A public forum, “Sports, Society, and Development: Helping Children Field Their Dreams,” was held at the Fall Meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association on December 17, 1999. Howard Katz from the Committee on Sports and Psychoanalysis chaired the forum. He noted that thirty million children are involved in organized and other sports. Sports are playing a more powerful role in shaping images of success and failure, ambitions and dreams for these children.
Sports give children opportunities to expand their capacities for teamwork, discipline, achieving their goals, channeling their aggression, and appreciating the pleasures and benefits of physical activity. But there are dangers. What is the impact of abusive or win-at-all-costs coaches? What about the focus on stardom? What is the role of a distorted image of masculinity and femininity? What is the role of identification with sports heroes in child and adolescent development? What about drug abuse?
The first speaker was Carole Oglesby, a professor of sport psychology at Temple University. She spoke of her own family's interest and support in sports involvement. She asked, “Which sport?” There is a paradoxical nature to sport. On the one hand, sport can be manipulative, greedy, and objectifying. Athletes report the trauma of losing, humiliation, injury, letting down others, fights, retirement, and harassment. On the other hand, sport can be about peak experience, mastery, integrity, flow and awareness. Oglesby suggested three arguments to consider. Sport is a resting phenomenon in a fast world, an identity. Sport is too powerful to leave to chance; trained leadership and accountable systems need to be developed. Sport is a basic human right.
The second speaker was Robert Lipsyte, author and sports columnist for the New York Times. He spoke about the paradox of media reporting about sport. While the media try to “report the truth,” they actually send out mixed messages. Winning is promoted over enjoyment and personal tragedy. Coverage of women, children, and minorities is stereotyped. Women are supposed to sublimate, minorities should be grateful, and children are manipulated by their parents. For men, an “in your face” mentality is stressed.
The third speaker was Mariah Burton Nelson, a former basketball star and author. She spoke movingly of her own personal story of sexual harassment. She had been sexually abused by a trusted male coach when she was a young adolescent. He had taken advantage of her need for love and mentorship. It only ended when her family moved away. She didn't forget, but she didn't tell anyone either.
Photo by William D. Jeffrey
After twenty years, she called this coach under the rationale of a “research interview.” During this call, her rage surfaced. Eventually, she “outed” him. He began to write and call her. Over a long time, they began to talk and write, and they met twice. She ultimately forgave him and felt liberated. She suggested five keys to forgiveness. These are awareness, validation, compassion, humility, and self-forgiveness.
The fourth speaker was Michael Miletic, former Olympic athlete, now a psychoanalyst and consultant to professional sports. He told of a young man who suddenly found himself unable to make free throws. In psychotherapy, the patient revealed two sides to his personality: one that overcame every obstacle through will without any feeling, and another, “alien” side that he hated. The therapist asked the patient to free-associate as he imagines himself at the free throw line. He gradually became more aware of a “chilling aloneness” and a memory surfaced of a traumatic state. His idealized father had thrown him into water to force him to learn to swim, and he feared drowning.
Miletic stressed the need in working with athletes to promote more of an active and suggestive style of working. He then spoke of another type of dissociation that promotes optimal performance. This involves a selective mental preparation for an event, blocking out the surrounding world and settle into the flow of the game. This is a creative freeing of the mind where there is pleasure both in the movements themselves and in the connection with the rest of the team. The mind and the body feel as one.
In the discussion, Miletic was asked about the therapeutic result of the psychotherapy. He had extended his basketball-player patient's psychotherapy by attending his games and using his observations in the next sessions.
Is there a contradiction between maintaining an “edge” and personal growth? Nelson thought this was a myth. She pointed out that remembering that life is broader than sport makes a person a better athlete. Oglesby stressed that emotions displayed in the game often cannot translate into real life. It is important for the coaches to transmit values and morals.
What is the role of aggression in both men and women? Oglesby and Nelson said that the model of men's aggression may be different for women. Women often compete by challenging others to do their best and create a team identity. Women, in trying to be like men, become afraid of their aggression and then become inhibited. Men often compete by dis-identifying with their feminine side. Men are guilty of not showing emotion. Lipsyte spoke of men's need to degrade women and homosexuals to maintain their own identity.
Several of the panelists spoke of behaviors accepted in the game that often don't fit in the rest of life. A professional tennis coach from the floor thought that competition at the elite level is antisocial. Athletes expect special treatment and exceptions. Self-esteem is based solely on winning and losing.
This public forum represents the recent movement of psychoanalyst away from the couch and the consulting room into a greater interest and involvement in contemporary American public issues.
Robert S. White, M.D., is a member of the Western New England Psychoanalytic Society and an assistant professor of psychiatry at Yale University.