Word: psychologist
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...consulting psychologist, I want to raise a vigorous objection to the conclusion of your article "Merchants of Debt" [Feb. 28]. You assert that "the advantages of widespread easy credit far outweigh its drawbacks ... psychologically, in the ability to satisfy impulse and indulge expansive moods...
...Psychologist Clark maintained that the individual has a "right to believe what he or she wishes to believe," but he added that people can "reserve the right to criticize the actions which these beliefs cause. There is a difference between faith and belief and knowledge." Clark said the Constitution does not permit murder, even if part of a person's religious beliefs. He said that it is likewise unjustified to convert others who are unwilling or unknowing, simple because the prosyletizers "believe they are right." Clark also noted that the rapid change one goes through during the conversion process...
Jaynes, 55, a research psychologist at Princeton, now knows that what he was trying to comprehend was consciousness-and how it arose from mere matter. Indeed, he thinks he finally has the answer: consciousness arose from language in two evolutionary steps and appeared for the first time in human history in the second millennium B.C. Jaynes proposes this startling concept in his new book, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. If his theory is correct, mankind existed without consciousness for thousands of centuries, functioning dimly in "antlike" colonies nearly up to the age of Confucius...
...something big? Academics who have read the book are divided in their reactions. Berkeley Psychologist Frank Beach calls it "highly original, provocative and stimulating." Northwestern University Psychologist Carl Duncan is caustic: "Jaynes is extremely clever to think up this thing. I only wish he would put that cleverness to some more serviceable use." Jaynes, who realizes he has rewritten most of human history, expects "to be clobbered by all kinds of professors. If you're an archaeologist who has spent a lifetime working with a little brush at ancient sites, you won't want to hear from some...
...most common academic reaction is an indignant question: Who is Julian Jaynes? Answer: an unorthodox and little-known psychologist, noticed mostly for an unconventional theory on the origins of language...