During my days as a psychology major at Penn State in the '70s, I got a job with the
psychology department working on a snake phobia experiment. I was to pretest the subjects
to tell how close they could get to a little garden snake in an aquarium in the next room
(I called him Sam, the snake). At the beginning, most were so scared they couldn't even go
into the room. After they received 6 weeks of phobia therapy, many were much braver, and
they would hesitantly approach the snake, open the lid, put their hand in and pick him up.
But since they were phobic, they picked him up too quickly and then dumped him down, going
"Yecch!" The poor snake developed an anxiety condition and would try to get away from the
people touching him. So every day during my lunch, I would let the snake climb around my
neck, under my long hippie hair where he felt safe and warm. Only his head and tail stuck
out by each of my ears. One day one of the football players came early. He was 6 foot 5
and filled up my whole doorway. Sam had been asleep but heard the noise and lifted his
little head and stuck out his tongue. The poor man screamed bloody murder and ran down
the hall, down 7 flights of stairs, and I saw him out the window, still running. I guess
phobia therapy didn't work too well for him after all.
Posing here with Joanne Rader, Karen Schoeneman (left) is a senior policy analyst for the Centers for Medicare and
Medicaid (CMS) Division of Nursing Homes, where she is the national lead for quality of
life and co-lead for the survey process for nursing homes. She has trained over 5000
surveyors. She formerly worked 10 years as a social service worker at the Cresson/Altoona
Centers (a state ICF/MR) and 7 years in the Hollidaysburg Veterans Home, both in
Pennsylvania. She also is a massage therapist with an active practice, and is one of the
members of the original group who met to form the Pioneer Network. Karen has written 4
articles on the regulations and/or culture change, and is a frequent speaker at various
national conferences. She also serves on the Veterans' Administration's Culture Change
Steering Committee and the advisory panel for the Beverly Corporation's culture change
project.
