Abstract
As one makes presumably free decisions in the course of one’s life, one hopes that one is acting rationally. Certainly, at the time of the decisions, I thought that I was. I also thought that I was acting freely, bound only by some inevitable contingencies at the time, but no true obstacles. It is only retrospectively, as I look over the course of my life, and a certain pattern becomes discernible, that I begin to ponder that murky word, “destiny.” Did I really freely choose all those contingent options that presented themselves to me, or was I only fulfilling some kind of fate as I pursued my career? I am not sure that I can judge this issue, but in order to help the reader to decide, I will first present the important factors of my biography as I see them and then I will present what I believe to be the important decisions that I made as a professional psychologist. The reader, as well as I, will recognize that there is possibly a certain bias in the narrative to be given in the sense that I will be giving both accounts, and I will be selecting the events to be reported. This, of course, cannot be avoided. All I can say is that I will be honest in the sense that I will report the events as they impacted upon me and I have no a priori bias with respect to the pattern that emerges – if one emerges – in the sense that I have no precommitment to either destiny or choice. I know that I felt free in making my decisions, but that does not necessarily rule out the fact that I may have lived a “patterned” existence.
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Giorgi, A. (2009). Professional Marginalization in Psychology: Choice or Destiny?. In: Mos, L. (eds) History of Psychology in Autobiography. Path in Psychology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-88499-8_4
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