Home
Search transcripts:    Advanced Search
Notable New     Yorkers
Select     Notable New Yorker

Kenneth ClarkKenneth Clark
Photo Gallery
Transcript

Session:         Page of 763

on racial identification in Negro children made a terrific impact on me -- in spite of the fact that I'd already been at Columbia. But it was clear to me that this was the area in which we had to devote the rest of our lives, professionally and personally.

I have never regretted, in any absolute sense of the term “regretted,”, moving into social rather than neurophysiological psychology. But I had always wished that I could have done both, or --

Now, I think the most exciting things in the field of psychology will emerge in the area of psychopharmacological and neurophysiological psychology. I think that the answers to very important questions about human behavior, aberrations in behavior, neurosis even, will come, once we break this Freudian preoccupation, and start looking at man as an organism. But, I think that a lot of the problems in social psychology might eventually have to be dealt with by direct organismic interventions.

Stupidity, for one thing. Prejudice. The booby traps of the human ego, I think can be dealt with much more precisely than we have dealt with them through education or philosophy or religion. That'll be in somebody else's lifetime, not mine.

Q:

Since you've made this type of reference to Freudianism, though, can you recall your first reaction to your studies of Freud, and trace the evolution of your thinking about his theories?

Clark:

Yes. I obviously was very impressed. Well, I was impressed about everything. But again, this man Sumner had the capacity to communicate, not only the substance but the implications of





© 2006 Columbia University Libraries | Oral History Research Office | Rights and Permissions | Help