Reaction To Reading Critical Thinkings Examples

History of Psychology in Autobiography by Robert Yerkes, was an interesting read filled with insight. Personally, I found much of the overall writing style to be dry and lacking in narrative quality. It was stale and difficult to get through. However, this was not the general point of the reading and, if one kept this in mind and focused on the material, it made the reading more enjoyable.
I must say I agree that the author’s father sounds like a bad influence, but I cannot understand why an individual who chose psychobiology as a career and studied it so diligently and profoundly could not allow himself to see later in life that his father was at the whims of his own upbringing and addiction. Moreover, I am also at a loss as to understand why Yerkes allowed himself to be permanently influenced by his mother’s Christian ways. While many scientists and psychologists maintain some type of spirituality, Yerkes is cold in his writing. It is somewhat apparent he does not harbor any delusions of grandeur concerning the afterlife and I suspect this could just be an unhealthy connection he has made between his mother and the only affection he knew as a child, since the passing of his three-year-old sister.
Yerkes goes on throughout the piece to make sure the readers know about the difficulty he endured in life. First it was his father, then the toiling on the farm and the death of his sister, the inability to gain a proper education at a time he wanted, America’s entrance into the war, and so on. However, he was able to publish his first major scientific paper at the age of twenty-three. I will have to then disagree with the writer’s dramatics about his life. While all of our lives are full of strife and hardships, for an individual who has learned about psychology, coping mechanisms, etc. Yerkes forces the dramatic instances of his life, while somehow downplaying his triumphs.
Yerkes reminds us several times throughout the reading that he attending school at both Harvard and Yale, spends time in the Army, and endured Scarlet Fever for seven years. Once more, these are denoted by him as if they are not worthy of mention. He spends more time on his attendance being delayed, or the fact that Scarlet Fever fatigues him, than he does on what attending Ivy League universities was really like, or the fact that he was able to live through Scarlet Fever. My personal reaction was disagreement, as it made him sound dramatic and unnecessarily whiney once more. For example, while at Yale Yerkes achieved major progress in the work he wanted to produce concerning apes. This is a small footnote in his biography and instead he discusses the massive fatigue he endures. It is unfortunate this is what he chose to focus on because it seems there was a brilliant mind inside him, and the most interesting parts of his biography happened to be when he was sharing his passion for his work, rather than when he was downplaying it, and preaching about his life’s struggles.
In sum, this was a biography and I understand it was to include whatever the author desired, whether that was his accomplishments, or his challenges. The writing and delivery left something to be desired. Whether or not one agrees that Yerkes was a great psychobiologic, it is clear he tried many things and attempted to push the field forward. Instead of hearing how he did that in an academic paper, it would have been nice to hear how he did that more candidly in his own words, in an autobiography.