Underwater in St. Charles, MO
To: psysr-disc@yahoogroups.com
From: target@batstar.net
Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2008 10:47:37 -0700
Subject: [psysr-disc] science of mind
with apologies to Uuu
Hi
In 1969 I was advanced to candidacy for the Ph.D. in mathematics. My "3rd committee member" was a member of the Psychology Dept. at U.C. Berkeley, Gerald Mendelsohn.
I went through many changes including becoming a successful community organizer advocating "mental health liberation," then rendition to DC [!] and an adverse psychiatric hospitalization under the watchful eye :-( of a member of the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute, then a process of "creative maladjustment" leading to a 2nd B.A. candidacy in social/organizational psychology.
Due to an adverse (and controversial!) behavioral management agenda in U.C. social psychology, I was soon diverted to a "cognitive" direction. I wrote a senior thesis paper under Gerry which is today online at
When I got my Ph.D. ten years later, in mathematics, Gerry was in the audience. At that time he was the Dean of Letters and Science.
How this relates to PSYSR-DISC is that Gerry told me he had resigned from the APA in the 1950's. For him, they had backed off the "science of mind" agenda in favor of a clinical and consulting practicum. Today the issue of "social justice" is re-networking psychology and the concern for "torture" has brought the relationship of morality and truth back into focus. I find this a matter of some hope.
As to Gerry, now retired but vigorous, he wrote a book on the personality of Giuseppe Verdi. Somebody named the
natural gas pipeline that may go through Georgia after a Verdi opera. Somebody, but surely not Gerry.The plot thickens.
Andrew Phelps
Berkeley, CA