During the lag leading up to the release of Fireflies, Ehrenfels sought new tactics in his bid to energize the movement to reform departments of psychology, a campaign dubbed 'Operation Firefly.' "If there is anything my efforts over the past two years have shown, it is that good ideas are where you find them and that Psychology desperately needs to stop selecting its faculty from the same petri dish. I've been a fly on the wall in some of these faculty search committee meetings. I've heard this or that serviceable standard bearer say things like "this applicant doesn't have the reputation, doesn't know the right people, and hasn't published quite as many papers as a graduate student. I argued at the time and I continue to argue to this day that we ask ourselves what happened with the applicants who did have all the publications, all the right connections, or an Ivy League pedigree. I'll tell you what happened. Diddly. Zilcho. Zippo. Zot. That's what happened. We're boring the hell out of the world. Sometimes those from outside the system are the ones ideally suited to fixing the system.

The alliance is a diverse, inclusive group representing various disciplines and backgrounds, all calling for the freedom and fidelity necessary to restore our faith in higher education. As a group, we are not going to agree on everything. I am not concerned with the extent to which our criticisms of psychology overlap, though they would not have contacted me had they not found appealing at least some load-bearing pillar of my critique. This group is strengthened by its diversity. I view the unique strengths and views of my allies as tools in the arsenal of a mobile and adaptible army that can hit you many different ways. This campaign, first and foremost, is about reviving (or injecting) the diversity that has been concealed, suppressed, disarmed, or sanitized by Psychology's academic and professional communities. Obviously, it would be unctuous of me, if not plainly hypocritical, to require uniformity among my allies.

I have been questionned for finding fault in Psychology's academic and professional communities. "The APA alone boasts over 100,000 members. How can 100,000 professionals be wrong?" And that sort of thing. When we deal with communities, it is important to keep in mind that we are not dealing with 100,000 individual minds, but essentially with one mind. Psych departments are roach motels. The selection and training of grad students, the doling out of predoctoral credentials for postdoctoral job competitiveness, and the committee-driven repopulation of psych profs by psych profs is so derivative, so inbred, as to stifle innovation. For those of you who actually need to hear this, any remark by me to the effect that we are dealing with one mind is admittedly an oversimplification, a bit of hyperbole to make a point, the point being that an individual enjoys potentially greater resources than loyalists who submit to a group mind by selling their wits, freedoms, and motives in exchange for membership in a community and for access to its one-size-fits-all sources of identity, guidance, and validation. If we apply evolutionary principles to the development and maintenance of a social institution like Psychology (see Two-Pronged Case against Dually-Disordered Psychology), we can understand how standard practices and committee thinking shape professional member selection and training into well-oiled machines that homogenize and bureaucratize the psychological community and actually work against the adult maturation, individuation, and true scientific progress of its individual members. We in the ShadowPsychology alliance may appear more raw and rough around the edges, and a little less polished than the professionals (and we are certainly less 'connected'), but we have managed to preserve our own integrity and the integrity of our ideas and to keep open the conduit to vital sources of inspiration, innovation, discovery, and serendipity. I once wondered why collegial relationships among academics and professionals were so harmonious yet poorly developed, almost primitive, and I realized that the vital contributing factor to relationships is diversity (i.e., differences). Psychology professors do rhapsodize fetishistically about racial and ethnic diversity, but then they seek a racially and ethnically diverse community of like-minded and serviceable standard bearers. Psychology professors do vary widely in their research interests and clinical specializations, but they hardly speak about one another's research around the water cooler, and they create this overarching paradigm to conceal and compensate for their various specializations, to give themselves something to talk about (some common alphabet), to make their day-to-day operations run more mindlessly and their career development more expediently, and to manage a public perception of inflated legitimacy around these things. And as for the natural diversity of pet theories, well, this is suppressed and restricted to the point where human nature, and especially the human psyche, is the 800 pound gorilla in the psychology department. We in the ShadowPsychology Alliance, and our numbers include dozens of academics and professionals whose wish to contribute confidentially for obvious reasons, understand the difference between real relationships and community management, between real and cosmetic science, between scientific and institutional requirements, between callings and careers, and between true professional development and ritual imitation. Our heads extend just a little further into the clouds and our feet are planted more firmly on the ground. Our tree of science is measured by the height of its crown and by the depth of its roots.

"While I contend wholeheartedly that the trends I describe are most conspicuous and counterproductive in Psychology, I also understand that they are not unique to Psychology. That being said, owing to the specific nature of my experiences and credentials, I decided that I could enhance my credibility by confining my arguments to the field in which I am a subject matter expert (i.e., psychology) while enlisting the support of authors whose works call attention to similar trends in other fields." Having enjoyed a research and development phase, repeated overtures from his publisher have forced Ehrenfels to forge ahead with plans to collaborate with top lieutenants on strategies and tactics. "The honeymoon is over. We've created and refined our tools, and while we will continue to expand them -- the book, the web site, the stores -- it is time to seriously think of how we could best put our tools on the street. This means a great deal of coordination among such activities as e-mail, distributing fliers, book signings, and appearances on cable access television. And of course no strategy is complete without a plan to address the matter with psychology majors who make up the social and financial base of Psychology, because notwithstanding a growing consortium of professional schools, the training of the vast majority of therapists is still powered by universities. It is also important to match the American Psychological Association stride for stride in spamming legislators with self-serving concerns about preserving or growing public subsidies for frivolous or corrupt enterprises. The evil empire needs to understand it now has a natural enemy on the Hill."

Having yet to systematically and comprehensively explore the universe of suitable authors, Ehrenfels is only beginning to compile a list of promising prospects.

The New Pocket Memo Lays It All Down

"...The condensed version is that psychology professors employ a combination of selection and reinforcement pressures to maintain a like-minded community of individuals intolerant to deviation and dissent and dependent on external sources of guidance, validation, and identity. As I implied, part of this is in selection and part of it is in socialization. You obviously take in the cute puppies who are already house-broken and then subject them to an advanced professional-grade weaning. As for the student with the pioneering glint in his eye, well, you leave him on the doorstep like some skanky barn cat. Most people who get my argument wrong do so because they don't read it. They assume I mean that the field attracts the wrong people, people with (psychological) issues. This is only partly true, but there isn't enough truth here on which to stake any compelling generalization."

-- J. Wyatt Ehrenfels

Rapid Fire Bullets

Members of the Ehrenfels team dispersed across shopping malls, colleges, and metro stations over the weekend to distribute fliers and introduce the campaign to reform Psychology to members of the community. fireflySun.com shattered its two-day record for web visits and accesses, and Wyatt Ehrenfels poured over dozens of e-mails. The public has spoken. And in appreciation for the interest in the web site, Ehrenfels deferred to public opinion by prepending his normal prose with a high-level view of Psychology's shortfalls in bulleted form:

• The professors responsible for Psychology research and education are intellectually ill-equipped to address (and indisposed to appreciate) the meaning of psychological life.
  

• Psych profs are less interested in the human condition (human nature is the 800 lb. gorilla in the psych department) than in (a) making their business transactions, day-to-day operations, and relationships easier and (b) managing a cosmetic impression of legitimacy for their students and for the public at large.
  

• Toward these ends, psych profs adopted standard operating procedures that show a fundamental lack of respect for the integrity of the individual, whether that individual is another professor, a research participant, a therapy client, a graduate student, or the much-maligned "man in the street" to whom the psych prof generalizes his or her research findings. These procedures include manualized diagnosis & treatment, approved textbooks and standardized course content, and derivative and imitative research methodologies that grind through masses of research volunteers like so many pounds of sausage.
  

• Psych profs develop a "para-skeptical contempt" for research topics (i.e., phenomena) that do not lend themselves as neatly or readily to these vaunted and self-congratulatory SOPs.
  

• As you might expect, tragically the phenomena being sacrificed (i.e., neglected or distorted) are the Big Picture questions or the psychologistic phenomena most associated with the heart of the human condition -- phenomena like dreams that pose the biggest intellectual challenges and make demands on psych profs to exhibit flexibility and originality in designing empirical methodologies which, like the best detectivework, is a confluence of qualitative and quantitative data, descriptive and inferential statistics, and exploratory and confirmatory data analyses. Currently, our excessively, precipitously, cosmetically, and gratuitously formal research accentuates the latter in each of the above pairs at the expense of the former, resulting in a one-sided science. Good research and necessarily expeditionary research simply cannot be judged by the same standards and cannot be comprehended with the same mindless minimum expenditure of energy with which they integrate all other slavishly expectation-compliant research.
  

• But alas, psych profs refuse to make compromises or concessions to the requirements of their subject matter and so, even while psych profs love to play God by disabusing the contemptible layman of his or her faith and folk beliefs, they perpetrate this myth that the essence of science is a collection of rules -- rules which, if followed correctly confer superiority on the game player. The scientist is portrayed as a disciplined mind and team player who seeks to converge on the same methods and truths as his or her colleagues. In actuality, however, genuine science is an open-ended framework that allows the individual scientist considerable discretion and latitude with which to draw constructively from his or her own wits and experiences. More accurate terms for the brand of quote unquote science currently practiced by psych profs include "paradigm," "epistemology," or dare I say "game" -- a Psychology version of Monopoly with rules (i.e. institutional requirements) that have less standing in science than in social necessity, social expediency, and worse yet, social control.
  

• And community management begins at home! Like many of the elimination-oriented reality TV programs, psychology graduate students who declare an interest in a problematic phenomenon (e.g., dreams) are summarily disqualified or systematically deprived of career milestones. A student interested in studying dreaming for a living must take a back seat to (and make considerably more sacrifices and adjustments) than students of subjects which are:
  • simple (for example, replicating previous research with an ethnic sample is requires minimum expenditure of energy, minimum risk, and assurances regarding publishability)
    

  • wayworn/derivative (for example, in the 1960s, thousands of faculty and students jumped on the 'cognitive dissonance' bandwagon with their own 'two-cent research.' Despite all this 'idle thrashing', a lack of original thinking failed to provide the high level view necessary to discern the broader clinical applications. When finally laid to rest, this subject was eulogized as 'academic' in both senses of the word.
    

  • socially conscientious (for example, the volume of research studies about racial stereotypes and gender identity)
    

  • materialistic/pseudo-psychologistic (for example, the number of faculty positions occupied by 'scholars' who cut up lesser lifeforms like frogs, rats, and pigeons for a living)
    

  • utilitarian/technical (for example, building a better spatula or designing cockpits on grants from the Federal Aviation Administration)
    

  • inbred/artifactual (by and large, clinical research studies DSM diagnostic constructs and the efficacy of manualized treatments for individuals diagnosed with these canonized 'disorders.' When sports reporters devote less coverage to NFL games than to annual rewiews of instant reply among league owners, you would have the sports equivalent of what we currently enjoy in Psychology.
    

  • advancing the APA's political agenda (for example, passing off opinions as an 'analysis' of affirmative action policy)
    

  The adjustments to my methods of research necessary to compete for a career in Psychology (and then to preserve that career) would not have allowed me to do justice to dreaming. For this reason, psychology's policies and procedures behave like prejudices and require an affirmative action for scholars who want to study human nature. Despite excellent grades, such students might find it impossible to achieve admission to graduate school. If they do manage to get through that gate, they may fall victim to the prejudice of an individual professor bent on questioning their fit, professionalism, or mental hygiene publicly in an end-of-academic-term faculty meeting that culminates in some category of conduct probation. Or they may find themselves unable to build a CV that allows them to compete for a post-doctoral teaching position because they cannot network, publish, or teach on a frenetic career timetable that supports only ADHD, frivolous, and highly technical research (or curriculum). At the end of the day, when all the vetting is done and all the checkpoints negotiated, the only available individuals on whom tenure can be conferred are those who are neither burdened with a superhuman curiosity nor sidetracked by a disposition to think. These "scholars," for whom a new mantra, "commitment to excellence," replaces the classical pursuit of truth, have adapted so adroitly and sacrificed so willingly as to prove they do not need tenure. Tenure, the real value in which is protection from one's colleagues (and not from House Republicans, as they would have you believe), is wasted on tenured persons. Like maggots born out of dumpster trash, the modern academic is a product of an institution, a creature of imprimatur, and instantiation of its policies and procedures.
  

• Why is it so significant that the bureacratization of knowledge production, diagnosis & treatment, and education & training places psych profs at odds with independent thinkers, exploratory researchers, and certain classes of phenomena? The effects are pervasive, profound, and permanent. Let's examine this from the perspective of natural selection, as observed over the course of many training generations. Psych profs on search committees and graduate admission committees can afford to cherry pick the 4-5 'perfect fits' from among the hundreds of applicants for graduate school and teacher-track assistant professorships. In conjunction with committee decision making, this seller's market helps the psych profs to re-populate their communities with like minds (do not let the racial and ethnic diversity of the flesh distract you from this fundamental truth). The community grows increasingly homogeneous, which adds to the pressure to uniformity additional pounds per square inch every year, making the industrially-polluted air in psych departments virtually impossible to breathe or penetrate with the human eye.
  

• I wish I could say all the fault lies in trans-individual entities, facticities, and other inexorabilities and sociological constructs that take on a life of their own. True, some biases are built into the system, but the system, with the full complicity of its individual patrons and administrators, determine how and with whom the academic community will be repopulated. And criteria for admission to graduate school and for tenure-track assistant professorships favor individuals with personal biases similar to those of the system so that prejudices now reside in increasingly large numbers of individual psych profs, in whom we find an unhealthy attitude to science and education. More psych profs depart from the normal balance between open-mindedness and skepticism, willing to categorically discount a phenomena as inherently unscientific. More applicants favored are those tractable types who simply demand to be shown a manual and told what to do. In the end, generations of psych profs who once grudgingly surrendered their freedoms and wits in exchange for access to common sources of guidance, validation, and identity gave way to generations with no wits to surrender and no freedom with which to choose their abrogation. The new generations of psych profs are, in a nutshell, "scary dumb."
  

• The bottom line: the psych department invented a new law of thermodynamics in which deindividuation passes across a gradient from people and work of relatively greater insipidness and imprimatur to people and work of relatively lesser insipidness and imprimatur. Psych profs seek to be scientists first by imitating the cosmetic (albeit outdated) aspects of harder sciences, and in observing this letter of the law fail to grasp the spirit of discovery and exploration. By fashioning themselves ambassadors of a generically scientific and professional community first and student of human nature second, psych profs lose all claim to scholarship and become mere clerks who preside over the cogs in a bureacratic knowledge production, diagnosis & treatment, and mass certification combine.
  

• Given this state of affairs, it behooves psych profs to fulfill their civic duty to accurately and adequately portray for their psych majors the odds and obstacles surrounding graduate admission, psychology-related career opportunities in the post-bacceleaureate labor market, and post-doctoral employment for those who endure the abuses and sacrifices to earn the vaunted PhD in Psychology.
  

NOTE
Barnes & Noble sells out of book while Amazon replenishes stock. As Ehrenfels works to boost supplies to Barnes & Noble and works out a better price at Amazon in the next few days, Ehrenfels (for now) recommends PublisherDirect (click here) for speed.

fireflySun.com Report List

16 Points Memo: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Authors, Scholars Unite to Support Wyatt Ehrenfels: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Teams with Dream Researcher Gail Bixler: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Exposes Our Fear of Exposure Therapy: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Interviews with Internal Correspondent: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Says Psychology Professors Suffer from Professional Analogue of Borderline Personality Disorder: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Student Defies Psychology Professor's Warning Not to Correspond with Wyatt Ehrenfels: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Chides Daniel Dennett for Evangelical Atheism in Psychology: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Argues Psychology Graduate Education Not Worth the Money: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Psychology Professors Acknowledge Student Complaints about Curriculum: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Answers Critics, Campaign of Diversionary Tactics: Wyatt Ehrenfels

American Psychological Association Denies Listserv Members Access to Wyatt Ehrenfels OKTV Broadcast Report: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Talks about the Dissertation Experience: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Discusses a Methodology for Dream Research: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Defends Dreaming from Psychologist Negative Thinking: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Urban E-Zine Entelechy Publishes Wyatt Ehrenfels Essay: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Defends Dream Research against Vaunted Psychology News Group Moderator: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Customizes Probe to Explore Dreaming-Waking Interface: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Teams with Kindred Critic Dennis Fox: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Teams with Psychotherapist Elio Frattaroli: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Teams with Political Scientist John Freie: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Teams with Biologist John Hewitt: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Shows Support for Embattled Psychology Graduate Student: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Counsels Students on True Callings: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Amuses with Proposal of Psychology Graduate Program Insurance: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Says Corrective Statistical Procedure Emblematic of Psychology's Flaws: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Brad Jesness Target of Malicious Psychologists on Usenet: Brad Jesness

Wyatt Ehrenfels Teams with Medal-Winning Author M.J. John: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Critical of Vaunted Cornell Research Claiming Opposites Do NOT Attract: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Criticizes Berkeley Psychology Professors for Left Wing Bias: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Offers Links to Education and Appropriations Subcommittees: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Thunders Away at Psychology's Load-Bearing Premises: Wyatt Ehrenfels

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

APPIC Match Service Helps Veterans Hospital Psychologists Discriminate against Applicants w/ Disabilities: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Psychology Professional Development at Odds with Adult Maturation: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Republishes Work of College Curriculum Critic and FOX News Writer Wendy McElroy: Wendy McElroy

Wyatt Ehrenfels Likens Psychological Research to Premature Ejaculation: Wyatt Ehrenfels

According to Social Psychologist Wyatt Ehrenfels, Diversity Is Skin Deep, Black-and-White at University of Michigan: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Dismantles Psychology's Standard Defenses against Criticism: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Points to Hypocrisy in Terror Management Research: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Releases Revitalized Pocket Memo: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Publishes Critique in Revolution Issue of New Therapist Magazine: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Is Psychology at Odds with Itself?: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Says Campaign Not Intend to Offend Psychology Majors: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Why Community Access Television Is Coming Around to Wyatt Ehrenfels: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Overview of Wyatt Ehrenfels's Fireflies in the Shadow of the Sun: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Onion of Obstacles Awaits Psychology Majors: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Depicts Psychology Prejudiced against Psyche: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Newsweek Report Surveys Dream Research Wasteland: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Assails Culture of Student Character Assassination in Psychology: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Depicts Psychology as Bloated Minor: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Multicultural Fetish Belies Suppression of Individual Freedom, Ideas in Psychology: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Depicts Psychology Research as Games without Frontiers, ADHD Science: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Uses Evolutionary Theory, Natural Selection to Impugn D-Volving Psychology: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Reveals American Psychological Association as Lobbying Tour de Force: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Shares Bizarre Tale of Application for University Position: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Discusses Predictive Power of Tornado Dreams: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Releases Preface to Fireflies in the Shadow of the Sun: Wyatt Ehrenfels

In a Drugged States, New Mexico Legislators Give Psychologists Prescriptive Authority: Wyatt Ehrenfels

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

Brad Jesness Exposes Malicious Stalking by Psychologists on Usenet: Brad Jesness

Psychology Majors Respond to Wyatt Ehrenfels fireflySun.com: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Offers Personality Taxonomy: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Offers Blueprint for Blighted Psychology: Wyatt Ehrenfels

From Position of Ignorance, APA Official Diverts Attention from/Urges Skepticism for, Wyatt Ehrenfels APPIC Discrimination Report: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Comes to Terms with Roiled Psychology Graduate Student and News Group Moderator: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Responses to Wyatt Ehrenfels Campaign to Reform Psychology: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Independent Publisher Offers Glowing Review of Fireflies in the Shadow of the Sun: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Teams with Psychotherapist Robert Roerich: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Says Psychology Professors Play Games with Rules: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Teams with Physicist Jeff Schmidt: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Malicious Stalking by Psychologists Abusing Psychotherapy News Group: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Reveals Groupthink, Abuse in Psychology Faculty Evaluation of Graduate Students: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Begins Sequel to Fireflies in the Shadow of the Sun: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Exposes Counseling Center Hiring Preference for Gays, Lesbians: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Diagnoses the Diagnosticians with the Shadow DSM: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Prominent UC-Davis Dream Researcher Dodges Wyatt Ehrenfels Draft of Reformers: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Teams with Management Consulting Maven R. Mallory Starr: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Overview of Wyatt Ehrenfels Dream Research with Cancer Patients: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Comments on the Short Falls of Teaching in Psychology: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Popular Psychotherapy All about Controlling Chaos: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Washington National Cathedral Site of Synchronicity in Novel by Social Psychologist: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Comments on the Value of a Degree in Psychology: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Offers Strategy for Self-Science of Dreams: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Attacks Psychology on Two Fronts: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Connie Vaughn Teams with Wyatt Ehrenfels to Explain Why She Is Not a Psychology: Connie Vaughn

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

Wyatt Ehrenfels Identifies Flaws in U.S. News Report of Psychology Employment Prospects: Wyatt Ehrenfels