From "Notes From a Subterranean Library in Oregon," a compilation of Ray Peat's newspaper letters and columns, compiled by T3Uncoupled (2023). Originally published 1979.

Ray Peat, "Editor", p. 35

Mr. Walkenbach’s review of MIND AND TISSUE contains few misstatements and misrepresentations. I suspect that Walkenbach’s own ideology, consciously or not, caused him to misread the book (or to fail to read all of it). He disguises an attack on basic Soviet research perspectives as an attack on a book about them. The book itself is easy to criticize — but the main ideas it presents certainly are representative of Soviet work. The basic ideas are those of Ukhtomskii, Pavlov, Anokhin, Nasonov, Chernigovsky, Luriya, Bekhtereva, and a few other (several dozen “complete references” direct the reader to a variety of theoretical and experimental works, to illustrate these perspectives). From Walkenbach’s comments, a reader might suppose that the book was written by a “Humanistic Psychologist” who simply didn’t care for “the” scientific method. One point which Walkenbach chose to ignore was that the book emphasizes the contempt many great Soviet researchers have expressed for the uncritical and idealistic approach of many Western scientists. If I am mistaken, as Walkenbach writes, regarding the identity of the most influential Soviet researchers, I think it is his duty to make up a list of the truly influential scientists in these fields. If I am mistaken in my choice of basic concepts in Soviet psychological and physiological research, Walkenbach should present his own list. The main peculiarity of my book, I think, is that 1 tried to make it impossible to misinterpret materialistic Soviet conceptions (including “the dominant,” “the action acceptor,” and “sensory analyzers”) in the way that Pavlov’s work has been misinterpreted, especially by American psychologists. Other recent books on

Soviet psychology are still mistranslating, misunderstanding or ignoring some of these basic concepts and philosophical orientations. However, Walkenbach takes the surprising approach of saying that these ideas don’t count even in the Soviet Union, and then, in a series of supposed paraphrases, attributes to me (Peat...feels, ... delineates,... overlooks, ...views, ...proposes, etc.) views that I don’t hold, and which I don't think can be honestly derived from my book. For example, I distinguished various theoretical trends in the West, yet Walkenbach says I delineate “the two general approaches to science in the West and in the Soviet Union....” His quotation takes the last sentence of a paragraph that discusses Gestalt theories of perception, joins it without a break to the first sentence of another paragraph, and then concludes that I have overlooked an idea which “isn’t new to American psychology,” apparently referring to Gestalt and humanistic trends. Maybe he read only those two sentences, and thought they would make an interesting paragraph, but I had to refer to the book to make any sense of them. Context is an essential part of any statement, and it is not proper for a reviewer to change punctuation or paragraphing. Walkenbach feels that I “identified” myself as a Humanist. I’m not sure what he means, or why he says it, but what I intended to say was that the book was directed toward American humanistic psychologists. That group, I think, hasn’t experienced such difficulty in seeing the humanistic orientation of Soviet behavioral research. Although I devote much more space to the Western and Soviet ideas of inhibition on the cellular level, than on the organismic level, Walkenbach says I seem to “believe that, to Western psychologists, inhibition is a term with meaning only in Freudian circles.” Did I say anything about observing consciousness via

introspection? Does Walkenbach want to say that Pavlov and Anokhin were introspectionists because they discussed awareness? The “science Peat proposes” is not, as Valkenbach says, one of ideological speculation based on “hard” research; it is one which does not hide its ideological orientation in phrases such as “the scientific method,” “standard scientific ideas,” or “such an elusive concept is beyond our grasp,” or in the creation of straw men. Our institutions, I wrote, “have actively suppressed the idea that our science and psychology could be tainted by hidden political or financial motives.” I agree with the Soviet view that idealism permeates much of Western science, taking many forms, including mechanistic materialism, positivism, and Neo-Kantism. What did I say that could give Walkenbach the idea that I “proposed” such a ridiculous “science” as “one of ideological speculation...?” Reviewers, like scientists, should deal with the data, and not just with their hypotheses about the data.