In the history of Antarctic exploration, possibly the most celebrated and controversial topic is that of winter-induced insanity. From the beginning, wintering expeditions have sought to avoid the dreaded mental instability supposedly caused by the cold, harsh months without daylight. (Laplanders and Eskimos must have somehow evolved past the hazard -- or maybe the ones who go psycho are secretly locked in an igloo until the sun rises again.)
The possibility of winter psychosis is taken seriously by the US Antarctic Program. All the stations have strait-jackets in the medical supplies, usually located somewhere near the body bags. Applicants, whether for summer or winter positions, are grilled by interviewers about how they expect to cope with the lack of movie theaters, MacDonald's, and Simpsons re-runs. The final, most dramatic test occurs for the winter-over candidates: The Psychological Exam.
I approached the psych with a feeling of certain doom. I just knew that I would be exposed as the mentally-unbalanced, obsessive-compulsive, angst-ridden manic-depressive that I was sure I was. All of my mental closets would be opened and the neurotic skeletons would come tumbling out. I would be rejected, and that would be end of it; no chance at Antarctica. With great shame, I would return to my lowly job as a software engineer for a defense contractor (is defense something you can contract, like a disease?), and remain sullenly silent when my cubical buddies asked why I didn't go to the frozen continent after bragging about it so much.
This fear was compounded for an unusual set of reasons: The psych exam used to be conducted by the Navy in either Bethesda, Maryland or San Diego. This was almost considered to be a paid vacation by many applicants. At least, it was by those who were relaxed about the whole matter. The Navy had a reputation for being much more stringent with Antarctic service applicants, sometimes rejecting them for relatively minor reasons, psychological or not. The Navy was also responsible for performing background security checks on some defense contractors, and I had been subjected to many grueling Personal Security Questionnaires in which I was compelled to "tell all." The telling consisted of chronicling virtually every misdeed and mental lapse of my entire life, followed by an interview with an investigator, extensive reference checks, and a polygraph test to make sure I had told the truth. Never mind the fact that I had passed all of these tests, been given the necessary clearances and rubber-stamped as having the right amount of okie-dokieness. I was convinced that somewhere along the way an investigator had tagged my inches-thick dossier with a red label saying, "Watch this guy -- he's trouble." Although the Antarctic psychological examinations were now being conducted by a private evaluation firm, I had a nagging suspicion that this company was communicating with the Navy psychological examiners. They would casually peruse my old records, raising eyebrows at the awful atrocities contained within until finally rejecting me, astonished that I would even have the gall to apply. My winter-over employment would be denied before it ever started.
To make matters worse, shortly after college I had applied to the CIA -- the Central Intelligence Agency, not the infamous Culinary Institute of America. (How does one apply to the CIA, you ask? You call them up and ask for an application. They also advertise in your local newspaper.) I had no idea what I could do for them. Computer stuff, maybe. Whatever. It had the potential for some adventure, at least from a nerdy, computer-geek standpoint. I was flown to Reston for physical exams, technical skills testing, interviews with different branches of the agency, and a polygraph. The CIA does what's called a lifestyles polygraph, where, beyond the normal questions about whether you plan on committing espionage and being a traitorous bastard, they also ask you things like "Have you ever smoked dope while having sex with chickens?" Or something like that. I had to have the examiner explain several of the questions. The final part of the interview process included a day-long battery of psychological examinations. I left with the distinct feeling that I had blown it somewhere along the way, and when I wasn't hired it only confirmed my suspicions.
For a couple of years I told myself that maybe their budget had been cut, and that they really wanted to hire me but just couldn't. And then I finally got the up nerve to apply again. According to the CIA, applicant records aren't kept beyond two years. That meant I was free to start fresh, and this time I knew what was coming. Once more they were interested in me, and the interview process started all over again. At the initial interview I mentioned that I had applied before but hadn't been hired. Heck, either they would find out anyway or they had no record of my previous application. The interviewer said she'd look into it and tell me what was up.
Two days later I received a call from her. "This is very strange," she said. "They don't want you, but they won't tell me why." And that was that. Branded by the government as a Bad Person for life.
And now it was starting all over again.
The psychological exam for the US Antarctic Program starts with two multiple-choice tests, both several hundred questions long. To compile a statistical perspective on the test taker's mental outlook, the same questions are asked repeatedly but paraphrased slightly differently each time. For instance, one test concentrates on fairly fluffy true/false questions such as, 'I'd rather be a florist than a truck driver.' A few questions later, something like 'I prefer flowers to machines' may appear. The other test gets right to the point, with questions like: 'Sometimes I just feel like killing myself.' Presumably a test taker will reveal his or her latent wackoness after answering variations on the same questions so many times they start telling the truth just to break the monotony. The final result for each test is a computer-printed graph, showing where you fit (or don't) within several categories of mental neuroses. Statistically "normal" people are represented by the center line on each graph, and your mental state is identified by X's plotted in relation to that mean value. An X too far from the middle will cause little alarm bells to go off in the heads of the examiners who review the plots.
There was one other examinee in the room, Chris, and we hit it off immediately. He was applying to do a second year at the South Pole. A second year? By my own definition of insanity this was clearly a bad case of it, and he should have been rejected from the get-go. You'd think he would have learned his lesson the first time. Of course, by some standards just wanting to go to Antarctica for a year should be reason enough to declare you unfit for going. Yet here we were, being tested to see if we were mentally stable enough to do something only a mentally unstable person would want to do.
You're not supposed to discuss the tests while you are taking them, but some of the questions were so silly that each of us would spontaneously burst into laughter. We'd have conversations about situations where we had felt like going postal or walking off the edge of the world, as suggested by the questions. At one point Chris laughed at the question, 'Voices tell me to hurt people.' Yes, he said, yes they do. And they are the voices of his friends, saying he "shouldn't have to put up with the bullshit" perpetrated by another co-worker. With friends like that, who needs psychoses?
The second part of the examination consists of interviews with two psychologists. The conversations are casual, congenial, but probing. They ask how you feel about this and that, and how you think you'll do during the winter. If you show signs of doubt or deception the questions become deeper. It is not a psychoanalysis session, at least not in the traditional sense (Chris was disappointed that he didn't get "shrunk"). It is mostly just an opportunity for the examiners to evaluate your attitude and discuss any outstanding issues. They will also be looking at the results of the written tests, and may show you the computer print-outs. They are trying to judge whether you are mentally secure enough to winter-over in Antarctica, even though they have never wintered themselves. Until recently, in fact, none of the examiners had ever even been to the Antarctic.
Employees and scientists returning for another winter-over are still required to go through the psychological examination, although the interviewers acknowledge that the applicants usually have a good idea of what they are getting themselves into. Because returnees generally consider the psych exam to be a paid play day, unless there is something important to discuss the conversation often becomes more of a friendly chat session rather than a rigorous evaluation. During the Navy days, a new examinee was once asked, without any preliminary questions, "What makes you think you can survive a winter confined with a couple dozen other people?" His answer was that he used to work on submarines. Antarctic service is sometimes equated with being on a submarine, and this was exactly the kind of positive experience the examiners were looking for. The entire interview lasted only 30 seconds.
In Freudian psychological circles there is an emphasis on sex. If you've ever had a Rorschach test, your responses to the abstract ink blots are carefully scrutinized for either too much emphasis on sexuality ("Oh that one also looks like two naked people!") or too little, indicating sexual repression. So the ideal answers are generally non-sexual, but when shown a blot that has obvious sexual imagery you should be sure to mention it. I never thought I would ever see one of these tests, but at the first interview POP! there it was. Since I had studied the purpose and methods of Rorschach testing some years before, I already had pre-canned responses to the standard set of ink blots. That one looks like a fox. Two women dancing. A mask. I think the examiner sensed my nonchalance because he rapidly gave up on the test.
Years later, during another winter-over psych, the examiners were two women who questioned me in tandem, inquisition style. It was all very rote, no Rorschach tests here. Everything was going fine until I noticed that one of the psychologists was wearing a striking slit skirt, and had crossed her legs in an attractive and rather revealing way. Was this part of the test? It was very distracting, and tremendously more compelling than any ink blot. It took a moment, but I decided that it might be best if I concentrated on the matter at hand and not stare at her legs for the remainder of the interview.
My test results were normal. So much for the accuracy of psychological exams, I thought. The interviews were brief, to the point, and relatively painless, aside from any indecision about where to focus my attention. Just before they started I had decided that I trusted myself more than anyone else to know whether or not I was mentally prepared for the experience. I didn't volunteer my own opinions of my mental state. At the same time, I knew that I would survive the winter just fine. Their approval was simply a formality. If forced to choose between the harsh rigors of an Antarctic winter or returning to the same dead-end job I had been working at for the past ten years, the greatest mental trauma would be not going to the Ice.
The examination processes is, generally speaking, a good thing. It has eliminated many of the alcoholics and obviously unstable participants from the program. A few still leak in through the cracks -- the process is not perfect, and never will be. But, in the opinion of some old-timers, many of the worst trouble-makers have been weeded out.
There will always be people who, although normal enough to qualify, still fall off the mental rocking-horse somewhere in the middle of the winter or even in mid-summer. In one instance, a South Pole researcher decided to follow in Sir Robert Falcon Scott's footsteps and ski the 800 miles back to McMurdo with nothing more than the 200 pounds of chocolate that he had secretly stashed. The search and rescue team found him a short distance from South Pole Station, towing his chocolate on a sled. They persuaded him to wait for the next flight back to Mactown, which was probably better than letting him die of acne somewhere out on the ice plateau. The chocolate was salvaged by one of the crew and quietly distributed to an unsupported, hungry-looking Belgian expedition that arrived on skis later that summer.
Occasionally there are personnel who spend their winters heavily doped on anti-depressants, although the station doctors are naturally reluctant to discuss the subject. But based on the stories circulated plus my own observations, the worst psychological problems develop over broken love affairs (but that is a subject for another time).
The long winter months of cold, darkness, miserable weather and crowded conditions may cause some depression and make tempers short, but it's no worse than, say, enduring a winter in Seattle. And Antarctic winter-overs have the advantage of knowing that when the winter is over, they will see the sun again.