"How anti-gay bias compromised a treatment: A commentary on Meissner (2006)": Reply.

Responds to the comments made by Michael C. Singer (see record 2008-00996-012) on the current author's original article, "Time on my hands: The dilemma of the chronically late patient" (see record 2006-20697-003). The current author states "I am grateful to Dr. Singer for his interest and stringent criticism. However, in reading his commentary I had the odd feeling that I was being caustically attacked for views expressed in an article I did not write. However, perhaps the deficiency is mine in that my expression failed to achieve an adequate level of clarity and precision." The author regrets that he could not write an article to suit Dr. Singer's tastes, and that in the article he did write there were unavoidable gaps and deficiencies in the material because of the time constraints and distortions in the analysis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Motivation and personality.

Reviews the book, Motivation and personality by A. H. Maslow (1954). As indicated in the preface, "this book was started during the years 1935-1936 and was intended to be a systematic psychology of the older type." Thirteen of the eighteen chapters appeared as separate articles although the author did have an over-all plan into which these separates did fit. There have been only slight changes in the chapters in the preparation of this publication because the author felt that his thinking has "stood up very well." The opening chapter has as its thesis the importance of taking into account the scientist as well as the science, and is followed by a second chapter with a related theme. The third chapter, titled "Holistic-Dynamic Theory in the Study of Personality" is described by the author as being "already somewhat dated." The fourth chapter is titled "Preface to Motivation Theory" and presents some vital concepts such as treating the individual as a whole. In the following chapter, "A Theory of Human Motivation," the author makes the point that "The organism is dominated and its behavior organized by unsatisfied needs." This chapter is followed by one in which the author re-evaluates the instinct theory. Subsequent chapters discuss love and self-actualization. The reviewer reports that overall, the general style of the book as a whole is pleasant in its personal quality and sincerity. It is easy to see how as individual articles, the sections could have been interesting points of departure for discussion, but the assembling of these does not result in an integrated approach nor the "systematic psychology" which the author mentions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Review of Cross-Cultural Studies of Behavior": Comment.

Canadian Psychologist (CP) is first and best on a host of things, and as a Canadian in the U.S. I read it well and with love. One first though, in a special category, is the review of a book by the book's own authors! Self analysis is, of course, eschewed only by the Watsonians. So there's little quarrel with Al-Issa and Dennis' comments on their book of readings Cross-Cultural Studies of Behavior (see record 2007-02140-011) that "The collection of readings by Al-Issa and Dennis are, therefore, a useful adjunct to the class-room literature." or "There are 39 articles in all representing a good selection of authors prominent in their field. Editors' comments are minimal." Perhaps Al-Issa and Dennis could become the Bob and Ray of reviewers, propelling psychology into a new era of analysis, with options on Massey Hall or the Worm Runners Digest Or at least they could bring together the best of their reviews to be reviewed in CP. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Rejoinder to Robert F. Morgan's review of psychobattery.

The present author applauds Robert F. Morgan's stated efforts in his review (see record 2007-04428-001) of the author's book, Psychobattery, (1981) to form "an ombudsman group to improve professional practice and protect the consumer." However, the present author does not approve of Morgan's inability to interpret straightforward statements in Psychobattery. He first seems to have completely missed the point that the book is about serious mental illness; essentially schizophrenia and bipolar and unipolar affective diseases. If Morgan were more interested in reviewing Psychobattery, instead of ventilating his prejudices in favour of unproved treatments by unqualified personnel, perhaps he would have mentioned the chapter of "The Biological Basis of Mental Illness." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sue Doe Replies.

I was saddened to see that Nihm's law is regarded as "meaningless" by a professor of mathematics. I have given a copy of Tomlinson's letter to a mathematics professor on our faculty here who has confirmed my results analytically. He concluded that my work was brilliant and true. He also said that Nihm's law could have been proved without recourse to data (I don't know how he can say this!) if a function relates sensation and physical value. He could not understand why a mathematics professor would regard a priori truth as "vacuous" or "preposterous." I was gratified to read Ryeta's discovery that the polynomial law occasionally exceeds perfection! I have not previously seen this claim and I intend to carry out further research to see if.it can be replicated, once I obtain a calculator of this type. I have received many letters praising my work, encouraging me to publish details of the analyses, or suggesting I extend Nihm's law to other areas of psychology. I have also received numerous criticisms from persons who doubt that the same type of function characterizes the relationship between physical measures and subjective value for all situations, or who doubt the scientific value of finding this function in the absence of a testable theory. I don't know why these criticisms are leveled only at me and not also at the other psychophysical laws. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Altemeyer replies.

Replies to commentary by J. J. Ray (see record 2007-08928-001) regarding the current author's book, Enemies of freedom: Understanding right wing authoritarianism (see record 1988-98419-000). The foremost of Ray's six criticisms is that "insofar as (I have) studied anything at all, (I have) probably studied some form of conservatism." The constructs of "right-wing authoritarianism" and "conservatism" can be defined as one wishes, and one can declare that they are the same thing. I prefer to draw several conceptual distinctions however, perhaps because one brand of "conservatism", especially visible in the United States, resents government authority. Next, Professor Ray quite correctly points out that my explanation of the development of personal authoritarianism ignored genetic possibilities. The twins-studies have caught me completely flat-footed, with my back turned, though I would find evidence for a DNA-based explanation of authoritarianism quite exciting. As for attitudes toward authorities, I suspect they do wobble some during adolescence. However, neither of the two adult studies Professor Ray cites shows "a general attitude toward authority does not exist." If anything, they suggest it does. Professor Ray says the consistency of the RWA Scale only occurs because my item selection procedures have created a distortion of the real world, a world of my own "from which the most disturbing outside information has been rigorously excluded." In fact, the covariation among items mentioning different kinds of authorities goes back to the Berkeley F Scale. Finally, Professor Ray concludes that I am studying some nonpolitical form of conservatism, because the RWA Scale gives "virtually no prediction of right-wing political preference." Data is presented to dispute this allegation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mowrer on "Sin".

Comments on the article "Sin, the lesser of two evils" by O.H. Mower (1960). In a recent issue of the American Psychologist, Hobart Mowrer (see record 1961-03555-001) argues that because "sin" is a stronger word than "wrongdoing" or "irresponsibility" it is better for the "neurotic" individual to admit his "sins" than accept his "wrongdoings." In upholding the concept of individual (if not original) "sin," Mowrer is contending that the "neurotic" individual must, if he is to get "well," accept the following syllogism: (a) sinning is unjustified; (b) I have sinned; (c) therefore, I must justify my existence by acknowledging my sins, changing my ways, and becoming a nonsinner. At first blush, this seems like a perfectly valid syllogism. But, as Mowrer himself suggests, it rarely works in practice. The author contends that with a more objective and realistic restatement of Mowrer's syllogism, the problem of the "neurotic" individual's changing his ineffective and self-defeating behavior is hardly automatically solved; but (by having the definitional concepts of deep worthlessness and severe ego "insult" removed from his philosophic premises) he becomes much more likely resolutely to tackle what Mowrer accurately describes as his moralpsychological difficulties. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Concerning the concreteness in schizophrenia.

In a previously published paper (see 33: 8329), Cavanaugh "concluded that schizophrenic patients are suffering from decreased motivation. He states that his results speak against my concept of schizopenia, assuming that I consider the concreteness of the schizophrenic to be a result of an organic defect of the brain, similar to the impairment of abstraction in organic patients. He has apparently overlooked the fact that the author has denied such an interpretation… . I hope that this discussion may eliminate forever the wrong assumption that I consider the abnormal concreteness in schizophrenics as an effect of an organic deficit… ." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Theory and problems of adolescent development.

Reviews "Theory and problems of adolescent development," by David P. Ausubel (see record 1955-00581-000). Unlike most other books in this area, this book offers a systematic presentation of psychological knowledge woven around a dynamic point of view. It is a scholarly book written in language that makes for easy and interesting reading. The author opens his book with an organized set of arguments designed to convince his readers that there is justification for a book on the "Psychology of Adolescent Development." His major premise states that "adolescence is treated as a separate developmental period not because it covers a decade but because it spans an interval in which distinctive changes occur in a biosocial status of the human organism. The author has marshaled his psychological knowledge and psychiatric experience into a well-organized book. Dr. Ausubel quotes freely from other authors and from his own writings and research. There are extensive references contained in the bibliography at the end of each chapter. Although the author states that "this book is primarily intended as an advanced textbook in adolescent psychology for graduate students in psychology and education," it would appear that this book is written with sufficient clarity and nontechnical language to be used in any college course dealing with adolescent behavior. It would be especially desirable in clinically-oriented courses. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Communication in management.

Reviews the book "Communication in management" by Charles E. Redfield (see record 1954-06660-000). Redfield's book presents an excellent broad view of the problem of communication in industry as well as information on how to handle rather specific problems. The book is arranged in five parts. The first part provides a general introduction to the problem, and contains highly useful guiding principles for effective communication. It is necessarily general in scope, but it does seem to give too little attention to one aspect of communication, effectiveness as a function of the educational differences of "communicator" and "communicatee." Part II of the book takes up "communication downward and outward," the most important aspect of which is order-giving. In Part III, Redfield presents "communication upward and inward." Part IV of the book is an interesting presentation of "horizontal communication," or such cross-talk as clearance, review, and conferences. In the final section of the book (Part V), Redfield presents his views of the future of communication in management. All in all, the book is a valuable one, chiefly for its survey of the field and its complete list of references and selected readings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

I Bought His Private Practice.

In 1975 I enjoyed a full-time faculty position at the New Jersey Medical School. I held a joint appointment in the Departments of Psychiatry and Obstetrics/Gynecology and was involved in the development of the Human Sexuality Program. In addition to my duties at the Medical School, I conducted a small, part-time private practice, seeing patients in my office at the Medical School and occasionally borrowing a friend's office in a suburban town. This arrangement is probably familiar to many neophyte practitioners. Through my work in the Human Sexuality Program of the New Jersey Medical School, I was in charge of conducting weekend "Sexual Attitude Reassessment Seminars." At the suggestion of a senior psychologist, I invited a well-known New Jersey psychologist and the then-acting Dean of the Organizing Council for the College of Professional Psychology, a forerunner of the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology at Rutgers, as a guest. We felt that his presence would be good publicity for our program. It was during this weekend that I was first approached by him with an offer to buy his practice. At the time of the purchase offer, I knew of no other psychologist who had bought a private practice. For details of the contract and purchase process, see the article by Robert Weitz (see record 2005-09169-002). For the young psychologist genuinely interested in developing a private practice, I would recommend seeking a seller. The choice of the seller, of course, is most important. In my case, it was an excellent choice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Discussion of Dr. Patrick Zimmerman's article on Merton Gill's contributions to the evolution of psychoanalysis: A memorial commentary on Transitions in psychoanalysis.

Agrees with much of what P. Zimmerman has stated in his review (see record 2007-10643-001) of Merton Gill's book, Psychoanalysis in Transition: A Personal View (see record 1994-98473-000). The present author notes that Gill clarified and elaborated important dichotomies in psychoanalysis in multidimensional ways, and discusses Gill's constructivist or perspectivist position, wherein Zimmerman stated, "Gill's elaboration of this new constructivist or perspectivist metapsychology seems to be the major real determinant for the particular organization of [his] final book." While Gill used these terms interchangeably, the present author differentiates between them. The third point discussed relates to the fundamental question of what is curative in psychoanalysis. Zimmerman discussed Mitchell's critique of Gill's position that despite Gill's openmindedness to the importance of the analytic relationship, Gill maintained the traditional view that insight is central to cure. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Leo Rangell and I: Where do we differ?

Leo Rangell (see record 2006-05420-002), in his article on the evolution of psychoanalytic theory, indicates where he feels that I have a differing view, both of present circumstances and of projected directions. Our perspectives do indeed differ, but I feel that his presentation seriously misunderstands and misrepresents my views. I do not feel, as he contends, that all theoretical perspectives have "equal valence and validity." Rather, I have stated that they all claim complete explanatory comprehensiveness on a theoretical level and at least comparable effectiveness on a clinical level, and I feel that we have no scientific warrant at this time for claiming the established greater validity of any one approach over the others. This is not to say that all do have "equal valence and validity." Rangell feels that his preferred approach, which he calls "total composite psychoanalytic theory," is superior (more encompassing and more correct) to the others. I feel that we cannot make judgments about validity at this point in the evolving development of our discipline. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Beliefs, Attitudes and Values.

Reviews the book, Beliefs, Attitudes and Values by Milton Rokeach (1968). I believe that Rokeach does not believe that his beliefs about beliefs, attitudes, and values are beliefs. The author seems to believe that he presents in this collection of previously published papers something other than his beliefs. Yet, from his presentation it would appear that there exists nothing but beliefs. Much of the confusion which appears in this book is due to the various ways in which the word "belief" is used. The author states that "the task for psychology is . . . to learn enough about the structure of belief systems to know how to form them, and how to modify them so that they will best increase the happiness and freedom of the individual and his society." As a result of the task the author sees for psychology he has undertaken a number of experiments presented in the papers which make up this volume. A detailed discussion of those experiments seems useless in the light of the fact that they are all based on Rokeach's confusing use of the word 'belief in terms of which he also defines "attitudes" and "values." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Rejoinder to Burke's review of Organizational behavior.

Responds to Burke's review (see record 2007-04325-001) of the book, "Organizational Behavior: The Psychology of Effective Management (2nd ed.)" by David J. Lawless (1979). Professor Burke's criticisms would be quite appropriate if directed towards a book, treatise, or thesis expounding the author's theories, but I think they fail to appreciate the objectives of a textbook directed primarily to the undergraduate student. I believe that every textbook writer, consciously or not, has to decide the question of whether he/she writes for students or for colleagues. I write for my students, and not for my colleagues, as teacher-administrator and not as researcher. Professor Burke would make me a purist writing for my colleagues and that is not my intent. The textbook writer provides only the framework upon which the good teacher can build, can embellish, and from which to intrigue his or her students. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"The reception of my Freud-critique in the psychoanalytic literature": Response to Professor Adolf Grünbaum.

The present is a response to Adolf Grünbaum's outrage (see record 2007-10890-018) at my article (see record 2006-05420-005), and others. Grünbaum challenged my articles with a mixture of ad hominem and ad rem arguments claiming that I misrepresented his ideas about Freud and psychoanalysis. In this response, I propose to disentangle these two classes of arguments and point out factual, textual, methodological, and theoretical errors in Grünbaum's various arguments. I review a number of Freud's passages from his seminal contributions to psychoanalytic method: Studies on Hysteria and The Interpretation of Dreams, and other writings to show that Freud himself did not make explicit another cardinal distinction: that between what he operationally formulated as the psychoanalytic method, procedure, or technique versus the various etiological theories of psychological, that is, emotional disorders. Neither was this distinction honored by Grünbaum, and that is his cardinal error. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Response to Milden's commentary.

Responds to Milden's comments (see record 2007-10564-001). In her response to my review (see record 2003-05429-013) of Lerner's The Dance of Anger: A Woman's Guide to Changing the Patterns of Intimate Relationships (see record 2006-00700-000), Dr. Milden assumes that I believe that there is no legitimate place for popular presentation of psychological knowledge and that feminist psychoanalytic writings do not represent a serious or thoughtful body of work. Quite the contrary. Although I did not expect The Dance of Anger to be a heavyweight, theoretical treatise, I did expect from someone of Lerner's stature at least a serious-popular book. What she has given us is "kitsch." This remains paradoxical, for as Milden points out, Lerner has written serious and scholarly works on the subject. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Rejoinder to Kurtz.

Kurtz (1971; see record 1990-56874-001) is, of course, quite correct in noting that my comment (Schaeffer, 1970; see record 1990-56809-001) does not really answer my question; but this appears clearly indicated in the conclusions I draw in the final paragraph of my paper. His plea for the use of Psychometrika as a touchstone for the investigation of "favoritism" is also reasonable, but my data should be sufficient to answer his question here. In fact, for 1967, Psychometrika ranked second in terms of printing editors' contributions, and lowest (among the journals reviewed) in terms of printing outside contributions. Further, the correlation between my measure of "favoritism" and the Jakobovits and Osgood measure of "Rigor" (on which Psychometrika ranks second) also suggests this journal would be high on the measure of "favoritism." While it might then be possible to argue from these data (and Kurtz's premises) that almost all journals considered in this study are prejudiced in favor of outside contributors, such an argument would seem somewhat forced, and would minimally require more extensive sampling of this and related journals than I felt the question really deserved. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The elusive search for the truth: A review of Pezdek, K. and Banks, W. P. (1996). The recovered memory/false memory debate.

Reviews the book, The recovered memory/false memory debate by K. Pezdek and W. P. Banks (see record 1996-98519-000). This book presents a series of articles, some of which are sympathetic to the "recovered" memory approach and others to the "false" memory approach. In the preface, the authors write: "We tried to hew a middle course, looking for value in all sides." Many of the articles in the book originally appeared in a special issue of Consciousness & Cognition, Volume 3, 1994, the journal which is edited by William Banks, one of the editors of this volume. A major strength of the book is that all the included articles argue their respective positions based on actual experimental data rather than on philosophical biases. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Images in mind: The evolution of a theory.

Reviews the book, Images in mind: The evolution of a theory by A. Paivio (see record 1991-98882-000). In this review I hope to capture some of the flavour of Images in Mind, in which Allan Paivio traces some of the signal events in the evolution of dual coding theory. I encourage each reader of the review to become a reader of the book. The main reward is a glimpse of the workings of a great mind, but there are practical benefits as well. I am reminded of an interview with Keith Richard of the Rolling Stones. When asked how he came up with so many songs, he replied that he just played through his "Buddy Holly Song Book," and something always came up. Reading papers by Paivio has the same effect on me; I can't read his work without many experiments "coming up." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)