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This book is a dramatic three-part fugue of Jerome Kagan's gratifying life in science. The first theme is a selective history of psychology from the time of his graduate years to the present; the second is a series of questions he puts to nature and the replies; his finale analyzes the “romance” between psychology and biology and offers a critique of some popular ideas in contemporary psychology.
His opening barrages spray the fields of both behaviorism and psychoanalysis for their gross generalities. He decries the predominance of theory in both areas (in the 50s and 60s) and insists, as a serious scientist, that meticulous, repeated observations must precede grand theories. He points out as examples the total inadequacies and misuse of the TAT and Rorschach tests.
The author frequently intersperses anecdotes about personal habits, events on the Harvard campus, faculty rivalries, and a critique of BF Skinner (especially his view that all behavior is the product of conditioned habits). Kagan acknowledges how the ideas indoctrinated during his graduate training limited his conceptions as a mature investigator. Much of what he had been taught turned out to be mistaken; therefore he cautioned his students to remain skeptical.