Freud in the Field

Life review is a common theme in contemporary theories of personality development over the life span. Life review involves revisiting, reevaluating, and reinterpreting past experiences (Butler 1996). Different ways of doing such a review involve systematically examining different goal areas of one's life (such as family, friends, career, travel, spirituality, and so on); another methodology consists of reconsidering the aspects of one's life and history, a segment at a time (Santrock 1999). Beatrice Whiting recently took the latter approach when she decided to review a formative period of her graduate school career as part of composing an intellectual autobiography. The significant flash points she has found most fascinating to reanalyze are moments she refers to as "AH‐HAs," when confusion suddenly cleared or disparate planes of understanding intersected. When that occurred, these insights helped in her professional search for questions and problems worthy of scientific investigation. They helped her frame (potentially) testable hypotheses. Some of the most promising, however, had to be let go because there was no practical or reasonable way to collect the necessary data, as in the case of the AH‐HA described in this article. Whiting blends a personal need to revisit and recount this particular segment of her professional development with her fieldwork report. The reader can understand these experiences as a unique historical report on dreams and Freudian theory from the 1930s, for example. Many social scientists throughout this period and well into the 1950s (and a few still today) undertook psychoanalysis as a part of their professional and personal preparation, and Whiting weaves this experience into both her autobiography and her theories about Paiute dreams.