    38

    s urely as an avenging ghost.  You and I would not be able to see this

    psychic damage until it was too late.  But Watson could peer into its

    heart, looking directly into the unseen world of the human mind.  After

    all, he was a psychologist.

    Research indicates that Watson's advice was just short of

    criminal.  Anthropological studies of the !Kung of the Kalahari show

    that children whose mothers pet them constantly often turn into far

    more self-confident adults than the coldly-raised progeny of civilized

    Londoners.62

    Why did parents follow experts like Watson into what was

    apparently a pit of hellish error?  Why are they today following

    specialists who say that you must deal with your child's misbehavior

    only by reasoning with him or her or that you must encourage a child

    to vent all his or her hostile feelings?  Because raising our young is

    another area in which we are wrestling with invisible forces.  We do

    not know what spoils a baby.  We often do not know why he or she is

    crying at this very minute.  We certainly don't know what effect our

    picking him up today is likely to have twenty years from now.

    And when we are pathetically attempting to deal with the

    invisible, when we have the least evidence of reality, that is when we

    are most vulnerable to the experts.

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