Friendship

About the Book

Merle B. Turner earned degrees in psychology and philosophy at Willamette University, Stanford University and the University of Colorado, Boulder. His PhD thesis reported on experiments in perception which he found were paramount to ones preferences. Regarding friendship, he realized that one’s perception of another was the root of the forming and dissolving of friendships. Throughout his life, but especially in the post-war years, as a student at Stanford and the University of Colorado, as a professor at San Diego State University, and as an ocean cruiser on his sailboat, he was led to observe himself, his colleagues, fellow adventurers and his family in the context of how friendships are made, how they disintegrate, and how alienation may occur following some critical incident. He decided he could construct a model of friendship, including the role of critical incidents which might be useful not only to himself but to others. He presents his model in this book.

About the Author

Merle Turner (1917-2005) enjoyed an academic career teaching Psychology and the Philosophy of Science. He styled himself a "romantic realist" and he loved language. He held degrees from Willamette, Stanford and the University of Colorado, Boulder and was Professor Emeritus of San Diego State University. He took early retirement from SDSU to sail his Garden Ketch to New Zealand. But he never retired from yachting or writing. He is the author of Philosophy and the Science of Behavior, Psychology and the Philosophy of Science, Realism and the Explanation of Behavior, Knot of Not: The Mind Body Problem, Celestial and the Cruising Navigator, Tornado and other Tales of Quandary, How we Lose Friends and Alienate People, and two collections of Quatroons (quatrains illustrated y a cartoon).