The Daily Campus

Issue date: 3/18/09 Section: Focus

Media Credit: Erin Odell Lauren Slater talks about her book at the Dodd Center Tuesday.

With credentials worth bragging about and an approachable air, Lauren Slater spoke to UConn students and staff in the Konover Auditorium last night, courtesy of the Creative Writing Program. With degrees in both English and psychology and six published books, Slater was a perfect choice for an author specializing in creative non-fiction. As she approached the podium, she announced to the audience that she had lost her original piece she intended to read, which would have been an excerpt from a work-in-progress about what it means to love animals. Instead, Slater opted to read a chapter from her book "Opening Skinner's Box."

Though her book received some harsh criticism from many university psychology departments, she chose to read from a chapter titled "Being Sane in Insane Places." Slater explained to the audience the context for the chapter: David Rosenhan's psychological experiment in the 1970s that hoped to debunk the validity of the guidelines in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), where subjects would claim the only symptom is hearing the word "thud."

In her reading, Slater recounted how she did the very same experiment, after many years and several revisions to the DSM, to see if the psychologists would admit her or admit defeat. Slater wove humor and hints of family life into her tale, which went over well and charmed the audience. As the conclusion of the chapter approached (which entailed Slater being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and depression), Slater expressed hope in a revision of the psychological world, where psychologists can admit that they do not know the answers to everything.

"There's a lot we don't know about psychology," Slater said in the character of the psychologist. "There's a lot we don't know about humanity," she added.

"She incorporated truth and honesty in witty, good humor," Samantha Buzzelli, a 6th semester English major, said. "She talked about psychology in an engaging, friendly way."

"I'm in an abnormal psychology class, and it was very interesting to see the difference and use of DSM being covered in my class," said Liz Hocking, a 6th-semester allied health major.

Prior to Slater's reading, winners of the Aetna Celebration of Creative Non-Fiction, Michael Schrage and Zara Rix, read pieces from their works. Schrage read an excerpt from "Memories Fade," a piece about his uncle who has a mental illness. Rix read from her story "Corporeality," which touched on the textual content of the human body and how friends bodies, though physically similar, can differ substantially.

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