Communications Officer Takes Leave of Absence. New Face of fireflySun.COM Unveiled

The Word of fireflySun.com is all Wyatt Ehrenfels. Well, mostly Wyatt Ehrenfels. The fireflySun.com Office of Communications (C.O.) had been invisible to the end user largely because until this week, fireflySun.com enjoyed only one communications officer during its five year run. The Ph.D. volunteer staffer, who chooses to remain unidentified, cited both personal and professional reasons for the move. "Fatigue, really," smiles the outgoing staffer. "I will always cherish this experience. I learned a great deal. I grew a great deal. I really enjoyed working behind the scenes with the person you know as "Wyatt." I enjoyed the exchange of ideas. The creative tension. The fusion of styles. But it became more and more apparent to me over the past few months that I wouldn't be able to juggle responsibilities and I felt the work on the site would ultimately suffer, and I didn't want to see that happen." The C.O. functioned not only as content manager and editor, but also as a liasion between Wyatt Ehrenfels and his publisher. In the words of site designer "Paul" (2001-2003), "[he] was a total buffer. He took some knocks for it too, and I think that may have taken a toll. But we all learned a lot from it, and I think it will really help the new guy [C.O.]."

The resignation follows an agreement with Wyatt Ehrenfels in early January in which the C.O. expressed an interest in leaving the blog upon completing a news page on cyberstalking. The outgoing C.O. denies a disagreement with Ehrenfels over the "fundamental shift" (cyberstalking page) factored into his decision. "There's plenty of Psychology here, and [Wyatt] will continue to push that envelope," he stated.

While his work as content manager and editor for Wyatt Ehrenfels comes to an end, he will continue to answer e-mails through June. The outgoing C.O. participated in the search for his replacement. He leaves fireflySun.com after nearly five years on the job (May 1, 2001 - April 17, 2006), and we wish him the very best of luck in his new career. His departure marks an end of an era for the psychology blog. The C.O. leaves as Wyatt Ehrenfels calls for a "slow growth" plan to protect the swelling blog from what he calls "urban sprawl." In his own words: "Jung believed the personality alternates between stages of what he called progression and regression not unlike the systole and diastole of the heart. Similarly, the universe is believed to expand and contract. So does this blog. [Outgoing C.O.]'s skill set was perfectly suited for expanding this blog when we really needed him. But now it's time to rebuild downtown ... embroider and frame our central thesis, and I think [incoming C.O.] will minister to this task with distinction. I hate to lose any of our volunteers. Most of us have a similar love for dreams and have suffered in similar ways for our passion. There's a comeraderie here unlike any I've known before ... makes us feel like we're cozying up around the same table even though we're separated by hundreds of miles."

With one notable exception. Wyatt Ehrenfels lived in close proximity to his outgoing C.O. If for no other reason, this alone will ensure [outgoing C.O.] will be missed.

About Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels is the pen name of a senior researcher with the federal government with a Ph.D. in Social Psychology. The recently divorced researcher evaluates the outcomes of various educational policies, including a Presidential initiative. During the interview, Dr. Ehrenfels sold his prospective employers on his knack for designing high-quality methodologies seldom seen in departments of psychology. "Inside the university system, with its grant-driven and publish or perish mentality, there is a culture of instant gratification that suffuses research. Step outside that system and you're expected to pay more than lip service to the exploration required by many questions/issues at the front end of what is a cycle of life in the production of knowledge. Most academics accept my criticism of psychological research because they understand all too well how they are constrained by professional trappings and social requirements. But with more academics choosing to stake their career on researching subjects that do not require innovative or exploratory methods ... staking out the most organized parts of our organized body of knowledge ... my argument, while accurate, is not as beneficial or even relevant for them. They do not want to see an argument in which they have no vested interest detract so much as one iota from the public's confidence in the academic community of which they are members. This is what is behind many of the charges of "over-generalization." But despite the fact they have removed themselves from ground zero of my argument does not mean my argument is any less accurate. In fact, it shows that academic psychology has abandoned the more challenging and mysterious parts of human nature."

By night Ehrenfels attends to his labor of love, the relationship between dreaming and waking experiences, and to a blog driving reform in the way dreaming is researched within Psychology. For his efforts, Dr. Ehrenfels garners both praise and [largely unconstructive] criticism. But it's the dispassionate analysis in the middle that interests Wyatt Ehrenfels the most.

A recent contributor to fireflySun.com compares Wyatt Ehrenfels to an entrepreneur, drawing from a new book about entrepreneurs when he writes "the most successful entrepreneurs are a little manic when it comes to their single-mindedness. They have an offbeat idea, which they believe with messianic fervor will change everything. And their evangelical zeal gets some people on board, while alienating others."

His experiences with departments of psychology span three undergraduate institutions, three graduate programs, a post-doctoral program, an institution at which he served as an adjunct instructor, three additional programs observed in an unofficial capacity. As an applicant to 38 graduate programs, Wyatt Ehrenfels made the most of an opportunity to survey the policies, procedures, and criteria driving the selection of graduate students. Academically, Wyatt Ehrenfels performed well. Despite faculty skepticism for his interest in dreaming and faculty suspicion for his extensive knowledge of a classical theory of human nature (i.e. Jungian Analytical Psychology), Ehrenfels maintained a greater than 3.9 grade point average on route to fulfilling requirements for his doctorate at a pace accelerated by diminishing tolerance for faculty harassment and pressure to withdraw. "Some people want to blame me for not having applied to universities that would have been a better fit for my interests. I had. Despite the fact there are not many universities sporting dream researchers, I applied to those that did. It's a bit crass to suggest that compatibility of research interests is the primary, let alone the sole determining, factor. Just about every one of the other 80-700 applicants pursuing the handful of slots can boast this fit. Not fitting will get your disqualified. But fitting does not insure admission. The dream researcher may not have seniority or an available assistantship that year. I have even encountered deteriorating respect for an older dream researcher by an increasingly younger faculty, as was the case with Charles Tart at U.C. Davis. One of their students reported that U.C. Davis used to actively 'misplace' the files of applicants interested in working with Dr. Tart. And then there are the ordinary factors, like the sheer competition or an affirmative action policy or affection for someone of a minority race. And then you have some extraordinary factors, as when an applicant is admitted because his or her senior thesis advisor and letter of recommendation writer has a personal and/or professional relationship with someone on the graduate faculty. You just can't compete with that."

Wyatt Ehrenfels graduated in 3 1/2 years, before many students who entered the program before him defended their master's thesis. Leaving skidmarks not only insured his sanity and his doctorate, but paradoxically worked against his candidacy for post-doctoral teaching positions. It was a blistering pace his professors overtly discouraged with words, but necessitated with their actions. Ehrenfels knew he had to limit their opportunities to find in him proclivities that were not produced by them or consistent with their personal preferences. But in his trauma-induced, milestone-obsessed tunnel vision, Ehrenfels did not have the time to immerse himself in the extracurricular professional development activities required to build a competitive CV in a congenitally saturated university labor market -- activities that force many students to delay core milestones (like a thesis or doctoral candidacy exam) and that keep them in Ph.D. programs for anywhere between 6-12 years.

"All the "wrestling" and "getting in line" to teach undergraduate sections of Intro Psych. Joining research teams in the hopes of one day becoming the sixth author on a four page publication. Editing the chapter of a professor's book, performing his library research, or working the overhead projector for his speech at the national convention in exchange for seeing your name in a footnote and receiving a recommendation and access to the professor's "network." I learned enough in 3 1/2 years to know the doctorate, while necessary, is not a sufficient credential for employment and that assuming any kind of position in this field was a political and parochial affair for which candidates pay an inhuman price on an installment plan. Stafford loans are not the only debt endured by graduate students and by the time freedoms and wits amortize into tenure, when they can finally claim to own their own home in academe, they have survived so many layers of vetting as to have proven themselves unwilling or unable to champion the kind of original idea required by the Psychology's more complex or obscure subjects.

"Many people ask me why I did not go on to pursue a post-doc in Psychology, especially after a wildly successful doctoral dissertation for which I explored relationships between the content and characteristics of dream experiences, coping styles, and blood chemistry in cancer patients. But one does not just 'go on' to a post-doc. They are just as competitive as any other post in academia. Now that we all agree just saturated the university labor market is, it ahs been customary for professors to advise graduate students to forgo applications for tenure-track assistant professorships in favor of the post-doc. Unofficially, the post-doc is regarded as a stage in pre-employment career development. Supplanting the dissertation as the final hurdle, the post-doc has assumed its place in the career development schedule. The vast majority of post-docs last only one year, and after hopping all over the country from one university to another in search of a hospitable climate, I found the idea of another port of call rather odious, especially in light of the fact the post-doc would not dramatically increase my competitiveness for tenure-track assistant professorships. The post-doc has become a silent prerequisite, and if it is not on your CV, your odds of finding a tenure-track position may be greatly reduced, but I would not expect an appreciable boost from the post-doc. And in my case, no post-doc will help me overcome the biases I face as a lab-less dream researcher. I was already resolved at that point to pursue a program where I can respecialize in clinical psychology."

Wyatt Ehrenfels weighed the odds of survival and, more importantly, the odds of meeting his own personal and professional goals, against the impending obstacles and decided he would be foolish to pursue a university position. "I looked at the growing skepticism toward dreaming and the number of competing applicants and I decided that the demands of doing dreaming justice through research put me in direct conflict with the demands of competing for a tenure-track position. As a dream researcher, I am required to sacrifice considerably more than my peers, and my sacrifices do irreparable harm to my personal and professional goals as well as to the phenomenon itself. In a market in which posturing and sacrifice has become a competitive sport, my research interest adversely affects my employment opportunities because dreaming is at an early stage of discovery and requires a great deal of original and expeditionary methodologies. Your curriculum vita is a lot like a business suit. As a dream researcher, I would not be published as often, nor would I be published in the most reputable journals. While my competitors are wearing meticulously stitched and double-breasted Armani suits (not to mention all the cosmetics), I show up looking and smelling like Indiana Jones. It's not that I feel I am not likely to win this game, but that even with doctorate in hand, that I am unqualified to play. I simply cannot survive in a market in which faculty search committees always have this luxury of cherry-picking applicants based on like-mindedness, sheer number of publications weighted by the reputation of the journals, and a willingness to sacrifice. However, the field itself pays a much larger price for its exclusion of people like myself. The quality and psychologistic relevance of its organized body of knowledge and its curriculum continue to deteriorate at an alarming pace.

"As a student of dreams, over the years I have been subject to all manner of resistance, resistance to my subject of interest, resistance to my ideas and methodologies, and resistance to me as a person. I have turned to peers and professors for sympathy, only to hear, "maybe this isn't the field for you." This would bear an eerie resemblance to the popular remark from significant others: "you didn't belong there," if not for the fact friends and family offer their wisdom in the spirit of praise. Rather dubious consolation coming from people aware of my arguably congenital interest in dreaming and personality. (By the age of thirteen I had already read a number of books on the subject of dreams, a General Psychology textbook, and an early edition of a text I’d later read for a graduate course in personality). The most constructive advice came from my wife, who admonished me one February 1, 1999 to stop whining and do something about it. "Write a book," she said. So I did."

But it became apparent rather early into the writing that Fireflies in the Shadow of the Sun required a pseudonym. While I initially scoffed at the idea of sacrificing my identity, after repeated overtures from my spouse and key supporters it became clear extraordinary measures were required to manage risks to her career and to insure their continued support. Her attempt to console a friend pressured to withdraw from the program led to the disclosure of my identity, and her friend "threw my book in the face" of the program director and some of the other students. When students swamped the program director's office with questions about the work, the administration pandered to student fears this mysterious, as-yet unpublished book would erode the value of their degree. Not only was an inquiry required to clear my wife of involvement in the writing of the book, program administrators demanded assurances from my wife that she had no awareness of the book's content. Once cleared of all suspicion, she was forced to deliver a menacing warning and threat of litigation to her husband. An I.O. graduate student specializing in Leadership at another local school was chided for her role in planning a campus speaking engagement for me. But the professionals themselves are not the only group to vindicate fears of reprisal among my spouse and supporters."

The best case for the use of the Wyatt Ehrenfels pseudonym is being made by a group of self-proclaimed 'kook-ologists', led by a former University of California professor, whose obsession with unearthing the identity of Ehrenfels (contact) has crept into harassment complete with veiled threats and cyber-stalking. "It's really quite amusing when you think about it. They don't approve of my practice of using a pen name. So under the pretext of defending gullible readers from the 'deceptive' and 'fraudulent' Ehrenfels, these creepy hoodlums, operating under aliases themselves and using false e-mail addresses, are demanding Ehrenfels disclose his identity. They must not think very highly of the average person, the much-maligned 'man-in-the-street,' but then they could have attempted to defuse the logic of Ehrenfels, to criticize the ideas. The web site is, after all, not an attack on an individual, but an issue-directed campaign. A campaign which a few hoodlums seek to derail by harassing an individual. That is what we call in football lingo an 'end run.' Diversions. Red herrings. Pretexts. Apotropaisms. Well, more power to them. They have generated quite a lot of publicity for this campaign at just the right moment in the life of this book. Our web logs have recorded over thirteen hundred accesses of our favorite icon in the past three weeks alone. It's a win-win situation. They've generated all this publicity for us without taking anything away from our vision for a better Psychology. And when all is said and done, even after people eventually learn the names of key Shadow Psychology figures, even after all the devilry or diversions have played out, nothing will be able to distract you from the facts that the campaign is about ideas and that it is the ideas from which the detractors are running. These are the real facts of this campaign. And they cannot be disputed."

"Sure, they will parade a series of diligently sleuthed and carefully gilded facts about the so-called real identity of Ehrenfels, that is, until out of frustration they lapse into repetitious reframing, argumentativeness, and fabrication. The facts will be accurate but also obvious, in this case readily available to anyone with access to an Internet connection, but though each is accurate in and of itself, neither any fact alone nor the whole lot of them will correctly name the identity of Ehrenfels. As accurate as they are, they are simply incomplete. I suppose, when you think about it, their efforts bare resemblance to our organized body of knowledge in psychology. A loose concatenation of conflicting findings culled from surface observations, tauted as probing. What did Greg Easterbrook of the Brookings Institution say in his NFL Network "Tuesday Morning Quarterback" column (January 6, 2004) about psychological research reported by ABC News and the New York Times:'(They) describe years listening to recordings of spontaneous conversations to analyze the roles of 'ums' and 'uhs' in communication. Their conclusion? Saying 'uh' means you need a second to decide what to say next, while saying 'um' means you need a couple seconds. Um, Herbert Clark of Stanford and Jean Fox Tree of the University of California at Santa Cruz, doesn't everyone already know this? Please, please tell me this study was not funded by federal taxpayers.'"

"The self-styled sleuths are working with an incomplete set of puzzle pieces, and we'll explain why their attempts to link Ehrenfels with an individual have been as much in vain as they have been in vein. You'll understand that it's not that they aren't capable enough or devoted enough, but simply because we haven't made enough information available to them. Why? Because we're holding the edges of the puzzle."

Wyatt Ehrenfels is a pen name adopted by, among others, a Ph.D. in Social-Personality Psychology to protect spouses and supporters from those in the field of psychology as bent on retaliation as they are on repression. A retaliatory overture directed against the spouse of one Shadow Psychology official, has been incorporated into the final draft of the novel.

The Ehrenfels clan, which refers to itself as The Shadow Psychology Network, is coy about the structure of its inner circle. "We're not releasing any flow charts," remarks its designated correspondent. "But we've known from the beginning we wanted the network, because only as a network can we take on a whole profession and survive any series of hypothetical scenarios regarding retaliation. But you do need at least a pair of network members to be front men, and these roles are associated with a greater risk of detection. And these individuals made the Ehrenfels identity a no-lose proposition for us. Those eager to unmask the Ehrenfels persona should not despair however, as many key members will eventually come forward in the months following the release of the book. They simply do not want to see all the credit go to one individual a few cyber-sleuths (who did the minimal homework) appointed as a figurehead. They want a trophy. Or possibly a piñata. But how much of a trophy is it when it is so transparent? No doubt others have traced this network to these 2-3 contributing members, but have not come forward to claim their prize simply because it was too easy to be the whole truth. But we'll come forward on our own timetable. This is not to slight the would-be sleuths, as we simply set this whole thing up so we could not be unveiled. There is not enough information on the Internet."

Having psychologists in the network ensures that Ehrenfels is trained in research & analysis and is vested with a fund of knowledge about small group dynamics, interpersonal relations, the structure and dynamics of the human personality, and most importantly, the vaunted norms that govern the day-to-day operations of academics and practitioners. I can think of no one more qualified to opine on the adverse impact of a field's sociological properties on its science.

Despite the network infrastructure, the group still refers to itself as "I," claiming as one of its mission precepts that the individual is the vehicle of life and indivisible/insoluble unit of ShadowPsychology. "At this early stage, I may have lost some support as a result of adopting the pseudonym," admits Ehrenfels. "But it's not like I am groveling for attention. My web logs record an average of over 250 visits to my web site a day and over 2,000 accesses. Most importantly, I owe the support of the most significant people to the nom de plume. And as for the support I may have failed to secure, well, some of those readers understandably have questions about my motives and intentions and about whether my creative campaign will have as many constructive as destructive effects. 'Do I intend to destroy the field of psychology?' and that sort of thing from people concerned about the effects of my efforts on the value of their degree. These questions will be dispelled once the book is released and I fully expect to recoup any ground I may have lost to the pen name. This will take the sting out of the juvenile salvos of some denizens living on those questionnable UseNet "news groups" who proclaim my use of a pseudonym to be an act of deceit and fraudulence despite their own anonymity and who seek to exploit the fact I began publicizing the book ahead of its release for public sale. You know, the kind of mudslinging traditionally directed at muckrakers and whistleblowers. Nothing would please me more than to announce with aplomb that the organized cyber-stalking (i.e., the intimidation, extortion, identity theft, hacking, and defamation) is being perpetrated by psychologists, but given all the other lies manufactured, e-mail addresses forged, and false complaints filed, I have to treat their claims to having a Ph.D. in psychology with incredulity and skepticism."

Immaculate Misfit? Or Shadow of Modern Psychology?

Don't let the metaphor go to your head. It didn't go to the head of Shadow Psychology Network coordinator J. Wyatt Ehrenfels. J. Wyatt Ehrenfels explains why he has been tapped with such labels as the 'shadow of modern psychology' and the 'immaculate misfit':