Braving the ice

Psychologists journey to Antarctica to evaluate those stationed there during the severe winters.

By
MELISSA DITTMANN

March 2003, Vol 34, No. 3

Print version: page 56

Psychologist Toni Anker, PhD, remembers looking out the port hole of a C-130 military transport plane in January 2001 at her first glimpse of Antarctica--an "immense sheet of ice" sparkling in colors of blue, purple, silver and white underneath a bright, crisp blue sky.

"It was the most magnificent thing I've ever witnessed," says Anker, a forensic psychologist in Denver. "It was like we were landing on the moon."

Anker never imagined that her training in psychology would one day take her to this place at the edge of the world--a continent composedof 98 percent ice and known as the coldest, windiest and driest place on earth.

Ankeris one of a handful of psychologists who have spent time on this icy continent. In fact, the first American woman ever to work with the U.S. Antarctic Program--in 1969--was psychologist Christine Muller-Schwarze, PhD, from Utah State University.

Each year, a select few psychologists travel to Antarctica during the warmer summer months--October through February, when there is around-the-clock daylight--to do psychological evaluations of the personnel who endure the dark six-month winter. The personnel maintain U.S. research facilities for such topics as global warming and earth sciences.

Leading one of the personnel-evaluation efforts is psychologist John Nicoletti, PhD, who recently returned from his ninth trip to Antarctica. For the past five years, through his Denver firm, Nicoletti-Flater Associates, Nicoletti has sent psychologists to do on-site evaluations and counseling at the South