Reflections of an Eclectic Skeptic

Following primary and secondary education in Europe, I came to the United States for further education. After majoring in engineering, I shifted to liberal arts and social sciences. I minored in mathematics, philosophy, and education at the undergraduate level and physiology at the graduate level, ultimately obtaining a PhD in personality psychology. My interests were primarily academic, but I did not neglect the emerging field of clinical psychology. After working in hospitals for 9 years, I joined the faculty of Michigan State University where I established the psychological clinic and served as its director for 13 years. Subsequently, during 2 sabbaticals in Israel, I researched personality development in unconventional family settings (the kibbutz). I also studied such diverse issues as motivation for parenthood, time perception and time perspective, and cognition in psychopathology. After editing several textbooks on assessment techniques, I initiated the series of triennial Murray lectures that highlighted the dynamic approach to the study of personality.