Kathryn Paige Harden: Never Left Education

I typically say that I’m a psychology professor, but lately, I’ve been practicing saying that I’m a writer. It feels very audacious to claim the mantle of “writer”! It still makes me nervous to say it out loud.

For work: Moral Psychology with Nietzsche by Brian Leiter. For fun: Marigold and Rose by Louise Glück.

I grew up in a fundamentalist Christian family, and in my family and church, women didn’t usually work outside of the home. When I was growing up, I envisioned myself as a wife and as a mother; I didn’t start thinking about a “career” of paid labor until I was in college.

College. I was a pre-med, but in my junior year of college, I was dragging my feet to sign up for the MCATs and complaining about my classes. My college boyfriend wisely pointed out that, if I didn’t want to study for my pre-med classes, what made me think I would want to study for my medical school classes? The question prompted me to think about what I actually wanted to study – which was clinical psychology.

I think she would be surprised to learn that no one ever fully feels like a “grown up.” We are all making it up as we go along.

I never left education! But, I suppose would give a bookish young woman, who wants lots of things out of life, some of which are very contradictory, and who is flummoxed about how one goes about getting any of those things, a stack of memoirs and essays by women — Rachel Cusk, Mary Karr, Leslie Jamison, Melissa Febos, Jenny Odell, Maggie Nelson, Helen Macdonald, Joan Didion, Roxane Gay, Cheryl Strayed, Patti Smith.

I had a grant from the Templeton Foundation on the topic of “Genetics and Human Agency,” and grantees were expected to write an article for a special issue of an academic journal. I started writing, and the draft got longer and longer, and I could think of more and more material to include. Then, an editor from Princeton University Press approached me, asking if I had ever thought of writing a book. The question clarified that I had already started writing a book.

This is a strange answer, because I disagree with the book’s conclusions, and think that its publication has led to real harm – The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray. Any scientist who is working at the intersection of genetics and human psychological differences necessarily contends with how the public’s perception of the science has been shaped by Herrnstein and Murray. And my book, The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality, directly addresses some of the same questions about the role of genetic differences in social inequalities.

I think fiction and memoir writers give the best introduction to psychology. Psychology, after all, is about people. Three books in those genres that I would assign to Intro Psych undergraduates: Dispatches by Michael Herr, The Recovering by Leslie Jamison, selections from Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.

When my grandfather died, he left me his collection of mystery novels and true crime books. Agatha Christie will forever remind me of my Poppa.

The book I’ve recommended most is The Likeness by Tana French.

I re-read A Life’s Work by Rachel Cusk after I gave birth to my third child.

Genetics is moving so fast – there are new discoveries about specific genes that matter for human psychology, and new methods for studying genes, literally every single week.

Everyone? I’m not comfortable generalizing to everyone. Lately I’ve been thinking that it would be great if we had a national reading program where everyone in the U.S. read the same book. For 2023, I would nominate The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, so that we can collectively remember why protections for labor are good and necessary, and why untrammelled capitalism is bad.

I’m doing research for my new book, which is tentatively titled Original Sin. So: a lot of moral psychology and moral philosophy. I read pretty widely, and it’s fun to see my subconscious start to make connections between different authors in different genres.