Adventures of a Psychologist

ADVENTURES OF A PSYCHOLOGIST In this enlightening biography, award-winning academic psychologist Michael Corballis tells the story of how the field of cognitive psychology evolved and the controversies and anecdotes that occurred along the way. Since the Second World War, psychology has undergone several scientific movements, from behaviourism to cognitive psychology and finally to neuroscience. In this fascinating biography, Corballis recounts his career as a researcher who played a part in these monumental changes in psychology. Beginning with his boarding-school education in New Zealand, Corballis goes on to recount his meanders through university education, his behavioural research into mirror- image discriminations in pigeons, the uprising of the “cognitive revolution” amidst 1960s counterculture and his switch to become a cognitive psychologist, his research into brain asymmetry and the evolution of language and its origin of manual gestures, and the development of mental time travel in animals. Featuring stories of prominent scientists who were integral in psychology’s biggest discoveries and insight into the heated debates and controversies in psychology during a time of great scientific and sociocultural change, this biography is a must-read for those interested in how psychology became established as a science. Michael Corballis was Professor of Psychology at McGill University and the University of Auckland. He has published widely in experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience. In 2003 he was appointed Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit, and in 2016 he received the Rutherford Medal, New Zealand’s top scientific award. ADVENTURES OF A PSYCHOLOGIST Reflections on What Made Up the Mind Michael Corballis First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Michael Corballis The right of Michael Corballis to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-42053-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-42054-3 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-82150-0 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC CONTENTS Preface vii 1 Growing up 1 2 Floundering at university 10 3 Hello psychology 16 4 O God! O Montreal! 26 5 Rats and pigeons 35 6 Revolutions 42 7 The lopsided brain 51 8 Doing the splits 60 9 Mirrors 68 10 Gestures, gestures 75 11 On time 83 12 Chomsky, God, and language 92 vi Contents 13 Professional psychology and its discontents 101 14 Anti-science 111 15 A brief reckoning 119 Index 125 PREFACE There comes a time when you realise you are actually part of history, a living fossil. I was also, I suppose, something of an interloper. My background and early career path had pointed me in quite different directions, and I stumbled across psychology more or less by chance, but somehow it stuck. And here I am still, an octogenarian, and a kind of de facto historian. Psychology as an autonomous academic discipline emerged in New Zealand after World War II, and I was part of it for much of that time – student, junior lecturer, lecturer, professor, emeritus professor, and researcher. Although scientific psychology had been well established elsewhere since the late 19th cen- tury, notably in the United States and Germany, it developed rapidly after World War II, spurred partly by advances in the biological sciences and partly as a response to the psychological trauma induced by the war itself. It also underwent quite dramatic changes in approach. Indeed, I scarcely recognise the psychology I was taught in the 1950s – for that matter, I scarcely recognise myself from that grey decade. Although my roots are in New Zealand, I have been witness to much that is international. I taught for some years at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, where Donald Hebb, Canada’s most illustrious psychologist, introduced the brain to psychology. I studied split-brained patients in the laboratory of Nobel Prize winner Roger Sperry in California, as well as in New Hampshire, Ohio, and Italy. I jostled with Noam Chomsky over the nature and evolution of language. I dabbled in brain imaging to try to understand how the two sides of the brain differ. I wrote about memory, brain asymmetry, vision, language, statistics – volumes of stuff, much of it swallowed in the catacombs of science and largely forgotten. Of course I met interesting people, some of whom surface in this book. I have set this account in an autobiographical frame, because my percep- tion of psychology’s tortuous advance toward becoming a science is coloured by viii Preface my own background and experience. I have more or less lived through Shake- speare’s seven ages of man, as recounted by Jaques in As You Like It , although I don’t remember the mewling of infancy, and puking persisted a bit longer, even into my student days. I still have teeth. Bubble reputation? Probably. Looking back, though, I can scarcely recognise any of my former selves, some of whom I wouldn’t wish to know. More important, though, were the cultural changes I witnessed – the early days of dull complacency followed by political and sexual revolutions, then an age of repressive political correctness, with signs now of a populist blowout. These have not only influenced my own demeanour and understanding but also psychology itself. Psychological science went through very different phases since I first encountered it. That is the real story I want to tell. Then there’s the problem of memory, which is fickle, to the point that one’s own account of past events can be very different from those of others. It is full of holes. Looking back through a photo album reveals images and people that seem utterly unfamiliar, as though from a different life. School reunions have much the same disorienting effect, and I now avoid them. A lot of memory is indeed fabricated, often seemingly designed to create you as a person rather than tell what you actually did, or were. Ronald Reagan is said to have based his recollec- tions of past heroics on war movies – this book may well suffer the same defect, although I have no claim to heroism. I make no claim to be inclusive, either, and should warn that I have always been an academic and researcher but never a clinician. There are no suggested remedies or diagnostic hints in this book for errant children, difficult in-laws, or mad dogs. My interest is fundamentally in how the mind works, to borrow a phrase from Steven Pinker, who tells me he once attended my classes. And I will drop other names. I apologise to any who may feel left out. I could probably write another version with entirely different characters; stirring the pot of memory can throw up all sorts of things I have overlooked this time round. By the same token, though, I cannot list all the names of people who have profoundly influenced me – to attempt to do so might just make omissions even more stark. But thank you all anyway, so much. I must nevertheless specifically thank my own family. Barbara has been end- lessly patient and helpful. My son Paul is in the same game as a colleague at the University of Auckland and likes to claim that he taught me everything I know. He’s probably right. My other son Tim is a novelist and now also an academic involved with scientific communication. His wisdom is also appreciated. My three 11-year-old granddaughters, Simone, Lena, and Natasha, have also con- tributed hugely to my late life, mainly through their expertise with electronic devices and their sense of fun. 1 GROWING UP It is customary to begin with premonitions – the events, thoughts, and ambitions that led to one’s ultimate calling. Alas, my own upbringing and early education gave little hint. Even so, it is probably worth relating something of the environ- ment in which I grew up, if only because it seems utterly unrelated to what hap- pened later on. Others more insightful than I may see clues as to my eventual turn to academia, but I can scarcely recognise myself in that long-ago place, and the memories that do come back seem astonishing and unreal. Was it really like that? So I offer my early years more as matters of historical and sociological interest than as casting any serious light on a future life as an academic psychologist, or on the field itself. And of course my memories are incomplete and fallible, if not downright false. One thing, though, is clear: I was born in 1936. Such is the paucity of human memory that I have no recollection of that particular event. Much later on, as a lecturer in psychology, I asked large introductory classes to date their earliest memories. There were always one or two who claimed to remember actually being born, although they were probably just being deliberately mischievous.

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