All the leading behaviorists were WASPs—a fact that didn’t go unnoticed by young people entering psychology in the 1950s. Looking back, a casual observer of the field at that time couldn’t help but wonder if there shouldn’t be two entirely unrelated disciplines: “WASP Psychology” and “Jewish Psychology.” The WASPs marched around in white lab coats carrying clipboards and thinking up new ways to torture rats and all the while avoided the great wet mess of human experience. The Jews embraced the mess—even the Jews who disdained Freud’s methods and longed for “objectivity” and wished to search
...more
