UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM

Interview #232
LEONARD BERKOWITZ

Narrator: 	Berkowitz, Leonard
Interviewer: 	Laura Smail
Date: 		1982
Location: 	Madison, Wisconsin
Oral History#:	232
Series: 	

First Interview Session (November 16, 1982): Digital File

00:00:00	[begin tape 1/side 1]

LS:	[...Psychology Department and the date is November l6th, 1982.  I'm Laura Smail, ... we're interviewing in the ...] the information I need.  
00:00:03
LS:	So, will start out by talking about your background.  
LB:	Sure, I grew up in New York City.  My parents were immigrants from Russia and I was the first member of my family to go to college as was so often the case.  My parents, as is typical with, even stereotypical with most Jewish families, wanted me to be a physician. But, from high school on I was really intrigued with the idea of being a psychologist for some strange reason.  
LS:	Well, what do you mean?  What's the reason?  
LB:	Well, I've always enjoyed it but it was a strange idea certainly for my parents – they-- 
LS:	Do you remember what made you— 
LB:	Well, I was intrigued with the idea that I encountered first when doing some reading in high school that there were laws or principals of human behavior—the notion of regularities and indeed discoverable principals accounting for human  behavior—it was a fascinating idea to me.  It just seemed to capture my imagination.  And ever since high school I knew that I wanted to be in the social sciences generally, and in psychology in particular.  
LS:	Was this a special high school?  
LB:	Well, I did go to a special high school. I went to a high school that concentrated on the sciences.  Stuyvesant High School in New York City.  But I don't think high school had any particular influence in that decision—as a matter of fact I think I found the high school quite disappointing.  It wasn't as challenging as I would have wanted—it certainly wasn't as advanced—the science I learned— the physical sciences for example I learned was really outmoded—even for that particular period.  When my daughters went to Memorial High School and that learned far more science than I had acquired in that high school that was supposedly specializing in science.  At any rate, after I came back from the military which was in l946 I finished my education on the GI Bill of Rights at NYU and then in February 1948 went to the University of Michigan.  
00:03:09
LS:	Why did you choose Michigan?  
LB:	Well, I think primarily because they accepted me in—I did graduate work in psychology.  I really didn't know much about Michigan as a matter of fact when I went there.  I think I was very ill-informed by the advisors at NYU at that time.  I went to Michigan because I wanted to get out of New York, because it seemed to be a good department, and primarily because they accepted me for graduate work.  I don't think I had all that great a high school record as a matter of fact.  I was just a B-ish student.  At any rate that turned out to have been one of the most fortunate events in my life.  It was fortunate from a number of respects.  Social psychology was very very new at that time, and one of the leading places—it's not even the leading place for social psychology—it turned out was at the University of Michigan.  They were the dominant influence in the field at the time.  And so I was in very very much in the ground floor—I made contacts there that also turned out to have been very very helpful and it was primarily through my major professor at Michigan, who was Professor Daniel Katz there, that I obtained the job here.  They consulted Katz when the department here was looking for a social psychologist and Katz referred me to that position.  So—again there were all sorts of unplanned events - fortunate events - that have shaped my career and I'm firmly convinced that the most important secret for success is being in the right place at the right time.  
LS:	The interlude with the Air Force—was that because you hadn't expected to go into the academic world?  
LB:	Well, there were very very few—I got my Ph.D. in 195l—there were very very few positions at that time, and I don't even know that I had any particular  aspirations for an academic--. Well yes I did—I did have some aspirations but I wasn't thinking high. It seemed to me at that time that my—the kind of life I wanted was to be a professor at a small liberal arts college.  That was my level of aspiration.  
LS:	Well, it's a good level.  
LB:	Yes, right.  I expected to lead --  
LS:	[inaudible]  
LB:	Well, it would have been a very comfortable life.  I expected to be or I thought of myself as being, let's say, just that kind of a teacher.  I went to work for the Air Force primarily because there were no jobs at that time and did some research for four years on the morale of bomber crews.  I think one of the things we discovered was that the morale was low because the people didn't want to be in the service.  We didn't really come up with any profound discoveries or really earn out keep very much.  At any rate I was happy after four relatively frustrating years to get the position here at Wisconsin.  And I found that I did very well in the atmosphere here.  It turned out that I enjoyed doing research.  I found that I really got a tremendous kick out of it.  Again it was a matter of discovering the principles regulating human behavior.  That continued to fascinate me—I got almost a kind of aesthetic pleasure out of finding some of these regularities.  And it turns out that Wisconsin is just the kind of a place for an individual who does enjoy research.  There's a lot of support for research and indeed a lot of rewards given to those who enjoy doing research.  And so I think my career took off from the time I arrived here which again was due primarily to accident.  To the fact that Katz had been contacted by the psychology department here and he just four years after I had obtained my Ph.D. happened to think of me that occasion so he recommended me for the job.  Well, what else? 
00:09:14
 LS:	All right. Had you done well in graduate school?  
LB:	Oh, I thought I was just an average student actually.  Michigan wasn’t especially challenging.  They didn't make much of grades, they did have a doctoral preliminary examination but didn't make much of it.  They more or less assumed that everyone they accepted would complete his Ph.D.  As I say, it wasn't especially challenging.  I don't know that I had any especial reputation in graduate school.  
LS:	There was a letter about your hiring which suggested that you were considered quite a gem to get hold of.  
LB:	Did you see that?  I have never seen any such statement.  
LS:	Maybe I'm putting it a little too strongly but it was definitely--
LB:	Was this something that Katz had written?  Did you--
LS:	No, it was I think an inter-, somebody to a dean--
LB:	Well, I did get along with Dan Katz so he might have made a strong statement or else it might have been even--
LS:	No, it's not from the department--
LB:	Well, I think when I was interviewed I displayed, if I remember correctly, a lot of interest in doing research.  Of course that is an essential part of me and I think that came across, and that's what impressed, I believe, some of the people here.  
LS:	I guess what I'm trying to find out is what leads to your becoming a Vilas Professor?  Whether it was to be anticipated then or--
LB:	No, no.  Again, it was an accident.  It really was—well I don't know about accident—it is true that I enjoyed—oh there's another—well somewhat accident—well let me organize my thoughts.  Somewhat accident and somewhat the fact that this is the way I got my pleasures.  I really enjoyed doing the research and above all I enjoyed writing about it.  So that it wasn't any strain for me to spend the entire evening and night writing up the reports of the studies I did—I enjoyed doing lots of studies.  The graduate school here provided funds for hiring research assistants so I had the wherewithal to do experiments.  And as I say did not  find it any strain at all to spend a lot of hours at night. After the family was asleep I very often, very often stayed up until about l or 2 o'clock in the morning  writing.  And I really enjoyed that.  I would have the radio on, listen to the music that was played at that time--late night music is very different from everything—it's a kind of separate world—and do my work.  So that what happened is that I sort of mounted a good many publications.  It was not a strain for me.  And to this day as a matter of fact I find it somewhat difficult to empathasize with young people who maintain that their responsibilities for their families, their roles as husbands, wives, parents, keep them from doing any publishing.  Well, in own experience I was able to do that between 9 and l or 9 and 2.  
LS:	You didn't feel that you have neglected your--
LB:	No, no, no.  I didn't feel that I—as a matter of fact I didn't feel that whatsoever.  I did, of course, have a wife who was a very active parent.  But I don't think I was totally out of the picture by any means.  
LS:	And she wasn't aggrieved about it?  
LB:	No, no - not at all.  Maybe she wanted to get rid of me.  But no, she wasn't aggrieved—I really don't believe I neglected family—I just enjoyed working late.  
00:14:15
Then, another thing that happened is—again illustrating the role of chance—in my career—one of the first topics I taught when I came to Madison—and there was primarily a lucky break—I covered in one of my courses the then  available research on aggression.  This was a topic that had been largely neglected.  There wasn't any particular reason why I selected that topic for coverage in my—this particular course.  It just again seemed to intrigue me.  So I began teaching  this topic, I amassed a bibliography for the purposes of this course, and I then  decided since it seemed to be a relatively neglected area, that I decided to do some  research.  And from the very start I found I was getting federal grants to do research in this particular area.  Of course it was a brand new or largely new field of research.  I also used my lecture notes to write a—first a review of the literature which had achieved a certain amount of attention for a journal and then I published a book all on the basis of my lecture notes, and that book was one of the very first reviews of research on aggression.  So I had in a sense the very real advantage of being one of the first in that field, and the research on aggression--
LS:	And it must be a singularly important field now?  
LB:	Well, it actually has lost a lot of--. There's a good deal of interest in research on aggression in the 60s and the heyday of the urban disorders and so forth.  Now it is a very inactive field except for a few people like myself.  Social psychology in general isn't paying special attention to it.  But at any rate, the point is  I—because I was one of the pioneers I achieved a certain amount of visibility and  I'm still, I think, widely known.  I also got in on the ground floor in doing research on the effects of movie violence on television on aggression.  One of the very first to do experimental research in that particular area.  It's not because I had any special interest in the question of whether movies or television could have adverse effects, but because it was a logical part of my research program to cover those particular matters.  
LS:	That was an absolutely fascinating question.  I've looked at some of the things you've written.  
00:17:34
LS:	Well let's-- I'll ask you then on the department—how you found it when you got here and what also what you know of its earlier history before you got here.  
LB:	Well, I think the department has always been relatively highly regarded and has always had relatively good people in it.  The department over the years that I have been here has maintained very much the same kind of culture even though the personnel have changed—and that's an interesting kind of phenomenon.  It's always been very very empirical—indeed I think this is probably true of science at the University of Wisconsin generally—is a good deal of interest in doing research here, there is a lot of, as I said before, resources available for the conduct of  research and the rewards are given for doing research, so there's always been a great  emphasis on, a valuing of, empirical research.  The psychology department is very much in that vein.  One of the deficiencies—I think is especially true in the  social sciences—is we don't have any great theoretical innovators—many because  our reward system rewards people who do lots of research more than it rewards people  who are in the theoretical forefront in their particular fields.  At any rate that's the way the psychology department was—we had a great bunch of empiricists, but not theoreticians—no people who had really contributed a great deal to important theoretical developments.  And the department has always been that way.  It's not that the people—well, I should backtrack a little bit and say that that was largely true, but not entirely true.  Harry Harlow, in my department, did indeed make very important theoretical contributions.  And I think he is the one exception to this.  
00:20:15
LB:	When I came, the department—well, I don't know how much detail do you want me to go into.  
LS:	Go into detail.  
LB:	You do want this.  OK.  What I would have to do really is to talk about the state of American psychology.  Do you want to get into that?  
LS:	Yes.  Since it would be relevant to what the state of psychology was here.  
LB:	Okay.  All right.  What are you going to do with all of this?  
LS:	Uh—
LB:	Is anybody going to—
LS:	I’ll tell you--
[break in recording]
LB:	Okay.  Now I think in order to fully understand the psychology department—especially at the time that I came—you have to get a picture of the place of the department within the broader context of American psychology.  I think it's fair to say that in the 1950s the most prestigious field within psychology had to do with the study of learning.  And in particular, the most favored ideas were ideas derived from principles of conditioning, classical and operant conditioning.  Well, the Midwest was the place where a lot of that learning research was being carried out and the leading figures in the study of learning were with some exceptions here and there seemed to be concentrated in the Midwest.  The three most eminent people in the Wisconsin department were also very very widely known for their research in learning processes.  These were Harry Harlow, Wulf Brogden, and David Grant.  They were very active investigators, they had made some important contributions, and Harry Harlow in particular was known not only for his learning oriented research but also for the primate studies that he was doing here, he was one of the pioneers in psychology in  the use of primates as experimental subjects.  Well, the department, as I say had a great deal of prestige primarily because this was one of the places where important research in learning was carried out.  And especially because of the visibility of Harlow, Brogden, and Grant.  These three people weren't especially interested in social psychology, they knew very little about it.  They had learned that in order to have something of a departmental prestige—that is, in order not to be seen as excessively narrow that they had to cover other topics besides the experimental psychology of learning.  And so, the department had a small program in clinical psychology, had a very small program in industrial psychology, and they also were interested in having some child development and social psychology as well.  In all cases, whatever the particular field, the faculty members in the area were expected to do research and hopefully a lot of research.  The people on the outside, the people in the other departments in the country sometimes had the impression that our triumvirate—the dominant influences in the department—were anti-anything that was not experimental psychology, not involved in experimental psychology of learning in particular, and so there was a conception that the department was opposed to clinical psychology, was opposed to the supposedly softer areas within the field.  In my experience that was not the case.  From the very beginning, from the time I first came here, I found that the department in general and those three people in particular, had very much of a live and let live orientation.  And I think that remains today.  People go about doing their own things.  There's not an awful lot of collaborative research by any means.  I'm not even sure that there's a high level of interest in what other people are doing, specifically.  Not in any general way at any rate.  It's not widely characteristic.  But what the department valued at that time was somebody who did research—whatever the—as long as he did it, and seemed to do it well.  And, as I say, the resources were provided to enable a person who was sufficiently motivated to do his work.  So--
LS:	I just wanted to say the sources were provided.  Are you talking about WARF grants?
LB:	Graduate school.  Yes, I think that that was always very important.  WARF grants, research space, however, as well.  I think the research committee was a very important part of my getting started.  But also I might say that around about, I would say 1957 or 1958, I had federal grants.  So that helped a great deal to.  Well, so I would say that the department generally, and Harlow, Grant, and Brogden in particular, were not anti the so-called softer areas but they wanted people to do work and a lot of empirical research.  
00:28:15
LB:	My own orientation has always to do laboratory experiments in social psychology, whatever the topics I've been working on, and that also fit in.  What the department has done is really favored an experimental or laboratory approach to the study of the various problems and that was what was generally valued.  Well, as the years have gone by, and—well one of the things that has happened is that as the department expanded and as new people came in, and as ... Harlow, Brogden and Grant got older they inevitably lost their overriding influence.  That happened well before people on the outside were aware that these three were no longer the kingpins, no longer the movers and shakers.  But even though  their influence diminished greatly—as I said before the culture of the department  seemed to continue—we continued to place a good deal of value, to this day, on  turning out lots of empirical research.  And again to this day we're not especially well known for being theoretical innovators.  
LS:	Did you ever worry about that and could we find a theoretical innovator?  
LB:	On yes.  But we don't seem to have been—well I know a number of departments, as a matter of fact, not only psychology, have attempted to rectify this.  For example, the sociology department makes a number of efforts to try to get a theoretician.  
LS:	Well I suppose ? would know.  
LB:	No, he was in economics.  
LS:	No, I meant I know he was in economics, but I was wondering if he would attempt to get a theoretician.  
LB:	I'm not sure, I'm not sure.  I think it's a generally valid one—political science, well I don’t—economics I think now does have theoreticians in the form of people who do mathematical models in the field of economics—people like Rothchild, for example.  And several others I understand.  So the statements that I'm making here I'm not sure apply too well to them.  But I think with a few possible exceptions we don't really provide the theoretical innovations at the University of Wisconsin in the social sciences.
00:31:28	[end side 1; begin side 2] 
LS:	So you think it's a question of salaries—not being able to offer enough salary?
LB:	I don't think it's a matter of salaries.  Our salaries are not of the highest, but I don't think that's a principal problem.  The sociology department, for example, as I understand it, made offers to several people that were adequate from a salary point of view, but still we weren't able to get the kind of people who were theoreticians or who were doing important work.  That's difficult to say really why that was.  Possibly, even our image as a place where numbers counted.  Maybe that contributed.  I don't know.  It's not that the work—the place has always been highly thought of—the psychology department has always been highly regarded, but again, especially as the—we get back to this business about the leading work was conditioning oriented research in the field of learning.  That changed in the 1960s—in the early 1960s.  There became in psychology a rapidly growing interest in what's called cognitive processes throughout all the different psychological fields and with that mushrooming growth of interest in cognitive processes, the Wisconsin department fell behind so to say.  And so were not where it's at in the study of cognitive processes - and that's true for all of the fields within psychology.  We do have people who are studying cognitive processes in a variety of ways—we have them in experimental psychology, we have them in clinical psychology, we have them to a certain extent in social psychology, but we're more or less followers instead of being among the innovators—among the leading contributors of new thought.  So I think it's fair to say that the Wisconsin department is in the real danger of becoming much less highly regarded.  Why we haven't been able to get the kind of people maybe because we've been in some ways too conservative.  It's hard to say.  It's hard to say—we've been relatively conservative in our hiring policies—we have in a sense not taken a good many risks.  
00:35:25
LB:	But I think it's also very difficult to predict—and this is another matter—I think this is a very important phenomenon—at least that I'll come to.  If you think of some of the leading psychology departments in the country you have to come up with names such as Stanford or Michigan.  These were places that were always very interested in buying—if I may put it that way—established talent.  They would pay a lot of money to get people with already established names.  People who had proven themselves.  We as a department—and I think perhaps the university in general—has shown much less interest in that kind of a strategy.  Perhaps partly because of our salary situation.  We haven't always had the full coffers that would enable us to go out and spend lots of money for highly regarded people—especially as the salaries exploded in the 1960s.
LS:	I've heard that said from other departments but presented as a positive value of Wisconsin that it did take young people that would be promising.  But I guess probably salaries has nothing to do with it.
LB:	Well, it's comfortable.  But you see that's in a sense—when that kind of statement is made saying that it is characteristic of the place—we only hire people as young assistant professors and bring them up and in a sense it indicates that we're not big time operators.
LS:	Well, I mean they say they think it's good.
LB:	That's what I'm saying, but I'm saying that point of view illustrates how the University with some exceptions is not a place of big time operations.  It doesn't picture itself the way a Michigan or a Stanford or several other universities do picture themselves as being in the forefront and willing to do everything possible to get the stars.  We have never to my knowledge or to my perception really set out to compete with the Stanfords, the Harvards, the Yales, even the Michigans.  At least not in psychology.
LS:	Well I was going to say it would have to be something that would have to be pursued throughout the university—you couldn't have one department—you would say well we're really going to get stars because then the other departments would say well we'd like—well I wonder.
LB:	I don't know what's done.  For example, biochemistry has a very good reputation.  I don't know how they've done it—whether it's solely a function of bringing people along or whether they've imported some eminent people.  I suspect it's probably the former.  But at any rate I would say that in psychology, in general, we have been discriminating in our granting of tenure. We have been one of the departments that has been most selective in not retaining people who didn't seem to fill the bill.  But nevertheless in our initial hiring we haven't seemed to really be able to select a lot of stars.  There are some exceptions.  We have had in the department some people who have proven to have very good reputations—who now have very good reputations.  For example, there is Michael Posner, Edward Smith, Hershel Leibowitz—these people have all gone elsewhere.  Smith went to Stanford, because Stanford was not only climatically very pleasant, but at that time was—had a tremendous amount of prestige and was viewed as a place where the theoretical developments were coming from.  And so Smith wanted to be at a department that seemed to be more in the forefront.  The scenery was pleasant, the weather was marvelous, and he would have lots of colleagues.  So we've had—we did hire a few people who have worked out very very well, but they haven't always stayed here.  So, because—well. So what has happened is that I think that not having a Harlow, Brogden, or Grant nowadays the department is I think not going to have the national reputation that the psychology department enjoyed in the 1950s.
LS:	I noticed a drop from I think seventh to tenth between ‘74 and ‘79.
LB:	On, is that the case?  I didn't know that.
LS:	In the national ratings.
LB:	I guess I haven't seen that—the ‘79 figures.  I wouldn't be surprised but I had thought it was well—I had thought it was a little higher—I thought it was about 7 according to some--
LS:	Well, 7 was an earlier figure.
LB:	I see, I see.
00:42:29
LS:	Tell me about the Rogers—Carl Rogers.  Was he seen as somebody who would be in the forefront of...
LB:	On, indeed.  That was an interesting episode.  That was an interesting episode.  Rogers seemed to be a mover, that is he migrated a lot from one psychology department to another.  He, I think had grown up in this area. 
LS:	That's right he went to the university, I think.
LB:	And he seemed to have some kind of family ties here—so after he decided to leave I believe the University of Chicago where he hadn't gotten along well with the other faculty members there he apparently put out feelers—I was not on the executive committee at that time.  I was not altogether sure exactly how it came about.  But I understand that he put out feelers indicating that he had an interest in coming to the University of Wisconsin.  The psychology department jumped at that possibility of getting somebody who had his national, indeed even inter=- national, standing.  And also it was seen as a way of rectifying the conception of the Wisconsin department's being anti-clinical psychology.  So the arrangements were made—the psychology department as I understand it paid his entire salary but he also had an appointment in the psychiatry department.  Well, that did not work out. I didn't have all that much contact with Rogers—but my perception, and of course it should be recognized that I am definitely part of the psychology department's culture.  My perception is that while both sides were at fault that the major part of the blame, I think, has to be placed on Rogers.  He gives very much the impression of a person who is open to all ideas—that he can tolerate all sorts of different approaches.  I think that that is entirely wrong.  I don't think he's that kind of individual at all.  I think the way he acts and what he proclaims are two very different things.
LS:	That's bad in a psychologist, isn't it?
LB:	It's not widely known about this but I happen to believe that this is the case.  First of all in the days that Rogers was here we had a—the department in its graduate training has relatively few requirements.  It's rather laissez-faire. But we did have a few.  I might say that this is in the 1960s especially—there were many graduate departments of psychology that had all sorts of established curricula—that had all sorts of programs worked out with courses that the graduate students had to take.  We had very little of that.  Nowadays as a matter of fact we have virtually no requirements with the exception of the? statistics requirements.  But we had a few more in those days, but not much more.  Rogers found that even those requirements—to me rather minimal requirements—were far? foreign into what he wanted.
LS:	There's a letter from him to Harrington—that was his complaint against the graduate student program—and what he spoke of was constant evaluation of the graduate students.
LB:	Well, I don't think it was constant evaluation.  We had a so-called pro-seminar that was required in the first year which was a course in basic psychology. It was divided into sections and the students took a test at the end of each section. Of course there were students that didn't do well in this but very often—in fact indeed—very often—students who didn't pass a section test were allowed to take it over again.  The department has always permitted repetition of exams—always we bail out very few people.  But he didn't like the fact that there were exams in this course.  He didn't like the fact that there were exams in our statistics course which is the other requirement.  He didn't believe in the advisability of evaluations.  I don't agree with him whatsoever.  But I think the basic—the nub of the thing is not only the evaluations but the fact the material being covered was not important to him.  He said on at least one occasion that nothing of importance has been learned in American psychology.  And so he didn't think that his students really had to learn what was taught in these courses.  At one time on a matter of evaluations—on the one time he thought that the best type of graduate training would be to allow students to come in—that is to select students who he thought had the right characteristics to start the graduate program and then not do any kind of testing or evaluation for the next four years.  And then evaluate them only when they are ready to complete their degree.  Well, if you do any serious evaluation at the end of four years—if you really want to evaluate—it seems to me it would be very cruel to tell some person after that individual's put in four or five years of graduate work, “you’re not going to be not good enough.”  It would be far better to weed out those individuals at the first year rather than the fourth or fifth year.  I think that the procedure that Rogers advised would be especially cruel.  
00:51:04
LB:	Rogers also argued that these constant evaluations as he saw it stifled creativity and I don't think that there is any evidence that that's true.  It's certainly not to the extent that he maintains.  But you know I think the principal thing that was involved in Roger's difficulty with the department is he had some very definite ideas of his own.  He had his own philosophy, his own approach, it was not an approach that was built on let's say the foundations of American psychology.  He had his own ideas.  I think he was so wedded to those particular ideas that what he wanted were people who would agree with him.  And he did not tolerate a divergent approach—if he had wanted he could have been allowed to do his own thing but he essentially insisted on having his approach be the department's approach.
LS:	Yes, I see.  That's where you had to stop.
LB:	Yes, and also the students he attracted frankly were our least able students.
LS:	Did he attract a lot of students?
LB:	Oh he attracted a lot of students. But they were not the best students. That was certainly true among our clinical psychology students. It was the relative weaklings who went to sit at his feet.
LS:	Because he wasn't training them in fact. 
LB:	Well he believed that—at least he believed in those days—that to be a good therapist—the fundamental criterion was that you had to be a good guy.  You had to be a nice person.
LS:	Positive absolute empathy.
LB:	Yes, unconditional positive regard.
LS:	That's right.  I edited his book on the schizophrenic study.
LB:	Oh yes—the one over on [inaudible.]  So he didn't think that people had to do any technical learning.  All they had to do was be nice people.  And that appealed to the less scientifically oriented.  But—what else was I going to say—I think that there were other kinds of deficiencies if I may put it that way in his way of doing things.  He was almost in some ways vindictive because of the divergence.  Again let me say I think that if a person is willing to play the game and make some accommodations he can get along.  I certainly did not see eye to eye with Brogden on many issues but we tolerated each other and indeed even had some respect for each other. But Rogers was unable to do that—to really tolerate a divergent approach.  His orientation seemed to be you either play my way or I'll pick up my marbles and go home.  But he did more than that.  And as I say if my memory serves me right there were some occasions when he was a little vindictive.  For example, on one occasion there was a preliminary exam that was unduly narrow, unduly rigid, unduly severe. There's no doubt that he was correct in objecting—at least there's no doubt in my mind—that he was correct in objecting to those particular preliminary examination questions.  I think that was the thing that prompted it, but whatever was the cause of his dissatisfaction he came to a department meeting with a tape recorder which he placed on the table and started and it went off with his lecture on the evils of the graduate training program.  In other words he wasn't able to say things as freely and as spontaneously as--
LS:	That's fascinating.
LB:	Sure, he proclaims the virtues of spontaneity and free expression but he had to give his talk previously tape recorded.  Another thing that he did—this I did see—that is when perspective students wrote to him asking if they could come the University of Wisconsin to work with him, he sometimes wrote back towards the end of his stay here saying to the students “don't come to Wisconsin—it's a place that stifles creativity”. And he would say all sorts of bad things about the place, and then he would circulate the carbons to those letters among all of the members of the faculty.  In some ways I suppose he was being honest but by circulating the carbons he was also in a way sticking out his tongue at the other people in the faculty.
LS:	It's interesting.  He resigned—you might well like to have gotten rid of him I think.
LB:	Well, we certainly didn't see eye to eye—there was no way of getting rid of him.  But, as I say, he certainly wasn't willing to accommodate.  I think that we're not the only ones who had these difficulties with him, as I say he has had a history of leaving departments—but on top of that my recollection or my understanding is he didn't get along with a lot of the people in the psychiatry department either.  There were a few people who were very close to him there but there were several others who were not at all close to him and not at all in agreement with him.  So, that's Rogers.
00:58:02
LS:	I have two questions—just one very briefly—was the mess that apparently occurred in the doing of the research for the study—was that his doing?
LB:	I don't know very much about it.  I really don't know.  You mean the conflict he had with—what's his name—that young clinical--
LS:	Yes, I had that--. There were things having to do with the data.
LB:	Yes, right.  They locked it off in safes or things.  I really don't know about that. 
LS:	All right.  And the other thing is...
LB:	[inaudible] what was the other fellow's name. He was one of [inaudible]’s students—I've forgotten—the guy who committed suicide --
LS:	Was there a Lewis in there--
LB:	No.  Lewis committed suicide.  He was a psychiatrist.
LS:	Oh, yes.  The other thing is it is worth talking about him this much in terms of his present reputation? Is he? He has many books out.
LB:	Yes, well I think he is a person who has an international reputation.  He is a person who will loom large in the history of American psychology in the 1960s and early 1970s.  I think Rogers is also a person who is very fortunate in being at the right place at the right time.  A couple of years ago there was a review of one of Roger's books in the New York Times—in the Sunday New York Times—where the reviewer, a psychologist, made what I think is a very valid observation.  He said that Rogers type of theory in his approach to psychotherapy, in his approach to the human personality, came along at just the time when the society was in favor of that point of view.  And that contributed greatly to his national and international standing.  The society in a sense was ready for it.  The society was interested in encounter groups, the society was interested in self-actualization in encouraging the individual to do his own thing, if you will, the society was interested in the selfish narcissistic approach to human behavior.  And that's what Rogers' philosophy was.  He was there—he was one of the supporters of that societal, that cultural approach, was one of the supporters of it, one of the people who contributed importantly to it, and one of the beneficiaries of that kind of approach. If he had come along, let's say in these days, he would have been given much less attention.  And as a matter of fact—he, of course, did establish a reputation in the 1950s—he was developing a fairly good reputation in the 1950s, partly because he was among the first, as I understand it, to do research into the psychotherapy process.  But, if the orientation of the 1950s had continued, you know, the conservative orientation, the business of having the individual fit in, and so forth—I'm not sure at all that Rogers would have the standing that he achieve. Actually did achieve in the 1960s and early 1970s.  He was in the right place—that is he came along--
LS:	Illustrates your earlier point.
LB:	Yes.  Right.
LS:	The right place at the right time.
LB:	Not only the right place but he was at the right time.  The society was ripe for him and he was there.
01:02:39
LS:	Well, I would be interested in what you have to say about Brogden also and Harlow as stars of the department—working with them, what kind of people they were.
LB:	Brogden. Can I quit around 11:30?  In fact I’m even surprised I’m staying this long, I have a desk full of stuff to do—
LS:	Do you want to do it some other time?
LB:	No, I might as well, as long as I’m here. But I’d like to stop, however, at 11:30.
LS:	Well, we can—This tape is almost over.
[end tape 1/begin tape 2]
LS:	Smith was here—came in '48 and, so he would not be somebody to talk to.  
LB:	Oh, I think you might want to talk to him, but what a picture he would paint.  
LS:	Well, that isn't necessarily very useful.  That is if there is no accuracy to it.  
LB:	It's a question of his interpretation of things and the emphasis.  That's a very interesting painting here ... what ...  
LS:	It's Indonesian.  
LB:	Oh, is it?  Can I look? Well, Wulf Brogden in my experience was a very responsible man, a great departmental and university citizen.  Took his role very very seriously and had a very narrow conception of things.  Very rigid in his point of view. But he was such a good university and departmental citizen that he was never really destructive.  I didn't think everyone who has encountered him would have that—would agree with me wholeheartedly in that last point, but I saw him as being a excellent university and departmental citizen.  When he came--when I came rather, I think at that time he was an associate dean of the graduate school as well as being half-time in the psychology department.  My understanding is that he was a very rigid enforcer of graduate school rules.  I could well expect him to do those kinds of things.  He would live up to the letter of the law.  He was very close to the then dean of the graduate school—Elvejem.  When Elvejem left the graduate school Brodgen also left.  I don't think Brodgen would have been kept on because his rigidity, his sticking to the letter type of approach, wasn't really widely appreciated.  He just rubbed too many of the people the wrong way.  He had done very important research in conditioning before I came to the department and was still widely known for that research, but his important contributions were largely over by the time I arrived.  Nevertheless, he continued active. He maintained a research program, but I don't think anything much was coming out of that.  When he--the role he played in the department was a very active one also.  He expressed lots of opinions, his opinions were highly predictable, he didn't have much tolerance for a softer approach to psychology.  I think it's fair to say that he didn't have much interest in having women in the department but again, I think primarily because of the—not because he was prejudiced against women in and of themselves, but because he thought women would be likely to leave the department if they got married or would go with their husbands and he didn't think that they would be sufficiently dedicated to the role of being a researcher.  So—
01:08:29
LS:	When--I'm just curious--when is this, the possibility of having women, being discussed?
LB:	Well, it's not a possibility of having women in and of--it wasn't women in general that was discussed. It was a question--we had--I'm thinking of a particular candidate--Mavis Hetherington.  
LS:	What, in the ‘60s or ‘50s?
LB:	When was she there? It was before we moved into the, our new building.   Do you have Hetherington down there?
LS:	Well, that was in 1962.  No I don't, but that doesn't mean anything because I didn't write down --.  So the building ‘62 so--
LB:	Is that when the building went up?  
LS:	It was round or bout there it was being built.
LB:	It was being built in ‘62.  Let’s see, I was in England in ‘64—I think that's when it was completed, because I know the people moved into the building when I was gone.  So it must have been about ‘64.  So she must have come along in the very early ‘60s or, yeah, very early 60s.  Brogden was not--
LS:	--getting women into the department.  
LB:	Well, she was a great loss.
LS:	You mean, you actually—
LB:	We hired her.  Oh yes, she became a very valued and very important member of the department.  Mavis Hetherington came here with her husband who was a member of the law faculty.  She wanted an appointment in the psychology department. I think she had some kind of an appointment in ed psych, I believe at that time.  But she did want to join the psychology department.  There was interest in her because she had experience in clinical psychology as well as in child development.  That's the combination that we had a long time interest in--a longer time interest in than--never really fulfilled.  So at any rate Mavis did have those combinations of interest that made her very attractive.  Brogden I think it's fair to say had some reluctance to hiring her and expressed negative opinions about that.  Despite his stand, however, she was hired.  Brogden maintained some skepticism about her so that for example her raises were not as large in the early years as perhaps they might have been.  That's because of our system of how we awarded raises in those days.  Everybody got in on the act, everybody at the executive committee level offered comments and made recommendations. But Brogden wasn't by any means the sole reason for the rather low raises given to Mavis. There was also a widely shared view, I'm sure that you've encountered this, that since Mavis was married and had a husband with a good job, she didn't need as much of a raise as other people.  That was widely accepted.  When I was chairman I took it upon myself to try to get the dean to rectify the situation, to give her larger than average raises, because I valued her and I think she was a very important person. That's proven to be the case.  She has an outstanding reputation in the field of developmental psychology nowadays.  But unfortunately she's gone.  Her husband was offered a position at the law school at the University of Virginia and Mavis went with him. 
LS:	So, she did leave, bearing out Brogden's complaint?  
LB:	But as I say we miss her, miss her for lots of reasons.  
01:13:17
LB:	What was I going to say?  Something about the raise situation.  Oh, no, about the departmental atmosphere.  To me, I think to me one of the very interesting aspects of the departmental culture is that the potential for conflict is a very great one.  Everybody knows everyone else's salary. It's true throughout the university.  
LS:	It isn't necessarily that people find out, but they could.
LB:	But in the psychology department they do know—that is our tradition—our traditional procedure is to have every member of the executive committee see the salary recommendations, and in a sense the executive committee has the vote to give its approval to the salary recommendations.  It used to be when I first arrived, when I first became an associate professor, that the recommendations were made by the entire executive committee—everybody at the tenured level participated—all got together as a group—but that procedure was changed as the department grew so that a five person committee was established which makes the initial salary recommendations and these are then voted upon by the entire tenured faculty.  Well because of the fact that the salary recommendations are open for everyone to see and because of the fact that as a department everyone is with very few exceptions—everyone is quite active.  
LS:	You mean, no deadwood—is that what you mean?  
LB:	We have a few—but a small number. Yes, there are a lot of publishers.  It means that the people might realistically say why not more for me.  But the department has also been discriminating in a sense that it has attempted to make differential salary recommendations.  It's been discriminating not only in terms of hiring and retaining but also in terms of salary recommendations.  So discriminations are made—whatever the criteria discriminations are made.  Which means of course that some people can be bothered—indeed can be bothered greatly by why they weren't getting as large a raise as Joe Blow.  All of this awareness and comparisons does generate a tension—as I say the potential for conflicts seems to me is there.  What is remarkable is how very little tension there is in the department. Given that potential.  I often wondered if the department as a whole isn't a great group of deniers.  The tension just doesn't seem to last or if it's lasted it doesn't seem to be active.  It's just latent or dormant or whatever would be the right word. It's not that the department is one big happy family.  I shouldn't say that.  I don't want to give the impression.  I don't think there's an awful lot of socializing done. But there is virtually no enmity.  People don't engage in vendettas.  They're not out to get each other.  With the exception of K. U. Smith.  He was the only one who was engaged in a vendetta.  But aside from that there's none of that.  
LS:	Is it separate universes ... is it that kind of thing—where in fact they don't pay much attention to each other?  
LB:	Well that's partly it—by the way I think this is true of a good many psychology departments around the country.  More of indeed a good many university departments where people just go about doing their own things.  
01:18:35
LS:	Are there groups?  Some departments have ...  
LB:	Cliques?  
LS:	Well not cliques—no—but by areas.  
LB:	Well yes we have areas—the department I think could be characterized as a confederation of areas—and in some ways a confederation of individuals.  
LS:	Your close to each other—are they the people in a particular area?  
LB:	Well more close—closer.  
LS:	But not close.  
LB:	More closer ... but not really close.  Again we don't collaborate within an area.  But we—as for an example my area in social psychology.  People in the social psychology area I guess are—have more contact with each other than we have with any people outside the area.  This is true both socially as well as professionally—academically ... but we're still not a community or a happy family by any means.  We do go about our separate ways and we do our own things.  We have within social psychology—I would say—no conflict whatsoever.  
LS:	Well that's an achievement.  Is this something that's been true since you came?  
LB:	Yes.  
LS:	That the department wasn't close but was also not split.  
LB:	That's right.  That's true.  And so with the hiring business I think it's fair to say that there might have been competition among areas—probably still is to a certain extent—for who should get the next slot available.  But there are enough people who were unaffected who could pass judgment—so that a vote could be taken—decisions could be made on the basis of a majority vote—and that's the way it would end up.  
LS:	And which way do you go—do you take the best person available no matter what the slot is for—or do you take it by the slot ...  
LB:	Well we've talked both ways but I think that we've gone more in terms of the area—the person's area of interest.  In the days of the mid-1960s when the university was rapidly expanding the area more than the type of need was less important. But everybody was hiring.  We were very slow as a department to hire come to think of it.  Even in those days.  Because of this need for a consensus within the executive committee.  We're very very slow to hire.  And as a consequence—well for one thing the dean at that time—Dean Epstein—kept on encouraging the psychology department to do more hiring.  There was a great deal of student interest—yet our conservative traditions and our practices were such that we didn't hire as much as we could have. One of the consequences is that the psychology department here in Wisconsin is one of the smallest departments in the Big 10.  
LS:	Yes, this certainly seems a small department.  
LB:	Yes, that was especially true in the days when we had more majors in our department—than anybody else.  We just didn't do as much hiring as we should have. And not only were we slow to hire we did let people go.  
LS:	You mean because you couldn't keep them?--  
LB:	No, no, no.
LS:	--or do you mean because they weren't of high quality?
LB:	Well yes, they didn't meet our criteria.  
LS:	Yes, there seems—one notices a great many people in and then their names aren't there the next time.
LB:	Yes, right.  
01:23:07
LS:	Well what on earth was the cause of the reorganization in 1965—
LB:	Of what?
LS:	--after Archer was, I guess, suggested as chairman—
LB:	God, you do know a lot. 
LS:	Yes, well I looked at the papers.  They divided into 14 committees and everything was to be decided by--
LB:	I don't know about the 14 committees.  
LS:	Oh you. Archer as writing you about it.  You were in England.  And he was very disturbed about it.  
LB:	My goodness.  Are all of those papers with him?  
LS:	Yes.  Yes.  
LB:	You know what you might do sometime?  It would be interesting to have you come to a department meeting and tell your perception of the history of the psychology department.  Would you like to do that?
LS:	It would be based on something that they would all know.  Why, is that unusual?
LB:	No, nobody would know that.  I'm one of the few people around who knows about these things.  Would you have any interest in doing that?  
LS:	I don't feel I know enough.  I mean I--
LB:	You know more than anybody else. I'll make you sing for your supper.  
LS:	That's an interesting thought.  It would force me to put down in writing all these bits of notes I have.  
LB:	Well, let me explore this and then I'll try it out with you.  May I?  
LS:	I don't know how effective I'd be.  Maybe I could write it up.  Maybe I could tell you and you could do it.  
LB:	No I find this fascinating that you're aware of all this.  I didn't realize that the papers were there.  
LS:	They are and anybody could look through them.  But it is. One sees this—it's a sudden loss by the chairman of any kind of power.  And usually a department when does that is—you want to go now--
LB:	No let me tell you about Archer and then I'll quit, because I find this is fascinating.  This is—he is one of the. You know what you're doing is giving me an opportunity to gossip.  
LS:	[laughs] Maybe that's what oral history at the university is.  
LB:	Well I find the whole Archer business as very interesting.  It says a lot about the way universities in general operate—not only Wisconsin but all sorts of universities.  I find—he's a fascinating man.  I said that Brogden was narrow and rigid.  Brogden is a piker in comparison to Jim Archer.  
LS:	Oh.  Well that's the answer to my question then, isn't it.  Why they took the power away from the chairman.  
LB:	The chairman never really had much power in this system.  Never really had much power.  But, oh I remember something vaguely about these subcommittees--but it was a resistance, a reaction against Archer. Archer was a man who was very very highly organized.  He was great in doing paper work.  Exceedingly highly motivated to get everything down, to get everything neat, to have everything orderly.  He was an extraordinary committee person because he did his homework, he had all of the fact, he could marshal his views in a very articulate manner.  So when he.  He was chairman at the time that we moved into the psychology department as I understand it--the move I'm sure was facilitated by his great organizing ability and interest.  But in contrast to Brogden he was very intolerant of differences.  As I said that Brogden was--people often disagreed with him, but he wouldn't take it personally.  He was frequently, almost always out of it, he would not take it personally.  He just kept on expressing his views and then would live with the differences, especially as the department got larger and as new people came in.  He was just outvoted and he would persist in his point of view but never become personal, never become vindictive.  That wasn't true of Archer.  Archer had very strong views and felt that anybody disagreeing with him--there was something wrong with that person.  And he took a lot of it personally.  So that for example, we have a coffee room, a faculty lounge.  Jim and his wife decided that the faculty weren't keeping the room neat enough.  And so on a couple of occasions they came into the lounge, either in the morning or at night and cleaned up.  
LS:	That's an absolutely new one.  
LB:	Not because they wanted to be nice to the department but I think they were essentially hoping to shame the department into doing better, to be neater, to be more orderly.  He had very strict and very authoritarian views.  And as I say became intolerant of those who disagreed with him.  What you're referring to it.  There was an experiment, a teaching experiment, that Jim organized to have the introductory psychology course taught over closed-circuit television on video tape.  I guess there was a difference of opinion as to how the teaching credit could be allocated for that course, and who was the possessor of the video tape and so forth.  The course was supposed to be divided—not one person but people from different areas would give their lectures, that's, in different fields.  And the question of how the teaching credit should be allocated among all the people who contributed to that video-taped course.  But at any rate there are all sorts of difficulties that I've forgotten surrounding this whole video-taped course, and I think that one of the things that contributed to the enmity.  But I've forgotten what the details were. I know that Archer was continually sending out memos expressing his different opinions—lecturing the department, chastising the faculty.  And finally it exploded.  I think there was a rebellion against his arbitrariness, his high-handedness, and he resigned. One of the things that I find interesting is just at about that time the--. I find this is a very interesting point about how universities operate. Here was a man who had been, if you will, a total failure as a department chairman.  At just that time when he was, when he and the department were at each other's throats or very unfriendly to each other, he was offered a job as graduate dean at the University of Colorado.  The people at Colorado not once asked us at Wisconsin what we thought of, what kind of a chairman he had been, what kind of a faculty member he had been. They thought they were winners in a great coup, they had lured this highly desirable person away from Wisconsin.  Well what happened was that within a very short time he was a great failure at Colorado.  He continued his authoritarian ways—evidently antagonized a fair number of junior level people at the University of Colorado—because the graduate dean there apparently has a good deal of power.  Apparently from the stories he treated a lot of people in a very high-handed, arbitrary fashion there too, so there was a rebellion against him there.  Apparently, I think he was relieved of that position.  Well, shortly after that he left the position as graduate dean to become an academic vice-president at a university on the east coast.  
LS:	What university?  
LB:	I think it was Rhode Island.  
LS:	Oh, for heavens-- And they didn't ask Colorado?
LB:	And apparently they didn't ask Colorado either. That's the thing that I find very interesting.  
LS:	Yes, because usually these dean searchers are accompanied by all sorts of letters from--  
LB:	Well they didn't--they didn't inquire all sorts of the information.  You see he was so good as a committee person.  And seemed to be so highly organized that they never inquired into the things about his personal relationships.  
LS:	Well that's what you would think looking at the correspondence. I mean there's a great deal of it and it looks well thought out, but then you wonder why everything was put into 14 committees, and of course, that's the answer.  
LB:	Well, there was just an attempt to take whatever power he had away from--
LS:	So presumably the whole system broke up as soon as the new chairman--
LB:	Oh yes.  We don't have anything like that--
LS:	It would be awful. Can you imagine what a department, everybody having to go to committees?
LB:	I think that must have been devised by Brogden and Grant, that kind of thing. It looks, it sounds to me as if it might have been Brogden's Machiavellian [hand there.  
LS:	But you would appear to have been a very close friend of Archer's and somebody to whom he could unload--
LB:	On, no, no.  Not at all.  First of all I wasn't there.  
LS:	-- he wrote you  
LB:	I don't even remember that.  But he and I were never friends.  As a matter of fact he didn't talk to me the first six months I was in Wisconsin and I never understood why.  It turned out that he was antagonist ... I learned later he was antagonistic towards me because I came $250 dollars more highly paid than he was.  And he resented that.]
01:
Second Interview Session (November 24, 1982): Digital File
00:00:00	[begin tape 2, side 2]
LS:	Well we ended up—you were talking about Archer.  Don’t you remember and his momentary reorganization of the department.  This is the 23rd or the 24th of November—2nd session. 
00:00:27
LS:	So I would like to hear what you have to say about Harry Harlow.
LB:	Well, I think that I myself will remember Harry Harlow best not only for the very important contributions he made to psychology—and especially with regard to the development of social relationships—of course as a consequence of his research with the primates—but also for his interest in the psychology department. I mentioned the other day the supposedly ruling triumvirate—Harlow, Brogden, and Grant.  Well one of the, what I regard as very notable characteristics of these three, is that they really had a great dedication to the welfare of the department—and indeed of the university as a whole.  They were strongly identified with the university.
LS:	That's interesting—I wouldn't have thought that of Harlow.
LB:	Oh, he was very very identified with the university.  He had been here since 1930s.  He says - he told me that he had built the primate laboratory almost literally by hand, making use of leftover building supplies and the like—well, he didn't of course build it all by himself—but he was very involved in the development of the primate laboratory and then afterwards in the development of the primate center—one of the regional federally sponsored research centers using primates. But, partly because these things were his baby, but also because of a strong identification with the university, he was greatly involved—he seemed to care very much about the university.  In my experiments with him he didn't have very much small talk—when he talked he talked about the university or about the department or about things psychological.  But I think it was an reflection of the extent to which he was concerned.
LS:	Does this mean that it wasn't particularly easy to talk to him?
LB:	It really wasn't.  I think to a certain extent he was almost always at least with me—posing.  He was playing a role.  On one occasion I remember asking him a rather unimportant question about what psychology had been like before I myself came on the scene and he didn't give me any straight answer at that particular time—but a little while later—I think it must have been an hour or two later—he came out with a poem that he had written as his answer.  He seemed to be motivated to come out with a witticism or with something that—some kind of a striking statement.
LS:	So he must have been very self conscious.
LB:	I think he was exceedingly self conscious.  He cared very much about what people thought of him.  The reputation was that he was very concerned about his standing in the university with regard to pay—for example—whether he was the third highest, fourth highest, fifth highest, second highest paid person in the university.  That concerned him.  He cared very much evidently whether beginning undergraduates dropped his introductory psychology course or not.
LS:	That's not at all one's notion of the great scholar.
LB:	Well,--
LS:	Or isn't he a great scholar?
LB:	Oh he was a great scholar—he knew a great deal—at least in my experience.  He knew a great deal.  And indeed was interested in making significant contributions to the science.  But he did care very much what people thought of him—what a full range of people thought of him.  So, perhaps for that reason—in my interactions with him as I say he seemed to be posing as good deal of the time.  I'm not sure that any one took offense at that.  It was partly because—I don't think anyone—I've never heard of Harlow doing anyone dirt.  That he was malicious to anyone.  And I think it was widespread recognition that he was posing.  For example, in his classes he made very shocking statements about women.  I guess he was in that respect something of a sexist.  But there was also a recognition that he was saying that partly to be shocking.  To set people back on their heels.  And it wasn't as I say intended to be mean.  People seemed to recognize that.  It is just that he was trying to present himself in a particular manner.
00:07:21
LS:	Well I must say I would have said that anybody who was a genuine scholar—and there are certainly those around here—is not somebody who is –
 LB:	Posing?
LS:	Well, it sounds petty or posing.
LB:	Well I think it's more a tribute to his insecurity.  Self consciousness if you want to call it that.  Oh no, I think he was a genuine scholar—certainly a genuine scientist.
LS:	That's all been written up I'm sure—the history of the primate lab and his footing his own part of the building.
LB:	Well there is a—there's certainly a—you might be interested in this—there's an obituary of Harry Harlow—that was just published in the latest issue of the American Psychologist which is one of the professional journals of the American Psychological Association—it's a two page history of Harlow by one of the very eminent people in the field—so that's a tribute to his standing and indeed his significant contributions. 
LS:	But that wouldn't go into the details of how he actually did start.  I mean you said that he went around scrounging --
LB:	Yes, materials--
LS:	Has anybody written that up?
LB:	I don't know.  I really don't know.
LS:	He presumably right there on the premises—I mean it was right there by the zoo right there.
LB:	No, no, no—this was—they remodeled an old cheese factory over on—where was it—near Regent Street and—what's the address—Orchard.
LS:	And it was his idea, the primate lab is his--
LB:	Oh yes, yes, yes.  Now there are two installations—the primate laboratory which is still the psychology department installation and the primate center which is—as I said before—one of the regional centers paid for by the federal government.  Those are administratively somewhat different.  The center supported by the federal government—the primate laboratory is supported by the College of Letters and Science.
LS:	How were his students and his relations with his students?
LB:	Well, he had—well the short answer is I don't really know.  But I don't know what they thought of him.  He had some very good students and I do know that he was in some respects very concerned about the welfare of younger associates. He fought very hard for people who were working with him.  He tried to improve their standing in many respects.  For example, in the—I think it was in the 1960s he had two young research associates who he tried very hard to have accepted in the psychology department and then become full-fledged members of the department.  He went out of his way to get them that position and he eventually succeeded—over some misgivings.  Then towards the end of his career he had a special relationship with a young—very young associate named Steve Suomi.  And also went out of his way to try to further Suomi's career.
LS:	Is that—how do you spell it?  S-u-o-m-i.
LB:	Yes, Yes.  He is a very active young man.  Very active, hard working, very ambitious—and as I say Harlow worked very hard to further his career.  I know for example that he nominated Steve Suomi for some special award being given out by the American Psychological Association—wrote a very glowing letter in support of young Suomi.  So he was concerned about the people who were working for him and with him.  How he got along with these people I don't know.  I suppose his graduate students were in awe of him and somewhat intimidated by him I suppose because at first glance Harlow I think would be somewhat hard to figure out.
LS:	Well presumably you would have heard if there ... I mean as you knew of Roger's students.  You had an opinion about them.
LB:	Well I didn't think they were less ... Yes I don't think they were too able.  At least his students here.  Charles Truax—that's the man who we were talking about the other day.  Charley Truax.
LS:	I've heard that ... what were you going to say.
LB:	Nothing.  Nothing worthwhile anyway.
00:13:10
LS:	Well, I've heard that somebody else in the end ran the primate lab—I mean that Harlow became an alcoholic or something.
LB:	Well that is a kind of exaggeration.  Harry did drink a lot—there's no doubt about that—but the extent to which he was inebriated I think was exaggerated—it turns out that he had Parkinson's disease.  And that wasn't known—that wasn't widely known at any rate.  So a lot of the symptoms that were attributed to alcoholism like weaving and not being steady on his feet and so forth. I think it really wasn't known at first, and indeed that point was made in this obituary that I mentioned as a way of trying to set the record straight.  No, he did drink but I think that he wasn't drunk much of the time—or at least all of the time the way story started to hold.  Oh, he had several people run the primate lab—John Davenport was an administrator man whose now in the psychology department, Steve Suomi worked with him very closely towards the end, and so on, but I don't think anyone really wants to take credit away from Harlow.  He definitely made some very significant contributions.  At least to my knowledge.  I've never heard of any accusations that the ideas were not his.
LS:	Well is there anything else to say about him?
LB:	About Harlow?  No I think that sums up my experience of him.  I guess I do want to give some credit to his second, or shall I say his third and first wife.  Do you know about this?  Do you know about this?
LS:	No.
LB:	He divorced his first wife Clara and married a former student, Margaret who was also an exceedingly ambitious woman and who was a very notable psychologist in her own right.  They collaborated on some projects but she was also quite independent and it was at that time that Harry made many of his most significant contributions and Margaret Keane Harlow—I think that was her name—also became fairly well known herself.  She was never a member of the psychology department because of the rules regarding nepotism that were so strong in those days.  But she was a research associate at the primate laboratory and as I say became fairly well known. One of the things that happened was that Harlow and the Harlow's—both of them—as I understand it increasingly became social isolates during that period.  They had less and less contact with others—they certainly had less contact with—very little contact with other people in the psychology department.
LS:	Maybe they were looking for adequate company, you know. [laughs]
LB:	Well I don't know what it was.  We didn't well in all of the years that I was here we never had any social contact with Margaret and Harry Harlow. 
LS:	That's rare isn't it.
LB:	Well somewhat unusual.  At any rate after Margaret died—she died of cancer—Harry remarried his first wife who was by then a widow.  And she came back to Madison and was to a certain degree re-socialized.  She took him out into the world.  She started widening his social contacts again.  She was very good for him. And they also I understand collaborated on some projects.  But again to illustrate the story that I tell—to illustrate Harry's posing and his need to express witticisms—after he retired and then moved to what I thought was a condominium on the west side and they gave a party for some people at that time—so we went out with that party and I asked Harry how he liked the condominium living?  Harry looked at me and said "A condominium is a way station on the road from the home to the tomb."
LS:	He was able to make [inaudible] like that.
LB:	I think it also illustrated how conscious he was of getting old.  But at any rate Clara was very very good for him as I understand it—at least from an outsider's perspective.  He was very lucky in being able to get back together again with her.
LS:	Nice that she hadn't been sitting around waiting all the time.
LB:	Yes.
LS:	I made a comment about the monkeys because that I suppose of all the research that's been done at the UW that's what I most remember and knew about before I came. It's such—I think it's Scientific American.
LB:	Sure, oh yes.  He had a lot of—and also a psychiatrist were very interested in his work—I was at a convention with him once and I remember how impressed I was—how the psychiatrists in the audience were taking up his ideas with great enthusiasm.  Oh yes.  But more so than many psychological studies.  Many of them were regarded as either alien to their ways of thinking or not of special interest—but his work on the social development of the primates they regarded as especially important.
00:21:30
LS:	Well what about? The reason I bring up educational psychology is that there was a letter in the files from Stiles to Archer --
LB:	Dean Stiles—is that who you're talking about—Dean Stiles—I'd forgotten about him.
LS:	It's saying that the department is just confounded and we hope there will be increasingly close ties --
LB:	I didn't know anything about that.
LS:	I don't suppose so and evidently there weren't.
LB:	I don't think so.  Possibly in part because of Him who as I indicated the other day tended to be somewhat arrogant.
LS:	It may have been to Mote.
LB:	Oh Mote.  Fred Mote.
LS:	It may have been that year.  But it was just one of those letters that one presumably files away.
LB:	Well it could have been Mote.  Mote was chairman when I came.  It was part of the turn taking aspect of being a department chairman that was more or less his turn.  I don't know anything about that.
LS:	All right.  Well, maybe we should just continue with departmental affairs—I guess that would be appropriate—which is to say why were you given the Vilas Professorship and did you accept the chairmanship.
LB:	Why did I accept it—the answer is very easy about the chairmanship. It was a matter of turn-taking.  I found that I was not especially well-suited to be chairman.
LS:	You certainly picked the worst possible time.
LB:	Oh that was a bad time for me.  I'm much too excitable.  And those were times that were—well, very excitable times.  I lost my cool on a number of occasions.
LS:	There was the TA strike and then there was Dean Kleene who was rather hard on—at least some department chairman.
LB:	Oh, well, I did get somewhat intense in my discussions with Dean Kleene? I remember on one occasion he told me not to shout.  But I think we generally --
LS:	What were you shouting about?
LB:	I don't remember—It had to do
LS:	He was very upset and you—there are letters--
LB:	It had nothing to do with the student situation—it more had to—with hiring.
LS:	Yes, because you were letting people go because you didn't think they were good enough—and you weren't being able to keep the money to get other people.
LB:	Well, I think it wasn't so much that—I remember on one occasion being concerned about a replacement for Mavis Hetherington who I mentioned the other day. She was I think a full professor at that time—and was lured away to Virginia and we were very concerned about finding an adequate replacement for her, and it was quite uncertain whether the dean would allow us.  I think Kleene's philosophy as Cronon's   philosophy nowadays is to allow departments or at least many departments to replace people they do not grant tenure to.  So that wasn't the question, it was the question of people who already have tenure or who are being, who leave for one reason or another.  It's about replacing those.  And that I remember being quite intense about—at least in some letters I wrote to Dean Kleene from California. No I think that we were never under pressure from the administration whatsoever in connection with the student unrest.  There were two such—one has to do with the TAs—but the other one has to do with the so-called black student's strike—the formation of the back studies program.  On both of those occasions and of course the—surrounding the Viet Nam situation—there was a great deal of unrest.  I was as I say much to excitable.  
00:26:23
LB:	On one occasion the young militants—undergraduates—in the psychology department anyway—you know they got the atmosphere—formed a kind of a radical student organization and tried to remake the psychology department.  So that on one occasion they came up with something like thirteen non-negotiable demands and presented them to me. 
LS:	Is this as TAs?
LB:	No, no these were undergraduates.  They wanted changes in the course content and changes in the way of doing things.  Changes in the committee structure. But especially changes in the courses that were available and curriculum requirements.  So when they presented to me with the demands I looked at the sheet of paper and said "What do you mean non-negotiable demands!?  And became a bit excited about that kind of a statement.  The word quickly spread that Berkowitz had lost his cool. And that was apparently a great reinforcement for the students—you know they had made an impact.  They enjoyed that.  All of that died down.  We nowadays find it very difficult to involve students in the department activities and committees and so forth.  Mrs. Davenport, the undergraduate student advisor, does find occasional students whom she works very hard to try to keep a psychology club going with interested students.  But except for those few highly interested undergraduates the student body as a whole doesn't seem to care very much at all about what's going on.  At least as far as I'm able to see.  I don't hear very much intense interest—it's a good thing we have Mrs. Davenport because she maintains some degree of interest—some degree of undergraduate involvement.
LS:	Are those positions new—those undergraduate student advisors.  Each department seemed to want one --
LB:	Yes, that's right.  That came about, I think, in the mid-60s if my memory is.  I don't think every department—I think most but not everyone--
LS:	Well maybe the big departments—history and economics.
LB:	Right, and they are a good idea.  They are in my experience very very worthwhile.  When I first came here I served as a student advisor as did every staff member.  Students would come in and discuss with us about courses and so forth.  Many of us tended not to know the rules too well.  And also, perhaps more important, we didn't really care very much about the rules or even about ...
LS:	You mean what was required and what not.
LB:	That's right.  College rules.  University rules.  We didn't keep up to date with whatever changes in regulations, curriculum requirements, graduation requirements ... and I don't think many of us were especially concerned about these particular matters.  And of course there was a certain amount of resentment even about having to spend the time in this way.  When the undergraduate advisors came on the scene in the mid-60s we were very fortunate in obtaining the services of Mrs. Davenport—John Davenport's wife—because she is highly motivated to fulfill this role.  Very very interested in working with students and does as far as I'm able to see a superb job.  The students are getting much better advice, much better information, from her than I believe they ever got from faculty members.  Of course a number of students say they miss contact with faculty members.  But the way for students to obtain that contact is by trying to work with a faculty member on an independent research project—in order to—sometimes students work either for pay or four course credit doing research under the supervision of a faculty member.  That's the way the students can get that contact rather than through asking a faculty member whether they should take geology or chemistry or other kind of advice that we used to be sought out for.
LS:	Well presumably if they are in your class they can come in and talk to you in your office hours too.
LB:	That's right.  That's right.  And I have gotten to know some students that way.  But as far as getting advice [I think they get much better advice from somebody who really knows and cares than from an indifferent--
LS:	{inaudible}  profited from--I know it.
LB:	Yes.
LS:	They're very fine with the history undergraduate advisor.
LB:	Yes.  Who's that?
LS:	She's helped them a great deal—Linda {inaudible} —And the TAs strike—I gather the TAs in the psychology department—I read a statement that they thought the TA was making too many demands and that they in fact were not that badly treated.
LB:	Oh, the TAs in the psychology department were not treated badly at all. They didn't really have any significant grips.  Many of them however did eventually join forces with the TAA.  I think it became a question of deciding whose side they were on {inaudible} choosing a reference group.  They had to announce whether they were on the side of their peers or whether they were on the side of the older authorities.]
00:32:31	[end tape 2; begin tape 3]
LS:	It's one of the observations, I've done a lot of interviews on the TA strike.  Was the very close relationship among the graduate students and what a source of excitement and pleasure and intimacy it was for them.
LB:	Oh yes, I bet they sort of drew together, they developed a real sense of community, don't they?
LS:	Yes.  And it would have been very hard to resist it, no matter how-
LB:	Sure, sure.
LS:	--how it hurt department relations.
LB:	Oh yes, I think that things were exciting in those days.  As I say, I don't think the Psychology TAs felt that they were exploited or treated unfairly.  I think in large part, they felt that they had to psychologically align themselves with their peers.
LS:	But, did this make them hostile to you?
LB:	I don't know.  I can't recall any incidents of hostility.
LS:	You're lucky.
LB:	It took place around us.  I remember attempts, of course, to injure the Chemistry Building which is across.  There was some, I think it was some TAs, trying to make some holes in that big tank right outside the Chemistry Building, but nothing of that sort ever happened in psychology.  As I recall there was picketing, some of our TAs picketed the building, but I don't think it ever went beyond that.  It wasn't the TAs or the TA strike that lead to that intense feeling, at least in connection with the psychology, wait a minute, I think that was the black—No, let's see.  Let me take it back, there was one occasion and it may have been the TA strike or not, perhaps it was the TA strike.  The only incidence I remember where some students invaded a classroom.  The class was actually being taught by Mavis Hetherington, whom I mentioned several times.  And they insisted that they tried to get the students in the classroom to leave, and so they tried to break up the class.  Mavis, being a tough cookie, wasn't going to give up her classes, wasn't going to not teach.  She was very serious about her work.  She insisted on fulfilling her obligations.  Well, the invading students, I think, threw a table at her.  They couldn't throw it very far, but it was just an expression of their hostility and frustration.  Mavis came running upstairs at that point, sought me out as chairman, and started crying.  I think that had an impact on her, considerable impact on her.  There was another occasion, if my memory serves me right, in that some striking students invaded the classroom being taught by K.U. Smith.  And K.U. Smith was also a man of very, very decided opinions.
LS:	He's the one you said would have a quite different view of the department.
LB:	Oh yes--
LS:	Is it K. U.?
LB:	Yes.  Any history of the psychology department would be seriously incomplete without K.U. Smith.  You have to get him in.   Well, at any rate, what K.U. did as I understand, was to grab a pointer and threaten the students with it, the invading students, in a sense chased them out of the room.  I think we all applauded, at least in our heads this action.  But, I think that, my memory is unclear, I don't remember whether that was the TA strike or the black students strike.  By the way, the black students strike was really lead by, promulgated by, in many respects, by white students.  Certainly it was white students who tried to disrupt the Psychology Building at that time in connection with that strike.  In support of the demand for black studies programs.  At least, in our experience, whatever disruption was created at that time, was created by white students.
LS:	I don't know much about that.  People haven't said much about it.  Was it a question of black students in the psychology department who--
LB:	No, there were no black students--
LS:	--whom they were working in behalf of?
LB:	No, they were working in behalf of demands elsewhere for black studies programs.
LS:	So, it had nothing to do with psychology?
LB:	No, but as part of their efforts to intimidate the university, they tried to disrupt classes.  They even prevented students from going to classes.  On a couple of occasions, when I was chairman, they tried to block entrance to the Psychology Building.  And that was another occasion in which I lost my cool.
LS:	What did you do?
LB:	Oh, I rushed downstairs with a pad of yellow, you know yellow pad, and said "give me your names, give me your names".  They ignored me.
00:39:08
LS:	You're a student of aggression.  I mean, what was your attitude about this whole period?
LB:	I didn't support these endeavors in any way.  I don't think my research on aggression had anything to do with my attitudes.
LS:	You weren't called upon by the authorities?  Because you might have been, you know?
LB:  No, no.  The only thing that I, the only possible contribution I might have made had to do not with the student strikes, but in connection with the TAs or the black studies program, but, some of the protests in connection with the Vietnam War.
LS:	Yes, well I'm including, that's what I'm really mostly talking about now.
LB:	Oh, okay.  Now, you might recall that the authorities, especially at first were really at a loss as to how to handle the protests.  For example, when students took over a building, or when they started, let's say took over a building.  And also, I must, getting away from that, but it was again the same era.  Remember in the mid and late 60's, around '66 or '67, there was a tremendous amount of urban disorders.  That's really what I was professionally more involved with, that's really what I should talk about.  I was professionally more involved with urban disorders and so served as a consultant for the Commission on Violence that had been established by Lyndon Johnson.  And on one occasion, I wrote a theoretical paper dealing with how crowds of protesters might be stimulated to increased violence by the sight of police.  So and argued on the basis of that authorities should, that is from a theoretical point of view, that authorities should use either an overwhelming show of force or no force and that having just a few police around was worse than anything else.  So, that came to be the policy that was used.  I don't think it was because of my analysis, rather it was experience that taught the various authorities that that was the procedure to be employed.  But, in some jurisdictions, I was told that this paper, or at least the ideas that I had expressed, in a sense served to justify and sort of give the police bodies some confidence that this was indeed a kind of course of action.  But, I think otherwise, my so called expertise didn't have any impact and I didn't have any real contributions to make.
00:43:21
LS:	But you must have been very interested in how it was happening.
LB:	Oh, I was very interested.  I was interested in the source of the turmoil, especially with regard to the urban disorders.  The blacks, of course, had many legitimate complaints.  I disagreed with a number of people, especially with some political scientists and sociologists who saw the riots as being rational attempts on the part of blacks to improve their political situation and their economic situation.  I viewed much of what was going on as non-rational behavior, for example, blacks in many ways were hurting other blacks.  The property they destroyed very often, but not always, but very often, was owned by blacks.  They attacked targets that they saw as bothering them, but it wasn't in a rational political way that they were behaving.  So I, in my writings, emphasized the impulsive, irrational, highly emotional nature of the behavior, especially at first.  But, at any rate, I was really professionally more interested in the urban disorders, than the student activities on the campus.
LS:	But when it actually started here, I mean things like the sit-in at the Peterson Building and the two Dow demonstrations, you must have sort of cast an eye out the window and said--
LB:	Oh, yes, I was very interested in what was going on, but only as an individual faculty member rather than as a psychologist.  If I had been asked what to do from a professional point of view, there's no doubt what my advice would have been.  I believed then, and believe now, that in part students wanted attention.  And that their behavior, in a sense was reinforced by having the buildings surrounded by police and having all the photographers there and the television cameras all focused on them.  As a matter of fact, we see that even nowadays when terrorists take over some kind of installation.  They're reinforced by media attention, not to say that the students were terrorists, but that there were some similarities.  Paying a lot of attention to these actions is rewarding, it sort of encourages the people.  Well, believing that, I wished that the regents and the authorities would have had the wisdom to really ignore the students.
LS:	But if they had, wouldn't the students have done even more to get some attention?
LB:	No, I don't think so.  They might have been frustrated perhaps, but I think for example, suppose they took over South Hall or took over the dean's office in South Hall.  I would have said, "Alright, let them stay there for a day, two days, three days, a week, whatever.  Just make believe that they don't exist, that is try to do business elsewhere."  Of course, the regents and the police would not have stood for that.  They wanted to punish, get these kids.  Show them who's boss.  But that, as I say, I think really was a reinforcement.  It would have been far more effective just to have ignored them.
LS:	It really is funny that nobody thought of calling on you.  Here you were a national expert on the handling of, I mean--
LB:	Well, no, I think that that kind of advice just would not have been welcome.
LS:	Nobody, nobody thought of calling you.
LB:	Oh no, no.  But again, I don't see why.  Everyone on matters of this sort, everyone has strong opinions.
LS:	They were all involved themselves, you mean they were part of the study.
LB:	Everyone's involved and everyone knows what to do.  Everyone has strong opinions.
00:48:13
LS:	What were your own opinions?  Were you also against the war?
LB:	Oh, yes, I don't think I was opposed to the war at the start, but certainly, oh let's say, by the last year of the Johnson administration.  I had awakened to the futility of it all.  I guess I didn't believe that, what was it, in '65, let's say in 1965, I thought believing in the Munich analogy.  I did believe in the Munich and I thought that with Dean Rusk and the other members of the Kennedy and Johnson administration in 1965, perhaps early 1966, thought there might be some benefit in being involved in Vietnam.  But after, I think maybe '67, I had changed my mind.  
00:49:29
LB:	You know, I would recommend that you let me, I don't want to close this off, but I do feel that I should go.  But what I would like to do is again to recommend that you have some people talk to you about their experiences with K.U.
LS:	Who would I --
LB:	People who were, for example, Bill Epstein who was chairman of the psychology department after me.  Or Len Ross, who's chairman now.  But I think Epstein in particular.  He started out being quite neutral in his view of K.U.  K.U. had not done anything to him, but he sort of changed his mind.
LS:	He came here in '44 didn't he, Smith?
LB:	Smith is definitely, I don't know when Smith came.  Smith is definitely one of the colorful characters and I don't, and my feelings toward him are very mixed.  I think he was in many ways irresponsible.  As a matter of fact I would say that it's interesting how much tolerance there was, he made many libelist accusations towards people, including, no not to me.  He was very, very critical of me towards the end.  Not because I had ever done anything to him, but because I was starting to become visible in playing an important role in the department.  So, he started focusing on me, but he was irresponsible and even libelous in many accusations he made, especially of Grant, particularly Brogden, and then also Harlow.  And he frequently referred to Brogden, Harlow and Grant as those academic gangsters in public as well as in private.  He wrote letters to all sorts of state and national figures.
LS:	That must be in the files, I wonder if it is?  
LB:	But, at any rate, I think it would be helpful to you to get his view-
LS:	Is he a scholar himself?
LB:	Oh, he was a very, very active researcher.
LS:	I mean does he produce anything important?
LB:	Well, he would say so.  He certainly did a lot of research.  I don't know what contributions they've made to the field as a whole.  I really don't know.  So, what I say is you should talk to him and also talk to others about him.
00:52:43
LS:	Alright, now just give me a few minutes on what as you think from the period since you were here of the presidents, the deans, people you've known, issues that you've known about, things happening on campus.  What seemed to you the most important things and the people--
LB:	Well, I don't know quite what is the most important part.  When I first came, the university had about 17,000 people, as I think I said the other day.  It's now about 40,000.  I, in many ways, regret the change.  It certainly was quite comfortable and more congenial in the other days.  Of course, it was inevitable and I have very somewhat mixed feelings about our growth.  In part, I'm sorry that the psychology department did not grow as much as it was able to, as it might have done.  I mentioned the other day that we were very conservative in our hiring.  We could have grown larger, we perhaps should have grown larger.  We certainly should have done somewhat different kind of hiring in order to maintain our visibility as an important place.  So, I'm sorry that that didn't happen.  But, on the other hand, it's comfortable being in a somewhat small department.  You asked me about how I became a Vilas professor.  The answer is that I was offered a chair at the University of Michigan.
LS:	I thought it must have been something like that.
LB:	It was a Walgreen chair and I told some people that I would have had to work in the drug store only two days a week.  But it was I guess, my Vilas professorship most directly was a response to that offer.  The people involved, especially Dean Epstein at that time, said that Vilas was really not a counter offer, it would have come about anyway.  But, most direct, it really was.  I don't think that would happen nowadays, because the whole procedure for selecting Vilas professors now is somewhat more formal.  Certainly more involved.  But at any rate, one of the reasons, there are several reasons why I decided to remain here at Wisconsin, partly because the real attractions of the place, partly because of the Vilas professorship which is a very nice set of perks.  And partly because I regarded the Michigan department as much too large, and this place much, much more comfortable.  There are I would say, close to 200 people in the Michigan psychology department in various ways.  There's research associates, people who have nominal appointments of one sort or another.  But it's a huge department, and even though I had done my graduate work there and knew a fair number of the people there, and indeed have a tremendous respect for the department, I didn't care for that size, just being one of a great number of people.  I found this place to be much more congenial, the small size to be much more congenial.  It is comfortable, but I think also we have missed some opportunities to get the kinds of people we need in order to maintain our visibility.  
00:57:31
LB:	You say about changes in the place, one of things that has always impressed me is that in the heyday of the growth, when universities were growing, when universities seemed to have a tremendous amount of money, this university did not become as entrepreneurial in my estimation as a number of other places, especially places like Michigan.  Private universities such as Stanford went all out to buy talent, to get eminent names.  We didn't choose that route, partly because we didn't have the funds that Stanford had, but also Michigan went that way to a very great extent.  They saw themselves as big time and they went out to achieve national eminence by hiring big names throughout the university.  As I see it, I don't think that the University of Wisconsin has done that.
LS:	Is that because--? Let’s see, Harrington was president then.  Of course subsequently--
LB:	Maybe it’s the not having leadership that emphasized this as you now seem to be implying.  Maybe it's partly a shortage of funds.  But I think it's also to culture the place.
LS:	 You can always get grants for hiring people.
LB:	Oh, there's all sorts of things.  I think money was available.  I think the psychology department could have done far more.  I put a good deal of the answer on the culture of the place as being partly provincial, partly small time.  We didn't think of ourselves as being, we weren't being driven by an image of ourselves as being one of the top two or three or four or five or so.  We believed more in bringing people along.  Which is good and bad, at least from the point of view of national visibility.
LS:	Of course some departments, that is usually in the university, it is some departments that are very high-profile.
LB:	Some departments do that more readily than others.  The Economics Department in my experience does that and perhaps even History, I don't know.
LS:	Well, History, well no, it didn't.  It didn't go out for big names, but it got very good people.
LB:	Yes, but I mean it's going out for the big names.  Economics did that you mentioned the other day.  
LS:	Yes, there was some surprise apparently in the New York Times when he accepted the position out here.
LB:	Oh really.  Well, that's a relatively unusual phenomenon in my experience here at Madison.
LS:	Who are the best people or the good people in the department now?
LB:	Well, I think the department is pretty good in general.  There are a lot of good people.  Again, as I said the other day, I'm not sure that we have major theoretical innovators, but they are all good people.  Well, some people who have ceased publishing.  But, by in large, I think everyone is good.
LS:	Who are the two or three that you would pick out as--
LB:	Ones who have perhaps great visibility are Frances Graham, who is interested in child development.  She's part-time in Pediatrics as well as in the psychology department.  Loren and Jean Chapman who are in clinical psychology.  They are very well known.  Loren especially for research on schizophrenia.  Steve Suomi, of course, for his interest in primate research and social development generally.  A number of experimental psychologists have some degree of visibility.  But, we certainly don't have anybody that has the kind of stature that Brogden or well, Brogden became old-fashioned rather soon.  Let's say Harlow or even Grant.
LS:	What about yourself?  Do you?  I know you have as a, you are apparently one of the two who from the university produce the most number of sited works.
LB:	Well, I wouldn't give too much weight to that kind of thing.  I think that--
LS:	Well, I suppose I can't ask you that.
LB:	No, no, no.  I'm really being quite honest.  I think that the way social psychology, my particular field, has developed, I am somewhat peripheral.
LS:	Oh, that's right.  You said that social psychology was no longer the main field.
LB:	No, no.  That's not what I was saying.  Social psychology is susceptible to rapid changes.  I don't know if other--
LS:	That's right.  You said aggression was no longer--
LB:	That's right.  Aggression is no longer really of interest.  For that we can go even a little more, can be even a little broader.  I think the study of social interaction is no longer of central importance.  People aren't doing research on conformity or attitude change the way they used to.  There's relatively little interest in how people interact, behave towards each other in groups.  The dominant area as I mentioned the other day, in social psychology and also in the field of psychology generally, has to do with cognitive processes.  How people think and remember.  How people process information and then retrieve that information.  We aren't especially well known in the department for doing important work in the field of cognition and there are very few people in the department who are doing social psychological work involving cognitive processes.  So, in many ways we're something of a backwater and I think are perceived as such.  And I think my own work is regarded as somewhat peripheral out of that--
LS:	But you're still interested in what you're doing.
LB:	Oh, I'm interested.
LS:	Can you say in a sentence what you're doing because we're practically at the end of the tape.
LB:	Oh good, that's a good place to-- I guess, I'm interested in a number of things, but most particularly in how unpleasant events can prompt aggressive reactions.  
LS:	Oh, is this the people whom you greet five times in a week and do it differently each time?
LB:	No, no.  
01:04:05	End of Second Interview Session
End of Oral History #232*
*A third interview session, conducted in 2008, exists in the collection of the Oral History Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Archives, but has not been transcribed.