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Kenneth ClarkKenneth Clark
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of corporations and government -- didn't have the status or the prestige of the pure psychologists, you know. The “rat psychologists,” the laboratory psychologists, the psychologists who wore white coats, who, from my undergraduate days, I suppose, or certainly in my graduate days, I had rather skeptical, amused perspective (on). You know, I could go into a laboratory; like everybody else who got a graduate degree, I had to know about the rats. I had to run the rats. I had to run the machines. But that, to me, was not what I was in psychology for. But I knew that that was the prestigious area, and that's where one was more likely to get the admiration and the respect and what not of one's colleagues.

So, given that fact, I never expected my colleagues to present me with the highest, the evidence of high regard, which I suppose is what nomination and election to be president of the APA means. It means that a substantial number of your colleagues in the field believe that your work in the field is worthy of this kind of a thing.

And I will tell you, in all honesty, when I was informed that I was nominated, I really thought it was a joke. I mean, I thought: “Oh hell”-- youknow --

And when Mamie and I got the ballot with my name on it, I looked and I saw it was Kenneth B. Clark, rather than Kenneth E. Clark, and Mamie and I joked about it. And whether you'd get her to admit it or not, it is a fact: she didn't vote. And I don't remember whether I did. But I know she didn't, because she has a way of losing ballots, or for that matter, any other communication





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