[summary of his much more extensive monographs, on the department history & biographical sketches] Psychology at the University of Michigan during the years, 1897^–₅₀1947_77ya, did not make the kind of contribution to the field that might have been anticipated given the stature of the University and the personnel present. The department had adequate facilities, was carrying out active research, provided excellent instruction in science but failed in an important way to communicate its activities to the field at large.

…73 doctorates were awarded during the Pillsbury era. The list of Ph.D.’s includes such people as John F. Shepard, Ernest S. Skaggs, Norman Cameron, Norman Maier [longer profile], Theodore Schneirla [longer profile], Margaret Wylie, Ella Hanawalt, Lloyd Woodburne, Wilma Donahue, Margaret Ives, Robert Kleemier, Irwin Berg, and Seymour Wapner.

…The Psychology Of Michigan: This then was the situation that characterized the department during the Pillsbury era. From the outside it appeared to be dominated by Pillsbury. But inside the department he was overshadowed by Shepard, a forceful, dogmatic person, much involved in research and system-building but almost completely unknown elsewhere.

The effect was that the department, though intellectually active, became curiously cut off from the mainstream of psychology. It also became severely inbred. Of the 26 people appointed full-time instructors during Pillsbury’s tenure as chairman, only 6 were not Michigan trained. Only one of these 6 reached a tenured rank. 4 remained less than 5 years, and one was supported entirely by outside funds. Inbreeding, of course, is in itself not a negative factor, but it does tend to perpetuate and eventually make dominant the less desirable features of an organization. To some extent this was true of the psychology at Michigan.

There was a great deal going on within the department but it was not representative of what was happening across the nation. The staff during the 1920s and 1930s continued to consider itself to be an experimentally oriented department and sought to establish itself within the natural sciences. It wanted no part of applied, social, and clinical psychology and kept what little that was done in those areas in the periphery of departmental concerns. Pillsbury and Shepard did not say this in so many words, but it was their attitude, and the junior staff and graduate students took it in with the atmosphere.

…Second, there was no one on the staff with the exception of Norman R. F. Maier who clearly had a national reputation. The ironic fact was that the department did not have the reputation it deserved. The staff was composed of superior teachers who had the respect of their students. There was much research activity but with the exception of Maier’s work very little of it was published.

[This explains why Curtis disappears from the literature after going to UMich for his PhD thesis, and why Maier’s textbook is the only reference to it aside from Feynman’s cargo-cult speech. Unfortunately, Raphelson’s histories shed little light on any “Young” (aside from a few references to a “P. T. Young” of the wrong era), and “Curtis” shows up only briefly; Raphelson does briefly mention a Shepard talk on floor-cues, and provides a list of PhD thesis titles which has no relevant-sounding theses or names similar to “Young” around the right time period aside from Curtis’s thesis.]

[Miscellaneous anecdotes:]

In this somewhat isolated but active manner, Henry F. Adams spent 42 years in the department. During that time he had only 4 doctoral students. These 4 were students who the rest of the staff did not seem to know what to do with. One was the white Russian aristocratic émigré, Skitsky, who did a thesis (1940_84ya) which appeared to be too abstract to be comprehended by anyone in the department.

…The only additional staff appointments made during the 1930s were those of graduate students receiving part-time pre-doctoral instructorships. One such position was given to Usevold Skitsky for two years beginning in 1931. Skitsky assisted Professor Adams in the instruction of the undergraduate statistics course. He was a refugee from the Russian revolution who claimed to be of Russian nobility. His dissertation, completed under Professor Adams had the following obtuse title: “Instances versus Generalization: A Quantitative Comparison of Discussive, Statistical, and Experiential Approaches to the Conceptual Subject Matter of Traits by the Method of Judgments Passed on the Performance of Judgments.” The thesis was so closely reasoned that no one in the department who read it could be certain that Skitsky was wrong or really had said anything. He was awarded his degree, but for years afterwards there were lingering doubts in the department.

Dr. Skitsky eventually married a Russian noblewoman and retired from psychology.

…The personal details contained in this biographical sketch were contained in a letter to the writer from Professor Sven Froeberg which was written a day before he died.

…In the spring of 1948, he was called to Washington to work in the Atomic Energy Commission on the important organizational task for the commission’s involvement in developing the nation’s atomic energy research. Walter Colby was then 68 years old, and both he and his wife were not happy with the prospect of his living alone in Washington…as a “last service” to the commission, the Colbys were sent to Europe on an assignment which would require the physicist to inspect some physics laboratories in Europe. The trip would also provide them with their first post-war opportunity to tour the Europe they both loved so much. While being driven through the mountains of Greece, their driver swerved to avoid hitting a goat and the car went over an embankment. Walter Colby was severely injured but recovered. Dr. Martha Guernsey Colby was killed.

…Haven was followed as professor of mental philosophy by a colorful, dynamic clergyman, Benjamin F. Cocker (1821^–₆₂1883_141ya). Cocker was born in Yorkshire, England and worked there as a manufacturer of wool. He emigrated to Australia in 1856 because of illness and established a prosperous business in Melbourne. The financial panic of 1856 [1857?] almost ruined him but he managed to save enough of his assets to buy a small trading ship on which he sailed to New Zealand and the Fiji and Friendly Islands. On the way back to Australia he was shipwrecked off of Tonga, an island inhabited by savages, where he had several close calls with death. He and his crew were rescued and taken back to Australia. With his fortune now completely gone, Cocker decided to emigrate to the United States. His destination was Adrian, Michigan where a Methodist clergyman lived whose acquaintance he had made in Australia and who had promised him aid.

…After 18 months of investigation, the two researchers concluded that well-trained rats, even though deprived of their major sensory abilities, after full recovery from each operation were able to traverse the maze very fast and “with confidence”, and this with different views of the device’s orientation (compass sense), different air currents, and different path length. In one experiment, for example, after training, the rats were released into a path reduced in length by half; food was placed in front of the new end. The animals ignored the food and ran nose-first into the end of the maze, making a “kerplunk” sound (hence the nickname: the “kerplunk experiment”).

…Indeed, the image many generations of Michigan students carried away was that of a distinguished man sitting in his office hour after hour composing at his typewriter, for [Walter B.] Pillsbury was a prolific writer. His bibliography contains 69 articles and 11 books. And yet his writing was not particularly inspired. When he began a text, he would examine the already successful books in the field, list the topics covered, and average the total pages assigned to each topic. Taking these facts to be the “geography” to be covered he would then write to meet these specifications. It often seemed that as soon as he finished the last page he would send the manuscript to the publisher with a minimum of revision. This same imprecision marked his social relationships with his peers.

…Mead was ready and willing, therefore, to accept Dewey’s offer to give the work in physiological psychology. A single-unit room (Room One) was obtained on the first floor of the south wing of University Hall where Mead carried out laboratory instruction for 3 years. Dewey was quite enthusiastic about this work and informed the students that all introspective psychology had come to an end. The new psychology was what Mead was offering. The work, however, was not that exciting. One student, recalling the experience years later, remembered only the tedious routine of dissecting frogs. Tradition has associated only one “empirical” outcome with Mead’s laboratory. While preparing and shellacking a brain, Mead allowed it to catch fire which, in turn, spread to the laboratory walls before being brought under control.

…Edgar Pierce ultimately gained an ironic triumph. He was extremely successful as a hotel manager and sold out at a profit that was large enough to allow him to retire at an early age. He attempted to return to a scholastic life but found that the 20-odd years in business had made him unsuited for a life of intensive study. He did publish one book entitled Philosophy of Character (1924_100ya).

…In 1903 psychology was fortunate enough to obtain what was the envy of other departments of that day—a building of its very own…The story is told that these additions were built during a smallpox epidemic when beds were needed to handle the contagious cases. In those days convenient methods of disinfection were not available, so the plan was to build cheap, wooden buildings which could be burned after the crisis was over. This story cannot be fully documented, but according to those who worked in the building, its appearance did nothing to disconfirm the legend.

In the fall of 1921, President Harry B. Hutchins, after much lobbying, succeeded in getting William Nank, Chairman of the state legislature ways and means committee, to come to Ann Arbor to see for himself what the University’s needs were…finally they came to the psychology shack, where Professor Shepard made some polite comments as he showed them around the laboratory. What Nank saw was apparently too much for him and he broke his silence to exclaim, “Why, Hutch, I own 30 horses and every one of ’em has a better place to live than this!”²⁷ That legislative session a $5,071,435.56^$375,000₁₉₂₂ appropriation was approved.

…The next morning, Saturday, the father came to Ann Arbor and registered a strong complaint to the Literary College dean. Dean John R. Effinger was a man of strong temper. On Monday morning the entire psychology staff minus Howard R. Mayberry was summoned to the Dean’s office to hear a pointed lecture on the undesirability of using off-color anecdotes of any kind in classes. His remarks were caustic and brief. One of the senior men attempted to defend the young instructor but Dean Effinger’s face flushed and the blood vessels in his forehead began to throb in a manner forecasting the apoplexy which would strike him down in 7 years. Nothing more was said and Mayberry’s career as a lecturer at Michigan was over.