MOYER: “As I understand it, you would like an opportunity to say a few words about the dissertation.”

EHRENFELS: “Yes – something I hope could guide my readers through it. It is a downloadable pdf, so feel free to download it, print it up, and read it in front of the fireplace or wherever else you like to read. It is 179 pages – considerably shorter than my book – but it is a much different work. And even though it was revised from its original 232 pages to be more consumer-friendly, the dissertation was never that technical to begin with. The statistics are not exotic. They are simple t-tests and correlations, and my advisor demanded that my dissertation be written so that my grandmother could understand it. And – one more thing – one may even be able to get away with turning immediately to the results and discussion sections. The introduction and the methods are required for any work in psychology, but in this particular case, I would say they are superfluous. My research was original, but I am not permitted to write up a single-sentence Introduction claiming that ‘based on a review of the literature, I have learned that my research is original.’ I have to credit so many pages worth of people in the field with having done SOMETHING on the subject of dreams, whether it made any contribution to my thinking on the subject or not – whether it bares ANY relationship to what I plan to do or not. It’s like a Welfare System for people who need to see their name in print. Some of these professors keep lists of other research in which their work has been cited and attach it to their vita as some kind of measure of their worth.”

MOYER: “So you would recommend what? Flip to the Contents page, find the Results, and start there?”

EHRENFELS: “If you need to ration your time between my dissertation and some other activity.”

MOYER: “Like your book and the rest of your web site.”

EHRENFELS: “Or mowing the lawn.”

MOYER: “Anything else we should know about the dissertation? I for one have always wanted to ask what your defense was like, knowing virtually everything else about your graduate school career.”

EHRENFELS: “Actually, the defense was very much unlike my graduate school career. In fact my career as a whole is very atypical for a graduate student. My students coast through the program without any political turmoil and then they expect to ride a high on the defense. How many students have I seen walk out of that room sorely bitter and disappointed.”

MOYER: “Are that many dissertations sunk?”

EHRENFELS: “No – not sunk. The students are disappointed because they were put through the spanking machine. They were questioned – grilled -- criticized. It’s all part of the standard defense and they know that – but for some reason it compromises the whole experience for them. Now I didn’t expect mine to be a party – hell – I thought I’d be in trouble because my fifth member – who is a faculty from outside the department assigned by the University Administration – well when I tried to reach him by phone to schedule the defense – I reached his wife. His wife proceeded to instruct me on what food to order for the defense. She told me I needed to feed my professors or they might be put off.”

MOYER: “So what did you do?”

EHRENFELS: “I ran to my advisor. He told me they do NO such thing in the defenses – that he has seen it happen in some other departments like Education, but never here. I have never been moved to use or even accept the term ‘professional’ before – it is a term I have grown to hate because it has always been used to cast a pall over my ideas or behavior – but I agreed when my advisor when he said the practice of feeding your PhD committee was unprofessional. I always likened it to bribery myself. But I had to wonder what my fifth member – coming from another department – really expected. I didn’t want him to sink my dissertation because I didn’t feed him.”

MOYER: “So did you prepare a special plate for him, or something?”

EHRENFELS: “No – and he turned out to be very affable and professional man. I suspect his wife was just being meddlesome and that she did not have her finger on the pulse of this man, so to speak. But it caused me a lot of grief in the two weeks between the time I scheduled the defense and the time I defended my dissertation. I suspect it even had my advisor worried. We walked out of the room at the end of the defense, and this man was hanging all over us. If I remember correctly, he even wanted to grab a bite of lunch or something. Which was unusual and all, but he seemed to have a really good time and appeared to need a friend."

MOYER: "And you didn't feed him."

EHRENFELS: (laughter) "Right. How could I forget? But he was really complimentary of my work. My advisor kept trying to separate us from this man so he could take me back to his office for the standard post-defense debriefing, which apparently they don't do in the Education department. Finally – the man took his leave of us and proceeded down the hallway. And my advisor – if you met him – he’s very temperate and philosophical – and yet in a voice that was almost audible to the man at the other end of the hall – called him an ‘asshole.’ I thought he WANTED the man to hear it. And I also worried about the defense because – well – the department head almost always attends. It’s like one of his official functions. And I was not in the good graces of my department head. I was worried he would try to scuttle the defense with a question I couldn’t answer. But he didn’t show. And I suppose it makes sense now why he didn’t. He would not have wanted to see me reach that milestone.”

MOYER: “So the dissertation went well.”

EHRENFELS: “It was a SLAM DUNK. I mean it was roundly praised. And you could tell – at some point into the defense the questioning turned almost informal and jocular. There was even a point during the defense when my advisor and I collaborated on a strategy that successfully deflected attention away from a concern that could have resulted in more revisions. But I will leave that for you to read in the book.”

MOYER: “I already read your book.”

EHRENFELS: “Well, then I will leave that for THEM to read in my book.”

MOYER: “What did you mean by ‘revisions’?”

EHRENFELS: “Even after the defense, it is standard for the committee to recommend a few editorial additions and modifications. Sometimes a committee member even catches a spelling error or wants THIS word changed to THAT word. Many people even have to run additional analyses, which is a lot of work, and some poor bastards even have to defend for a second time.”

MOYER: “When would THAT happen?”

EHRENFELS: “There are a range of possible circumstances. If the student performed an analysis incorrectly or did not correctly interpret the results. Or maybe if one of the committee members JUST decided on a whim that he or she would have liked to see the project move in a different direction. Now at THIS particular university, which operates a little differently than most in this regard, there is a proposal stage, where the committee meets to hear your proposal and ultimately agrees to or metes out your methodology. But it is not like a contract. They could change their mind, and you also have two new members on your committee for the defense. Two members from OUTSIDE the department. One you choose and the other which is chosen for you by the Administration. But wild cards, both. Fortunately, my major professor recommended someone. It seems he uses someone from the Anthropology department for these purposes. My guess is that it works both ways. Whenever one of them needs a friendly professor to serve as outside member on a dissertation committee.

MOYER: “And you?”

EHRENFELS: “Did I have any revisions? No. Virtually no revisions. It took me less than an hour to make the changes requested. But I knew – and my advisor did too – that most committees will not allow the PhD candidate to leave the defense without having to do something, even if it means taking a feather duster to it. It is truly the last phase in the hazing process. So at some point during the Q & A, we saw the writing on the wall – he and I – and we concocted this scheme which had the effect of exchanging one type of revision for a far less extensive one. In other words, we GAVE them something. We made some concessions, refused to put up a fight, and we were rewarded for it. The odd part of the whole defense was that my advisor was the only person in the room to ask me a question I couldn’t answer. I could have strangled him. How many troops did we lose in the Persian Gulf to friendly fire? He asked me about the implications of my findings for anoxia research, which is not really even a Psychology question. I know he didn’t mean to do it – he is there to help me help myself – much like a benevolent deity – but he inadvertently tripped me up. I knew when he realized what he had done that he would later apologize for it. That was the kind of man he was. But in the meantime, the question was out there, and it took quite a contortion to get myself out of THAT one. It was like 'okay, figure our something smart to say that is vaguely relevant and then find a transition of sorts to make your statement qualify as a response rather than something that will get me diagnosed with Schizophrenia, Disorganized Type. Reminds me of the scene in the film Apollo 13 when the NASA engineers were instructed to come up with a way to instruct the Apollo 13 crew how to connect this round and square device using only a roll of duct tape and a plastic bag. But it was fun! It was my entire tumultuous career in miniature, at the end of which I could say, just after it becomes apparent that I will not be lost in space or go down in flames that 'this would be my finest hour.' I walked out of that room with an excitement I had never felt before and may never feel again. My defense was for me what it almost never is for anyone else – a time for closure – a true peak. I was in gyrations the rest of the day. I had music coursing through my veins. The visceral, active feeling lasted about a WEEK. I will never forget it. What a vindication!”

MOYER: “Why do you suppose it went so well?”

EHRENFELS: “Because we had the TOOLS, and we had the TALENT. Just kidding. I still get excited when I think back to that day. I suspect it is because the dissertation is the only time in the life of a graduate student when the things I think should matter actually DO matter. Stuff like independent thinking – like hard work – like having a head on your shoulders. You can do as the faculty say and play Simon Says with the faculty throughout your training, but no amount of conformity will get you through the dissertation, where they set you loose and look for something extra! You have to have some brains and your research has to show some heart and soul. And it did! These committee members drooled over the kind of data I had – blood chemistry data – hard medical data – as well as questionnaire data and interview data and dream data. All those material things earned me some idiosyncracy credits. I had many types of data and I related them well. I did every possible analysis I could have possibly done with the data I had, so I would be prepared if I were questioned. If I did an analysis that I didn’t put in the dissertation, the worst that could happen is that someone could ask me why I didn’t do it. I would then tell them I did do it and show them the results. Then they would tell me that I was wrong not to have put it in the work, and they would tell me to stick it in. That would have been the worst of it. I didn’t even run into that. I even ran those bullshit descriptive statistics on the distributions of the data – stuff like kurtosis and skewness and stuck that in the dissertation so no one could fault me for not dotting all my I’s and crossing all my T’s. And I did all that in just 2 months. My dissertation took me only 4 months end-to-end, which is virtually unheard of. And I could do that because I LOVED what I did – and because my advisor gave me complete creative control over the project. That is no small matter. I think many dissertations have two authors – the student and the dissertation advisor. And in some cases, the student does not even have much discretion at all in decisions that range from the research design to the actual topic of the work. But this was ALL mine. So it was no big thing for me to spend twelve-sixteen hours a day working on it. Also, my research wasn’t up there with pie-in-the-sky abstractions, statistically masturbating and mating constructs with constructs. And my research statistics were allowed to be simple – no factor analysis or regression – I had no statistical decisions to defend – I didn’t have to be a Statistics expert – because my subject matter and raw data was worthwhile. I didn’t have to compensate with a flashy statistics show or with a documentary-style literature review or with multi-media equipment.”

MOYER: “Or with food.”

EHRENFELS: “Or with food. Right. I was correlating the content and characteristics of dream experiences with objective measures of disease in cancer patients – X-rays and blood chemistry – with subjective measures of disease in cancer patients – responses to a quality-of-life inventory that indicated what the appreciable symptoms if any were at this point – and with interview data that helped me to classify their coping style. Hell, there was so much clarity and impact to the study that even the non-findings were interesting -- and informative. And ultimately I would correlate all this data in as many ways as possible, but I only needed t-tests and correlations to do it – like I said in part because my data and theory were worthwhile and in part because I couldn’t employ anything more sophisticated because I only had 14 research subjects.”

MOYER: “Only 14?”

EHRENFELS: “Yeah, I know. I worried someone would raise cain about that, but then they probably didn’t because my subjects are not coming from a captive audience of over 1,000 General Psychology students who are required to participate in 3 experiments for course credit. I mean -- that’s like shooting fish in a barrel. They’re like livestock for crying out loud. But my research subjects – they were bona fide flesh-and-blood human beings – and they are cancer patients! The fact I had access to cancer patients and that I took certain risks associated with convincing them to join – and remain in – my research – well that put the gloss back on my sheen. I spent two months over the summer collecting that data, and I was ready to roll in the Fall. By early November, I had filled out the forms I needed to petition for my defense, and by November 7, a defense was scheduled. In retrospect, the greatest threat to my PhD at that point was the tornado that touched down a mile from my house just a couple weeks before my defense.”