When I first began my graduate work in psychology, one of my professors, Professor Dr. Eugene Wist commented, “Why is it that when an apple falls and we know that gravity has something to do with it, we don’t all suddenly think we are physicists, yet everyone thinks they can be a psychologist because they know something about human behavior?”
When I read the op-ed in the January 26, 2014 New York Times by Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/26/opinion/sunday/what-drives-success.html?ref=opinion), I thought of Professor Dr. Wist. Clearly these two writers are highly educated and intelligent. Since I don’t pretend to be an expert on the law because I’ve watched lots of episodes of Law and Order, I would respectfully ask Chua and Rubenfeld to leave the interpretation and analysis of human behavior to those who have spent as much time studying it as they have the law.
Clearly Chua and Rubenfeld lack training in how to interpret sociological and/or psychological thought and research. Sadly the conclusions they draw from the studies they quote are valid only insofar as they justify the thesis Chua and Rubenfeld are trying to prove. They seem happily oblivious to the fact that there are far too many variables in the statistics they quote as well as how they were derived for them to be tossed off as “proof” of a rather silly theory about the three magical attributes of success. I understand that Ms. Chua and Mr. Rubenfeld are trying to sell books and that they are doing it in the accepted way such is done nowadays. Still, h’mmm. I think we need to be a bit more thoughtful on the topic of success, what it is and what makes it happen.
Perhaps oddly, I am reminded of a telephone call I made today. I called the Marriott Renaissance Hotel in Dallas to inquire the travel time from the hotel to the airport. Of course the first response I got when my call was answered was from a talking computer. The talking computer told me that an “Ambassador” would be with me shortly. An Ambassador? Are you kidding me? What they meant was a clerk or receptionist. When the “Ambassador” came on the line, she said, “Thank you for discovering the Marriott Renaissance Hotel in Dallas. How can I assist you?” Okay, I laughed. I didn’t mean to be rude, but sometimes when things are funny, you just must laugh. I mean I wasn’t speaking to an Ambassador and I hadn’t ‘discovered’ the hotel. I am attending a meeting there; it’s the hotel for the meeting. That’s all. I did get the information I requested. What a lot of phooey to dress up a very simple communication!
So what does that have to do with the op-ed in the NYTimes? Well, just this (and we find it in so many aspects of our lives today). Words don’t need to have meaning anymore. Surely the meaning of the word ‘success’ according to Chua and Rubenfeld doesn’t have meaning beyond making lots of money (not the definition in the dictionary…) any more than I spoke with an Ambassador when I called the hotel.
Here are some words that, based upon constant misuse and overuse, no longer have much meaning: depression, focus, awesome, passion. I guess I may need to add ‘success’ to my list.
I’ll be writing about each of these soon. Stay tuned. Meanwhile think about what sort of success you most want for yourself, for your child.
Dr Carol Maxym
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