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Uleman, James S. Explorer, Eagle Scout and Joined the Order of the Arrow

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Uleman, James S. Explorer, Eagle Scout and Joined the Order of the Arrow U Uleman, James S. Explorer, Eagle Scout and joined the Order of the Arrow. He won a prize in the Westinghouse Sci- Jim Uleman ence Fair with a homemade planetarium, built a New York University, New York, NY, USA Heathkit hi-fi system (with vacuum tubes!), and bought his first LP, Stravinsky’s The Rite of In Pittsburgh Jim was not always a professor. Spring. In his senior year, he placed first in a He grew up in Aspinwall, a Pittsburgh suburb. His tri-state academic competition. After a summer father worked at Mellon Institute (now part of job as an assistant ditchdigger in construction, he Carnegie Mellon University) for PPG Industries, won a National Merit Scholarship and became a after earning an MS in Physics at University of freshman at Caltech in 1957. Michigan. His mother earned a BS in Psychology From first grade onward, he had gotten 25ȼ for from Michigan but never worked outside the every A, nothing for a B, and owed 25ȼ for every home, though she was active in civic organiza- C on his report card. During dinner, the talk over tions. His younger brother is a Japanese-to- the table focused on achievement, cleaning your English translator, living in Tokyo since the plate, and facts. Politics, values, and other early 1960s. His younger sister lives in domains not reducible to facts or economics (the Washington, DC. National Association of Manufacturers’ version) By middle school, he was one of the “brains” seldom arose. Dating, other complex social rela- although social categories were permeable in the tions, and emotions remained a mystery. small high school, with a graduating class of 100. He wanted to become a physicist and was active in In Pasadena He majored in physics and had a science clubs, chess team, newspaper, and the rifle good freshman year. Martin Luther King, Jr., vis- team. (His team won the state championship two ited his small humanities class, but being apoliti- years in a row.) At the Buhl Planetarium’s Ama- cal, he missed King’s significance. He almost teur Astronomers Association, he hand-ground a flunked out in his sophomore year. Unmoored 6” mirror for a reflector telescope. He bred Dro- from adolescent motivational certainties, sophila melanogaster (fruit flies) in his basement, surrounded by very smart but diverse all-male to test Mendel’s laws. His mom regularly took the classmates, and exposed to the temptations of children to the Carnegie Museum and Library in life in Ricketts House, he lost his naïve, straight- Oakland. He took piano lessons for 4 years and and-narrow ways. Richard Feynman’s pranks and spent hours listening to classical music (esp. Linus Pauling’s unconventional views expanded Brahms and Franck) at the Carnegie Library. his concept of reasonable role models. After Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts, he became an # Springer International Publishing AG 2017 V. Zeigler-Hill, T.K. Shackelford (eds.), Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1505-1 2 Uleman, James S. Abraham Maslow delivered a series of guest In Cambridge Jim’s first year in the personality lectures on self-actualization. Maslow stayed in a program in the Social Relations Department fea- dorm suite down the hall from Jim, and his room- tured his advisors Dick Alpert’s (aka Baba Ram mate invited him over for scotch. Conversation Das) and Timothy Leary’s experiments with LSD went on until 3 a.m. Folk songs at the Ash Grove and psilocybin. Jim had a bad psilocybin trip the in LA, O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night, first time because he feared he might never get and Bartok’s Music for Strings, Percussion, and back to reality. The second trip was interesting and Celeste by the LA Symphony Orchestra enriched fun. But the drug scene split the faculty and stu- and stirred his emotional life. The campus dents, culminating in a public discussion at counseling center was little help. Jim flunked 5 Divinity Avenue between Leary and Alpert on two quarters of abstract algebra. It was time to one side and Brendan Maher and Herb Kelman on switch schools and majors. Maslow’s example the other, who insisted that “expanding your con- suggested that psychology could combine science sciousness” was not part of the graduate curricu- and humanity. So he applied to five schools and lum. His future wife asked him to choose between only got into Michigan. the drug scene and her, so he dropped that scene. His classmate Naomi Weisstein (1968, 1969, and In Ann Arbor Jim lived in West Quad, had the Chicago Women’s Liberation Union) ridiculed weekly “ego support” therapy, and worked to that scene, as she gleefully collected parking complete a psych major. But he could not ignore tickets from the Cambridge Police. such campus events as teach-ins on racism in the Jim’s first year support was in developmental North, picketing Woolworth’s, and the political psychology through the Palfrey Center, where ferment that produced Students for a Democratic cultural anthropologists Bea and John Whiting Society (SDS). He moved off campus his senior were conducting their Six Cultures Study. Weekly year and roomed with four liberals from Chicago. lunches with them, Roy D’Andrade, and others Being the only one in his apartment old enough to were memorable. Jim married at the end of his vote in the Nixon-Kennedy election of 1960, his first year. roommates persuaded him to abandon his repub- One day, Stanley Milgram asked him to throw lican roots. a brick through the window of his classroom on In the summer of 1960, he was a counselor at the second floor of Emerson Hall. He did not obey. Michigan’s Fresh Air Camp for emotionally dis- Both Jerry Bruner and Erik Erikson asked appli- turbed children, run by Elton McNeil and Dave cants to their seminars to write descriptions of Wineman (Redl and Wineman 1957). Then he why they should be admitted. Jim did and was entered the honors program in psych. Jim turned down. He was a teaching assistant for McConnell (The Worm Runner’s Digest) taught George Goethals in his popular year-long under- honors and asked students for brief reports on grad developmental psychology course. He did a three books of their choice. Jim’s were Hebb’s reading course in psycholinguistics with Roger (1949) The Organization of Behavior, Shannon Brown and Volney Stefflre. Classmates went off and Weaver’s(1949) The Mathematical Theory in multiple directions, some to the LSD commune of Communication, and Dollard and Miller’s in Brookline, some to become clinicians, and (1950) Personality and Psychotherapy. He met some into social psychology. Hans Eysenck’s his future wife. After graduation in 1961, he got (1952) article suggested that clinical psychology a summer job at the Mental Health Research Insti- was largely a placebo effect, and Jim could not tute with Len Uhr and Charlie Vossler, and find any outstanding examples of the much-touted coauthored his first psychology paper (Uhr et al. Boulder Model ideal of clinician-scientist. 1962). He applied to graduate schools and went to A course on scoring the Rorschach and a field Harvard to become a clinical psychologist. placement at Boston State Hospital hardened his skepticism about clinical psychology, so he aban- doned the plan to become a clinician. Uleman, James S. 3 His PhD in Social Psychology with a Concen- spent a lot of time delighting in his growing tration in Personality with Dave McClelland family. involved developing a TAT measure of the need MSU hired almost 20 new psychology facul- for power (n Power). Dave Winter, a year behind ties in 1965–1967, so the atmosphere around ten- Jim in the program, went on to base his career on ure was fairly cut-throat, especially among those this approach to personality and unconscious who came out of graduate school with ambition motivation. Jim’s experience with developing the and clearly articulated research programs. Jim had measure – by contrasting the content of TAT not, so he did not get tenure. He was interviewed stories told by those whose “power motive” had at five places. Only NYU made an offer, based been aroused with stories told by those not partly on an old-boys-network recommendation aroused – convinced him the method was from a Harvard faculty member. Although his unreliable. Although he split samples in half to family had deep roots in the East Lansing cross-validate the measure, there were daily arbi- community – having helped start a “free school” trary decisions about what to include and what (à la Summerhill), working on a local political was ephemeral. The data forced him to develop a campaign, and his wife being active in the potters’ nonparametric statistical test (Uleman 1968) with guild – they had to move on in 1971. It was a Jerry Klotz in Harvard’s Statistic department. difficult stressful time. Lionel Tiger’s Men in After four years in the program, he took a job at Groups (1969) captured some of the dynamics. Michigan State University. In New York Jim got tenure and became coordi- In East Lansing The obvious thing to do with a nator (director) of the Personality and Social Psy- new personality measure is to seek evidence of chology Program, an elective role he held from reliability and validity. But reliability for a projec- 1975 to 1997. At first, he did research in multiple tive TAT measure is not straightforward, and areas, largely depending on students’ validity criteria for power depend on a theory of interests – memory and the shift to risk, the mal- social power.
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