The Roads Taken, as in the Grand Tradition

First, I want to thank Dr. William Fried for inviting me to write this recollective essay. I recently wrote a review of the Rapaport-Holt letters, and reading these letters stimulated my readiness to write about my early training and my past and present relationships with other psychologists and analysts.

When I graduated from college, I wanted to be the poster boy for what was then called the Boulder Model. This model stipulated that a clinical psychologist should be involved both in clinical work and research. I decided that before I would begin clinical training, I would do some type of research. At the very end of my undergraduate studies, I took a course with Solomon Steiner and became interested in some of the questions that learning theorists were exploring. Steiner got me a job doing neurophysiological research with Edward Taub, now a famous neuropsychologist. We did research on deafferentation, a procedure in which the afferent fibers of the spinal cord are excised to demonstrate that animals do not need afferent feedback in order to learn. This research focused on the conditions necessary for learning, primarily in an avoidance paradigm. Animals had to learn to make a response to avoid a negative stimulus (a shock). We were trying to show that the behaviorists were wrong and that learning is a cognitive process.

As I re-read this last sentence, I realize how distant from this research I have become. Despite this divergence, the early experience left me with both a desire to integrate positions and a strong interest in evolution. The research was not only interesting but provided me with grounding in a number of physiological techniques. With Taub, I started to look at how lack of afferent feedback influenced the central nervous system and sleep cycles. This work also brought me to the realization that while proprioceptive feedback could be important, it was not necessary for learning, as various relational analysts have stipulated.

When I began graduate schoo