When I was asked if I would review some Russian books on Psychology and Child Deve¬lopment, I agreed immediately since I had not read much literature emanating from Eastern Europe in recent years. Familiarity with the English language predisposes one to keep largely to books coming out of the USA and England, and to translations of French and German writ¬ings.
While I was settling down to writing this review (at the thir¬teenth hour, so to speak), my memory cells retrieved a com¬ment made to me by some radical students at Madison. We were at the house of a Professor of History, renowned for his brilliant lectures on the ‘History of Revolutions’ and his admiring undergradu¬ate students were there in large numbers. When they found out that I was studying Psychology, one of them asked me what I was trying to achieve, studying ‘capitalistic’ psychology. Not having ob¬served the political colouring of the subjects I was taking, I inquired what they meant by ‘capitalistic psychology’. They did not answer, but smil¬ed. Finally, I said, ‘Do you mean that if a person acts in his self-interest, it is ‘capitalis¬tic’? But don’t all of us act in our own interest?’ Their response was spontaneous. ‘See, you are already brain¬washed!’ I hope my readers will glean the moral of that story.