Gaudeamus

An article by Robert Brill, associate professor of psychology, has been published in the 2003 Human Resources Annual. Developed from a talk Bob gave in 1999 at an International Federation of Training and Development conference held at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland, the article is called “Future Areas Beckoning Partnerships Between Human Resource Professionals and Industrial/Organizational Psychologists.” It describes potential collaborations in employee selection, training, and motivation as driven by emerging business changes such as globalization, technology, and worker values.

Jim Tyler, an adjunct instructor of Latin at Moravian, was elected chairman of the Laura (Riding) Jackson Board of Literary Management at the board’s annual meeting December 29 in St. Augustine, Florida. He also has published an article on the Burgunder collection of George Bernard Shaw materials at Cornell University in Bibliographical Shaw, Vol. XX of Shaw: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies. And he showed several of the prints and poetry broadsides hand-set and hand-printed by his letterpress printing company, Larch Tree Press, in the fall alumni art exhibit at Moravian Academy.

A Death in the Family

Dorothy May Tyler, professor emerita of French and German at Moravian, died December 20 at the age of 92. She taught for 12 years at the College (1963-75), during which time she chaired the Foreign Language Department, was faculty representative to the Board of Trustees for a term, and won the Lindback Award for distinguished teaching.

She was the widow of George Tyler, professor of classics emeritus, who died in 1998 and in whose memory an award is given by the Division of Continuing and Graduate Studies at each commencement.

She is survived by two daughters and two sons, one of whom is Jim Tyler, adjunct instructor of Latin at Moravian. (See note above.)

Body and Soul

In the history of medicine, a few pre-Freudian cases continue to fascinate scholars of the field. One is that of Estelle, a French girl whose dissociative disorder was treated by Dr. Charles Humbert Antoine Despine in 1836-37.

Carole Brown, associate professor of English, and Joanne Dangelmajer, associate professor of French, are collaborating on a project about Estelle and Despine, and they presented papers at the 19th annual fall conference of the International Society for the Study of Dissociation, November 9 in Baltimore, which was devoted to recent scholarship on the Estelle case.

In response to Despine’s 1838 treatise De L’Emploi du magnetisme animal et des eaux minerales dans le traitement des maladies nerveuses, suivi d’une observation très curieuse de guérison de neuropathie, Joanne offered a paper, “C.H.A. Despine’s Magnetic Cure: Issues of Readership Yesterday and Today,” which explores issues that may have had an impact on what Despine chose to report and not report. It grew out of research in Paris and in departmental, municipal, and family archives in Haute-Savoie, France.

Carole’s paper, “Empathic Engagement: A Cautionary Tale of a Physician,” contrasts Despine’s respect for and orthogonal thinking about his patient Estelle, which supported her ability and resources to cure herself, with the analogous case of Elizabeth, a poor Irish maidservant who was treated by a Dr. Elliotson of London. The doctor antagonized Elizabeth, ruining the therapeutic bond with his subject and, afterward, creating a lifelong breach with his university and hospital.