Professional marginalization in psychology
choice or destiny?
pp. 131-157
in: Leendert Mos (ed), History of psychology in autobiography, Berlin, Springer, 2009Abstract
As one makes presumably free decisions in the course of one's life, one hopes that one is acting rationally. Certainly, at the time of the decisions, I thought that I was. I also thought that I was acting freely, bound only by some inevitable contingencies at the time, but no true obstacles. It is only retrospectively, as I look over the course of my life, and a certain pattern becomes discernible, that I begin to ponder that murky word, "destiny." Did I really freely choose all those contingent options that presented themselves to me, or was I only fulfilling some kind of fate as I pursued my career? I am not sure that I can judge this issue, but in order to help the reader to decide, I will first present the important factors of my biography as I see them and then I will present what I believe to be the important decisions that I made as a professional psychologist. The reader, as well as I, will recognize that there is possibly a certain bias in the narrative to be given in the sense that I will be giving both accounts, and I will be selecting the events to be reported. This, of course, cannot be avoided. All I can say is that I will be honest in the sense that I will report the events as they impacted upon me and I have no a priori bias with respect to the pattern that emerges – if one emerges – in the sense that I have no precommitment to either destiny or choice. I know that I felt free in making my decisions, but that does not necessarily rule out the fact that I may have lived a "patterned" existence.