Despite the self-congratulatory tenor of this report's title, I assure you that my recent unraveling of a UCLA psychology professor in an Internet forum speaks far less about my skills or merits than it does about the substandard health of our psychology departments. I exploited a weakness just about any reasonably intelligent or intelligently reasonable individual could have exploited. And it's not like I needed an investigative wit to find a weakness that was thrown in my face in the form of a protest to an opinion I posted on a Critical Psychology forum. The protest betrays sub-scholarly motives, emotional instability, and logical untenability, and I only burden you with it because it is a variation on a common practice perpetrated by psychology professors in the name of such tasteful things as "performance evaluation & training" and "scientific standards in the public interest." In a form of institutionalized covert social aggression, the all-too common psych prof as I remember him (and her) often requires graduate students to apologize for their personalities or ideas. Psych profs invent categories of conduct probation to marginalize and modify the behavior of students in good academic and ethical standing. In what amounts to a theatrical exercise, psych profs invent ethical and performance constructs to enforce desiderata (i.e. things they simply want or like). Call it what you will: 'house rules,' 'club code,' 'lodge by-laws.' They grow accustomed to having this code coursing through their veins. They owe their careers to the code. In the name of the code, they were offered the reward of lifelong job security and membership in a professional community. And the code consigned their competition to ill-fitting suitors or second class citizens. In the end, they come to be defined by the code they serve, but nowhere is the code itself, and its absurdity, no more obvious when they seek to promote and defend it outside their walls. In a public Internet forum, we caught a glimpse of this code in the form of one UCLA psych prof's objection to what he perceived as another's 'arrogance,' rekindling memories of end-of-semester faculty round table discussions in which psych profs matched students to standard letters of reprimand depending on the nature of the offense. Unlike the penal code, you're not dealing with sections of felonies or misdemeanors identified by the digit to the right of a decimal. Faculty committees invent their punitive constructs on-the-fly, speaking of such unstructured but powerful accusations as 'unconventional tendencies' and 'patterns of judgment.' You can be guilty of anything as long as it reveals your competitive disadvantage at fitting in. You can be too 'arrogant' one semester and too 'self-deprecating' the next. I've been reading college textbooks and even some informative works before I entered high school. By the time I reached graduate school, Psychology was anything but new to me and, had the yearbook category existed, I might have been voted 'least like to impress anyone with my obedience.' As children, we were entertained with games that tested our hand-eye coordination including but not limited to touching our nose with our index finger. 20-30-40 years later and, as adults, we get still sweat the logistics, and psych profs have breathed an atmosphere of olympic competition into dotting i's, crossing t's, and doing the hokey pokey. In ways too numerous to count did my graduate training in Psychology resemble 18 holes of golf, not the least of which is that I am a 10 handicap when it comes to this kind of hand-eye coordination. It was primarily for this reason that I chose not to pursue an improbable tenure-track position (i.e. career), and will not reprise these adolescent aspirations until psych profs make mind-eye coordination at least an exhibition event.

But oh how those end-of-academic-term student evaluation committees make for great theater. Don't let the word 'committee' fool you. The committee is synonymous with the whole of the faculty, so the term 'committee' should be used to denote that the psych profs throw on some costumes (judicial robes actually) for this ceremonial occasion. I like to think of it as 'awards season' for students who are usually quite distressed to learn of their nominations. I was nominated in 8 categories for the 'Spring of 96 awards,' judging from the numbering of the concerns in a joint letter to the committee by three faculty. And judging from the way the meeting went, I lost in nearly ever category (including sound editing) except for the grandaddy of them all, best actor. They thought me quite the imposter and nearly expelled me with no evidence. For those of you who have not been through the process, you're going to have to imagine what it feels like to be thrown out of a biker bar or involuntarily unsubscribed, without warning or explanation, from a listserv.

Oh, how I miss the maudlin displays of concern. No one ever had any hard or outcome-based evidence to support their charges of 'non-professionalism,' which amounts to the modern equivalent of 'witch craft.' I never really did anything wrong. But I was always a 'person of interest.' What in the name of Steven Hatfield is going on? Well, I suppose if we're handing out awards, they'll have to be Tonys. It all made for great theatre. Did I just use the 'arrogant American' spelling of the word (theatre), or was I just being colourful? Hmm. For every thorny ethical question like this, there are psych profs cavorting in closed door strategy meetings to determine how to argue their side in that end-of-academic-term student evaluation meeting.

How satisfying it is after all these years to have the opportunity to engage a psych prof on this matter? Just how stupid, or should I say 'arrogant,' is it for a psych prof to put on the defensive a person who is no longer a student nor property of his institution? In the account below, you the reader will be fascinated by the gymnastics to which this one psych prof (hereafter referred to as 'gentleman') resorts in an effort to make someone's personality or point of view a matter of science. Hmm. The science of arrogance. Arrogance? Really? All I really want to talk about is dreaming and Psychology. All this 'gentleman' wants to do -- and implores others to do -- is talk about me. Is this a diversionary tactic? Perhaps. It works very hard to keep my ideas off the table. And by making me the focus, it works very hard to establish ipso facto that I am arrogant.

Minor PTSD flashbacks of psych profs aside, the gentleman also resurrected memories of a romantic vision I stoked my junior year of undergraduate work. A vision of driving cross-country to begin the next chapter of my vocational life. I am referring here to graduate school -- ostensibly "advanced" studies -- at a nominally reputable psychology program on the West Coast. The vaunted University of California at Los Angeles. One of six bids for "advanced studies" in my first year of application and one of forty in my second year. In the middle of the second application season [affectionately subtitled "Round II, Wyatt's Revenge"], I was informed over the phone that a lack of funding forced the UCLA psychology faculty to cancel the division to which I applied. Rather than withdraw my application entirely, I indulged the graduate application coordinator when he informed me I could re-direct my application for consideration by another psychology program of study. By this time just about every application deadline nationwide had come and gone, and rather than reduce the number of potential destinations by 1, I opted to make an ill-fated-to-foregone run at the clinical division, which is ubiquitously more competitive than any other psychology program of study by a factor of 10, and that's before we adjust for the popularity of Southern California and for the nominally reputable flagships like UCLA. Of course it only took me three days to realize it would have been just slightly faster if I had flushed the $50 down the toilet myself. It was within that time that I received the letter of rejection in the mail, leaving me to wonder (estimating the time of cross-country transport by way of the U.S. postal service) whether I had been 'pre-rejected' for that and any other divisions I might have selected over the phone that night. I can practically envision it. The graduate application coordinator listing the other divisions, and dropping the pre-processed letter of rejection in the outgoing mail basket upon hearing my wrong answer. In any event, the letter was a gesture of compassion and courtesy compared to the rude phone call I received from the graduate admissions coordinator in my bid the previous year. I inquired by phone into the status of my application, a practice virtually guaranteed to bristle faculty and staff at the receiving end. But the irascible reaction notwithstanding, I learned I had been rejected over a month earlier, and the coordinator could not comment on the fact that the check had been cashed but a letter had not been mailed. $40-50 should at least buy me a letter, don't you think? Instead, I was compelled to contact the department directly, and was rebuked for what I imagine was my impudence. It's often difficult to apprehend what (within the psych prof's trait-like 'how-dare-you?!' state of mind) may have offended them. Basically, we're talking about a compass with cardinal points 'how dare you NORTH,' 'how dare you SOUTH,' 'how dare you EAST,' and 'how dare you WEST.' During the phone conversation, the graduate coordinator (the big schools that field a lot of applications find it useful to create this breed of administrator) asked me about my research interests and left me with the distinct impression he did not think I could play in their league. The school's glossy color prospectus boasts the average GRE scores of the students admitted to its classes, and also featured a photo of its Diversity Committee, the most racially and ethnically diverse-looking group of faculty to garnish a conference table. (This committee was tasked with selecting applicants that represented the most granular, state-of-the-art taxonomic system of race & ethnicity). Had I paid sufficient attention to the photo, I should have known the odds of my admission to UCLA was a logarithmic function of some number raised to the power of zero. If only I had realized then that the act of applying demonstrated poor quantitative reasoning.

In the course of my journey through three graduate programs infinitely less tropical than UCLA, no research connected to UCLA had come to my attention. UCLA fell out of awareness, until three days before this one, when a published and media-quoted UCLA psych prof, a serviceable standard bearer, exemplified the most unrefined, peevish, and generally 'bush' objection to this, which I posted on a discussion forum for critical psychologists in reaction to a report citing an area of the brain responsible for dreaming.

"I am Wyatt. Hear me yawn. Every few years a report like this with a similar title (some with ever bolder claims) surfaces in some periodical, and some psych prof (usually a physiological prof) tells me it's okay to stop studying dreams because someone "found the atoms in the brain responsible for dreaming" or "proved that dreams are meaningless" or "nothing more than waste products or filing cabinets."

Sure, the hardware (brain) is important as a research tool and it is probably accurate to assume the brain is the source of the phenomenon, but attempting to explain the software (dreaming) as a product of the brain is tantamout to explaining the 2000-1 economic recession as a consequence of the Big Bang. The phenomena attains a degree of functional autonomy and self-sustaining logic and none of this diversity can be addressed in myopic brain research."

Apparently, our published and media-quoted psych prof from UCLA was disenchanted by my view. Allow me to give you this tour of spin alley by pointing out what he had to say:

"Of course *your* approach, which assumes with no evidence whatsoever that dreams *have* some purpose that needs to be discovered through fabulous detective work, is more scientific, or more worthwhile, than that of the "white coats" you scornfully dismiss.

I have no investment whatever in physiological research in dreaming. It just boggles my mind that you can be so scornful, sarcastic, and dismissive of an entire field of research. Are you trolling for flames?

Well this was a rude 'how-do-you-do.' But what else would you expect from someone who bookends words with asterisks, a common syntax among flame warriors on Usenet's unmoderated and unfortunately-named *news groups*. I offered an issue-driven critique of an institutional trend, and this gentleman from UCLA goes on the offensive against an individual who dared to offer a criticism on a critical psychology listserv. He seemed particularly disturbed by the fact I seemed dismissive of the scientific report. He acted as though I had dismissed the Moon Landing when, in actuality, I was not questionning the validity of the findings. I was dismissing their significance and relevance for dreaming. I am well within bounds to do that Herr Doctor. Evangelizing the dogmatic materialism for which Psychology is now notorious, the gentleman was also disturbed by the fact I allocated the slightest bit of wriggle room to the possibility that the brain may not be the sole source of our dreams. Oh, he probably thought I was being mystical or metaphysical in qualifying the supremacy of the brain. I can't imagine what he thought I had in mind as an alternative, and as you will soon read, apparently he didn't know either, but isn't it reasonable to consider that one's waking experiences have a role to play in architecting our dream experiences? What about our pre-sleep attitudes and appetites? Our gentleman from UCLA would probably agree that these factor into the rich tapestry that is our dreamwork, but in his view, as a sex researcher predisposed to biological monism, that all these things I mentioned in turn have their source in the brain as well. Like for the all-too common psych prof, this gentleman dresses up all phenomena, including aspects of our material environment, in the language of the brain. The universe to such people is just the outward projection or secretion of the chemical and electrical events beneath the skullcap. Knowing the all-too-common psych prof, a serviceable standard bearer, I suspect this gentleman expected a response anywhere along the "visible light" spectrum he is accustomed to entertaining from indentured research assistants: something between a muted withdrawal from the discussion and a note of well-rebuked self-flagellation. Here's how I responded:

"Why would my post be a special case of "trolling for flames," as you put it? This is a critical psychology group, and any field is capable of benefiting from its critical and adversarial tradition. Feel free to disagree, but do not jump to the rather inflammatory conclusion that I am looking for a fight. I simply went on the record and I do not have any preconceptions as to the spirit in which patrons of this list might receive my remarks. I imagine you thought I had someone in mind when I posted my view, and I'd ask 'who?,' but now that you stated I was 'trolling for flames,' well I guess I was supposed to have assumed that someone out there, if not everyone, should have been offended.

But if you cannot tolerate opinions that call for greater inclusiveness, than you may be less suited to a Critical Psychology forum than a list for skeptics or some other list where professionals celebrate their mainstream methods."

"It's not your opinions that troubled me. It was the arrogant, sarcastic tone of dismissiveness, when the ideas you were presenting appeared to emerge from non-rational, pre-scientific ideologies. Nothing wrong with that in principle of course (unless they are presented as scientific), but when they are presented with arrogance, sarcasm, and dismissiveness, one is moved to comment."

"I'm troubled by the rather violent and unfounded inference of arrogance, and while it's one thing to feel disposed to draw such an inference, it's another to act on that rather valuative (and by that I mean purely expressive) assessment.

None of my ideas are non-rational. The phenomenon may be non-rational. And empiricism itself is arational. But the arguments I advanced possess a coherent logic, and I don't believe agreeability (or in this case lack of it) should be treated as synonymous with a lack of rationality. Anyone unfamiliar with where I'm coming from would still have to agree that it is quite possible an approach can imitate the cosmetic features of science without being true to its fundamentals. My statement is hardly irrational. As for pre-scientific, well I'm all for that. Science itself depends on it. Before there are refined ideas there are intuitions and dispositions and before there is data there are raw facts. It's all grist for the mill. If by pre-scientific you meant, prehistoric mysticism, well, there was nothing in my post to suggest THAT. You may have imputed something into my post that was not there. We all do that from time to time. [I suspect this is where he assumed I was envisioning a source of dreams other than the brain. Even if I agree that all experience comes from the brain, that does not mean I have to agree to think about experiences in terms of -- in the language of -- the brain's electrical and chemical make-up]."

At this point, our gentleman copies the content of my original post into a reply, noting with a self-assuredness "If the posting above does not seem arrogant and dismissive to you, I offer my apologies. It sure seems arrogant and dismissive to me. He seemed awfully confident in the axiomatic arrogance of my words.

"Who cares? I don't think anyone's thinking in those terms. From where I'm sitting, I have a right to my passions and my ideals, and if you want to brand that as arrogance, that's your burden to bear. I am no one's marionette or ambassador, and so I speak my mind in my particular idiom. You would not be the very first to attempt to hang a disparaging label on me like 'arrogant,' but those who've focused on the message and not the messenger have seen fit to refer to my ideas as passionate or socially conscientious ideology or ideals, scientific advocacy, and even anti-establishment iconoclasm. Many of my ideas are unique and I clearly put my heart and mind in my work, and that is bound to draw a charge of 'arrogance' from those who choose to bind themselves to a certain code.

Anyway, no doubt other listmembers think this exchange frivolous, and I'd have to agree that you and I have been wasting their time. So I suggest that if you have more to say on this matter (I am satisfied with my remarks), that you address me backchannel. But I wouldn't publicly obsess over valuative labels like arrogance. Such labels have no intrinsic logic or utility and serve only an expressive (and self-diagnostic) function, which is to say they speak volumes about your sensitivities and preoccupation with matters of the ego. Personally, I put the ideas first."

Did the gentleman from UCLA continue the discussion backchannel, as I suggested? No. Apparently our battle royale is nothing if not an opportunity to chide me publicly. Get a load of this effort to snatch victory from the jaws of a humiliating defeat:

"Sorry, but arrogance affects thinking processes. One of the most fundamental criteria of critical thinking is the ability to subject one's own ideas to the same scrutiny as those of others (see Halpern on this). Arrogance is the opposite of critical thinking. In this respect, the messenger *is* the message.

This is definitely a gentleman who would not fare well at chess. He simply cannot see as many as two moves ahead. This gentleman clearly suffers from a failure of imagination. The gentleman speaks of arrogance as being "the opposite of critical thinking" by which he means that an inflated self-estimation adversely affects the scientific quality of thinking. But what doesn't affect thinking? Who among you reading this report is not currently smirking at the inestimable array of self-assessments, values, dispositions, traits, circumstances, etcetera that factor into our thinking? Assuming for a second that I am proud of my ideas and that I think highly of myself (not that there is any evidence of this), who is to say that this has an adverse affect on the quality and validity of our thinking process? If the gentleman is concerned with convictions undermining the flexibility or scientific fidelity of my thinking, and I do possess convictions, let me remind him that it is unscientific to assume my convictions reflect the beginnings rather than the products of thinking. Among my ideas, those I phrase with conviction are products of some combination of direct observation, disciplined logic, and/or empirical research. But yes, there's more to it than that. I also make a number of statements that frame the broader meaning, significance, or consequence of other statements and, at the highest levels, express an ideological theme necessary for advocacy and awareness in the public domain. And I'm passionate about this campaign. I have made no effort to hide my love where dreams, dream research, and dream research advocacy is concerned. The passion itself is often the product of the ideas and may provide an impetus to future ideas, something that must clearly be lacking in psych profs who minister to their work with the malignant form of passionless pride to which our gentleman refers. His kind of pride is a self-centered rather than an object-oriented pride. Often pride like his grows so big which like your average supernova creates a black-hole like rift in the fabric of society that sucks in everything around it, consuming all decent pride, passion, and persuasion. Do you really want this man, and many other psychologists like him, policing the world to arrest all egos and to cut down to size -- his size -- those with great love, high aspirations, and big ideas?

But as I mentioned, this gent is not the only gent cursed by the burden of seeing the world in shades of ego. Get a load of this e-mail from an Australian forensic psychologist who took issue with one of my posts to a dreaming forum:

"we are, undoubtedly, overawed by your perspicacity, persistence, professionalism, being a hero in your own lunch box and sheer ass! It would have been nice for you to have introduced yourself, asked if anyone minded your promoting your efforts on the this discussion site by telling us how hard you have found it making your millions from your book sales ........ and, may we suggest it, asking for some feedback. As a result, I am sure that you will notice our presence....particularly by our marked absence on your website site ''hit counter''......bon voyage, sweet dreamer......dream on ..... alone. There are maybe 50 or more people regularly contribute to that site. When people first contribute they go through the age-old introduction of ''who I am'' what I do, and ''do you mind if I say....''..... There is a lot of latitude but we do believe in good old fashioned courtesy. I was not the only one offended ...... given the feedback I got......but was probably the only one who is so sick and tired of the sheer commercialism and ''pushiness'' that comes out of the USA that I deservedly bit your ankles......You really are a most ignorant and arrogant race with few of the good old fashioned manners that used to be commonplace.......and that is typified by your statement that you are ''not concerned about being off-topic in this forum''.....courtesy says you should be ... it is not your forum....you were presuming to intrude as a guest......and guests wipe their feet on the mat at the front door.

Allow me to provide some context. This gentleman was prompted by a single, yes, one post of mine, to admonish me that it is not your forum. He is also mistaken in that I was not new to the group. I introduced myself a number of months ago. He also characterized himself as a a forensic psychologist, while I characterize myself as a lifelong dream researcher and enthusiast. So I don't think he wants to broach the subject of possession, not that I think in those terms. Aided by his complex, he selectively attended to a reply in which I claimed I was "not concerned about being on topic" because I was most certain that I was on topic, not because I didn't care what anyone thought. He advises me to wipe my feet, but nowhere on the forum's "front door" is a policy addressing introductions. And what is an introduction anyway? My name is included in the post, so it's not as though I did not identify myself. Okay. So I did not say "hi" nor did I seek permission from group members to post what I intended to post (much like I would pre-register for classes or pre-certify a hospital procedure with my health insurance company). In the very act of seeking permission, I would have conveyed most of what I'd put in a post anyway, and I would have ended up burdening group members with two posts rather than one.

The consummate scientist should look to facts and to logic as a means of refuting an idea. You could demand this of me or you could attempt to refute my idea by way of addressing its intrinsic logic rather than by seeking to disqualify or dismiss it by way of a presumption of arrogance (what most list patrons call ad hominem or characterological). It is the gentleman from UCLA who is clearly the dismissive one. The gentleman from UCLA still has no basis on which to claim my original post 'arrogant.' It may 'seem' arrogant to him, but then his reply seems just as arrogant to me. It places demands on me and other readers that are not logical in nature but are valuative and, beyond that, emotional. It suggests that it is he who has the boundaries problem. And no one has to apologize for arrogance that has no adverse effects on anyone. My post poses no material threat to anyone. I am posting a sublimely relevant message for individuals with whom I share a common interest.

NOTE
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