Volume 84 Issue 1 Article 7 October 1981 All My Friends Are Becoming Strangers: The Psychological Perspective in Legal Education James R. Elkins West Virginia University College of Law Follow this and additional works at: https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/wvlr Part of the Jurisprudence Commons, Legal Profession Commons, and the Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation James R. Elkins, All My Friends Are Becoming Strangers: The Psychological Perspective in Legal Education, 84 W. Va. L. Rev. (1981). Available at: https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/wvlr/vol84/iss1/7 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the WVU College of Law at The Research Repository @ WVU. It has been accepted for inclusion in West Virginia Law Review by an authorized editor of The Research Repository @ WVU. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Elkins: All My Friends Are Becoming Strangers: The Psychological Perspect "ALL MY FRIENDS ARE BECOMING STRANGERS": THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE IN LEGAL EDUCATIONt JAMES R. ELKINS* PREFACE That I adopted as part of the title for this article "All My Friends Are Becoming Strangers"' suggests the need for expla- nation-what humanistic sociologists call a reflexive statement. More simply put, this article needs a preface. The psychiatrist, Robert Coles, has suggested that a preface permits an author to tell where he stands, and unquestionably in so doing he runs the risk of self-centeredness if not self-display .... We owe it to ourselves and our readers to show something of our lives and our purposes, to indicate, as it were, the context out of which a particular book has emerged.2 This article began as an angry and polemical response to an article by William Simon calling into question what he called The Psychological Vision in legal education.' Upon first reading the Simon article I was dismayed that anyone could be so bold and presumptuous as to attack the psychological perspective and its role in legal education.