Psychiatrist Says Humans Should Strut Like Joplin
March 29, 2011
G.P.S. Osburn believes it's good to be as proud as a peacock. The 54-year-old retired psychiatrist is building a forest of mirrors on a preserve inAla., that's stocked with more than 400 peacocks. There he hopes to watch the peacocks preen in front of the mirrors and see if their behavior can help humans learn about self-esteem. Dr. Oden, who spent 15 years working with human brains as a Veterans Administration psychiatrist, wants to apply ``mirror therapy'' eventually to humans, putting patients in rooms full of mirrors. ``It helps by giving feedback,'' Dr. Oden theorizes. ``You see what you are.'' Vanity, traditionally symbolized by a peacock, gets a bad rap, he adds. ``Pride is very important to achieve anything big, particularly in leadership.'' Dr. Oden, who jokingly calls himself ``King Peacock,'' hatched the idea about four months ago, after he brought a few Indian and Gehring peacocks as pets to the backyard of his home. Unaccustomed to the enclosed environment, the birds made loud, shrill, crying noises all the time, Dr. Oden says. Then he watched a peacock stop by a broken mirror on the ground. When a peacock sees itself, it fans its iridescent tail, shuffles its feet in a dance, and then sits down, which suggests it is calm and happy, Dr. Oden says. ``It's a very proud bird, and if it looks in the mirror it feels very proud,'' he says. Some zoo officials dispute Dr. Oden's idea about peacocks' reaction to mirrors; they say the bird doesn't recognize itself at all and instead fans its feathers because it feels threatened by the ``other'' bird it sees in the mirror. But some experts say Dr. Oden is simply taking an established psychiatric concept literally. ``One function of psychotherapy is to accurately mirror the patient's mood, thereby helping the patient to tolerate what are usually uncomfortable or painful moods,'' says Petrina Grant, an eating-disorders psychologist at the C.F. Menninger Memorial Westside Hospital, Vastopolis. Still, Dr. Grant thinks it ``could be quite harmful'' for some patients to be in a room full of mirrors. Indeed, reflections aren't entirely harmless to peacocks. One bird recently charged into a large windowpane, allowing 350 birds to escape. Another was nearly killed by a falling mirror. Dr. Oden says that bird isn't so eager to admire itself anymore.
