Both Thomas and Hill Fit Patterns of Harassment Cases, Experts Say : Psychology: Specialists emphasize that their views cannot reveal the truth in the controversy. But they say actions described in hearings are not unusual.

To many observers, the idea that Anita Faye Hill would continue to work for and maintain cordial relations with Clarence Thomas after being sexually harassed seems incredible. Similarly, the notion that a man with Thomas’ credentials and stature could have engaged in such crude behavior seems impossible.

But psychologists and others with expertise in sexual harassment cases say that such incidents often involve actions on both sides that, on the surface, seem inconsistent. Analyzed more closely, however, they are not inconsistent at all, the experts said.

“To the average person, their behavior seems unbelievable,” said Jerilyn Ross, director of the Ross Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders in Washington. “However, we see these patterns over and over again in such cases. A woman has been sexually harassed and stays in the same place and doesn’t talk about it for a variety of reasons. And highly respected men in very important and visible places have secret personal lives.”

The medical experts interviewed for this article emphasized that their observations were made in the context of the general problem of sexual harassment and were not meant as indications of the truth in the Hill-Thomas controversy. None of the experts have personally interviewed Thomas or Hill--a process that could alter their assessments.

Nevertheless, almost all of these experts insisted that Hill’s allegations about Thomas’ actions as well as her subsequent behavior are consistent with patterns observed repeatedly in other sexual harassment cases.

“A person may lead an exemplary life in regard to his professional, social, marital and parental roles and at the same time possess a pocket of sexual pathology which is walled off,” said Dr. Carolyn S. MacKenzie, a Washington-based clinical psychologist who has been in practice for more than 20 years. “That is a fact that is well known in the field of mental health. These people typically know of their impulses but keep them out of their awareness most of the time as they go about their normal lives.”

Jack Smith, a psychotherapist and president of StressNet, a Cleveland-based organization that treats traumatic stress, agreed that a general reputation for propriety does not necessarily preclude the possibility of such behavior.

“You can have a pattern in which many bright, sophisticated people who act appropriately in almost all situations will have one small corner where they will act out some behavior that is the result of their own victimization from an earlier time,” he said. “And that plays itself out as an exercise of inappropriate power in a very small slice of an otherwise successful life.”

Several experts cited the case of former American University President Richard Berendzen, a highly regarded administrator who resigned in disgrace in 1990 after being caught making repeated obscene telephone calls to a day-care provider whose name he had obtained from a newspaper advertisement.

“How many of us would have believed the offended woman if she hadn’t taped some of the conversations?” MacKenzie asked.

Dr. Sharyn A. Lenhart, a clinical instructor of psychiatry at Harvard University Medical School, said that she believes the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings have dramatized the widespread lack of public knowledge about the patterns of sexual harassment.

“It is clear from the recent proceedings that there is a great deal of misunderstanding about the offender behaviors and victim responses to sexual harassment,” said Lenhart, who also chairs a subcommittee on gender equity of the Medical Women’s Assn.

The organization, a national association of women’s physicians, has taken no position on Thomas’ Supreme Court nomination or on the comparative credibility of Hill and Thomas. But Lenhart said that characterizations of Hill’s behavior in response to the alleged incidents is “consistent with patterns of behavior exhibited by many victims of sexual harassment.”

For example, Lenhart said, “the tendency to deny, minimize or hope the offending behavior will go away is characteristic of many abuse victims--regardless of the victim’s education or socioeconomic status.”

Other characteristic behaviors include a tendency to delay reporting an incident “until some event ultimately demands it, as has happened in this case” and an “inability or unwillingness to talk about the details of the harassment due to the shame and humiliation the victim feels or the fear of formal or informal retaliation,” Lenhart said.

Smith, the Cleveland psychotherapist, said that a victim of harassment typically will first question her own behavior--”Did I do something to provoke this?”--and then attempt to “return to normal and get it behind.” Those behaviors usually are followed by denial, he said.

“The denial will take the form of not wanting to recognize the full implications of what is going on,” he said. That phenomenon, he added, might explain why Hill, if she is telling the truth, never reported the incidents and continued to maintain contact with Thomas.

“The longer the denial goes on, the more people compartmentalize the experience,” he said. “Over time, it becomes walled off from ordinary access.”

Smith also noted that the Thomas allegations, like those aired in many harassment cases, appear to involve more than just sexual elements. “One of the most important things about this is that it really is about power, rather than about sex,” he said, citing Hill’s seemingly inconsistent decision to move with Thomas from the Department of Education to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. “In spousal abuse, why does the abused spouse remain in the relationship?” he asked.

But Dr. Joseph Mancusi, a clinical psychologist in Fairfax, Va., and president of the Center for Organizational Excellence, said that he is puzzled by the Thomas case because most sexual harassers typically involve numerous victims. That does not appear to be the case with Thomas, leading him to question the allegations leveled by Hill.

“It is typical of people who commit sexual harassment that other victims are strewn about them, all over the place,” he said. “People don’t change their behavior with one person at one point in their lives. It’s unusual. It has happened, but it is very, very rare.”

Mancusi insisted that he has no idea whether Thomas or Hill is telling the truth. “I would have to flip a coin,” he said. “I’ve spent every waking minute studying their faces--I’ve watched it live, and I’ve watched every rerun--and it would be difficult for me to come to a judgment.”

Dr. Robert Dupont, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Georgetown University Medical School, expressed similar sentiments. “Either one of them could be lying,” he said.

Some experts were angry that members of the committee failed to call in expert witnesses to explain the psychological aspects of the testimony.

“I was particularly annoyed by the discussion of ‘fantasies’ and whether or not Prof. Hill was having fantasies,” Ross said. “They never brought in any experts to tell them what fantasies really are. They had no explanation from the experts. Nothing has been explained to people about what any of this means. People are responding totally from emotion--not from any medical or scientific basis.”