Paul E. Meehl (Autobiography)

Excerpts

My mother was affectionate, nurturant, praiseful, but somewhat seductive, which led to sexual problems for me as a young adult.

— Page 337

I was aware of my intellectual superiority by age six or earlier.

— Page 338

In 1931 my father, who had embezzled money to play the stock market, committed suicide. … My mother began having frightening “heart attacks,” and life seemed precarious indeed. … My mother isn’t going to die of heart failure, she’s a young widow with anxiety neurosis. I decided overnight to become a psychotherapist. … At age sixteen I suffered a second object loss when my mother (who had remarried when I was fourteen) died of ether pneumonia after surgery for a brain tumor.

— Page 339

Statistically speaking, most of the people you meet will be fair to middling stupid.

— Page 339

It was excusable to make a mistake, although if you made too many egregious ones you would not be well accepted; but the unpardonable sin was to refuse to recognize that you had committed a fallacy, formal or material, when it was pointed out. A close second major sin would be to keep committing the same fallacy over and over again and having to be reminded of it.

— Page 342

While I have mellowed with age and become more tolerant of other people’s frailties (as I hope they are of mine), I must confess that I have never fully recovered from the shock of realizing that one can become a college professor and not be able to think straight.

— Page 343

Reference

Paul E Meehl, G Lindzey “Paul E. Meehl (Autobiography)" (1989)

@Inbook{meehl1989,
  author = {Paul E Meehl},
  editor = {G Lindzey},
  title = {Paul E. Meehl (Autobiography)},
  booktitle = {A history of psychology in autobiography},
  volume = {8},
  language = {en},
  year = {1989},
  pages = {337--389}
}