Sunday Forum; Dr. Jerome Kagan: The Other End Of The Log

Wait so you've been here before. Tired of hearing us and so are you. And haven't heard it before so I'll let you know and if you read it I know you wrote an imitation. Most anywhere but let me run through it. We're starting a little bit late for what we usually do was ask everybody to say their name and something about their job or their work or where they come from. So I have some idea of who's here and then Dr. King will introduce himself and then I'll interview him for about 15 minutes or something like that and then when I usually run dry about 14 minutes and 30 seconds sort of opened up for the group of and general and I I should say I think. Jerry and I met earlier today and I think I may have over stressed the point that I think something like Dr. King is really known for his work as a psychologist and someone who specializes in early childhood development I think it's very tempting to want to ask him about

that. So and the reason I've asked him to come in early have overstress of a beginning to talk about himself and try to find out is sort of like I think we spend a lot of time worrying about our problems you know what. This one didn't go wrong in this. John can read whatever and I think it's nice to spend time with somebody who would well you know there's a throne here you worked up for you up before you know how that happened you know what one would well what went right what did we do wrong what what makes for success in you know human development. So that's the advice I can come in with that I've discovered in a way that. That isn't the only thing that matters that it matters that we have an opportunity to spend some time with a man like this and every question doesn't have to be about you know what was your fourth grade teacher like what was your future. So I'm sort of in between on it and I'm glad he's here but I and I'd like to talk about that but I like to talk about whatever comes up as you

know sets up with somebody cover when you get to know them. So anyway let's I want to speak to the roof work. My name is Will Fitzhugh among the museum staff. And I live in the suburbs. You started back. Running back. Thank you. Very much. For your. Call. Restores. Your status. With her. World. Right. Away. There's four years

of. Life. When. You describe. What. Also. Asked my mother send them my father's letter without going to Mr.. PETRI with closure and unity. Yeah you know you. And he will know more when you see something and he says you know you're a jerk to you.

Oh yeah go ahead Father. Psychologist residing in Goma in Maryland. For the money so click on the order of things you used to introduce yourself but I can't think of anything clever as I don't give that order any special right. I guess Well one way to start is to find out. But I guess as a sort of general question when did you when did you start getting interested in human development. We actually question by saying I got interested in human development very late when I was a graduate student and that I'm sure was an accident as in trying to predict a career well you interrupt me if I go on too long

and try to predict a career. I believe that the specialty you're in is an accident that you can predict larger domains are you going to be a lawyer or are you going to be an engineer. But when you're an electrical engineer or a civil engineer I don't think you can ever predict from childhood. So I think the decision that you can try to understand I don't quite understand it was whether I was going to be. The scientist professor of English Dr or in the more practical world a lawyer or businessman that you can predict. But once I decided not to be the latter then I went off to college and I went to art science and actually given everything that happened to me.

If one were predicting and laying bets then I would be a biochemist. That's why I should be right now based on the blood based on the fact that I majored in chemistry and I like chemistry and doing very well in chemistry. And I like the challenge of the natural sciences and I applied toward graduate school in chemistry and I was going to be a chemist as mere fact. That's why you can't predict. And I'm like This is a freak thing that happened was that I took one course in psychology and my undergraduate teacher who was a very nice fellow not very famous just a nice teacher one day asked the question I forget the question. You asked a question in class and I gave an answer which apparently he liked and he said Won't you eat after class. And as we walked across the campus he said you know. Do you have a

good. I remember the words I remember the theme I don't mean the words obviously but the theme of they were content was you'd be a very good psychologist. No no chemistry professor ever told me that. And so I said well man it's very cute because the self wants to be creative doesn't quite care where where you're going to be creative just want to be creative. So this nice old fellow said I couldn't psychology you know chemistry professor ever told me that so I said maybe I'll be a psychologist. And I took more courses but they were boring and unchallenging because psychology is a mature relative to the natural sciences. So I decided that I would not I would be a psychologist and I. Do plight of biochemistry graduate schools. But there are Mark stuck in my head. So I remember going to the chair of the department who was a Yale Yale graduate and again a nice old man on the verge of retirement. I didn't know very

much but I did know that. I still wish I played a graduate school he said. Was only one graduate school that's any good Yale. I wouldn't play anywhere else. So I sent for the application but I didn't have the motivation because the courses I was taking in psychology were boring but I had the application. And now I'm really not the end of the story I'm not telling be entertaining because I believe it to be true. It was due January the second the application I had not filled out and it was the week between Christmas and New Years and I filled it out because I didn't have the motivation. But I have played about chemistry so I had a date and a snowstorm cancelled date I couldn't get out of the house so I moped around have it do something and I put US application in for want of a better I filled it out and sent it in. I am convinced I would not have sent it out in the open for that place for want of a nail.

But she was lost so I should have been a chemist but the point is that it would have been happy to know I think I would have been as competent or incompetent chemist as I am psychologist I really think so. OK no I surly bother maybe similar if not be interesting sort of theme to pursue but I can't believe I really like you for in order for the needle to be so important for the shoe for the horse and the writer in the message No it has to be a war on. And it seems to me that in order to pick on something like this nice man saying Yeah you're probably good while that you know it is true that I can be very obviously important but I mustn't fall on fertile ground and the fertile ground was. The ground that you could anticipate. When one thousand fifty when I went to graduate school psychology was not to be a professionalization that it is now that is to say what's happening 25 years are a lot of very responsible professional jobs. There is a bureaucracy in psychology that existed forty nine fifty. So the average person want to be a psychologist I would say.

Was similar to one of the philosopher you want to understand himself. He wanted to do that then you meant that that was the fertile ground upon which it failed. But I've not been interested in what makes human beings the way they are. Then that Idol professor's comment would have been discarded. All right let me let me pursue it maybe at least one way to go about it would be to say go back to high school or go back to your family what what kind of course you know what were the good stereotypes like. And sneers were good or lawyers or good or chemists were good and I grew up in a very in a middle class household where doctors and lawyers were the things to be and therefore I should have and that that those were my my Mazas reflect my uncle was a lawyer in that small town in which I grew up. By town standards he was successful or you know small town where they say you want to become a lawyer and then Will. Join my little firm and be a lawyer. And I know why that didn't appeal to me but you see now you get to profound issues that's why I say.

If I understood myself completely and none of us do we approach it. There was obviously a strong. Attraction to the intellectual life toward understanding. What is absolutely true. About. Nature and man. And I remember very clearly. Saying to myself. The law is man made. The law is arbitrary. And I don't want any part of it. I want to understand you see what is absolutely true not what man makes but what nature makes. Now that was profound and that's why I went to science because I didn't know when I was 15 years old that science is man made too. It is I I was ingenuous. I didn't appreciate that scientific laws are as manmade as as the laws that Congress writes. Had I known that I probably would have gone to the law. But see that was the dichotomy I made. What is man made. What is Nature made.

But then in the in the background that you are you know I don't know what I really was. Chemistry orse was science already kind of a doubtful occupation. Oh yes no I was going against my peer group. None of the six or seven in my peer group and everyone went into establishment vocations. One is a lawyer one is a comptroller with a company. One cuts coupons. You know all the stablish location I was the only one. But you see it's very interesting and this happened to my daughter and then I make another comment. Peer groups are very important if they're stable. And what happens in peer groups that last for five or six years or more when they're small is just what the books say each one gets cast in a role. You're the athlete you're good with the girls you're drained and then you. And that has a profound influence on you.

And I was cast in the role of the brain and that and that's very important and what smart people do is science right. You know are unlikely smart people don't want anyone to history or anyone one thousand forty nine and fifty is different now. Yes they will class America. If you're smart good you become a scientist and that therefore That's right that's right. So liberals appear to place you under an enormous leap. People move around a lot. That is younger don't establish stable peer groups have both advantages and disadvantages are disadvantages to being put in a role suppose the role the adolescent is put in is an unfortunate one. And we all know I'm sure you know I know many analysts who are put in bad roles in that case not having a stable peer groups an advantage if the role you're put in is a facilitating one that having a stable peer groups an advantage you know wish we should get it. The question the guy asking your answer no because I'm sure there was like the Rosetta Stone or something because it's such an important event at least the way you describe it. And but one of the things that I would

protect I mean or something about it is or at least one possibility is brains and science and all that. Are. Not. They're not. Humane I mean they are but but they're sort of the English history psychology to some extent as. Is the more. Humanities kind of human. I don't know if you know it's right will no doubt but that dimension. You see. That's. That's why secular trends are amazing. Those dimensions were relevant to us that is the conflicts that. Harvard freshmen today grapple with some of them were out of our camp. We never considered them never considered them as conflicts and that issue was never considered because we never doubted our humanity was never questioned who he was. It's not that today's youth are less you made him or

you may but that question has been inserted into the fabric and so they asked that question we never asked that question. It never occurred to us where they were that we were inhumane. There all you may my Probably probably covered the question up a little bit like I know more about the middle 50s I do about the late 40s but there was a time clock or summer beginning of 50s McCarthy and all sorts of things Id stuff a lot of I guess to uncover the question a little bit. English history maybe psychology philosophy certainly is not masculine. That's right. So so for you that's correct. That's another issue. That's right and that is change Fortunately I would say in the late 40s it would not have been it would not have been masculine to become an English professor. That's Fortunately that that's less true today. It was really to bring young that probably was part of the operating but also the science was very much for the smart high school kids to go into the mine stand about this work.

But like again you know it's sort of reveling after like being an archaeologist who's only settle for Atlantis to uncover it really will have nothing here but but this this question and answer in this relationship with a guy that had some impact. It seems to me that I wonder if it didn't make possible an intern's I mean here you are now. Bush lied in children which could that really would have been possible for the chemist or for the trained a lawyer and I you know this is such as You really should drop the whole thing but it's a good time working on this hypothesis like crazy but there's something about this occasion that maybe opened up a possibility for whether it's a more nurturing side or more. Yeah you know right. And in contrast the chemistry I don't know. Well let me ask you one more thing about this down there with you said there was a good it was a good course in the first course was a good one. No no you know the core of this was really

just like the guy was a nice guy was a very nice guy was very friendly. Put his arm around me so you could say. But the courses were terrible. Yeah they were very good. Was that there were methodological or no I mean about motivation or some you know psychology psychology that much better in 1973. It's a very immature science so that you take a student who's been taking chemistry and physics Well for example on the Harvard campus. It is it has been that way for 15 years and will be that psychology is a got major and a lot of bright I know many bright students who come to my office and it's very sad. They say I really want to major in social psychology but it wasn't challenging so I majored in math and they wanted to major in psychology. Now it's a serious problem. So if you come with a strong actual science background where there are problems to be solved in there and there's a way to solve them and then you enter the complex area of Psycho which I wouldn't

leave I'm fond of the of the ambiguity the complexity but for a young person it's very hard. There's nothing to put your teeth into. So it's very hard. It's easy to teach a good course in physics it's very hard to get a good course in psychology you can appreciate this. Take a good course in philosophy it's hard to teach a good course in philosophy as in chemistry. It's also murky you know. Well let me ask when you said about seven in the peer group that seem like a small group I wonder whether the subset or those of those in a small town where was the where was the rowing in New Jersey. It's about 25 miles from New York City south and it was a small school until high school. I had 900 students when I went there. Well it's a good size so there's this group of seven was what neighbors and they were neighbors we all lived within 10 blocks of one another was a very stable industrial town and now it's part of the gospel it's but when I grew up it was not it was very isolated and

it was you know empty land between this town and next town it's not true today to just oh I will. It is a very stable group I think from about age 7 through high school graduation very stable group. Who were they. There's almost always a subset of your classmates when you are a hundred incline right where they all want to cover them. You are talking about the influential kind of group like that can be. They were influential only because we did everything together and we each had a role and we did. We played football together we went to y y dances together. Yeah I was very stupid because one question is what what made that group stable I don't know. Or well the point is about peer group C is very important that that there not be too much tension that no member of the group seriously threaten any other member of the group and that theres complementarity that she's a lesbian which you make is

make it moment is that none of us is a whole person and that the most stable groups are those where if you put all the people together you have a super human person and that one person has a talent that's special really is profound I've been very struck with the fact that adults do not form strong friendships now. About six years ago four of us got together because we were all consultants on the same project in Central America and year old men in their late 30s and men who aren't necessarily very friendly and the same thing happened very interesting in the four of us now. If you brought these four people here you and listen to them for half hour you would say they are so

different they could never form a stable group and actually phenotypically they are. They're incredibly different but it is it's an axe and I'm sure it is a redo cation a group. Now I don't know these members are in each one. Are you still in training. Yeah yeah in the same room are. You. Tell your manager the same thing. One is the adventurer. You know the guy who ski down a slope or take a wave. He shouldn't take advantage of the brain. And you beast. And it's amazing how stable this fruit has been incredible. It has all the characteristics of an adolescent peer group and these guys were in the 40s. Fantastic and it's the same thing and they didn't understand it and I. Just remember sitting around wondering. They say this was going on.

The group is still together it still got. You know. Syria interesting. You know another I guess this is all the discovery or maybe this but. Now there's another system that that gives role to people's family you know what if one of these you said already is that being a chemist and I'm going from that I mean it's like all of this was of some deviation from the standard operating procedure it was. What did your family have sort of general expectations into which that fit. I what I mean what kind of I would say my father. My life. My father had arthritis and he was so preoccupied with his illness which he had for many years that it reflects of Lee led him to give me autonomy essentially was I was. Look you decide what you want to be with me. He did not in any way try to

direct I think it's because during these years he'd have several operations and was very painful and so I'd only get out of wisdom or benevolence. He just had to do it because he so much of his energy was tied up in battling the the pain of this disease. And I was not a strong person overshoes inertia person so. I don't have to fight very hard I think and my father being more dominate than he was and what is just nonsense. Yeah so it was easy for me just like him probably in general you can't good grades and being a writer. So that's another reason for not really right for me. You guys get into trouble you get into trouble if you don't get pranks breaks ranks you know nothing there's no way with my sister there are future controllers as I look back on it I think we're pretty well behaved.

Well this is really Safire's question of life but I always ask when I'm just about to run out of questions and you know something to do with other teachers it's you know you mentioned it was like I was anybody earlier than that of stands up. Yeah I would say I don't know how close it was but. My elementary school teachers were really outstanding. My my composite memory is of ENDA morphic 45 year old spinsters. If there were. More. Muito for women whose total involvement was with that the 30 children in their class fantastically warm image. And I think I don't know how much variance to give you an amateur critic but but I have I guess I see a very important very important but interesting thing

which gives the school system some credit. I don't think it's just a town because the town is was an industrial town. It was a small town and in a period of seven years if you count me as successful scientists then there are five very successful scientists that immersion a town. Now if you do it by probabilities it turns out that that's far beyond chance in this town was Carl Sagan. You strike him or who thinks there's life on Mars and it's written up on time. Very good astronomers in this town is a brilliant medical by a chemist named Ronald Breslow is on the staff of Columbia Physicians and Surgeons. Doesn't work doesn't get it was the New York Times in his eminent work. I mean it's of Nobel Prize quality. There's a man named Hanson who is working with Harry Harlow and is a brilliant primatologist. Just one more anyway from the same town. Well but you see if you

look if you they go to the towns of comparable size you say something's wrong here. Well you have to give parents to schools is because these families are all different and I think it was the school system or the school system gets credit for that as well. Some credit you're just want to check you you keep saying it's a small town 900 is not too small as a movie. I'm going to I wasn't well and I grouped about 20000 for 10 to 20000 You shouldn't have in a short span that many pretty good scientists should you know it's an interesting thing. I forget the area but it's somewhere in Bohemia. If you take a hundred year period Bohemia there are eight the most eminent physicists and and biologist Mendel Schroedinger all grew up in this area of miles and you have to give some credit to areas there are areas or school systems that have a move the Camelot that last a short period that in that area it's incredible when you look at the mimicking that this tiny Larry 150 square miles you go you take the next

hundred square miles and there's nothing. And if you look on the map there's nothing special about that area but I suspect if you had a good historian go back you'd find something special about the towns in an area where the school systems. Well you know as most these people mature into the site where use of science right now that's usually high school not necessarily but was there do you remember so many of the high school graduates coming here and you know terrible instructors You see that's the thing I don't think it's the specific instructor I think it's the mood of the school. In other words the teacher if as a matter of fact the scholar of the high school there was only one. He taught Latin and he if any was going to emulate a scholar you read them you know this man. I don't think it's that specific. I think a school communicates a mood that scholarship is interesting or exciting or doesn't want to does that other factors take over in the term are you going to be a chemist

a Latin scholar a psychologist. Did you get support from the town I mean where there are town scholarships or awards or no kind of recognition in a paper unlike any kind of town feeling about you. Yes I would say I remember the town if I got important remember the town sent me once a year the now defunct New York Herald Tribune used to have a big high school for men and some big place in New York and I forgave Carnegie Hall I forget. I was sent by my friends why I was simply returning my pictures in New York Herald-Tribune probably I don't. Know what was the form of on was it about national affairs you know whatever was being debated one thousand forty nine. I own I forget what it was. Next year it was Oh no no no as a matter of fact I graduate school 46 so even forty five. Well the second world war was just ending maybe was about the occupation of Japan or universal military training. That was probably what it was about.

OK don't call for help. So in time that rolls I wonder whether own your family growing up whether you are the brain and I wonder in your family now whether that's your role here and you said Oh if you put everybody together then you get kind of super right. So I want to be one. What is your what is your role. Are you always the brain. Are there situations where you release something. Yeah. Well my family I only have a younger brother. You should be talking about my family as a child not my family you know. Oh oh oh I see you are right. Oh. Please. Cause of the brain is not without honor save it as long as you can why you only have a younger brother. For years my junior. So the question is make sense to my family just two

of us parents. Oh well as I say. It wasn't a dimension I was a child and so when parents look at their for 12 or 13 year old people when I look at mine or when you look at yours you don't view them as wise. You say things but child tends to be smart. That's what you say but that means alert. Clever will probably be able to do well in the world later. You don't give it the same connotation that we give it so it's not a good question for a child that was a child who got good grades in school. I'm sure that's us yes. I wonder I guess one of the roles. What other roles I have had in the family.

Well I for one thought about that because if one looked if a psychiatrist had known my family when I was 4 through 10 I probably would have been taken for psychiatric therapy. I don't seem to be joking. I was really symptomatic. I had all the symptoms of a neurotic child. I was asthmatic and not manic since I was mildly phobic. As I look back on it you know I have the knowledge as I look back when I was like at seven I was a very you're not a kid. A lot of symptoms a lot of symptoms. And if you had to make predictions I think it wise and savvy clinical psychologist would have said Trouble is going to be trouble so I try to undo. I mean being a sighted anybody human trying to understand life. Being a psych developmental psychologist I obviously thought a lot about it

and it's easy to make sense of your life after the fact. Very easy you know give me 10 life histories if they're over I'll make everyone beautiful sense. But if I have to predict beforehand I will make a lot of years so I will have thought about N.. And I think there's one fact which was probably which I believe to be important whether it's important you know who knows. When I was about 15 or 16. My father had a go for the second operation. And had to be out of commission for about a year and my mother was a dependent so. And she did what came naturally. She placed me in the role of kind of running family. And I think I was very I mean I. Guess I missed the 70s I drive a car anyway. I mean I took her to the hospital in New York City each Sunday make sure I really got off to school

and as I look back on it I sort of became the father and the husband for about a year and a half when I was 16 years old and I think that was important for I was not too far to replace the father when you're very young. Probably is very in Hansing of ego structures. So I believe that was important. It helps me understand my own past history a little. Yeah you made it out though. Not many friends this size you know. I'm just Kerry started talking about that. I was talking about my stuff about these four men right. Not necessarily other people. I didn't hear that was an attempt to tear down a lot of ational not nice. But you. Know I'm sorry I didn't mean to imply that I was only speaking for these four particular I mean these four men are not necessarily one of

them is the others are strong your feelings necessarily. No that's not true generally and I don't know I don't know. I feel I don't have a good feeling for what the average four year old adult friendship patterns are because I live in a strange environment my environment is Harvard University where you have a lot of prima donna professors in each room. Each one runs on a state and that's not a natural situation it's a very unnatural situation. Usually there's more acres in between you have to tell you have bare arms and offices next door. No member of the cavalry gets the Masoretic point Corinne. So I don't know and therefore not not a false modesty or false humility. I don't know what the friendship patterns of an

average four year old person is I just don't know. You're talking about occupations and it's very interesting. Question. But once there do you have any knowledge of how you got in there. Yes children right relate to that. Yes you know the race my personality not my background. And there I think will came very close. All right Sonam and psychology and I'm at Yale and it's 19 50 you know 950 every department psychology usually has a dominant theme and one or two titular leaders who run the place and that's where all the power is. OK. At Yale it was animal learning Neil Miller and Clark almost all live so that that's role of prestige

was to work in animal learning conditioning and working out the principles and I was interested in. OK. So as a matter of fact and I became assistant Frank Beecher was not should learn a bit of animal behavior and I spent three years running animals studying sexual behavior an animals. All right I almost left psychology because it was it seemed trivial. The principles seem so obviously weak and I was serious this what if and began to look like a game and I was very troubled. And I thought seriously of leaving at the end of my first year because you're so game like you are sure I can memorize holes principles of learning but what's that got to do with what's Important been seen.

Didn't seem seem like again as a matter of fact I was talking a little before you know about easterly about my just deluded that's why Maga still Herman has his last novel appeal to me because that's that's if you've read my disability. That's what connect was battling with. How many of you read mugs delude you all should read it. Probably the greatest novel of the last century. It's the conflict that has deals with his whole life. For a man who wants. An intellectual has a conflict. I don't see that in a snobbish way everybody's got this conflict but has Israel has tends to write about contravenes lecture because that's his writing as on conflict as a writer to live a life of relevance versus a life of formalists that a beauty and a writer he must have felt throughout his whole lifetime Yes I write beautiful novels. But what social relevance is this. I am just entertaining people that was has his conflict

and he must elude he is an allegory of of academy what all academies stand for and connect to is the modest their lives this conflict as to say each year there's an an intellectual limp dicks called the gains and it's you know it's Spassky versus Fisher. It's it's it's intellectual games at their finest that they're most is that it. But the modest there keeps on asking their where's the relevance. And that's if you look at it all as a matter of fact that's what Siddartha fights with only for there the conflict is the life of the mind vs the life of the flesh but the same problems like of in the world or out of the world. That's the same conflict and why in the world or out of the world in the in the other great one which is narcissism Goldmann same conflict right. And why in the world are out of the world. Now

there is flesh against monastery but this is same conflict in the world. Relevance or flesh out of the world ivory tower mind. OK well that's what I was feeling only I could not articulate it very well. Yeah I can run animals your beautiful experiments in nice curves but it was. So why retire. Why did I stay. I don't know I guess I stayed because there was nothing else more attractive and I see many of my graduate students in the same role. There was nothing more attractive and so I stayed. I think I'd have been 1000 Had I been the same person and now it was Yale 969 I might have been one of the person left because I was leaving. I mean it was hard to leave then. First it was not the move to leave. Second I was about to get married I married the end of my first year in graduate school so I had a wife who was about to cop out. I just got married. But I think of the movie.

Thank you 16 I might have left the way many grudge students leave because seemed so irrelevant. So I didn't stay. For any positive reason I really stay for a negative reason. OK but then you see. But that means that I'm now restive. Psychology looks like a mistake but I've got to find something. Then I think two things happened. One was I felt that I had creative ideas if I would work with children. I know I felt that that's very important. But you see that's goes back to things because you try to be. You try to be creative and second I do and you say you indicated this unconsciously. Now of course this is all vulnerable to the era of reconstruction but unconsciously I think it allowed me to.

Allowed me to an opportunity to gratify whatever nurtured motives I had. I am basically a nurturing person and I think I must have sensed that somehow working with children was going to be for gratifying just I don't want to just cut the flow but I just sensed. Was there any opportunity or was it the animals or what you know no no no no. Kind of their Look the only have children of your own no no no. The only clue would be this. The only clue would be this. Remember I remember that I've been prior to this and am a very introspective person. OK. So the only clue would be that psychoanalytic theory was very strong around the department. Katherine Wolf was there. Ernst's Chris was there the medical school was very psychoanalytic and the mood was this is the answer and the only way you'll understand

what an adult personality is like. What tensions and conflicts he grapples with is if you understand the child there's no other way. It was as if the genetic approach was known. So obviously not obviously I think what happened was we get a that's an interesting problem. I will understand myself. I will help the next generation that is to say look at all these look at all these poor fouled up people. I will understand personality development Ilana to work with children. If he allowed so many things to be ratified simultaneously kind of because I can know various things I like to get into this more about. Well truth to me you know abiding principles are coming in that I think the creativity is tied into that also in the world of the world. Both agree but that I cannot by year this year you push in that direction. With children came only at that level is the theoretical level in me and so I just keep looking

for you must have run across some kids or you know some place where you know. No no that's very important because now t when that decision was made. The decision. The decision that I was going to be with children was made in my second year as a graduate student. I had not worked with children. And I had no course in child psychology. No that's why. It's not. The selfish but I mean it was very profound that's not what determines it. You don't get interest in music by playing Beethoven or listening to Beethoven records it's more complicated. If it can be explained again we're you know this whole discussion rests on the danger of reconstruction that rests on a. The intuition I would be creative if I stayed in psychology with children be the intense preoccupation with my own personality. Married to the fact that psychedelic theory which is very strong at Yale at this time says there's only one way to understand your

personality personality of others. That is to understand children. 3. The desire to be nurturing. That means going into clinical psychology and helping society. Right and and what's the best way. I am told in my department prevention not cure you prevent schizophrenia you prevent juvenile delinquency you don't cure it once it's occurred. So how do you prevent it by discovering the basic principles of personal development. Those were the reasons I went to church not working with children or taking courses each other there were no courses in child psychology it was a course in child psychology the whole curriculum and but that makes sense that's the way choices are made I think. A lot of the time now it turns out once I made that decision then I took a double major in both clinical and experimental and my last year I worked as a clinical psychologist in the Clifford beer's guidance clinic in New Haven. Working for years a clinical psychologist with kids. So I moved on it very quickly that I remember as a matter of fact.

Frank knows this. I remember one day going his office and he didn't have many students and we were very good friends used to drink beer every day and he was very close with his students and I said I got some sad to tell you I'm not going to I'm going to leave animal psychology. It was very hard because for years and yeah I mean he was he was he was sad. It was hard for me to tell him that but I knew but I knew for a couple years that that was what was going on. As a matter of fact. When I was there last year looking for a job and the faculty said you know which advice I want to be a child psychologist. And that's been stable. But that decision was made I think probably my second year is better students are what 19 51. But but I think you see accidental that was you see you know I mean as soon as you for some reason as soon as you type the nurturing too through therapy in general it's often

nurturing gets labeled and that sort of slides down to the you know up to a certain age and then is there AP After that somehow. But if that was the way you were thinking it is not it's how do you combine two motives the motive to nurture and be relevant and the motive to be intellectual. They're very hard. Well to be in New Haven in one thousand fifty one there was a way to become a child psychologist. That's the way to gratify both and that's what happens and that's you know that's how behavior that's how psych that's how. That's why choices are so difficult to explain and understand because there are many other combinations that would get you child psychology. Moreover there are many other outlets for that double need right can't you see I'm sure there are many other professions I could have ended up with a motive to nurture and resented it when I could have. OK was there anybody going to cure diabetes but not be Jessica. There is going to crank unless no Frank beach Frank

because you work with the animals right Missouri missioners criticism of people I did not work with Christopher Wolfe or Escalona who were there it was hard to get close to them and I didn't I said I got close probably to two people Frankie and some were scarce in the studio and was he seems like my life most likely. OK so he was a counterweight in a sense to the right. Yes but Frank. But I work with Frank you know I didn't experiments and Ramin and things like that. One of the. Or rather the second me that was he was there when you went into the clinic and all you weren't with you when you were Sarrasin did sir is Harrison Seymour supervisor and I work the child guidance clinic in New Haven. Right. Getting very good experience great experience in you like because probably thought oh yeah that was a very important greens for me because I was working with first contact with you know all of you whose good experience you're

going. To see. It was a red feather agency and I bet it doesn't look at it the way it operators no different from the way Redfeather agency operates right now in Newton. It was standard. The patient referral from the school. Members of community agencies supported by Community Chest funds headed by a psychiatrist three social workers and a psych two psychologists and of course much money. They used the advanced graduate students as clinics around here that could be inscribed in clinical psychology to give projective tests and give Wexler's standard. I was out at the Brookline mental health clinic I saw two guys tunes out there and there I was 22 years ago and that hasn't changed. I think you're going to see exactly what happened. Sorry.

No. That's the sadness the clinical psychology has not changed very much in 2011 else has. No I gave a lecture. I forget his name anyway. Brookline child guidance clinic on get the street two or three weeks ago and upper is the same we contributed 25 years ago and hasn't changed. That's very sad. That's why clinical psychology isn't a deep moral crisis. Yeah I was hearing you said that if you come by going to be your first attempt to look like a fool it's very hard and the people if you say you have an influence on you really was the professor put his arm around you. So you've made a good psychologist and I thought that was kind of nurturing and the endless

line of elementary school teachers who were nurturing was anybody that you admired I wonder who the people are that your life or any of them intellectual. Were there any that were both intellectually you know good. Good question I don't remember. People I knew you were teachers are you know OK you know even when on some you know you hear or some you know somebody who was a model you know OK I don't remember anybody in my extended family who I great admiration for. So I did not come from my extended family.

In my peer group since I valued intellectuality and I was put in that role. So it was not some one peer group. The Latin teacher had the reputation of being the scholar but frivolous and therefore that tainted that selling to him. You could not be hero because you would pinch girls. So he had the reputation of being frivolous. He wasn't totally heroic personalise in love for you know can really do the history of the world. So I would say. You know going from memory no there's no one through high school graduation who is in my immediate life space or why no one can touch who's a hero. I read a lot. I had many authors who were heroes I remember I went through the hero worship period for Dusty FC and I'd read everything

that all of us to ask him he was a great hero for a while. I remember I read all of Paul the crew for when we pulled my 100 micro hunters and I read all those books again relevance. Right right right. So it's I'm right. What authors were great heroes I didn't know them of course. Now I go to college. You see there were one or two students who I admired who were very very good students. It will never happen to them they were not far in advance of me but they were. I remember having great admiration for their breath and keenness of mind one or two professors no one really outstanding. So to the best of my knowledge no

outstanding hero until I come to graduate school when of course then I meet a lot of very outstanding psychologists who are now 21 years old but who have an enormous respect for Carl one who's now dead. You know Miller. Plus as a graduate student you go to meetings and you meet all the famous psychologists of the country. So that little bit now you're pretty old at heroes right there all have clay feet at that point when you're 21 years old. They're all human. None of them is a bit of that heroic stature that they're beyond none of them transcends humanity. I would say no. And of course that does bother me because my own view is that theoretical view is that you need a hero. And I must confess that this troubled me. Try to understand my own life because I should have had one and I can't

find mine. What about people in the world. You know none authors and people that you knew personally but personally for me friends with Russell's. So I don't suppose you could write particularly McMillian also be philosophers and kind of with anybody you know around. You mean you read about it. Yeah yeah I would say that I was sure there must have been scientists and I've just forgotten of that approach the hero worship I had for Dusty ASCII. Well I remember reading popularizations of Einstein and being very impressed very impressed. So maybe they were stronger than I can reconstruct. But I think that's where they were that they were way out there far beyond touch represented. You know enormous intellectual relevance productivity insight. Einstein was a very humane figure very humane in a funny way this

is getting very psychoanalytic and I wrote a book four years ago I wrote a biographical statement for a book called psychologist and I said this and I I believe that when I wrote it I thought I still think I believe it. You know it's very hard. Some interpretations are so poetically beautiful that you want to believe them. And that's why it's so easy to get carried away in the poetry. But anyway this might be a possibility. I guess you could class my mother is and were a protective mother very nurturing to her firstborn son. But she would always talk of her own father in the way one would talk about a sage and I never got to meet him because he died when he was 55 and in my memory my memory of her discussions of him was

this wise man who would read books all day. He was so kind and so insightful and so you named and I never saw. As a matter of fact you know regularly we would hear that she discovered him. He died of a heart attack in his stuffed chair with a book on his chest that says she found that it may have been. That may have been the hero but that's how it now seems I gave the premise because poetic that's so beautiful you see any Psycho house to say that's it. That's lovely We understand we understand you completely next case. My right leg was sound. It's so packed. Well maybe it's true. I don't know you know I know there are other questions like this I like to pick up on this partly because I'm really into a little bit of money because I think it relates to the markets your movie business and all that. Perny somebody told me once that you don't have archetype. I haven't read about it but and one of them is the same age

if I not mistaken. And certainly there are things like us here someone who well again it's you get into the philosophical religious but it's a combination of somebody who can see or understand ultimate reality in some way and is good at giving advice and is useful in the media here and know that that sounds like part of this images. That's the that's my heroic image of him and of myself. Yeah that's right. Maybe he did have an enormous and well as I say it makes intellectual sense. And then when you consult your ethics you say. OK Aphex tell the truth. Does it have the ring of authenticity. A little nuts like you say. Absolutely carefully up to the present.

That's right and there's your question that he would be a hero because my mother revered him. And here I am this 11 year old kid who reveres mother so that he would come and I never have to. He never has a chance to sully his reputation I never medium you see that he's a dumb bumbling stupid old man because I never got a chance to meet him. And all we have up here is this is this hero. So it does make sense to me that was a very important figure was he a scientist. No no no just a decent teacher high school teachers matter fact. Well this is an area you know I had no idea that wasn't home just to read a great deal to read a great deal I've seen you know everything and taught high school in Paterson New Jersey and Venice and yet there were other questions that I didn't. Yeah. You're.

Right. You know. I was talking. To someone you know. Him you know what happens really rather simple. I think my wife and I some she would have two children. There was so the unwritten understanding with one child and we liked her so much and she was just great fun that we didn't want to interrupt that and have a baby when she was 4 years and we have to tend to his baby and she'd interrupt great fun we were having with this child. So we kept on waiting. And then suddenly she's 10 and now you know now we're relishing our freedom.

That's what happened. And there was kind of one moment where he said Well Michelle that second child but we're enjoying our freedom so much. Those I mean we just waited too long. I think that I'm that's as far as I'm concerned what happened that you say like oh I don't know I don't know. I have more distortions of appearing. I think my daughter is really great and maybe so it's easy to say that we have a second child that really would fell the rope. So I don't know. OK. Let me this is one of the Robert White was here and he sort of thing about this there's a story about a child psychologist who wrote a book about children and he said he said children something like children do this and then he has the next book came out and says Children do this sometimes. You've heard the story in the second

edition yet another child next edition came up. Some children do know some talk. Earlier you know he didn't he wasn't up to doing a third edition. So the question is what you know as a child psychologist what has been the interaction of the influence I remember was in something about when his first child just collapsed all of his eye tears about him would be if you would listen to you went through the effect. Right. I'm not saying this out of modesty. This is not and it's not to make a joke or to win your affection. So it's on. I don't know I don't know. I don't think it's a it's a mystery to me. You understand your own children least I believe that. I don't understand why my daughter is the way she is. I just don't understand it because I should have gone in other directions.

And maybe it's disguised maybe what should have happened is really there internally was you know time just as a joiner but you know I don't understand she should be more rebellious than she is she's not. She was very dependent when she was two. She's very autonomous now three times. You might say with a nurturing father in science you would pick science she's picked writing. Nothing to do with science as a writer too. OK all right you know I think we could do whatever she would have picked I mean given a professor's daughter. I mean you could have made a relation whatever she picked right she picked so she rigorously Well he's very close to you to explain anymore. So I would say it's very hard to understand and therefore I'm not going to give any advice not because I don't like giving advice I just don't understand it.

And maybe some day I like for instance I'm certainly one of the things that happen when you go back to what I was you know it's something find out something and you change your whole perspective. And did it was there any kind of similar any kind of surprise after working with working with children and then having your own to do that it just simply provides you with more information or was it one of their major just continuities and what you built up in the way of ideas and theories about what children are like or what I learned about children from my own child. What I learned about children. That sounds like a such a tough question I'm really just saying. What was it sort of just more information it wasn't a break that's a kind of the I mean it was a kind of a no prize no. It was just more information. Remember also that. She's growing up. At a time when I'm. I'm still formalizing my own ideas it's not that I have. I have a theory and now. I say Ah.

How does this child's growth. Verify or not verify the theory. It's different. I'm working I'm not clear in my own mind whether the Germans are or I have some ideas that are wrong and therefore this information is is not well tailored to what I'm thinking or doing. That's a real problem in that way. But I would say the one thing that's very clear in my mind that she taught me is that the implication of p as a statement that there's a profound intellectual change of formal operations. My own prediction is that when history writes contribution it will not be sensory motor. It will not be concrete in the form operation. Something happens between 11 and 13 which is profound. It's absolutely profound it's more profound than the change in six and seven years of age and I saw in my daughter suddenly and idiology crystallizes out of snow where you look around.

Where is it suddenly and suddenly they decide they're not children. You've done nothing. They're eating the same meals or having the same fights the same arguments the pugilism change and one morning they have decided that they're going to start the race for adulthood and that means and it but it follows a cognitive change it's not that you decide and then you change your ideas. Your ideology gets examined and once you see consistent inconsistency you see your role clearly. You take off one set of clothes you take off your childhood sneakers and put on your adolescent shoes. That is profound. Now some people we know never take off the child to choose the equation. Once that happens. You have a new scene of a totally new play and that doesn't talk to a person either vellum but he but I believe that's.

Let's put it Freud against distorting both of them a little. See Freud would have us believe that there's a profound change and it is a reaction against very strong sexual motivation that it fundamentally is a reaction to motive strength. The storm and drama of dealing with his new motivational intensity for sexuality and hostility of sexual partners. Yeah he says because he implies that what happens in adolescence is the child's head is stuck with a whole set of beliefs which if examined all at once he would see are inconsistent. But he's not mature enough to recognize it. Things like my parents are a mission. Look how dumb they are. Kind of look at the handle

that problem last night right. Or if the home is even semi religious God as you mane there is a God become miserable so many people are both those beliefs are in the head of the 10 year old. They're both there. But he does not detect the fact that they can. Those beliefs contradict one another. Once that happens and it happens at 13 14 15 depending upon how fast the kids growing. The There's a natural desire to put the head in order because inconsistency cannot be tolerated. Once you detect it it's like a splinter in your foot. You gotta get rid of the splinter. And once there your exhaustion occurs then you see an idiology forms and the storeman drawing of adolescence is not because the hormones are flowing. It's because.

There is a strong need for the adolescent stand what he believes and for it to be his decision. Therefore his conflict especially in the western world is. Is this my catechism or my parents. If it's my parents I'm a child. If it's mine that I'm on my way to adulthood. Now that is like fighting ghosts because we all know how can you be 15 years old and have a belief system totally independent of your families. That's impossible but you should. But you cannot tell your child that. So you have to help your adolescent. Create and strengthen the illusion that his values were independently arrived at. And I think a lot of the hostility and tension and conflict fights between parents are lessons is not a function of hormones it's a function of charge I see I must decide what psychically is mine and I'm angry that so much of me is you.

If that's true then PJ's writing appears at the top of it but that is a clear implication of of the importance of formal operation. Thank you no I don't have a name wrong a little bit but it seems like you words keep popping in my head like Platonist epistemologist mean it is the kind of pick up this concerning you a lot and nothing that comes to my 13th Corinthians the more you put away than you were seen seen as known as Bruno as you are known and a lot of questions come out of there but one is it seems to me if I write all of this is an important thread for you the not games I mean a lot is man made and another kind of looking for it. Not ideal for what permanence and truth and that is the one possibility might be that you would be more interested in formal operations as a as a time of study you know rather than the earlier period but right. Well but there are two reasons why not one is interesting. The other is not.

I first heard PR years a graduate student and I find I found him abominable and I irrationally rejected him. I said this man is absolute crazy and I will have thought about why. And I know one reason why. When I was working in the clinic as a My last year's grudge do I say to myself regularly after talking with these neurotic kids if only I didn't think so much. How maladaptive thought is you know it's the old Buddhist maxim of how evil Freud is that if not for evil thought there would be no no evil in the anxiety. Now that translates to thinking is maladaptive which I was convinced to choose and one of the problems of self concept but a distortion of reality.

OK now you pick up. And what do you read on every other page you read following sentence. Intelligence is adaptive intelligence is adaptive. Well that is absolutely inconsistent with what I was saying. So I unconsciously said this man is out of his mind. How can he say intelligence that that device he kids every day whose thinking causes them their problems. And that. Because I wasn't understand what he meant by intelligence. I said I rejected him. And it's what we all do when a man says one thing and you misinterpret. And then you reject the whole man. Only when I had that insight. And. And began and the laboratory kept on providing me with laboratory my observations were Guatamala. And now persuaded me that he has had some wise things to say and that's only because I initially was very hostile toward his intellectual writings.

That's quite a victory see to say well as many people as a Ph.D. is this absolutely insightful. I had to come around the long way and I fought I fought for many many years but I think the formal operational note is is is is correct. But you see I told my graduate students this in dead seriousness. I went to probably in one thousand fifty one of the three best graduate schools in the United States. One could go to. Everything I was taught was wrong. Everything I was taught I was taught wholly in behavioral theory. I was taught that the Rorschach was the key to understanding personality so I was taught for three years and I was taught the formal forms like my theories of this development. All those three are incorrect. That was intellectual heritage

I left New Haven with. That is a bird. That is a terrible burden. And I tell my students send this series to watch it. That you don't fall that way it's taken me like it's taking me close to 20 years. To. To turn around. That's a terrible burden. Better to be taught no catechism to a bad one. Right. Martin. Fired. Back. At. Her. You're fired. You may go into his shell. Considerable. Room for you. Especially. Isn't actually very a shape you're going out especially saying that. There's been 180 degree share least in teaching over over 25 years since

everything you write you are ready to. Roll. You're just coming up a little on on your feelings. Regarding the natural sciences. Everything there. Or so. Oh yeah. Sure. And well you know the stage of life. You're right I mean what is what is what is the tension for or. Clinical. Psychology right. Where where you see the truth coming where you see it's coming his in his bio right hemispheres. Oh OK you know. Well let me answer the first question quickly in a second question. Of course many years ago I realized that I had been duped that the natural sciences are man made laws half truths of 50 years. Had I known that I might not have chosen science so the natural sciences are in no better

shape. As a matter of fact I did this semester what I wanted to do ever since I came to Harvard nine years ago. But another time I did a philosophy science seminar with my graduate interest great fun and I'm Jerry Holden came in I had some philosophers and they were wonderfully therapeutic because they said look you guys pick the hardest problems we pick easy problems and and so the problems of psychology are from an epistemological point of view no different. And I mean we know. Whether it's manmade whether matter is particulates or wave like maybe we now believe the orbits are elliptic. No one will be surprised or shocked if tomorrow morning the New York Times reports that a brilliant astronomer says they're not all that the cause of all the traps oil and the predictions are better to be trapped. Right so we all know the temporary nature of physical truth is a matter of fact we live in. Read

banish Hofmann's biography by Stynes is beautiful and then read the chapter which gives Einstein's conception with the world as it is so counterintuitive that you can appreciate what modest elude he was talking about it's a it's a formal pomace out where the world is but that works very good for explanation prediction but the world is not. The way the Einstein equation described it that is now everyone except for all of the sciences. They are temporary pictures which serve us well. They are not the way reality is. No physicist is an essential is they more use a philosophical term that is prior to the enlightenment. Most scientists were sensuous and said what science discovers is the way the world really is. The East of course never got hung up on that. That's why physics never the natural sciences never grew in the or China because they knew that the world

it's all rules of appearances. But we got the West did get hung up on this but now no physicist worth his salt is an essential ist. Those are equations and the service three years five years 10 years 20 years. They work so they are as manmade as the Constitution of the United States. I did know that when I was 17 years old. And as very hard as a matter of fact the beauty part of the seminar is I had two undergraduates who were undergraduates to be essentialist in their one world and I got them close to recognizing that the COLB they all believe that in of the various ways to truth science is the best way. Got them see that that wasn't true. That in the end there are the things are true by authority. Most of these you know are true by authorities matter of fact. Prior to the astronauts

your feeling that the world was round was true as by authority you had no right to believe the world. The room that the that the that the earth is round you would actually know right. Do you believe that to be true. That was true by authority and 90 percent of the statements you believe to be true are true by authority not by sense experience. So that's the second source of truth is by the by sense experience you have experienced that the third by logic and the fourth which is the most important by subjectivity and those are the ones that really count and in the end in the end when you're confused that's what you retreat to and the example I gave them was. This is the one the example convince them. Although it's hypothetical said Suppose tomorrow morning you pick up science journal. And you find that answer John Ecclesiastes one of the world's leading most leading neurophysiologists found by planning impeccably with impeccable methodology electrodes

in various parts of the brain especially those parts of the brain that discharge during sexual intercourse. And what he found was that only the pain cells discharged and he therefore concluded that this was painful. Would you believe that then they understood. And then used to get such you know they wouldn't believe that at all. So in the end that's what you can down to now these four. So you can separate physics from psychology. The maturity of a science is measured by the greedy which the four sources of truth are in agreement. So when you say the earth is round authority agrees. Science agrees there are always the same as we know when church what science. Science agrees. Your sense experience doesn't disagree. And the funny thing is authority and such so strong that you probably

feel a true it's round. I'm not your friend that's the important thing because you can feel it your you be much more cynical. Now it's probably psychology in psychology. The four never agree what the journals say doesn't match what you believe. So you say you know this and all the authorities disagree and that's why we're an amateur science but in the end I believe that the most profound source of truth is the subjective source. That's why unfortunately that's why you mystic psychology is getting full. But those people misunderstand they think that's the better one. So they make the same error as my undergraduates. No one is better in the end that's the one that counts. But it is as much an error to say that science is the road to truth as it is to say my phenomenology is a road to truth. That's just the silly which you want to get is harmony among the four. But I must confess that the phenomenologists have a point when they say I

must feel it to be wise. And the problem with Einstein is that with Einstein's theories that no one can feel it to be true it's just too counterintuitive. You know run a gram lab where you think about the space time continuum. As a matter fact as Huffman says in the book you can only understand if you equations you can understand that a phenomenal logical so that's not how the world really is. Well that's a long way of saying No science is no sacred cow in physics is is essentially no different from psychology. Now clinical psychology The sad thing about clinical psychology is the following that unlike. Aspects of comparative psychology or. Or the psychology of BS von Frisch is beautiful work which is interesting. But the world will go on with or without it. Beautiful as it is that it's

a set of propositions valid propositions about anxiety and symptomatology how to cure them is absolutely one of the most important missions we have. So one would think that would be the most vital exciting valid part of the discipline and it is in the deepest moral crisis. It has not grown. That is a paradox with profound consequences. How can that be. As the joke goes that the most important part of the discipline has no vitality and the least relevant has so much my talent you call a moral crisis. Oh because because bright people are abandoning it. That's why it's a crisis not a moral crisis. It's a secular crisis because you can't let an I mean you could let the psychology of bees die for a while nothing much would happen you can't. This is a very important field. It is actually vital that we improve our diagnostic methods and understand with

with greater clarity just what happens in psychotherapy. What are the best ways to help human beings. Why is the field in total confusion full of quacks and fads. Why that's that's the crisis we're in now. My own view is that dogmatic people entered the field and killed it. They weren't flexible enough. They committed themselves to ideas and were not sufficiently self-critical which is what a scientist must be. They are not self critical. As a matter of fact the shame is one of the most self-critical men in the history of the last two centuries was Freud who changes three of anxiety four times but not clinical psychologist. And this is not her very Alec are not I mean they're just not self-critical. They have not improved their methods of diagnosis. They do not

analyze in any way data or phenomenology where that technique is good or bad and that's a shame. The field is. When major universities the jet their clinical psychology programs not because the president wants to Mr. Bott does not want to but we are eliminating our program because the responsible faculty have not done what they have to do. It's not administrative. It means that the administration doesn't want his ministrations med effect would like to have a vital clinical psychology program. Is it because there's no payoff there's no good. Oh pay off all the money all the training money all the fellowships. If that's why the whole thing is so bizarre it's financially remunerative to have clinical psychology built in your university and in your community. It's bizarre. Where is the retreat coming from human beings. The people in clinical psychology.

Should choose which. People to. Read. All right. Now. People that are in the hospital in California you know. Yeah I know that work. It's but I'm a person I know the name David Rose in hand. But let me tell you and I don't say this in order to whitewash and a psychologist but really he distorts the data the experiment was done in a California hospital. And I happen to know as my colleagues do that in that hospital it was known that a patient could walk out at any time. Therefore the way the psychologist psychiatrist behaves perfectly reasonable if I'm working at an institution where everyone knows

that once a patient decides he is healthy he can walk out with an if he stays there I'm going to assume he wants to stay there and Rosen in the store data that's really not fair. Now that's not I'm not going to psychologist psychiatrist as a matter of fact what's problems but that is not the way to attack them. The person put himself in an instant we all look you know to be a very sophisticated psychiatrist to know that a person who is who is psychotic. Doesn't show all the time his symptoms are hidden so merely because part of the day he behaves in a sane way that does not mean he's ready to leave. In fact it's no it's really not fair. There are much more profound bases for criticizing mental hospitals and psychiatrists especially because we can walk out at any time. Yes of course it was in mention of course as well. Oh always well the New York Times. Yeah I know I know and I don't think it was responsible for

that reason I don't think it was responsible. There are but there are there are more responsible bases for criticizing the practice of psychiatry and clinical psychology than that experiment especially to walk on the institution. What do you regard myself as a responsible psychologist devide been on the staff and the patient didn't believe in it but he voluntarily said I'm community because I have delusions. Why should I say leave me I'm going to soon he says delusions and I don't think it's irresponsible for me to assume that some of these delusions left when I just came here a month ago I know that that that paranoid episode last a couple of years I mean all my knowledge leads me to say he's not really in the hospital even though he's not actively lived at the time. That's not irresponsible. Should the psychiatrist every day ask him if you have your delusions now. It's a silly it's a silly thing it really is.

I think I think it's not fair when. But meanwhile I don't want to I don't know I don't mean to imply that that there isn't room for tremendous improvement. See I'm not criticizing the humanity of people in clinical psychology psychiatry or their care I'm criticizing their state of mind they are not self critical. They are not self critical and that is what they are responsible to most of the time. When a discipline dies you could point to Washington and say they cut off the funds all the funds are in clinical psychology there are no funds for bee work but there are plenty of funds are going to psychology where you point to university and give enough space. President of a building of their own they have no one to blame but themselves there is no one the scapegoat but the field itself. How about the prevention business engine business. That's a serious problem.

I mean I thought in a way that's what you were saying. One of the things that drew you here in the early days of American children. Yeah but that's because I believe there are two problems at the prevention business. One is theoretical and the other statistical Let's talk about theoretical. When I believe as many psychologists believe in the 50s that most of the variance to use non jargon most of the cause of symptomatology was with the family. Then there is a place to focus and Prevention is easy because you know where to go what the impure what my experience the Perigal data. And reflection have led me to and some others is that the family only has about a third of the variance that it's out there. It's in the classroom it's in the peer group. It's in the

neighborhood. It's in the accident. Well then prevention becomes almost impossible because where there's no place to focus that's the first problem which the school which is discouraging to a prevention. I'm going to come say I'm still with the study prevention but I want you the problem why one is less charismatic and less you know Don chaotic about this second problem is statistically. And my friend Richard Light pointed this out to me in when that when the numbers show you. You feel I wish that were true. For example when you were trying to predict or prevent a rare phenomenon like schizophrenia or child abuse by your I mean one of the thousand or one in 10000 which is what we have then. You're going to make

more errors than success hits. And to give an example Dr. camp of Colorado a pediatrician did so drug abuse. I'm sorry child abuse has persuaded Senator Mondale to present on the floor of the Senate a bill requiring every child in the school system every family to be checked for whether he is subject to abuse at home. Now I can't give you the whole argument but it goes something like this. But if you want to get a sit down with you try to review the mathematics. But what I'm about to say is absolutely true. No no absolute you because the argument can be made is used as a user base in statistics if you assume that you will be correct. Ninety nine percent of the time when you say that child is abused that's pretty good right.

Given given the severe instruments and if you're correct 99 percent of the time when you say the child is not abused. For every 100 children you say are abused 90 we're not because you have a rare phenomenon it's just that in that course you sit up straight and say wait a minute do we want every child examined. You'd be wrong more than you're right. And that always happens for rare phenomena as a problem X x y you know gee if x x x y y people are criminals let's have everybody have a think. Same problem we have a rare phenomenon even assuming 99 percent accuracy for us is in those you'll be wrong more than you're right. You have more false positives say that person has a disease when he doesn't have a disease. So that's a second problem with early diagnosis and Prevention and the third problem is of course the insensitivity of our diagnostic instruments. So prevention is the prevention works with polio and measles and diptheria

and it's going to work with psychology but a long way to go it alone with you know things like say things that you've been saying OK. I would say two things. Oh I've taken more serious than I have excited a lot of empirical findings which lasted a year and then they became assimilated. So I interpret your question as like one of the super things that excited you. You know the first when I realized

about 10 years ago that all the constructs in psychology would have to be defined relativistically as up until that time I thought it was possible to have a few constructs that were could be defined. Absolutely. I'll give you example in me that this degree of parental rejection would have a fixed outcome that this much praise would have a fixed outcome. To state it in a sense in a way I never said it to myself in a way that often PTA parents ask it how many minutes should my husband be with the child when so many minutes you get ten minutes gives you this outcome 100 minutes gives you that outcome. But often people you personally asked that well once I realized that the whole thing lives in a relativistic base in the rest of my brother was very important to record that's an example right.

This change just take me out of the system and leave everything else the same. You have a different person. That's true but once you really see that not just for that concrete example but for all of psychology that turns your head around and we think about problems for example as long as there are classrooms will be more no questions. It is of necessity that 33 percent could be 40 anyway. That's a third a third of the population will always question their fundamental worth and ability because we live in a rank where world no matter how large or small the reference group whether it be 10 or 100 is a bottom third in the matter what the absolute level of competence is. The bottom third are in doubt.

That's very sad but it's true. So you see the implications of really believing in in the relativistic notion in a profile in a serious way. And I think that gets in my head because I I thought that fundamentally we could have some absolute was so much input so much output. I don't believe that anymore. And that makes psychology hard as a science that makes it easiest on discussion essays. But now try to take that to nature as an empirical scientist. What do you do. I gave up trying to measure prime rejection for example. How do you measure that.

There's no way to look at a mother's behavior. And now as a scientist not as a clinician and say that mother is rejecting because on such a such a degree. If you want to use numbers because I have to be in the mind of the child and know from the child's point of view who are the other siblings how the child perceives other mothers. Given the mother given a mother who is this way she behaves in a certain way. Now I put her I put my 10 year old child in a group where all the other mothers are very cruel. Suddenly she's a beautiful mother. Now I move this family order neighborhood where all the mothers are much more nurturing. Suddenly she's cruel. Same mother same mother. So all of our constructs are in that problem that's a very serious problem that's why when the serious natural scientists like Conrad Bloch.

Or Jerry Holton sit around and the fabric when we talk they're right when they say Cherry I should pick such a hard problem. Bromine is bromine. No matter where you find your. Bromine is the same no matter what receptacles you put it in. That's not true for human beans. That's not true for any important psychological construct. It's a terrible problem to be stupid when you want to scientifically inquire into how and how human beings work is a matter of fact no human being could talk about animals. One site and this is the only a modest thing I'll say this even once I realize it's 10 years ago then I knew that behaviors and had to be wrong and now go read the psychological drove on how many of your psychologist but for those you are in this month's psychological review beautiful paper by a young behaviorist student

skeeters said you know reinforcements relative just lovely how to be by Howard rock when if you're a psychologist read it. It's rats and everything it's pigeons picking it and. But he says it it looks like reinforcement is relative. I haven't looked at time gone by and I'd like to know there are some other questions that I'd like to try one and maybe for a sort of going back to the the direction you were going in towards you want to call it truth. But it is not man enough relativist and so on and you you get to the point where this leaves one this is one important thing that you feel about the fuel as you're in. What do you do for truth. What do you do for truth. When you know for sure what I'm going to say.

May have the ring of being corny but. I believe it. Russell once said that what the scholar does be scientist or philosopher is to Stubb's the two for inarticulate certainty. Articulate uncertainty. Other people have said this is been said by many that. Wisdom. But the growth of knowledge. Is removing of ignorance. And that's what truth is. In other words. To free yourself of bad ideas of propositions that are untrue. And to remain self-critical. That's growth. And that's what's true. Those

interested in this problem I recommend. What for me is what probably one of the wisest books on science I've ever read. It's by Karl Popper. It's called conjectures and refutations. He's probably at the moment I regard him as the wisest philosopher science. And he says that you can never prove anything true. And that's right. When you think about it you can never say all squirrels have fur because suddenly I found a screw that doesn't have. So there's never a way to prove the proposition universally true for all time. The only thing you can do in science is to prove the proposition false. When you say all squirrels have fur and I say here's a screw it out for good. That is growth because we've gotten rid of them in correct proposition and that is although it has a negative ring to it. I find it very

satisfying. I feel wiser not because I've proven anything but I've got rid of a lot of bad ideas. You know a lot of bad ideas which are wrong and you say but why do you feel wiser. I just do and remember what I said about healing and let me end it you end with one just the most beautiful demonstration of this. I'll tell it actually verbatim because it's so rich emotionally. We've been working in Guatemala for many years and it was a young Guatemalan girl fundamentally intelligent but miserably educated just smart but went to school in Guatemala City and went to San Carlos University which is you know a tenth rate Central American college where you do is take notes and memorize everything. So she knew nothing. And whatever she knew were said in one thousandth century dog men that were

obviously incorrect. Well she was so smart that we figured if she learn English she could help Guatemala by getting a PH You know Carmen and Richard in Guatemala so I took English for two years and she was admitted as a special student into our department to matriculate for a Ph.D. and this is her first semester. And she came to me in March. And as a first time she ever been it's a lecture. She said I want you to reassure me. This is very painful year for me. She said I feel I've learned nothing. All that's happened is everything I believe is wrong and I don't know anything. And she felt this was bad she said. Will they kick me out because I don't know anything. At Hitler.