Ch 3 & 4 of Opening Skinner's Box

In chapter 3, we find about the not so scientific study conducted by David Rosenhan on the psychiatric institutions of America.  The goal was to see if he and his friends could lie about being crazy to get into a mental institution, and then proceed to act normally to see how long it takes to get out.  Personally, I agree with Rosenhan's confederates; it would be fun to get into a psych ward for a while, but really, I don't have a whole month to devote to a silly game.  But the description of what transpired in the experiment is fairly limited, since Slater only has a chapter to write about it, and she still has to leave space for her needless musing.  

After talking to Spitzer, Slater decides to repeat Rosenhan's experiment herself.  Thats when we find out that she had been admitted to a psych ward for legitimate reasons already.

I knew she was crazy!

Everything I ever read by this woman is going to be biased because of the knowledge that she legitimately had psychological issues in the past.  Now I have give her credit for having the dedication to her book to actually retry the experiment.  Actually...the stuff she's doing sounds more like it would be a TV show.  On the history channel.  I'm also surprised that none of her psychiatric evaluators recognized that she was using the exact same circumstances as Rosenhan.  Though I thought it was funny that the majority of them diagnosed her with depression, which she was not at all intentionally conveying, though she did have it in the past.  That just proves that she is a little crazy...

The fourth chapter presents to us the utterly appalling case of the genovese murder.  Well, rape and murder.  Actually, this line struck me as odd: "[he was] unable to achieve an erection.  So he lay down on top of her and had an orgasm then".  Maybe they oversimplified that part, but I don't think that would happen.  I'm having an equally hard time believing that over the course of 30 minutes, this woman could be attacked 3 times and raped with absolutely no help coming from the people on the block who saw this event happening.  They couldn't even call the police?  This entire chapter just made me sort of hate people.  

One day, I was waiting at the bus stop at the trigon, speaking on the phone.  I hear a shuffling noise, and look across the street to see a person lying on the ground.  They continue to lie there for a few seconds, at which point, me and a few other people rush across to help this person.  It was an elderly Chinese woman, an employee for TAMU dining services.  It was very difficult to understand her, but we weren't sure if her communication issues had anything to do with a head injury, her potentially low blood sugar (she was holding an uneaten sack lunch) or the blistering Texas sun that we were all standing in.  Someone calls her an ambulance, while another person tries to communicate with her and wipe the blood off her face.  I reassembled her glasses, which had popped apart with my mini screwdriver.  The ambulance arrives, checks her vitals and takes her away.

This is why I have such a hard time believing that dozens of people wouldn't take the slightest steps to save a person's life.  In this chapter, I don't have much to say about Slater, because I'm too busy hating all those New York residents.  Although I still thought it was funny that she actually bought a gas mask in light of the anthrax attacks.