Extract from an Introductory University Lecture for Nick's first year undergraduates
Inspirational Life Stories
"Self-analysis can serve as a basis for raising legitimate questions that require more systematic research," wrote Yale's Director of Clinical Psychology, Jerome Singer (1975). It is with respect to this proposition that I encourage each one of you to consider what in your own lives has most intrigued you, as your own most heartfelt life-experiences can be wonderful sources of motivation and insight for your scientific explorations.
By way of example, I'd like to cite as examples the lives of three former Presidents of The American Psychological Association…each voted in by 140,000 American psychologists; and also the life of George Vaillant, for 36 years the director of what is arguably the finest long-term large-scale study of adult development.
It was growing up in the poverty of the post-war South Bronx that led Philip G. Zimbardo to realize that many of his family and friends had been prisoners of a self-inhibiting time-perspective…always looking ruefully to the past or mesmerized by the present, whereas his own forward-looking orientation was a fortunate accident that became a means for growth and freedom (Zimbardo & Boyd, 1999).
And it was only when the rookie philosophy graduate, Martin E. P. Seligman, walked into some University of Pennsylvania research laboratories back in 1964, that he recognized something akin to his own father's stroke-induced helplessness in the learning behavior of dogs…a realization that soon led to the Cognitive movement and entirely transformed the way post-war psychology viewed our minds (Seligman, 1991).
George E. Vaillant was just 10 years old when his father died. At 13, George found himself fascinated to read an alumni magazine about how his father's College Class of 1922 were fairing 25 years after graduation. This moment was a foreshadowing of George's own 36 year career studying adult life-development (Vaillant, 2002).
Robert J. Sternberg was told as a child that he had a low IQ, and was told as a college freshman that he had absolutely no aptitude for psychology (Sternberg, 1997). Even so, he was to become the 2003 President of the American Psychological Association, and is recognized as a leading authority on domains as diverse as intelligence, love, wisdom, and creativity.
We can glimpse from these snippets of biography, and even the photos of these individuals as young men, (drawn from their websites), how each of these pioneers began their illustrious careers in the face of adversity: simply as very curious and determined undergraduates (often sporting hilarious hairstyles). I urge you, too, to challenge the accepted wisdoms of the age, and make your mark by attempting to see the world differently…more clearly… and sharing your vision.