Why I do not attend case conferences

Abstract

I have for many years been accustomed to the social fact that colleagues and students find some of my beliefs and attitudes paradoxical (some would, perhaps, use the stronger word contradictory). I flatter myself that this arises primarily because my views (like the world) are complex and cannot be classified as uniformly behavioristic, Freudian, actuarial, positivist, or hereditarian. I also find that psychologists who visit Minneapolis for the first time and drop in for a chat generally show mild psychic shock when they find a couch in my office and a picture of Sigmund Freud on the wall. Apparently one is not supposed to think or practice psychoanalytically if he understands something about philosophy of science, thinks that genes are important for psychology, knows how to take a partial derivative, enjoys and esteems rational-emotive therapist Albert Ellis, or is interested in optimizing the prediction of behavior by the use of actuarial methods….