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Sumner?

Yes.

It's hard to say. He was totally eclectic. He was an avaricious reader. I guess his basic specialty was theoretical, philosophical psychology, although I learned a hell of a lot about the organism from him. He taught everything in psychology, within the framework of understanding the complexity of man -- the organism and the social interactive being. Freud, Adler, the Vundt-ians -- you know. History and theory of psychology, I think. He was the major abstractor for psychological abstracts of foreign psychological articles. He taught himself strange languages in order to be able to read what was happening in psychology throughout the world.

As I was telling somebody who was at the home yesterday, this man was the most under-rated, under-known American scholar around. Try to get hold of a copy of Guthrie's book, EVEN THE RATS WERE WHITE.

Unfortunately, for those of us who knew Sumner, it's a surface treatment of his influence.

Anyway, to come back to this particular black's perspective of the situation, once you are in competition, this “positive” response, I see as condescending-- although it may not be intended to be. Certainly my friend, and he's still a very good friend of mine, Otto Kleinberg, did not intend to be condescending, whenever he was talking to me about how well I was doing on exams, you know. Once he slipped, when I turned in my dissertaion and was elected to