The APA's addition of Dreaming (formerly of the San Diego-based Association for the Study of Dreams) to the ranks of its flagship journals fueled speculation that the locally embattled American Psychological Association is repairing a loss of public confidence at the hands of author Wyatt Ehrenfels's campaign to raise public awareness of academic disenfranchisement of dream researchers. Independent sources, including an academic with a PhD in Experimental Psychology, contacted Ehrenfels to alert him to the development and to express their view that the author is responsible for the uncharacteristic move by the psychological community's flagship association.

Dubbed "major pain in the ass" by the editors of New Therapist Magazine, Wyatt Ehrenfels claimed victory today in his effort to redress policies and procedures that disparately impact students and professors wishing to build their career around the research of dreaming. "These policies and procedures, which govern knowledge production, publication, faculty selection, and graduate training, do not equally affect the development of all careers. Those interested in phenomena that require more exploratory research sacrifice a great deal in order to meet the requirements and race through a thicket of professional gates against a bloated applicant pool. I remain hopeful that the addition of Dreaming to list of vaunted APA Journals will restore dignity to dreams and to dream researchers seeking some workspace in the academic community."

Deflecting the charge of 'sour grapes,' Ehrenfels sketched a series of relationships linking the broad pattern of discrimination against dream researchers to the overall health of the science/profession, citing the rash of "professional abortions" as a threat to the intellectual freedom of its researchers and the integrity of their organized body of knowledge. When asked whether Wyatt Ehrenfels liked to exaggerate to make a point, a source within the Ehrenfels camp defended the claims of his movement's iconoclastic coordinator. "Wyatt has become a semi-mythic figure because he is being built up by outrageous claims and even gamier allegations from a few who like to defend the status quo in Psychology. Some of the people you're referring to have PhDs but must have skipped classes in common sense. Wyatt's claims are dead on. Now if Wyatt had compared the disenfranchisement of dream researchers to Pol Pot's genocide of intellectual leaders in Cambodia, that would be a bit of a stretch. But claiming we're not paying enough attention to dreams, and that our practices reward professors and students for neglecting or, in some cases, mangling the phenomena of dreaming...that's right on target. And he marched into hostile territory with this message and took his case directly to the field's social and financial base," deadpanned the ShadowPsychology insider with an obscure reference to its student outreach initiative. The Ehrenfels camp estimates that it put its fresh angle on Psychology directly into the hands of over 1 million students nationwide, cataloguing professorial ignominies in the psych prof's all-too-common characterization of career opportunities and strategies. "It was not really enough to storm the gates of the universities with a message about its science and education. But once Wyatt plugged into what proved to be the main concern of undergraduates -- their futures -- this thing was over. He got their attention. And he hit the psychological community pretty hard with a scathing indictment of how they characterized employment opportunities and prepared their students for careers."

Wyatt Ehrenfels subscribed to APA's listservs, occasionally cross-posting a bulletin-board style update on the status of the campaign. The listserv administrators expelled him twice, but they never completely eliminated him. When the APA attempted to delete links to archived posts about his cable access broadcast schedule, some students began to contact Ehrenfels backchannel to question the extraordinary methods of censorship and repression. "Students who had once ridden a rising tide of skepticism about Wyatt Ehrenfels could no longer afford to hide in the herd and ignore his message. They knew something was off and that they'd be stronger for hearing both sides."

Ehrenfels also credits recent successes to refinements of his web site, in particular the creation of his news page. "The news format gave his campaign a credibility it previously lacked as an author page, and it did so in a way that was pleasing aesthetically."

But the APA's headache did not begin to throb until Ehrenfels widely publicized his inroads with community access television. And he put the word directly on the street, in the hands of discerning D.C. professionals living within 12 miles of the American Psychological Association's national office. "...right in their backyard. He would introduce himself to metro riders and people on the street and talk about these policies and procedures that behave like prejudices and that are counterproductive to an adequate exploration of the human condition. He discovered quite an appetite for his work among the local populace. And he distributed fliers that directed them to a book and web site. If you read the overview of the book's plot, you'll find that the protagonists struggling to pursue the truth about dreaming against the academic and professional culture of Psychology includes a student who designs original dream methodologies and also a student who aligns himself with the Swiss psychiatrist CG Jung. The whole book and web site discusses how the abandonment of phenomenological and theory-driven dream research for the kind of research performed in a sleep lab demonstrates -- it demonstrates -- that our interest in dreams was confined to how they could help us learn more about the brain and the biological construct of REM sleep..."

"...enter this journal, chartered in March 2004 just after the official release of the book. I find it quite interesting that the APA added to the ranks of its vaunted 'APA Journals' the journal Dreaming, formerly the signature publication of the San Diego-based Association for the Study of Dreams. You'll notice in the description of the journal the emphasis on the journal's inclusiveness."

"This statement in particular appears to speak directly to Ehrenfels's critique: This includes biological aspects of dreaming and sleep/dream laboratory research; psychological articles of any kind related to dreaming; clinical work on dreams regardless of theoretical perspective (Freudian, Jungian, existential, eclectic, etc.). The description actually frames the previously neglected distinction between research performed in a sleep lab and the more psychologistic research and clinical work. The description even drops the name of Jung, as if to say 'hey, if you hear anyone claiming we discriminate against Jungians and phenomenological dream researchers, well, here's the proof we don't.'"

While Ehrenfels embraced the legitimization of the journal, he voiced a number of concerns. "I am hoping this is not a token gesture, a showpiece, or stop gap solution to an acute public relations problem. I am hoping this was not some cosmetic maneuver designed purely to discredit or depotentiate the message of my campaign. My message is vital to the long-term and sustained health of this science and profession, and to exploit the acquisition of this journal, to frame it negatively, which is to say, to deny my message rather than to affirm it, is to reflect the kind of attitude prognostic of weakness. I am not sure what the future holds for the study of dreaming. I don't know whether, in the hands of the APA, this journal will evolve into another instrument of its fierce professionalism and scientism. And let's not lose sight of the widespread skepticism and prejudices among faculty selection committees, who may continue to penalize applicants for having published in a dream journal like this one.

"...Bare in mind that most of the individuals published in this journal have established careers and reputations. The acceptance of this journal into the APA canon in no way substantively addresses, nor augurs, the prospects for a new generation of dream researchers. And many of the established researchers are not committed to dreaming in the same way other researchers build careers around the study of self-esteem, stereotypes, or taste receptors on the tongue. As an applicant to graduate programs, many applicants interested in dreaming will write to these researchers, in the hopes these professors will lobby for their admission, only to receive a letter stating that they are not currently working on a dream project or have moved on to some other one-night-stand like creativity or genius."

While the author insisted he remain responsibly vigilant and guarded in his pursuit of an adequate science of dreams, others in his possey wanted to enjoy the moment. "I think that what made Wyatt's argument so compelling," cited one source from within the Ehrenfels camp, "is that he clarified how the fate of many people like himself is actually an etiological factor in the decline of Psychology's progress as a science. When you read some of his reports, you can almost visualize psychology departments becoming more homogeneous and less intelligent over the training generations. And while this was at one point the tragic consequence of systemic biases, it was inevitable that these systemic biases would contaminate the criteria used by faculty selection committees to repopulate the field, and ultimately if you meet these so-called 'standards,' it is highly likely your attitude toward science was such that you had a para-skeptical contempt for dreams...So you see, [Ehrenfels] endured those who charged him with the populist crime of over-generalization, which they had hoped would make him look absurd, and he took them behind the woodshed, plainly demonstrating how this field was molded into a collection of like-minded persons who put their careers first. He took those who attempted to take the easy way out and make him look absurd, and he turned the tables on them, making other psychologists, some of them social psychologists, look ignorant for failing to appreciate basic principles about sociological entities and organizational cultures. And in the new generations of psychologists we find the incarnation of those systemic biases."

NOTE
Ehrenfels is currently working to boost supplies of book to Barnes & Noble and Amazon, where it is selling out. For now, Ehrenfels recommends PublisherDirect (click here) for speed.

fireflySun.com Report List

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Wyatt Ehrenfels Counsels High School Students on Choice of College Major: Wyatt Ehrenfels

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Fireflies in the Shadow of the Sun Press Release: Katheryn Moyer

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Benjamin Willard Elected President of Wyatt Ehrenfels Fan Club: Benjamin Willard

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