"Yes, sir."
The student feels that he has been insulted, treated as a child. He has been unable to explain that his work simply doesn't mean anything to him. Obviously, the University means a good deal to the Administrator; after all, he has committed himself totally to it. He has too much invested to ask questions of basic value.
Professors exist at too great a distance to be approached; tutors are likely to be impatient with embarrassing confessions. They have too many problems of their own to want to be amateur psychoanalysts can do irreparable damage.
After a year or two, the student who has succumbed to his suicidal drives has established a pattern of avoiding his work. He may begin each term with a firm resolution to work and proceed to kill the semester reading irrelevant books, writing, painting, working on drama, playing the guitar, or just hanging around the Bick. A few days of agonizing cramming, and perhaps his grades are high enough to allow him to continue.
He can't attain all knowledge, so he satisfies himself with learning as little as he can, except in fields where he won't be tested. And he'll have no trouble finding an in-group which approves.
If the student visits a psychiatrist, it is likely that his troubles will be treated as symptoms of a deeper disease. By rejecting academic work, he is undergoing a symbolic rejection of his father, who has always wanted him to be a success. He is afraid to test his full power, for fear that he will fall short of the goals he has set for himself--to be the very best. The psychiatrist is probably right at least as often as he is wrong, but the answers he provides are not what the student wants to hear. He wants to be convinced that his work has religious value; it must be something personal, to which he can be committed with the same degree of passion with which he is committed to himself.
The experience of the suicide student is obviously not universal. There are some students for whom studying is never a problem. They have decided very early on a professional career and go about methodically achieving it; or they never challenge the authority of their parents; or they have a terrible fear of failure. Others manage their growing up while still succeeding academically, if necessary treating courses simply as an unpleasant job that must be done.
Harvard University has no adequate machinery for dealing with those who follow their thought to its conclusion in inaction. And it needs none. Some students will never be the mature citizens that Erik Erikson and the Commonwealth of Massachu-