I entered the field of psychology with the sort of enthusiasm reserved for only the few, the proud, and the truly naive. Four years later I would realize and describe the earning of my degree in psychology as less like science and more like reading Wilhelm Reich while being torn to pieces by wolverines.
I charged into my first psychology class with my tape recorder, fresh binder, paper, three different fine-line pens all ordered in front of me.
My professor, a grey-haired woman in her forties leapt into an impassioned lecture.
"Zee amount of fatty tissue which has been found around zee frontal lobes of many laboratory animals has direct linkage to traumatic infant psychosis."
Did I say leapt? It was more like slept, or the movement of a lab rat recovering from brain surgery.
In my next class, Psychotherapy in a Post Freudian World, the professor had no use for rats, fat, or infants; and ended the class by telling us "Of course we all know that we are living in a Post-Freudian age. The Behaviorists act as if they do not know this, but deep down inside they do. The Existentialists choose to disbelieve it as well." he said.
"And as for Freud!" he said dramatically, "It is now commonly accepted that he is just not Freudian enough."
As I was leaving some students had clustered around him and he was pointing at diagrams of several behavioral models and giggling.
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Part three on the way.
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