The author's critique is part of a two-pronged approach, combining dispassionate sociological analysis with visceral complaints about incidents in which he was personally victimized by department policy or politics. "I am often criticized for rancor and punditry," claimed Ehrenfels. "I do not deny that I am disgruntled, and my feelings on this matter may have prompted my decision to express my views on Psychology, but they can entirely account for their logic. If you want to defeat me, you have to attend to the logic of the argument and not merely dismiss it on the basis of tenor, venue, or motive. Such things are red herrings intended to repress and divert. They are nothing more than defense mechanisms. The abuse of the term 'inappropriate' by psychologists (frequently applied to Ehrenfels postings) serves an expressive function only and should not be mistaken for a logical argument. It is ritual magic, an incantation invoked in chorus (or chanted) to ward off anything that ill-suits or bedevils them."

I am not here purely to malign, but to reform something about which I care much about. If I could help readers to acknowledge the difference between Psychology and psychologists, they could understand that I am not here to 'destroy the field' but to liberate it from its true detractors. But psychologists make some poor choices in defense of institutionalized Psychology, such as reducing my critique to the 'sour grapes' of someone who 'couldn't cut it in the field.' Unfortunately, this characterization is the choice of many academics and practitioners when approached by students with serious questions about my 16-points memo. In the final analysis, once my critique has been reviwed, it will be apparent that my 'not cutting it in the field' (to put it crudely), is just one of many symptoms of a dysfunctional and arguably defunct field.

Many psychology majors show their youth and inexperience by rotely and rigidly regurgitating from their faculty when they demand "empirical evidence" and respond skeptically to any observations that even remotely appear anecdotal. My arguments are in actuality consistent with, if not grounded in, what little empirical facts have been gathered on this neglected subject. In other words, the the facts are friendly enough. But this does raise an interesting point regarding the paucity of literature on the issue. Psychology professors know they would be ostracized for publishing any research that reflects poorly on the field or that brings upon the field scrutiny or skepticism. While empiricism in and of itself is relatively value-free, empiricists have to operate within the trappings of their institution, many of whom with strong personal biases. Objective observors of my debate with Psychology tend to settle on the conclusion that there are problems with both sides. While I am not always happy to find my motives under a microscope, I am extraordinarily pleased by the fact that psychologists themselves are being, for the first time as a group, subject to scrutiny and skepticism. In this regard I suppose I am sacrificing myself to rescue the psyche from the field of Psychology. If I can improve psychology this way, then that is enormous. FOR THIS REASON, I CONTEND I HAVE NEVER TRIED TO BRING DOWN PSYCHOLOGY, ONLY TO REFORM IT AND LIBERATE IT FROM THE CURRENT REGIME PRESIDING OVER ITS ACADEMIC AND PROFESSIONAL CULTURE.

In addition to SOME statistics, and again, we need more research in this area, there is also another type of analysis. There is a sociological analysis of the norms that govern the field. This analysis does not even require statistics, only agreement as to what are the field's business practices. It consists of a series of observations educated by my own experiences as a social psychologist required to go through the system. These are a set of experiences that are not unique. I am not referring here to a "collection of bad experiences." (Critics and wishful thinkers like to portray my argument as the reprisal of a rare victim, and thus judge that argument 'inappropriate' for public dissemination and consumption). No, bad experiences are something else entirely. This is not about politics. This is about socialization into a professional or academic culture. This is about a set of training requirements and business guidelines that are actually tauted as fairly universal across programs. These experiences are indisputable. In fact, psychology professors are so proud of these conventions that they do not wish to dispute them. I submit these experiences as "article A" of my evidence.

There are other articles. Such as "article B." These are the collections of bad experiences, the "horror stories" of students and colleagues who were politically embattled on ideological or characterological grounds. Then there is "article C," which is a comparison of the motives and research interests of those who succeed in the field versus those who fail to find a niche in the field or who where possible fly under the radar. There is "article D" which consists of a historical comparison of the field's contemporary vs. pre-contemporary characteristics (i.e., research interests of its membership and the branch structure of the field).

Once these articles are presented and articulated, only logic is required to raise sufficient doubt about the field by arguing how articles B, C, and D are the result of article A. As evidenced by my doctorate, I am familiar with the norms for research, teaching, and mental health delivery and training, and I am capable of determining whether these norms do injustice to individuals and to the human psyche. This is a sociological analysis and it is quite compelling and it demonstrates that there are prejudices in this field, some systemic and endemic and others that reside in the attitudes of individual professors. The effect of the latter is no over-generalization and should not be underestimated. Professors are successful suitors. They were at one point selected from a throng of applicants or candidates for admission to graduate school and, later, for appointment to faculty. They were selected on the basis of characteristics. As in Darwin's species, there are characteristics that are favorable to survival of the fittest and the evolution of the field follows accordingly. In this social evolution, the fittest are simply those whose interests and personalities match or fit those of the faculty search committees, who often invoke the phrase perfect fit to refer to the ideal candidate. Some of these vaunted characteristics are praiseworthy, and some are indifferent to standards of worth and merely reflect the arbitrary, actuarial, and algorithmic properties of the search (i.e., what is expedient and profitable [e.g. grants/number of publications], what is socially desirable [e.g., minority status], what is similar, familiar, and safe). In addition to the criterial characteristics there are also a host of other characteristics that are correlated with the criterial ones, i.e. various attitudes and habits. Consequently, these characteristics work systemically against certain classes of candidates in a way that I contend is conducive to the statement that Psychology itself is prejudiced against applicants with certain personalities and research interests. Why is this important? Well, in addition to calling attention to a systemic prejudice, it also casts doubt on the attitudes of individual psychology professors. Empiricism is only as good as its empiricists, and the empiricism of psychology professors is bound by certain professional trappings, reflects systemic prejudices, and fails to reflect a broad range of freedoms and functions essential to science. This is what I call an autistic empiricism, and it practiced by psychologists who are savants with respect to technical fidelity to design principles and statistical analysis but whose agendas and poor conceptualization skills alienate the phenomena under study and nullify their products.

But selection is not the only root of this pathology. It is not the only instrument homogenizing this club, bureautizing knowledge production, and creating a dysfunctional set of ethics and evaluation procedures. Once in the system, these suitors become subject to additional layers of vetting but also to a system of reinforcement that, well, 'reinforces' and 'extinguishes' the behaviors that solidify and perpetuate the culture. Psychology is a "club" to the outsider who, once on the inside, finds himself or herself in a "token economy." The primary unit of currency in this "economy" is simply conformity and obedience through which SOME idiosyncratic credits can be earned (e.g., tenure) but which for the most part undermines the essential nature of science and relationships. In the final analysis, tenure is wasted on tenured professors.

The "Other" Evidence

It is always preferable to supplement universal with unique sources of information. This is the difference between vehicular and discriminant validity utilized in statistical analysis itself, and their tandem is more powerful and more sensitive than either one alone. Thus for anyone in the field to hold my individual cases against me as 'anecdotal' shows an ignorance of effective evidence. And I will not allow my adversaries to characterize my campaign as a roman a clef, I will not be bullied into silence about some rather egregious actions that have befallen me while a graduate student at one of four different institutions. While my intentions may be difficult to guage because my presentation is often muddled by my outrage, I do ask my readers to tolerate if not accept my feelings, as my perspective on this field was not forged in an experiential vaccuum.

My graduate training was polymorphously political, and I was often embattled. While I am only an anecdote, my anecdote speaks volumes about what happens to "a person like me." The anecdote allows me to make very specific statements, but in their limitations lies their power. (Incidentally, because I received similar treatment across a variety of institutions, while I am anecdotal, the institutions of which I speak are not. They become appropriate targets for generalizations). I am the exception (or belong to an exceptional class) because the rules of psychology professors made me one. They point to me and say, "this is what we do not want in a colleague." This speaks volumes about them. Once we ascertain the set of characteristics the academics do not want, and the procedures they used to identify you, censure you, and remediate you, then we can make certain generalizations concerning what is underrepresented in the field and concerning the instruments of discrimination.

Ultimately, it comes down to legitimacy. The phenomena in which I take interest and my methods for exploring them are depicted as less scientific because they do not comply with all the unessential elements of the current scientific paradigm in psychology. But it is my belief that in refusing to be bound by all these superfluous constraints, I have freed myself up for an authentic and adequate science, for a science that is quintessential, a science that is comprehensive in its exploration and scrupulous in its detectivework, that retains its roots in the facts of human experience as well as its crown in the free-wheeling intellectual wits of the investigator. And I refuse to be branded as a non-professional simply because my curiosity, my appetite for intellectual freedom and creative control of my products, is insatiable. And I refuse to be branded as a non-professional because I think independently or because I am willing to allow my research to be informed by the best thinking of classical scholars like CG Jung, who represent an age in which professionals were both disposed and permitted to think.

The self, as an individual, is not only a legitimate measure of the worth of an enterprise, but the dutiful one. Clearly if you take away my sociological critique, which is to say, if psychology were properly oriented toward its subject, then it would not matter as much what had happened to me as an individual. But they are indifferent to, and ill-equipped to explore, phenomena like dreams, like personality, and as someone who's devoted his own efforts to these phenomena, I am a telling victim. Moreover, the prejudice against person's like myself is related to the limitations of the field as a science of psychological phenomenon. Because I, and people like myself, are not in the mix, certain phenomena, like dreams, have suffered. So while I could have settled for a statement like, "what happened to me as an individual is analogous to what happened to phenomena like dreaming and personality," the prejudice against persons like myself are likely to have caused the current impoverishment.

As I mentioned, I am not the only individual with these interests whose careers have suffered the professional equivalent of abortion. But even if I were, or if I were the only person to scream at the top of my lungs, for those in the field to trivialize this, and to leverage this for their advantage, is not only disingenuous but it is typical of the kind of perverted thinking that governs this field today. It is the thinking that the individual doesn't matter. Even in our science, where we rely exclusively on the partitioning of variance among large numbers of research subjects, the individual is just an anonymous, interchangeable, and expendable brick in the wall. We do not know how to learn anything from the individual person or from the individual experience, preserving the integrity of the individual, surveying the landscape within each individual, before, or in conjunction with the practice of, extracting commonalties among individuals. Consequently, our body of knowledge is both fragile and fake. I liken it to erecting a skyscraper with no foundation. You can't really work within it and you can kind of just push it over. Or like a Redwood with no roots that grew in one direction. The pressure to comply with the field's over-rated and over-differentiated norms keep this stilted vegetable growing in one direction. Though of all my flora metaphors, my favorite would be the likeness of Psychology to a tree that had been trunc-ated, over-pruning both its roots (phenomenology) and its crown (theory) and bearing branches that are far too numerous and twisted for the width of its trunk.

So this is a two-pronged critique. I am attacking their attitudes toward their students but also their approach to their subject matter. I suspect that if you wish to defeat my argument, you have to defeat me on both fronts. The two arguments intersect in my contention that psychology consists of a system of prejudices that precludes an adequate exploration of the psychologistic phenomena at the heart of the human condition. This prejudice is systemic in that it is governed by norms and policies that were given the power to perpetuate and proliferate themselves, but the prejudice is also supported by the attitudes of individual academics and practitioners. The prejudice claims as its victims certain phenomena as well as those students who align themselves with these phenomena."

16 Points Page: Wyatt Ehrenfels

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Adventure on APAGS listserv: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Cancer Research Appendices: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Cancer Research Discussion: Wyatt Ehrenfels

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Wyatt Ehrenfels Reveals Hidden Odds & Obstacles to Graduate Admission: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Cancer Research Introduction: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Overpowers UCLA Psychology Professor: Wyatt Ehrenfels

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Cancer Research Methodology: Wyatt Ehrenfels

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Cancer Research Results: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Psychologists Abuse Usenet to Stalk Its Critics: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Eludes Detection to Protect Key Allies: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Psychotherapist Scott Adams Offers Positive Commentary on Wyatt Ehrenfels memo: Scott Adams

Authors, Scholars Join Wyatt Ehrenfels: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Lays Out Two-Pronged Case against Dually Disordered Psychology: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Teams with Alice Andrews: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Teams with Psychotherapist Bill Arnott: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Doubling Down: Wyatt Ehrenfels