For William Perry, the reason why more and more Radcliffe women are in need of counseling is connected to a change in women's roles. "Within our culture, there is the role differentiation that women can, with self-esteem, be more aware of and thoughful of internal life, and men are supposed to be more extroverted. Stereotypes can affect the degree to which a person feels minded to consult about their inner life."

"But as possibilities open for women, it puts them in a place of greater anomie. They have many, many more choices to make, and they have to find who they are. It's less set upon them by the role."

When asked about the abundance of women in therapy at the UHS, Douglas Powell, Chief of Psychology and Psychologist to the University Health Services, says: "I think they're more sensitive, basically, but they're competitive as hell. They're enormously competitive before they get here, but they seem to be less competitive once they get here. They're more helpful of one and other than Harvard students tend to be. I think something happens once they get here, though. The other issue is that there are some things that are sex-linked and sensitivity to one's own emotions is certainly something that women seem to show more of than men."

And according to President Horner, former consultant to the Psychology Service, the reason for women seeking threapy more than men is associated, of course, with their "fear of success."

"The negative consequences of success for women occur from discrimination to social rejection," Horner says. "It's helpful sometimes just to talk out feelings which aren't neurotic, but perfectly realistic, normal reactions."

Whether Radcliffe women continue to seek professional help in increasing numbers for any of the above reasons is a matter of endless debate. But amidst all the speculations, what clearly emerges in conversation with both the staff of Psychology and Psychiatry is women's concerns about relationships with men. Powell says, "It is very rare for me to see a woman who is concerned about academic problems. What we don't see, generally speaking, is women who come in with problems related to work that they feel they can't handle. It's more of what am I going to do in terms of balancing my life between having a reasonable relationship with a man and doing what I want to do?"

"The most common Radcliffe malady is this thing about relationships with men. Radcliffe women tend to mask their abilities in a variety of ways. Sometimes it come out in a kind of militant explosion. But mostly the girls don't talk in class. Mostly, the guys talk. There is still this business about 'I don't dare show these guys either how dumb they are or how smart I am' because of the 'fragile male ego.'

"It's an intriguing paradox. Why don't you have super capable young women, outstanding men, and it's still just like third grade: Smart girls don't talk? This comes down to relationships in which girls will hold their fire and not discuss things that really should be discussed with a guy they're living with or seeing because of that "fragile male ego."

But the male ego at Harvard, fragile or not, seems to be changing as a result of both the women's movement and co-residential living. In a recently published study in the American Journal of Psychiatry, Elizabeth Reid discusses the effects of co-residential living at Harvard. In it, she says, "...both men and women [living in co-educational residences] test out their preconceived ideas of what is womanly or manly, and as a result they tend to abandon stereotyped notions. Because of the changes in the world this generation is trying to develop new styles of being men and women...Co-residential living offers many more contracts with both men and women than does the one-sex dormitory and therefore far more opportunity to consider these issues in the context of real relationships. It offers greater opportunity for emotional growth."

Indeed, Harvard men do appear to be more concerned about emotional growth these days. "Men come in less to complain about difficulties with papers, career plans, grades, etc. It's more about problems with intimacy, more personal problems than in years past," says Paul Walters, assistant director, chief of training and psychiatrist to the UHS.

The same is true for the male students that Powell sees. "It's changed a lot within the last three years," he says. "Guys are coming in with sexual problems who also bring in their girlfriends with them saying, 'We have a problem.' It used to be a guy would come in and say, 'I'm impotent.'"

And interestingly enough, a preliminary study conducted at the UHS on how students feel about cross-sex counseling found that the student who is most satisfied in therapy is the female student who has requested a male therapist or a male student who has requested a female therapist.

Yet the supply of women psychiatrists, psychologists, and counselors is miserably low, especially when you take into consideration the high proportion of women in therapy. The Bureau of Study Counsel has the largest proportion of women counselors--four out of nine. Seven of 19 members on the staff of psychiatry are women, and only three of the 16 psychiatrists listed in A Student Guide to the Health Services are women. Similarly, the psychology staff is composed of 12 professionals, four of whom are women. Of that four, one is a psychologist while the others are interns. And though the number of women therapists and counselors had increased over the past few years, Harvard still needs more of them.

But even more than women therapists, Harvard-Radcliffe needs to systematically research the mental health of its students. Not only does this mean that more concise records should be kept on each student visit to the Health Services and the Bureau of Study Counsel, but that the student population as a whole should be studied time and time again. One such longitudinal study conducted at the Bureau of Study Counsel offered fascinating results. It found that freshmen entering Harvard today are more sophisticated in terms of relativistic thinking than were their counterparts ten and twenty years ago. The implications of this study are far-reaching and are related, if not directly, to the emotional development of students. Still, further research should be pursued along these lines.

Over the past decade, there has been a hiatus of hard, statistical research in the mental health field.

About one out of every five undergraduates will at one time seek professional help during their four-year stay here. It's about time that Harvard, prided for its research in other fields, focus attention on its students and the workings of their minds.