographical distance between Sicily and the most industrialized part of the country and that can be extremely useful for fostering the development of SCM strategies. Moreover, in the industrial district that we have analyzed there are several approaches to the use of ICT and, of course, this is related to the different kinds of activities: in the clothing industries there is awareness that ICT, and in particular B2B solutions, can improve the effectiveness of communication with suppliers, improving in general the supply chain and their production. This positive attitude is greatly weakened by the fact that ICT-based solutions are still viewed with suspicion: financial transactions, electronic payments and privacy are perceived as the main obstacles to the diffusion of ICT solutions in SMEs.
Another major obstacle is that SMEs undergo serious problems in introducing ICT into their organization processes: micro-enterprises and SMEs suffer from ICT skill-shortage problems and do not have the capabilities to perform the organizational changes that are necessary to activate ICT-based processes.
The shift of the focus on the problems towards social factors rather than technological ones has become increasingly clear during the project: a systematic use of ICT for business is a direct consequence of trust and cooperation between SMEs. A common European outcome of the project has been that cooperation between SMEs in general seems to be a serious problem: cooperation is extremely limited, and usually it is aimed at defining marketing consortia;actually, the cooperation at production level is still restricted to a very small number of enterprises. The lack of trust in other SMEs’ capabilities is a serious obstacle to cooperation and, therefore, to the adoption of ICT- based solutions; the social factors underpinning the relational and communication interfaces between SMEs are the main obstacle to the boosting of SCM strategies: a systematic use of ICT for business is a direct consequence of trustiness and cooperation between SMEs ((Fulantelli, Allegra, Vitrano 2001).

Technologies for distance training and consultancy: the SOLARE project
In the SOLARE project we have developed an experience of Distance Consulting, an ICT-based approach to consultancy, which systematically provides companies with information, communication and training services in an effective way. The main objective of the SOLARE project was allowing a group of SMEs located in the inland areas of Sicily (Italy) to benefit from consulting services through an innovative on-line cooperative environment. Twenty enterprises were connected, through the Internet to a consulting center, to research and academic institutes, thus establishing the SOLARE laboratory. It is important to highlight that the involved enterprises were mainly family companies, not placed in any industrial district, working on traditional economic sectors and, finally, their use of ICT was restricted to PC’s for accounting and administration purposes. The ICT-based consulting approach in the SOLARE project has proved effective for the SMEs as well as for the consulting center. Most of the benefits are an immediate consequence of more general advantages from using ICT for information exchange and communication purposes. Firstly, the communication facilities activated in the SOLARE laboratory have dramatically reduced the need for face-to-face meetings and seminars and, at the same time, improved the communication mechanisms as a whole; as a consequence, entrepreneurs, company managers and consultants have cut down travel costs, keeping in touch with each other in a continuous way. In particular, through the asynchronous communication facilities in the SOLARE project, it was possible to schedule distance-consulting activities in a very flexible way. A second important benefit of the SOLARE approach has been the possibility of providing consulting services in a continuous way: the set-up of Web-based informative areas has guaranteed that the consulting process keeps on also at the end of the face-to-face meetings, especially to support companies in putting into practice the concepts acquired at the meetings. In addition, thanks to the possibility of publishing information on-line, in an economic way, the consulting activity can be tailored to the need of a single enterprise or of a sector of enterprises much better than in traditional settings; in addition, ICT-based communication tools have been associated to each area, in such a way to provide SMEs with a direct communication channel with the consulting center on each specific topic.
A side effect from using ICT to provide Distance Consulting services has been that the involved SMEs have developed awareness of e-commerce solutions as well as of the need to move towards a full integration into the emerging digital economy.
Finally, it should be noted that effectiveness of the overall consulting process has been guaranteed by the availability of several technological solutions, according to the implementation of different consultancy models (Fulantelli, Allegra, Chiazzese 2000).
Concerning the obstacles to using ICT, it should be said that it was not easy to reach the objectives of the project, because SMEs, at the beginning of the project, were not used to considering the computer as a communication medium and they did not know its potentialities for the interaction inside and outside the enterprise. This factor implied that the initial motivation in the experiment of ICT for consulting services was low, even though the participation to the project was free and the involved enterprises had already used the services of the consultancy center in traditional ways; the solution for this problem has been the definition of training/consulting paths starting from the specific needs of the involved enterprises, avoiding to develop generic or theoretic, even though interesting, consulting materials, and organizing them according to a practical view.

Conclusions: key elements to improve small companies awareness of ICT potentialities.
According to the direct experiences reported in this paper, some key-elements to foster the introduction of ICT-based solutions in small companies have been highlighted.
Developing a full awareness of the huge potentials of ICT is the starting point for every attempt to introduce ICT-based processes in a company. Forcing the introduction of technology is one of the main reasons behind the failure of several attempts of the SMEs to become e-business organizations or simply to use ICT effectively for new services. The path to full awareness should move from introducing concrete and short-term benefits for the companies, followed by the presentation of more general and long-term advantages. Furthermore, by bearing in mind that the introduction of ICT in SMEs can bring a real modification in the way of working, the introduction of ICT-based processes should take into account the specific culture of the company: the background of the entrepreneur and/or the managers is important as well as their openness to innovation; we learned an important lesson about this in the SCP project, where the attempts to introduce ICT in the companies to improve communication with other companies failed because of a really weak social and cultural attitude to cooperation between companies.
Another important aspect is that ICT-based solutions should be introduced gradually: sudden transformations risk to fail against unaware and unready business organizations.
A further fundamental element concerns adequate training and support. It is useful to stress that one of the main difficulty for SMEs in exploiting ICT potentials is the lack of awareness of the benefits to be derived coupled with little or no specific training on ICT (both at application and methodological levels). The smaller the enterprise, the greater this problem becomes, since most small companies are not using information technology for their activities (apart from specific accounting services, and little more). Consequently, several problems must be solved to make ICT simpler to use, reliable and well integrated in the enterprises activities.
The adoption of continuous training solutions can play an important role in increasing the awareness of the huge potentialities of ICT for concrete situations; in this way employees, managers, entrepreneurs, can acquire a learning culture, integrating the training in their work activities and understanding in depth the potentialities of communication and information tools. In our experience a key factor to success was that the provider and organizer of training was a consultancy company, which knew the informative/training/updating needs of the companies, so finding, organizing and proposing just enough learning, to be very motivating and well integrated with other activities.
To conclude, the proposed key-elements to bring ICT in a small company are based on the central idea that the introduction of ICT-based solutions should be coupled with continuous training on both technological aspects as well as on the socio-relational and cultural changes that must occur inside the company. The need for training on technological aspects is a direct consequence of the ICT skill shortage problem; training on the socio-relational and cultural aspects is extremely important to develop awareness of the social implications of the introduction of new tools and methods of work and to perform the necessary organizational changes.

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WHY "MEN WITHOUT WOMEN?"

Why do these men—more than one fourth of the males in the United States—choose to live alone? (It is not a matter of a woman shortage, since unmarried women outnumber unmarried men by 3,412,000.) Psychologists, sociologists and other authorities who have studied this phenomenon have reached these major conclusions about the American bachelor:1. If a man is still single when he reaches the age of 35, he will probably never marry.2. Although he may talk constantly of the desire to get married, there is a strong chance that he unconsciously rejects the idea. Most men who really want to get married find a wife by their late-20’s.3. In some cases, even though the desire is genuine, the bachelor may still be single as a result of the increasing mobility of our population. Uprooted by military service or his job, a young man may find it difficult to meet a prospective wife in a strange town or city.4. The single man’s interest in sex is often as intense as that of his married brother—and a revolution in sexual standards has made this less of a problem for the bachelor than it would have been in the early years of this century.5. Although many bachelors find their lives less carefree than pictured, a substantial number have worked out a pattern of existence that they find thoroughly satisfactory.Happy, well-adjusted bachelors are, however, a minority among America’s unmarried men. Most of them—whether single, widowed or divorced—spend a good portion of their leisure time in a search for a mate. But they conduct the hunt in a manner that is far different from that of the average marriage-minded female. A woman who is looking for a husband usually runs headlong toward her goal. The single man inches slowly in the general direction of marriage. What man has ever changed jobs because there were no eligible girls at his place of work? Yet hundreds of thousands of unwed girls quit their jobs each year with the frank statement to personnel directors: “All the men here are already married.”An unmarried man makes a trip to a ski resort to ski, and if he meets an attractive woman on a ski slope, he regards that as an unexpected bonus. He attends a party—or turns down the invitation—after deciding whether or not he will have a good time, and considers the possibility of meeting a girl he wants to marry as incidental. And if a man attends church regularly, this is usually the result of family tradition or personal conviction—not because he knows that many men have met the women who became their wives at church or church socials.In this, single men differ dramatically from unmarried women. Women without men head for ski resorts, parties—and often church—with one primary objective: to meet eligible men. . . .Even in the 1960’s, an unmarried man has one special advantage over a single woman. He has no hesitation about sallying forth from his lonely room to a neighborhood bar for a few sociable drinks, or to seek other entertainment, without worrying about the comments of his family or friends. Even strangers assume that a man who goes to a movie or a prize fight alone does so through choice. They do not make this assumption about women.THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACHSometimes, in desperation, the lonely man will put a notice in the “personal” columns of newspapers. Mixed in with the frankly erotic notices in such columns are a vast number of apparently sincere marital offers: “Lonely—I am a widower, I need a widow. I’m in the best of health, 57, 140, no dependents. I have steady job and like my work. Am a Jersey man, American, Catholic, not rich, but happy, white.” Or: “Marriage only—Lonely bachelor, 26, college educated, good-looking, wishes to hear from well-educated young lady. Child accepted. Snapshot.” Or: “Master sergeant, gentleman, has retired and needs gal to help civilian him. He’s fat, 50, widower, now in Massachusetts.”Some unmarried men long for a scientific approach to mate selection. A man in Missouri writes: “Having been indoctrinated in college with the ideal of the scientific method of solving problems, I found that method was applicable in almost every area of life, except in choosing a wife. Why isn’t there some centralized social agency that could at least place men in correspondence with women of reasonably comparable backgrounds? Why isn’t there such an agency for fulfilling this obvious need in our society? . . . ”Three years ago, just such an agency was started. Named the Scientific Marriage Foundation, it has headquarters in the Hopkins Building, Mellott, Ind. Originated by Dr. George W. Crane, a consulting psychologist who also writes a syndicated column, The Worry Clinic, it has as advisers such religious leaders as the Rev. Norman Vincent Peale, Rabbi George Fox and Methodist Bishop Gerald Kennedy. Thus far, it has arranged for over 5,000 marriages.Applicants fill out forms, supply character references and attach a photograph. Then they visit a local foundation counselor (usually a minister), who records his own impression of the would-be bride or groom. All of this material is forwarded to the foundation headquarters in Indiana, where the initial “mating” of couples is done by means of an IBM sorting machine. Thus men and women are paired off as to age, race, religion, education and so on. Nearly all of Dr. Crane’s customers have been between the ages of 30 and 60.The increasing mobility of millions of men and women has made such an agency especially desirable. Ours has become a country of the rootless. A young man who does not marry during the years when the opportunity for a “spontaneous” meeting with a girl at school or at work is greatest often moves on to other cities—away from the familiar surroundings in which he grew up. Hunting for a wife then becomes a much more complex problem. . . .The increasing number of businesses with widely scattered offices and factories is another factor. Over 3,500,000 men moved in a single recent year to other places of work. The unattached men must start from scratch to meet girls in the new setting. Altogether, some 35 million Americans change their places of residence yearly, as a matter of course. It is small wonder that the unattached male is at a loss how to put down roots in new territory. More than one husband has confided: “If I hadn’t married during my school days, I’d never have had the chance. How could I find time now to court a woman? And how would I meet one to court?”While searching for wives, what do unattached men do about sex? Apparently, they do what they can.In his pursuit of sex, the single American male has been aided by the revolution in the sexual behavior of American women—who, in tremendous numbers, suddenly lost their reluctance to indulge in premarital relations. Why did they do so?The late Dr. Alfred Kinsey told a 1955 conference sponsored by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America that the changing sex code was “the chief product of the concerted attack on prostitution.” As prostitution disappeared, men began successfully persuading women to enjoy sexual relations with them outside of marriage. The widespread use of contraceptives reduced the fear of having unwanted babies, and new drugs provided some reassurance against the danger of venereal disease. . . .Many men complain that they search in vain for a woman who lives up to their exacting specifications. Says a 53-year-old Catholic bachelor from a large Eastern city, “I’d have to have a wife who was a Catholic too. She’d have to be acceptable to my family as well as to myself. Because I’m short, I’d want her to be short. I’d want her to be as good-looking as my sister, who’s a real beauty. She ought to be a logical thinker, and she should be pleasant to be in bed with. Also, I’d like someone to have five children in three years; that would mean a couple of sets of twins, but, after all, I’m not a spring chicken any more. Oh, yes, and she should be distinguished-looking rather than pretty—so she’d still be handsome at the age of 80.”A far younger Protestant in Nevada sets up similar specifications: “I would like someone who has looks, a high IQ, money in the family, is Protestant, tall and slim, likes the out-of-doors, can cook, would be willing to live in a small community. To complicate things further, she should have the right blood type, be in the age group 25–35, have an even temperament, not smoke, drink or swear, care about her make-up and not have a history of inherited disease. . . .”Psychologists agree that such a long list of requirements would condemn the writer to a lifetime alone. They explain that, while men who draw up such specifications may sincerely believe they want a wife, they have unconsciously created a barrier against marrying any real woman.Some of these men recognize their problem. From 50,000 to 75,000 men get psychiatric help each year. This group includes a portion of the substantial number of unmarried men who are suffering from emotional disturbances and distorted conceptions carried over from childhood.Psychologists say that men having the most common difficulties fall into four groups:A large number of those who reject marriage are fixated on a mother figure. These men live at home with their mothers until the death of the parent “releases” them—and then find it difficult to carve out a different kind of life.A second—and familiar—type is the man who is not so much antiwoman as antiresponsibility. Panicked at the thought of heading a household, he spends a lifetime evading marriage while believing he is seeking it.Some of the unmarried men in this category carry heavy psychological burdens. Raised with admonitions to “be a man—be independent,” some adult males become confused over the conflict between their determination to be truly self-reliant and the need to lean on a woman for love and comfort. . . .A third troubled group consists of latent homosexuals. These fall into two classes—the “neuter” who practices no sexual activity of any kind, who is often found working in boys‘ schools and boys’ organizations, and the Don Juan, who is so threatened by his fears of his unacknowledged homosexuality that he engages in affairs with women to prove his masculinity.The fourth group consists of the nation’s confirmed homosexuals. A recent estimate fixed their number at five per cent of our total population. They have always tended to gravitate to large cities—a tendency accelerated by World War II. Today, an estimated 100,000 male homosexual prostitutes live in New York City. Yet Dr. George W. Henry, who has done special psychiatric research with sex variants for the past two decades and who has written several medical volumes on the subject, maintains that the number of American homosexuals has not increased in the past 25 years.“I think the subject has simply become more fashionable to talk about and to write about,” he says. “What is more, I believe that male homosexuals get far more publicity than female ones, simply because they are not permitted to do in public what women can do without criticism. Women can kiss each other in public, hold hands, register in hotels, even wear male clothing—but if men wear female clothing, they’re arrested.”While emotional problems are common among single men, a number of unwed men adjust completely to life without women and find a thoroughly satisfying existence alone. Some of these seem to have found fulfillment in their working life exclusively. Examples can be found in every field. Other men find a sense of completion by rounding out their business lives with an engrossing hobby, often in the sports field. . . .However well he may adjust to his lonely life, the single man suffers disabilities that seem to be traceable directly to his bachelorhood. Unwed men are much less healthy than their married brothers. Metropolitan Life Insurance Company studies show that more than four times as many unattached men as married men (ages 20–74) die of tuberculosis. At ages 20–44, five to six times as many unmarried men as husbands die of influenza and pneumonia. Prior to mid-life, nine divorced men are victims of cirrhosis of the liver to each married man killed by that disease.Of all the men without women, the divorced are in the worst physical condition, these studies indicate. Widowers rank second in physical suffering, and bachelors, third.Away from the sickbed, the lives of the unwed are still hazardous. Widowers and divorced men (20–44) are four times as likely to be killed in automobile accidents as husbands. Five divorced men commit suicide to each married man. In homicide, the picture is even blacker. Out of every 100,000 men (20–74) in this country, 24 divorced men are murdered, as are 17 widowers and eight bachelors—while only four married men die at the hands of a killer.Two Yale researchers wrote: “Of all interpersonal relationships in our society, marriage is at the same time the most rewarding and the most demanding.” Unmarried men who believe that should be encouraged by the one point almost all authorities agree on: If you really want to get married, it is never too late.

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NATURE'S GUIDE FOR MENTORS

Abstract
Having a good mentor early in your career can mean the difference between success and failure in any field. Adrian Lee, Carina Dennis and Philip Campbell look at what makes a good mentor.
The Nature awards for creative mentoring in science were created on the premise that the mentorship of young researchers — although fully deserving of recognition — is perhaps the least remarked on of all the activities that take place in the lab. Indeed, there is no established definition of what constitutes good scientific mentoring. This article attempts to remedy that situation, drawing on the evidence from competitions for Nature's awards. These are held on a national or regional basis, with the most recent taking place last year, when the focus was on Australasia. Previous competitions have been held in the United Kingdom, and the next competition will be in South Africa (see
http://www.nature.com/nature/mentoringawards/southafrica/index.html).
The response to the competition in Australasia was remarkable, with more than 70 groups of 'mentees' submitting their achievements and the reasons why they believed their mentor excelled, with each of the nominated mentors giving a personal view of how they approach mentoring. The quality of applications was outstanding and the panel, all experienced in refereeing papers and grant applications, commented that this was one of the hardest evaluative tasks they had ever undertaken. However, there could be only two winners and they have been lauded elsewhere.
BELLE MELLOR
Having been involved in judging the awards — whether in Australia or in the United Kingdom — we realized that within the pages of the applications was an immense resource that could provide a basis for reflection on what comprises good mentoring. These reflections are presented here, with examples of just a few of the hundreds of quotable quotes included in the nominations supporting the mentors. The attributes that we highlight represent a distillation of the opinion of more than 350 scientists writing as nominated mentor or their nominating mentees (and it was the latter whose comments were all-important for the judges).
We hope that this material will be especially useful to younger scientists as they start out on their careers as mentors — be it PhD supervisor or scientific team leader. But others stand to benefit from it too. Indeed, we challenge readers who are established leaders of groups and supervisors of young scientists to look at the evidence of what comprises good mentoring, reflect on your practices and determine whether there are lessons here that could see you alter your approach. Such changes could be to the ultimate benefit of those under your charge and, given the lasting and broad influence of good mentors highlighted by the competition, to science as a whole.
All the quotes included here were taken word-for-word from the applications, either from proposing mentees or the mentors themselves. For obvious reasons they have been depersonalized and are unattributed.
A mentor for life
"M, without any doubt, sees all his interactions with people as lifelong. He always keeps in touch with ex-students, postdocs and so on after they have moved on. Even if he is not directly helping them, he keeps himself aware of their activities and at times informs them of things he believes would be of interest or useful, to them. He genuinely treats his ex-students and postdocs as part of an extended family."
Many of the proposing mentees started out as students of the mentors but later became well-supported colleagues. But a distinctive feature of a great mentor as opposed to a great supervisor seemed to be a special focus on helping to build the mentee's career. A natural consequence of the care and effort the mentors put into supporting the careers of their students/staff was that the majority of them became mentors for life: their advice continued to be valued, friendships grew and the links were maintained.
"For me there is a difference between a supervisor and a mentor. With the latter you find that you are not simply a student with a research project, but a student with a career in front that the mentor helps you start."
Personal characteristics
Enthusiasm
"First and foremost, M is incredibly passionate about science. She eats, sleeps and breathes science. Her enthusiasm is absolutely infectious, and it creates a wonderful atmosphere in her laboratory."
"It is the nature of supervision that you have to explain/teach some key concept time after time as each new student arrives. Each time I had to make it feel to the student postdoc that it was the first time I had ever explained the concept; each time I had to tell it with sparkle to help inspire them to seek to know more. At times it was hard to stay 'inspirational'; but to fail would have meant to me that I should quit as a supervisor. You need to understand, as an old and wise friend once said to me, 'Remember, they stay the same age, you get older!'"
Passion, enthusiasm and positivity were words dominating the majority of the mentee reports. Whether these are traits we can cultivate or create is debatable. The lesson seems to be that it is very important to be as enthusiastic about your students' research as you are about your own. If you are not, then the question becomes: is the student working on the correct project? If you are not passionate about their project, how can you properly support them? This should also be a lesson to administrators, who may sometimes allocate students to projects and supervisors for expediency rather than a genuine concern for the student or indeed the staff member.
Sensitivity
"When things go wrong, it is important to find out why things happened the way they did. There could be personal factors (sickness, relationship break-ups) that contribute to unhappy decisions or results. Although I may not be able to provide the solution to personal problems, I can provide a sympathetic ear as well as advice or direction to support services."
This quote speaks for itself but there were a number of examples in which mentors were very sensitive to their charge's circumstances and showed compassion and understanding. When a student or colleague exhibits unusual behaviour or lack of progress there will be a reason. Mentors need to listen, hear and support. Also, many mentors were sensitive to mentees' needs that were not strictly professional, such as finding the right balance between work and family responsibilities; coping with cultural transitions after a move from a different part of the world; developing confidence in a culture that may not be welcoming; or opposing ethnic or gender bias if it arises.
"M also knows that it is important to have a work–life balance. He's made it easy for a postdoc with young children to return to the lab part time. It's encouraging as a young scientist to see that there are lab heads who are supportive of people being able to spend time with their family but still have a chance to develop their careers."
Appreciating individual differences
"Again it is important to cater for personal traits. Some of my student colleagues need to dot every i and cross every t as they design a set of critical experiments that we have all agreed are important. Others, with, I suspect, an equal success rate, need to jump in, risk making a mess of a few highly critical experiments but gain an instant understanding of either what not or what to try. Allowing both approaches is sometimes difficult, but necessary."
B. MELLOR
We are all different in how we work and in what motivates us. The mentees were clearly very appreciative of an ability to carefully craft development activities to enhance and extend personal strengths. Special effort is needed to try to understand all those in a team and deal with them differently. And however much you want that student/colleague to work on that project, sometimes you have to help them make decisions about their career directions.
"Not everybody wants to be a leading researcher and some have skills that make them better suited to other occupations. There is little point in encouraging young people to take on a career to which they may be unsuited or that they will find stressful or uninteresting. So I believe it is necessary sometimes to encourage them into other directions."
Respect
"She treats her colleagues, regardless of whether they are doing a PhD or if they are a fellow professor, with the same high regard. In doing so, M inspires confidence in her collaborators."
It is sadly true that laboratories exist where the PhD students are seen as extra pairs of hands rather than genuine collaborators. Although the supervisors may well be successful and grants be funded courtesy of those extra hands, they will never have the satisfaction of working in the stimulating environments described in all of the applications for the mentor awards and will never truly be respected themselves.
Unselfishness
"His magnanimity in sharing his own ideas and delight in seeing others succeed has also been an inspiration, not just for myself but for a whole generation of younger scientists."
"Most importantly, M has no intellectual jealousy. She was always happy to see others succeed, pushing them forward into the limelight while standing back in the shadows herself."
There are leaders of some big and important groups who are more concerned with using group members to promote their own scientific standing. Letting your students/colleagues take your ideas and run with them, and being free and willing for them to take credit is not always easy but is always appreciated. What do you lose by allowing them to be lead authors even if the idea was yours?
"His lack of defensiveness was very important to me. On several occasions I've published papers that were critical of some aspect of his work — and he helped me to articulate the issues and supported me in getting them published."
"I believe that it is too easy for mentors to create grand (manipulative) plans for their younger colleagues. I believe it is important for mentors to suppress the desire to paint the grand picture, instead it is imperative that they learn to understand their colleagues and how to assist them to fulfil their dreams."
"It was not uncommon to hear that she had lobbied for an opportunity for a postdoc to speak at a conference rather than doing so herself because she recognized the value of becoming known, especially given our distance from North America and Europe."
Support for other than one's own
"M is just as diligent in fostering careers of people who he thinks can advance science as he is at fostering his own students. This action is consistent with a motive that goes beyond mere ego and represents service to the advancement of science."
The impact of a good mentor goes far beyond his or her own boundaries. Within the applications were many examples of support outside the mentor's group. Indeed a number of the mentee support documents were from those who had never actually been in the mentor's laboratory but whose lives had nevertheless been touched.
Teaching and communication
"M's enthusiasm was infectious for many undergraduate students, and I have no doubt in saying that her delivery of the subject matter was instrumental in fuelling my interest in X as a subject."
The tension between research and teaching remains at all universities. Success in both is not mutually exclusive and it was striking, but not surprising, that many of the exemplary mentors were exemplary teachers. Many of the mentees who themselves have gone on to very successful careers and have international reputations in science would not have gone down that pathway if they had not been exposed to their future mentor as a teacher.
Those who work in university administration need to remember the benefit of exposing undergraduate students to top scientists to increase the number of graduate students. Up-and-coming young scientists should put effort into their teaching in order to inspire and interest their future mentees. Good mentors encourage their students to teach as soon as they start their PhD, not only to supplement their income but, more importantly, to develop skills that will benefit them in the long term.
Also, many of the great mentors were great communicators, not only of science itself but also of enthusiasm for it to diverse audiences such as schools or local societies. This is not a universal talent and can even be damaging to all concerned if done badly. The good mentors appreciated that such activities can be very valuable training for the communicator and encouraged their students and younger colleagues to develop these skills.
"I first encountered M as a year-11 high-school student in a small country town. The Royal Australian Chemical Institute had commissioned M to travel to regional Victoria and put on a 'chemistry show'. I remember the explosions, the foam tower spilling its contents over the stage, and M pretending that he hadn't noticed the chemical mayhem around him. And I remember that it was about this time that I became interested in chemistry."
"Students need experience talking about their research in many different forums. Conference attendance is crucial so that they have the opportunity to discuss with other researchers and to develop new ideas. But it is equally important that students have the opportunity to discuss their work in lay terms, whether it is being presented to parents, teachers, or to doctors and nurses as S has done."
Tips for mentors
Throughout the mentees' reports and the mentors' reflections on their mentoring styles were descriptions of activities used by the mentors that contributed to their success. A number of these tips are reproduced here for those readers embarking on a scientific career — or those in full flight — in order to stimulate thinking about mentoring. There is no magic formula; these are simply examples of what the mentees thought worked for them.

Availability: the open door
"First, her door is always open, even now in her retirement she can never say 'come back later'. I now greatly admire this skill for I find myself struggling with administration and feeling guilty in making appointments to see students. M always put scientific discussion first."
"I cannot remember him ever cancelling an appointment with me despite the tremendous demands on his time (he was head of department for some of the time that I was his student)."
"M was always accessible, and she always made it abundantly clear to her students that she would rather talk about science with them than do just about anything else."
B. MELLOR
If there was one theme that came through all the reports it was this one. Availability is the standout quality appreciated by the mentees. Despite enormous workloads and responsibilities, the mentor was always there and the door was always open. They never failed to respond to an urgent request immediately. Mentees marvelled at e-mails answered in 20 minutes, responses made to drafts in two days and the willingness to listen to their problems.
The regular meeting is clearly an important strategy that some mentors use as well as having an open door. The most impressive was the mentor who set aside a whole day to meet each group member individually for half an hour. The day included a journal-club meeting for all, followed by a research discussion over drinks at the end of the day. An advantage of having a routine that all knew was that it made it easier for students to plan their work and for the mentor to avoid committee meetings on that day. Morning or afternoon coffee breaks are also great daily opportunities for discussion. In these meetings, good mentors encouraged troubleshooting unsuccessful experiments rather than discarding them as a result of incompetence. Indeed there was a common theme that analysis of failure was as important as success.
Inspiration, optimism
"Going to M's office with your head down, armed with a plot or calculation showing that the project seemed to be going nowhere, you will leave believing that you've solved the mysteries of the Universe."
"On many occasions I remember walking into her office convinced that I had been wasting my time, and then ten minutes later walking out with a smile and the sure knowledge that what was a bad result was indeed just what I needed!"
The 'walk into the office dispirited/a failure/ miserable and yet walk out inspired and optimistic' phenomenon is a special feature of interaction with the great mentors. There were many comments similar to those above. Attributes that allowed the mentor to cause these almost spiritual experiences included: a broad vision of how science works, a big-picture view and a conviction that unexpected results are often the most interesting and point towards novel insight.
Balancing direction and self-direction
"M displays the right balance of direction in a project and letting someone discover and develop insights for themselves. Supervisors who micromanage their students or have very specific ideas of how the science in a lab should be done can stifle the student."
"The scientific acumen to, on the one hand, encourage promising ideas and, on the other, recognize a 'dead end' is one of M's great mentoring skills."
Given the large number of comments on getting the balance right, this is a major component of good mentoring. Just how much guidance to give can be a challenge. There were many negative comments about those who have been seen to micromanage. Yet there was also criticism of those who let students run free and learn by their mistakes.
The skill lies in giving young researchers the freedom to expand on their ideas but gently reining them in when they are off track. There were no clear clues as to how to develop this skill. Possibly awareness of how you do it could encourage you to change. Where do you place yourself on the direction–self-direction scale?
"His advice was almost always given in the form of suggestions, so that we were able to digest them and form our own judgment about their worth. With hindsight I recognize this as a deliberate strategy designed to encourage independence of thought and critical thinking. As a PhD student, M made me feel like his collaborator. This is probably the greatest single lesson I have tried to take from M and apply to my own research group, to encourage and prompt students to follow their own ideas and judgement, and to provide an environment where this is possible."
A special challenge is, even if you are prepared to encourage independence, what can you do that nurtures research creativity?
"When I conducted an experiment using two different sources of the one tissue that was never in the research programme, M, instead of saying 'No, stick to the programme', asked me why I thought that was a good experiment to do and then complimented me for thinking laterally about the programme."
"If and when your ideas did not come to fruition there was no criticism, only encouragement to learn from the mistakes made, if any, and encouragement to develop other avenues of scientific attack. This 'judgement'-free environ allowed one to attempt to implement challenging techniques, knowing that there was no 'skin off one's nose' for trying."
The art of questioning and listening
"There is always another question to ask. The questions seem innocuous but nothing is as it seems to be; there are more insights to be gained by probing away. M also never imposes her will, but she persistently keeps the questions flowing to help the answer come along."
One of the strategies used in developmental workshops to help young academics become better small-group teachers is to practise answering students' questions with a question, in order to lead them towards both an answer and a better understanding of what they are learning. It is always easier to give the answer. The same is true when you start to mentor your PhD students and younger colleagues.
"Rather than directly providing me with interesting ideas, he is able to ask the right questions to allow me to come up with my own theories and ideas."
This is a skill and it can be practised even though it is time-consuming. It is a skill highly valued by the mentees, as was the equally important skill of active listening.
"The major aspects of practice and personality are her ability to listen patiently, even when she knows better, and to point the mentored person to a more complete understanding of the issues implicit in a particular problem. This she does with deceptively simple questions that frequently do not elicit an immediate response, but ultimately allow a more rational interpretation of all the facts."
Being widely read and widely receptive
"As a new assistant professor with my own young graduate students, I can appreciate the subtle ways in which M fostered good habits of constantly surveying the literature and exploring research outside the immediate bounds of my own interests. I hope that I can guide my students in a similar, low-key way that M encouraged in me."
"Often, M would leave the latest, hottest paper on my desk, with an enthusiastic note attached that not only conveyed his own excitement about the field, but also piqued my interest."
B. MELLOR
An enabler of good science is keeping abreast of the literature. A defining characteristic of many of the great mentors was wide reading outside their field. Mentees appreciated sharing in this reading, and also the deliberate strategy of using key papers as a base for discussion either at group or individual meetings or by the casual dropping of reprints as described above. Again, time-consuming but valued.
"For a rigorous scientist of international acclaim, I found her to be very open-minded, and she encouraged my exploration of different avenues of research, even when these fell outside her direct expertise (if need be, M was very willing to study new areas of enquiry in order to provide appropriate intellectual support)."
Most researchers have a pet hypothesis and an individual approach to their particular area of science. Sometimes that dogma and limitations in breadth may be exposed and challenged by students or colleagues. As a result, you need to be open to ideas and solutions from all other disciplines. You need to be ready to accept that you might be wrong, to acknowledge and study new directions you have never considered, and to congratulate your mentees for taking you down that pathway.
The initial project
"Ensure that all students have projects with at least some guaranteed biologically relevant results. Risky work (such as making a knockout mouse) should be balanced with other work that will ensure some results."
This is related to getting the balance right, but a number of comments highlighted the fact that, in the beginning, students do not have the experience to make a decision on the first project. One mentee drew attention to the fact that, at the start of a PhD, it is the supervisor who has the knowledge, but as the PhD draws to a close, it is the student who has the knowledge and who becomes the teacher. Those readers who are on graduate-student committees will probably have seen instances in which the initial project was a key question to be asked in the supervisor's research programme, but was simply too hard to be the basis of a starting-out project. Many mentees identified being given the right kind of project as a key factor in their ultimate success.
Life after science
"M has always encouraged me not to forget to smell the roses. I will always remember him telling me as a first-year PhD student that I needed to take up other activities besides science. My life has been a lot more fun because of his advice."
This was not a widespread observation but was clearly a positive feature to those who received this advice.
Celebration
"The first time a person comes up with a novel idea or experiment of their own. This should be an occasion for public recognition within the lab as it is a milestone of great significance for most young scientists."
The importance of celebration and rewarding successes, large and small, is often neglected. Yet it can be highly encouraging to individuals and can contribute to the building of communities. It is a strategy that all mentors can introduce, although the extent of the celebration will vary depending on personalities and level of extroversion.
The guiding principle is that celebration, however large or small, is a powerful motivator. The range of celebrations mentioned in the awards nominations is worth listing here as a challenge to your imagination: off-campus lunches, the weighing of the PhD thesis on submission, cakes at morning or afternoon tea, barbecues at the mentor's home or cocktail parties on graduation.
Building communities
A constant theme from the groups supporting their mentor was the sense of community. The successful mentors realized the need to build communities to create an environment where all under their care could flourish. They all had deliberate and varied strategies to build these communities. How often have you experienced the negative impact of silo-building within departments? Positive and sustaining communities do not just happen, they have to be nurtured.
Of scientists
"M takes an inordinate amount of trouble to involve all the people around her in all aspects of the life of the lab, such as seminars, research-planning meetings and informal meetings with outside visitors. All these make you feel a valued member of the research team from the outset."
Regular meetings have been commented on before. They include: whole-group planning meetings; meetings with external visitors; subgroup meetings with a specific task to report to the whole group; group-writing tasks; assigning a new junior staff member or student to a senior staff member or student mentor.
Especially important meetings were 'journal clubs', which many team leaders set up but often do not sustain.
"The journal club helps to make sure all of us read something other than immediately relevant research, at least once a week. The menu wanders around, sometimes classic papers, sometimes high-impact pieces in Nature or Science, sometimes chapters from a popular-science book, sometimes philosophy or psychology of science. Over time we have evolved the practice of going round the table first with each participant speaking for 3 minutes. There are always some people who have intelligent comments, but would never put them forward if it were left to them to find the right time to speak. The 3 minutes also restrains the talkative."
Of people
"The most useful single thing I've learned is that chocolate biscuits do more for everyone's good humour and enthusiasm than any amount of feel-good talk. The role of blood sugar should probably have been obvious to a biologist from the outset, but I only learned this by experience. Mind you, cheerful and encouraging conversations are good too, as are gin and tonic."
Again some mentors' disposition might not always lead to easy support and nurturing of a social group. But there is no doubt about how much such social activities were valued. Activities can be as simple as the chocolate biscuit or more adventurous, for example 'Shakespeare under the stars', wine tastings, ethnic dinners, dinner parties with visiting scientists, bird-watching days, video nights or celebration of every birthday at morning or afternoon tea. One group formed a jazz band, but commented that their gigs were not as favourably reviewed as their articles. One successful mentor noted that, having initially created the social events, he/she now left it to the group, with a resulting range of events that reflected their interests from canoeing to cake-baking to karaoke.
Skill development
"M has focused on equipping people with the skills to be fully functioning members of the scientific community, able to prepare grant applications, review manuscripts, speak at conferences and engage with scientific administrators in a constructive manner. Such a holistic approach to running a scientific group will ultimately bring enormous benefit to the group's alumni, giving them all the skills necessary to carve out their own niches in the academic world."
It is clear that successful mentors work hard at developing the scientific skills of their charges. Again this depends on deliberate strategies and activities rather than leaving the outcome to chance. Not surprisingly, the following three skills were the ones that were most often commented on.


Criticism
B. MELLOR
"Our regular meetings would often entail the discussion and evaluation of recent published works. This process provided a great insight into the method of critiquing and assisted in driving our work into new methodological areas to answer questions in a greater depth."
"The critical analysis of scientific publications is encouraged. No conclusions are taken at face value and fearless discussion of the analysis and interpretation of results takes place during our weekly laboratory meetings and, of course, in the preparation of papers."
Again this is where a journal club has been used to good effect — students regularly take turns dissecting one or two relevant current papers and their background, with input from other students and faculty members. The successful strategies highlighted involve requiring students or young colleagues to write reviews of journal articles, referees' reports and grant applications and then critiquing their efforts.
Instinctively you probably know the value of such activities, but do you always ask for individuals or groups of staff/students to have a go first? Or do you simply involve them in critiquing your writing or your grant application? The last approach is not the way that works.
"M does not only guide his students in their research, but ensures that they learn how to critically review the literature. He often challenges his students with an exercise of reviewing a paper. He then patiently remarks on their review."
As this quote illustrates, another way these activities benefit science is by preparing the mentees for their role as peer reviewers in the future. This is an activity often taken for granted. We believe that it shouldn't be. Peer review is all too easily done badly, and is also all too easily put aside under the pressure of other commitments.
It is essential that the motivation to review papers and grant applications is instilled in young scientists. It is equally essential that they be required to practice such activities, under the scrutiny of their mentor. Only then are they likely to learn how to provide a combination of specific and constructive advice about significance, technical strengths and weaknesses.
Writing
"Writing my first paper was a true experience. M asked me to write it, but the paper that was submitted had no resemblance to my initial written draft. Nevertheless, M went through my mistakes patiently and thoroughly, a writing experience from which I learned a great deal. This paper was accepted by Cell without any corrections, which is a very rare event."
Writing is such a critical part of being a scientist that its development must not be taken for granted. Among outstanding mentors, rapid turnaround over one to two days with clear feedback seemed the norm, as did resisting the temptation to do the rewrite for the student but, rather, assisting the mentees to rewrite several times. Also, it seems essential that this attention is paid to writing from the very beginning of a studentship. This requires deliberate action and task-setting by the mentor.
Oral presentation
"Although few students have a natural gift for giving a scientific talk, all can learn if given sufficient practice and advice. I always suggest that the student provides me with a run-through a week or two before a presentation, to allow sufficient time for revisions."
"I recall that one day M suggested that she and I should have a wager on who could ask the best question of the speakers at the chemistry seminars held weekly in the department. This meant you had to listen closely to the work being presented and to think about it, in order to come up with an insightful question. I recognized that what she really wanted to do was show the students how to get involved in a seminar and she used us as examples of how to engage with the topic presented. Her questions were always informal but probing. The audience, largely made up of postgraduate students in chemistry, of course loved this and soon got into the act."
B. MELLOR
The quotes speak for themselves, but all mentors saw it as their role to ensure that their charges had ample opportunity to speak at international forums, and all highlighted the need for practice and critique beforehand. An often-neglected skill is the art of questioning as described in the second quote about the practice of an experienced mentor.
Networking
All successful scientists have extensive networks spread across the globe. But do they all link their students into those networks as actively as they could? This was another of the standout attributes of the Nature finalists and, as commented on above, is one of the distinguishing features of a mentor over someone who is simply a good supervisor. Good mentors saw it as their responsibility to share their network.

Use their contacts and promote their students/young staff
"M always made a large effort to develop the scientific careers of his students. He would actively encourage his students to attend national and international conferences and at these conferences would make a significant effort to introduce his students to other researchers in their field. He would also make a great effort to make sure others were aware of his students' achievements and work. When it came time to leave his laboratory and develop links with others, M was a great source of contacts and ideas."
All the mentors made special efforts to ensure that their charges were exposed and introduced to visitors who came into a laboratory. And they encouraged collaboration by introducing their mentees to potential collaborators. This was never left to chance but was planned.
"Similarly another practice was to try to secure a few hours of time from visiting international scientists during which students would present their work. This practice has a number of benefits. First it provided good-quality feedback and a range of helpful suggestions on the direction of particular pieces of research. Second, and perhaps of particular importance to Australian trainees, this practice gave an insight into the way some of the world's outstanding researchers think and helped demystify the work of such researchers."
Departmental tradition often expects the visiting scientist to present his or her findings to the department. Good mentors ensure that the visitor also gets to hear of the work of their students and staff.
As support for those who have left the laboratory continues, the advice of one mentor rings very true:
"Write only honest references. One slanted recommendation will damage the prospects of all that follow, because the writer's credibility goes out of the window."
Send overseas
"With the wisdom of hindsight, I think the single most important thing I did as supervisor of PhD students was to send each one of them overseas at least once in their candidature."
Another recurring theme was gratitude from the mentees at the special efforts their mentors made to allow them to travel overseas to conferences and/or visit the laboratories of colleagues in their networks. Some unselfishly suggested that their protégés should go instead of themselves. Others, when overseas, ensured that they arranged exposure of the work of their charges to world experts. Hence:
"She would attend conferences with her students and at such events would always make a point both of introducing her students to the leaders in the field, and of actively encouraging anyone to whom she was talking to go and see the students' work. She was renowned for arriving at her students' or postdocs' posters with a bemused world-expert in tow and then encouraging the student to explain the poster, letting the student do the talking but with M adding encouraging and supportive comments from the sideline. This is another practice I have adopted from M."
Once aspiring young mentors appreciate just how important it is for all their students/staff to have opportunity to travel, it is important to negotiate financial support from the department or professional society or elsewhere. There are sources of funding available, and good mentors seek these out, just as they actively look around to find the best match of conference and/or laboratories for their mentees.
Advice on career decisions
"But perhaps the most important thing is his tireless attention to the needs and in particular the career development of the younger people around him. M always finds top placements for his students and postdocs."
Perhaps a defining feature of the Nature nominees was that the goal of networking was not simply linked to their own research progress, or to ensure that the PhD was successful, or that the work of the postdoc or research assistant moved their projects forward. Rather, there was evidence of extensive communication, discussion and negotiation behind the scenes to ensure that when the student or colleague left the group they could travel along a pathway that was most likely to set them on a successful career. All the supporting mentees had successful careers and in all cases their mentor had helped them with their career.
Conclusion
"Having a good mentor early in one's career can mean the difference between success and failure in any career."
"Those who are good mentors get incalculably more out of it than they put into it."
This article concludes as it starts, with reference to just how important mentoring is to those under your care. The second quote highlights the positive satisfaction of being a good mentor.
From the entries we have read, it is clear that there are second generations of mentors now out there who learnt from their own mentors how to provide superb support for the scientists under their charge. Many reading these pages will themselves have been privileged to have been mentored by those applying many of the strategies described. Indeed, in the pages of nominations that was the inspiration for this article, it was also clear that the proposing mentees had taken on board the behaviours of their mentor and were themselves well on the way to being the next generation of successful mentors.
Our purpose, based on the rich resource provided by both mentees and mentors, is to challenge you to reflect on how you are currently mentoring those under your charge. Is there anything you can learn? More importantly, can you improve what you do? What examples of exemplary mentoring activities do you use?
Equally important, for those young scientists newly embarked on a career in science or about to start building a research team: can you plan your approach to mentoring that team by including strategies, processes and behaviours described here that clearly work? If so, you will not only influence the next generation of scientists but also increase your own satisfaction by being in charge of a productive, enthusiastic, challenging and fun team.
As a stimulus to these reflections, we have drawn up a simple table (above) designed to aid your reflections. Whether you are setting out on a mentoring pathway or simply want to see how your mentoring strategies stand up, we encourage you to fill out the table. It asks for the provision of specific examples: we consider this to be the best way to stimulate reflection on your approach to scientific mentoring.
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