Answering the Critics:

I. On the Charge of Sour Grapes

Subtitle: Outrage Is Never Appropriate, and Always Incriminating

According to some of my critics, my criticisms of Psychology stem from my failure to put my PhD to use and find work in the psychological community. These critics would like you, the reader, to treat me as any disgruntled employee. The theory is that I would have been high on this field if the field would have embraced me with open arms. Are they right? Well, it depends. I know a handful of professors who managed to find a place in a university at a time when an academic with interests or methods that were out of the mainstream could find work. Of course, these professors had a hell of a time holding on to their jobs. They had difficulty getting their work published and colleagues made life miserable for them by harassing their research assistants and advisees. And much of their work reflected a rotten compromise between their own plans and the prevailing culture in psychology departments. Had I found a place in Psychology under these circumstances, I would have continued to fight for what I believed, and whether my work reflected any of the adjustments and sacrifices, I would have still found an outlet for my criticisms. However, knowing that I would have jeopardized my job by speaking out about Psychology's shortfalls, I may have opted to keep my criticisms close to the vest. After all, if I would have lost that job, I would have a hard time explaining to prospective employers (psych departments) why I couldn't hold down the first job (and why my references from this university have, even at heights of diplomacy, discussed how I was not a good fit for their program. I know a lot of psych profs who harbour criticisms of the academic community.

And then there are professors abandon their beliefs altogether as payment for work. It's what my critics expect of students and new psychology professors. If I had become a psychology professor, should I have adjusted my attitudes so that they were wholly consistent with the ways in which I found myself behaving? Identifying with ... giving up my identity completely to ... my colleagues and the surrounding academic culture would have meant living with less dissonance-related tension. I'm not built that way.

Now if the field had embraced me with open arms (and not just misemployed me), well, that's different. Under those circumstances, it's unlikely I would have had much to criticize. The field would have been the one I had envisioned since I began reading and researching as a thirteen-year-old. Being embraced would not have invalidated my criticism, because there would have been no criticism to invalidate ... Psychology itself would have been a different place, which makes the criticism of me moot. I am what I am, because Psychology is what it is.

Having been exposed to psychology's academic culture as a graduate student, I decided not to seek a tenure-track assistant professorship in a psychology department. I never submitted an application. So statements that I "could not get a job" are not entirely accurate. Though I acknowledge there would have been difficulty finding work, I could have eked out a position somewhere had I responded favorably to advice from my professors to rewrite my dissertation for submission to the hot new health psychology journals. But for what purpose? Even if a faculty hired me on the strength of one trailblazing medical dissertation, going forward I would not have survived doing the kind of research I thought worth doing. Sure, sacrifices and compromises are a part of life. But psychology faculty are the most narrow-minded and gratuitously prohibitive group, and I decided I could do all sorts of research in the federal government and private sector where adjusting to requirements would not have felt like selling my soul. I cared too much about my dream research to witness its degradation -- to witness its degradation by my hand. And because I am enmeshed in my work ... because my personality is intrinsically tied to dreams ... I would have felt personally degraded in the process. This is not a problem for most psychology professors estranged from their research interests. This may explain why they are so unsympathetic.

The strength of my critique does not hinge on my argument that Psychology would not let me in, as my critics would have you believe, but that Psychology is no longer the kind of field in which I could develop personally or professionally. It's not the kind of field in which I can mature as an adult, individuate as scientist, and truly advance our understanding of a phenomenon to which I remain faithfully curious and curiously faithful. It's not that I do not have anything to offer the science of Psychology, but that the institution of Psychology has nothing to offer a science of dreams. The policies and procedures governing knowledge production in modern Psychology would have required considerably more sacrifices on the part of a dream researcher and original thinker than it does of those who can afford to uphold the so-called 'standards.' And we were expected to do more than just imitate conventional practices. We were expected to wear the so-called standards on our sleeves. To wear our scientific precepts like uniforms. If your career as a university professor is one of manufacturing casts, you cannot expect to be 'awarded' a university position unless you yourself have been produced vis-a-vis some mold, and done so without blemish or irregularity. This metaphor is fairly effective in making my readers understand how systemic biases (discrimination built into impersonal policies and procedures) are reproduced into the attitudes of individual psychology professors, who are then said to be the human carriers or incarnations of the system. The cherry-picking of new psychology professors from among a pool of standard-bearing applicants, and the Darwinian homogenization of the academic community over successive generations of hiring, created conditions inhospitable to certain talents, temperaments, and topics (i.e. phenomena). I was not prepared to live with the fact these sacrifices would have been detrimental to my maturation as an adult, my individuation as a person, and genuine scientific progress in the area of Dream Psychology. By the time I learned how the game was played, it was not too late for me. But I simply decided it was not worth playing. I knew I could battle my way to the PhD, but beyond that, I would asked too much of myself as a persona and scientist to make the sacrifices necessary to survive the subjective and zero sum competition for university positions.

So what my campaign is advancing is not so much a vandetta, but a vision of what Psychology ought to be. Now if I was the kind of corporate whistleblower who (a) had been aware of the corruption all along (b) remained tacitly complicit or unconcerned, until (c) I was dismissed on unrelated grounds, then perhaps my case would have warranted a charge of 'sour grapes.' Because this is not such a case, the charge of 'sour grapes' applied indiscriminately to me by Psychology insiders, has never struck a chord.

It appears the charge of sour grapes strikes so many third-party observors as mingy because the way it has been deployed by Psychology insiders suggests there's something wrong with good old fashioned moral outrage. Lost in the shuffle is the fact that some people complain for legitimate reasons. Where there is smoke, we should at least consider whether there may be fire. However, the 'sour grapes' tactic is difficult to resist because of the following implications, which shifts the focus onto a "fire in the belly" of the complainant, who is then perceived as a self-destructive arsonist whose intention to destroy a field can be traced to a pattern of misjudgements and misdirected impulses that first destroyed his own career. Here are the implications:

• the complainant, in this case me, was wronged or declared illegitimate for a legitimate reason
  

• the adverse outcome is attributable to a cause that is not personal and thus beyond reproach
  

• the collection of adverse outcomes is unique to the complainant (or at least rare) and thus regardless of how accurate or justified the complaint, it is sheer malevolence or narcissism to impugn the whole (all of Psychology) based on the behavior of one of its parts (one professor or one university).
  

I'd like to address the last implication first. My critique of Psychology is just that: a comprehensive critique of the policies and procedures driving teaching/training, research, and mental health delivery. It is not a complaint against a specific person or university. When psychology professors begin losing ground to me, they become willing to sell out one of their institutions to save Psychology as a whole.

There is a bit of irony to this tactic. I mean it is my critic, and not I, who is attempting to discard a whole on the basis of one of its parts. My critic wants to throw out the whole of my critique because I had some bad experiences. True. I did have some bad experiences. But the bad experiences clued me into the dysfunctional and discriminatory professional development and knowledge production policies that pervade the entire field, a critique that transcends local politics. The personal experiences also gave me the impetus to refine my critique and the language to express it in writing. Pardon me for being motivated.

Isn't this how things usually happen? You often become aware of a problem when you first become affected by it. To disqualify my assessment on the grounds that it happened to me is absurd. Someone had once written of my book that its problem is that it was not written by someone currently employed as a psychology professor. But part of the criticism laid out in the book is that the field is such that it promotes and retains 'psych profs' whose attitude is such that they feel they have a stake in seeing only the good in Psychology and in otherwise keeping their heads below water. This ideology of survival insures the survival of ideology.

I suspect it is for this reason that charges of sour grapes have always bolstered my standing publicly by precipitating a backlash against the person who cries 'sour grapes.' Invariably, one in every 50 respondents will ask me whether this whole campaign was motivated by "just a collection of bad experiences." And my answer has always been "yes, of course. However, my experiences cannot account for my position, only for the impetus to take it public." Moreover, I am not lashing out at a handful of people who hit me up with a collection of bad experiences. I am using scientific principles and best practices to bring to light fundamental problems with an institution. Beyond individual politics, my argument subjects to a dispassionate sociological analysis the systemic biases harmful to genuine progress in the science of dreams. When viewed as a symptom of Psychology's professional training model and of the policies & procedures governing teaching and research in Psychology, my personal plight becomes a productive story to tell and not some biled-filled beside-the-point obfuscation of fact. But by attempting to reduce my whole critique to an individual blowing off steam about a handful of professors who may or may not have done anything wrong, Psychology insiders hope to depict my critique as, at best, the result of a derailed career, and at worst, the result of a career that deservedly failed due to some fatal flaw, or general incompetence, on the part of the complainant. What makes this so misleading and mischievous is that those vested in defending Psychology know that the average person will not care about the plight of one stranger, so their goal becomes of one of maintaining that way of portraying this critique.

But it doesn't work. Even more transparent than my motivation to express my argument is the motivation to dismiss it on the grounds of "sour grapes," for no such charge could clear the air of the logic in my argument. My position simply cannot be dismissed or discounted. It has to be defused, and the only way to defuse it is to address its conceptual architecture. You can't stop it. You can't go around it. You have to go through it. Nothing has proven more effective in galvanizing attention for my critique than managed neglect.

Known as the "sour grapes" or "you couldn't cut it in the field" critique, this kneejerk retort has been an apotropaism, a magical incantation invoked by academics and practitioners to pre-emptively ward off attention to the campaign's ideas. "Sour grapes" is one of those self-substantiating arguments, if you could call a single summarily judgmental phrase an "argument." If you follow their reasoning, then you would have to conclude that because I never succeeded in winning a place in the field, I do not have what it takes to criticize it. Such an argument presumes there is no beach beyond their own Sand Castle.

I suspect that if the source of the sour grapes epithet had more of a counterargument in his or her arsensal, that he or she would either use it or deem my argument so innocuous as to ignore my whole campaign. But ironically it is the bitter person for whom the sour grapes argument is the last redoubt, and I often hesitate to lay waste to it in fear of what such a person would do when stripped of his or her last line of defense.

Others seek to alienate me by pathologizing me or portraying me as an angry man. I assure you that while it may appear I am asking a lot of people to swallow a bitter pill, my critique packs a positive punch. It is my message that there is still room for pioneering in this field and that a bounty of wisdom awaits us if only we cast away the policies/procedures that shackle us with arbitrary and superfluous "requirements" that, in actuality, have less standing in science and nature than in social necessity, social expediency, and even social control. I seek to liberate psych profs from the "institutional cataracts" that distance them from their own wits and from the phenomena under study. And my critique could even spare them from having to assume the level of responsibility for the opinions and actions that might otherwise prove a career risk. I am attempting to shoulder this responsibility as an outsider. The reason why these same profs need to spin reaction to my efforts to emphasize the destructive and emotional elements is easy to diagnose: they do not want to explain to my readers that they cannot compete in a free market of ideas and that they have become hopelessly inured to the web of dependencies that supplies them with sources of guidance, validation, and even identity. As creatures of imprimatur and instantiations of the field's so-called 'best practices,' they have come to depend on a system that rewards them for having perfected the art of imitation and compliance. Even if I made the sacrifices I needed to work within faculty expectations and avoid censure, and I did this briefly to advance on my PhD, I still would not have been able to function at the level of compliance required to build a CV that would have made me competitive for a tenure-track position...and more importantly, I would sacrifice the quality of my research into dreaming, which demands a great deal more ingenuity and flexibility than research into building a better spatula. Psychology professors do not understand that in defending their policies and procedures, and in holding them up as rigid and universal standards, they demand that I, and all people with interests like myself (dreams), make sacrifices they do not have to make and undermine the quality of the research as a result. And then for them to turn around and portray me as self-indulgent and rigid, well, that's just blind and avaricious.

In a world in which faculty search committees can afford to cherry pick from among 200 applicants, an original thinker could not possibly survive, leaving academia within reach of only those who are willing, or who can afford to, sell out completely. Now while this may not have been true a few decades ago, it is true today and its truth becomes more severe as this field "progresses." Those who see anger in this statement may need to examine their own house for boogeymen and things that go bump in the night.

To dismiss my argument because I might be disgruntled is disingenuous. Am I to believe of those who cry "sour grapes" that it is their view that outrage is never appropriate? Surely, they've felt wronged at some point in their lives. Rather than inquire into the nature of the perceived inequity or injustice, they categorically condemn the inconvenient critique. Did they ever suppress themselves thinking someone could invalidate their own complaint with a simple statement of "sour grapes"?

I have to wonder just how available is my emotional state to those drawing inferences about my state of mind from the tenor of my web site. Perhaps they are imagining that they themselves would be angry if these things that I am reporting had befallen them. Based on my experiences, such an inference of "anger" is in keeping with their penchant for violently assessing the character of their students and, in what is tantamount to slander and groupthink, sharing that vague, unscrupulous, and unsubstantiated assessment with the faculty at large. Just prior to authoring this rebuttal to the sour grapes epithet, someone had sent me an e-mail characterizing me as both disgruntled and narcissistic and then attempted to post the same e-mail to my Yahoo discussion group. I ask you who you think the truly angry party is here.

So as I mention on my web site, my critique is two-pronged, consisting of both a collection of anecdotal experiences and a dispassionate sociological analysis of the field's policies and procedures as I observe their effects on my own work and, more broadly, on what passes for an "organized body of knowledge."

The most recent "sour grapes" purveyor is a Harvard doctoral student who graduated Northwestern with a dual major. He studies positive psychology, and from my experiences on the positive psychology listserv, those participants seem to think the mission of positive psychology is that of exuding congeniality, much like many participants on the humanism listserv seem to think the mission of humanistic psychology is the advancement of peace. Such social and political confabulations undermine the true mission of positive and humanistic psychology, which is the adequate exploration of psychologistic phenomena at the heart of the human condition. (These programs actually are necessary corrections for an over-emphasis within psychology on psychopathology or abnormal psychology, resulting in the field's poor track record with normal and para-normal phenomena). I have never witnessed such frenetic opposition to my campaign as I have within these groups, which is bemusing when one considers that my campaign shares precisely that mission. Apparently, even the sects of psychology that were designed to restore or provide what is missing in the field, are just giving us more of the same. Bemusing ironies are not in short supply. The web site of the Harvard graduate student who charged me with narcissism as well as bitterness featured the largest image of any person's face as I had seen on any web site -- his.

I wonder if he or any other verbally incontinent parrot of 'sour grapes' would ever tell a rape victim, 'you're only angry with him because he raped you' or 'the reason why you're lobbying for stricter rape laws is because it happened to you personally. Only a minority of women are raped, so you shouldn't subject the world to your rape laws.' Leave it to these aspiring scientists to disqualify the messenger on the grounds of personal bias. The experiences may have added some impetus to his motivation to publicize his argument, but it cannot account for, nor can it discount, the logic of my argument. The fact it personally happened to me should be a reason to examine my message closely, not to disqualify the messenger. Given part of my thesis is that the culture of Psychology exhibits a pattern of discrimination in adversely affecting or excluding individuals with certain interests or values, the 'sour grapes' response to my critique that best presents my case.

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

Are Psychology Professors Prejudiced against Psyche: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Psychology's Science of Dreams Fails Science and Dreams: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Psychology Graduate Schools Blasted for Culture of Student Character Assassination: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Ode to Psychology Students: Are You Making A Major out of a Molehill: Wyatt Ehrenfels

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

Games without Frontiers: Ehrenfels Depicts Science of Psychology as ADHD: 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

Dreams & Dreaming Frequently Asked Questions: 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