That is me kneeling in front of my birthday cake.The kneeling was done because my wife has the saying: "A real princess never cooks." But she did so for my birthday--and I fell to my knees out of gratitude. I am married to her since I was 22.

Again me with the "Princess, who never cooks." She was a teacher for twenty-some years.

Dr. Kroiss with another princess, who sometimes cooks--his daughter Doris. She is currently a student at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina.

Here is his mother:

And now back to the past:

This was the place where I was born. It is located in southern Bavaria, in the Alps, bordering Austria and Switzerland.

As a kid, I went through a wood, called Castlewood, to the next hamlet. This is a view across the valley to the south, from which many painters made their paintings. For years, I dreamt about Castlewood, which contains a small castle used as a relay station for the knights horses. The castle was burnt down in the peasants' revolt. The wooden ceiling was taken out before and put into the chapel.

This is another magic place of my childhood, the railway station. In the meadows closeby, we once found a bambi, whose mother had been shot. We took it home and he grew up with me. The trains back then were of the old-fashioned kind, rolling steam engines: "Hoop-choop, hoop-choop," they made, faster and faster. When they had cut the railway through a long, flat hill, they discovered the graves of ancient people, who had invaded the Roman territory and settled there. The Roman road from Italy passed by my village through the next bigger town--

and from there went to Kempten, a former Roman City with a fortress. The town still has an Italian flair. I was in a Roman Catholic Seminary there for two years, but then disliked it so much that I asked my aunt Trudi, who lived in Austria, to pick me up and send me to school in Austria.

Above is the town, where my auntie and cousin have a hotel and restaurant. I went to school in Reutte. I loved it there. Then my parents decided I should come to their place in the industrial area of the Ruhr in northern Germany.

This town, Bochum, was not exactly to my liking. I had been there before and disliked it even more: There were still a lot of ruins from World War II. The German steel factory of the Krupp family was located there and became a major target for American bombers. But I finished high school there--and then joined the Bundeswehr (German Army) for two years. Germany drafted their soldiers for 18 months. I guessed that joining them for 24 months at a much higher pay made more sense. While being in the German Army, I got to know my wife in Heidelberg:

Above is the Main Street of Heidelberg, whose university is more than one thousand years old. However, I preferred to study at

and later at Boston University's Overseas Program. You might wonder why. I will tell you:

At German universities, you don't need to pay, but you have to obey!

The legal situation at German universities was the following: Neither students nor professors had any rights to challenge examinations. Even if a professor had proof that certain items on a state-administered test were faulty, the state board had no legal obligation to consent. The students, however, were powerless towards professors as well. In the beginning 1990's, the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany amended the law.

After having received my Master's Degree, I went into private practice. Then, after many  years, I decided to come to the USA and get my doctorate at a university, which back then had the best program in the States, namely

Above, I expressed some critique of German universities. However, American universities are also not perfect. I applied to over 40 doctoral programs. "In spite of" having two summa cum laude degrees and many references and pretty high scores on the Graduate Record Examination, all of these programs rejected me. I had to mobilize a professor friend of mine to get me into the above program. The reason was very simple: The psychology and counseling professors were afraid of me. One of the professors in my bachelor's program, who is still a friend, had a panic attack after I had informed him that I had signed up for another of his classes: "Please, Gerhard, don't do this to me! You are the most overqualified student I ever had." Part of the problem might be the discipline. Most mathematics professors I met reacted very differently.

Pictures of some Professional Contacts

During the last two years of my high school, I eargerly read through the 18 volumes of the Collected Works of Sigmund Freud:

However, after some time, I began to ask myself the question: "How can he say that? What is the logic behind his reasoning? What evidence does he have for his statements?" In order to try and solve these questions, I started to correspond with his daughter Anna, who had become his follower, the President of the International Psychoanalytic Association, and the first to apply psychoanalysis to children:

I correponded with Anna Freud for many years. She always tried to talk me into becoming a psychoanalyst. But I resisted--because I had serious doubts. These doubts led me to read some of the books written by the eminent logician Rudolf Carnap, whom I also met personally:

I remember two issues we addressed. The first had to do with my critique of psychoanalysis. Rudolf had recently lost his wife and had seen a psychoanalyst and profited from it a lot: "Well, I used to share your critique, Gerhard. But I got quite a bit out of my treatment." I answered: "I'm not surprised, Rudi. You probably, could get gold out of manure." But I also had my doubts concerning his approach to logic: "Can you answer this question: When you do your first proof of a theorem of symbolic logic, where do you get the logic in your proof from?" Carnap's friend,  Professor Stegmueller in Munich, sent me some of his philosophy books, which actually directed me away from this discipline because the confusion there seemed to beat anything in psychology: Instead of coming from a marsh to solid ground, I came into a swamp instead. My interest got rekindled, however, when I watched an interview on TV, in which Sir Karl Popper was interviewed:

There is a letter from Popper on the page PHILOSOPHY AND BIG MONEY of this site, in which billionnaire Soros shows how he profited from studying Popper's books. After some years of reading his books, I ran into another philosopher, whose seminars were visited by celebrities. I was told that the former Cardinal Ratzinger (called Pope Benedict XVI now) had participated in one of them.

I exchanged many letters with him. Popper and Feyerabend are philosophers of science. The main difference between the two is that Popper is much more linear than Feyerabend, who is highly complex and deals with science as it really is. He is pretty similar to a physicist, who will occupy two pages on this site dealing with his assessment of psychiatry and psychology:

Feynman's books Surely You're Joking Mr. Feyman! and What Do You Care What Other People Think? are prime examples of what is called Critical Thinking today. Below is the picture of Michael Scriven, who saved my dissertation topic against the resistance of my department and who is one of the founders of the critical-thinking movement:

There is an interesting story connected with Michael: My department was vey much against my writing of a dissertation, which was critical of psychology, psychiatry, and counseling. I insisted on my idea, however, and got help from the neighboring department, whose director informed me that a famous logician was here, who might be able to help me. He was at UNCG for just one semester--had come only because his house in California had burnt down. I asked what his name was and got the answer "Michael Scriven." My mouth fell open because I knew from Paul Feyerabend that he had been the guy, who had picked him up in Austria and brought him to the USA. I actually had passed him several times, not knowing who he was. If I had not insisted on my dissertation, I might never have known that he was there! The belief that events with small probabilities do not happen is sheer nonsense.

Another person, to whom I am very grateful is Thomas Szasz, who supported me all through my doctoral studies. Szasz is a professor of psychiatry, who is very critical of it, wrote tons of books and articles. I met him once at the Department of Psychiatry in Greensville, North Carolina. He took the arguments of the professors of psychiatry apart with amazing ease. I always asked myself where he was coming from. When I went through the books of Ayn Rand, I knew. He is a really nice and very intelligent man, who shares many of Feynman's attitudes.

ADDITIONAL STORIES

ONE

My grandmother told me a story from the Third Reich, which I was very hesitant to believe her, because it conflicted with what I had learnt. So, let me begin. In our part of Bavaria, people greet each other not with "Howyadoeen?" or "Howdee?" or something like that. They do not ask, they order, namely "Greet God!" Now, in the Third Reich, the Nazis had built an Ordensburg, sort of a military academy, in Sonthofen, three klicks north of Altstaedten, the village I was born in. My grandmother, a devout Catholic, did not like the Nazis, whom she considered sort of infidels. She disliked the youngsters even more, who got their training at the Ordensburg.

They were as devoted Nazis as my grandmother was a devoted Catholic. My grandmother also did not like a neighboring people, namely the Austrians, who just live behind the mountain in the background. Now Hitler was Austrian by birth and had  become a German only in the 1930's. So, when the Nazi Youths marched by my grandmother and greeted her with "Heil Hitler!", she shouted: "Greet God, you good-for-nothings, but not an Austrian!" The whole village laughed, and my grandmother was ordered to the Nazi mayor, who told her: "When we win the war, people like you will go to a concentration camp!" My grandmother: "When you win the war...? If you win the war...if!" Now, I found this story highly doubtful because I had a different view of the tolerance of the Nazis; I did not think that my grandmother would have survived the above incident. But today, I ran into a similar story in a book on Hermann Goering:

But I am still not certain whether the story my grandmother told me is really true.

TWO

This little report concerns my daughter Doris. Even though life in the USA for a family with very few connections is not easy, there are still a lot of opportunities for Doris, which I feel she might not have had in Germany. Below is one of those. She was at Camp Merrie-Woode as a counselor for young girls, who spent part of their summers there, doing various activities such as horseback riding, archery, photography, rock climbing, and so on. Here is a recent thank-you card from the camp staff:

Sometimes, I am truly surprised at the professionalism and kindness and consideration of some American institutions--and sometimes it is just the opposite. It is very hard to generalize about Americans and the USA.

THREE

The following is a story about the opposite: About 8 years ago, the school system approached me because they were in trouble: A math teacher had just walked out of her class, never to return. In spite of an expected low pay, I accepted--but the pay was even less. When entering new data online recently, I found out that the school system had sent only my Bachelor's degree to Raleigh, which contained the least number of math classes: 

FOUR

The story of the Jumpy Incense

When I was a young boy, I was an altar boy. At first, I was one of the two, who kneeled on the steps in front of the altar, and had to say some of the prayers in Latin: "Introibo ad altarem Dei...." Later on, I got promoted to swing the incense kettle or hold the "ship," beside the swinger. The ship was a container, which contained the incense. But let us first have a look at the inside of the church:

When I was about seven or eight, I had to go to church to serve as an altar boy. It was the first of January of the respective year. The night before, at the turn of the year, all hell had broken loose: Rockets, firecrackers, sparklers, and all sorts of devices had gone off in celebration of the New Year. On my way to church, I examined some of the debris and found a good-sized bomb, whose fuse had burnt off but which had not exploded. I tore it open and poured the black powder into the pocket of my coat. On my way to church, I thought what I could do with it: "Maybe, I could wrap it in some paper and put it in the box my grandmother stores things in to be burnt. But no, that's too dangerous--it might blow the stove up!" When I came into the sacristy of the church, I was greeted by my friends, who told me that I had to take the incense kettle today. "Incense, that's it!" In those days, incense was of all kinds of colors: Yellow, black, green, some of the kernels were even red--and my black powder did camouflage well. Of course, I did not want to have the incense kettle myself, but gave it to someone else, who happily took it because he got some money from the minister for this service. I myself sat in the pews at the left side of the main altar waiting for the things to happen. The priest came down the steps of the altar and approached the two boys, the one with the kettle, who had pulled up the lid of the kettle, and the other one, who had opened the "ship," which contained the incense and a spoon. The pastor put a spoonful of incense on the red-hot pressed charcoal in the kettle: "Pffft!" it made--and the incense was blown out of the kettle onto the carpet. A next spoonful--and "pffft" again. I tell you, the incense was really jumpy! The beauty of the whole thing was that nobody had any idea what was happening. The churchgoers started wondering and staring--and I got the cramps behind my prayerbook. The minister never succeeded to make the incense stay on the coal! So, I am finally revealing the mystery of the jumpy incense because I am safely away in the USA.

If you think I was bad, just hear this story of another boy: He had shot out the buttons from the shirts on the clothesline with his air gun and received a really serious spanking for that from his father. Spanking in these days was so serious that you could not sit for days. The boy took revenge on the father and put a waspnest in his bed!