ABSTRACT
In his conclusion to The Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain (1869) observed, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness…” (p. 243). Sidney William Bijou (1908–2009) traveled a lot. He traveled in search of a point of view that would unify and advance psychology as a natural science. He traveled from field to field, among them, mental testing, psychometrics, animal models of psychopathology, abnormal child psychology, basic and applied child psychology, and developmental theory. He traveled from system to system: psychoanalysis, neo-Gestalt field theory, and four varieties of behaviorism. Although his destinations were sometimes unexpected, his travels were not haphazard. As Louis Pasteur noted, “Chance favors only the prepared mind” (Vallery-Radot, 1927, p. 88). Bijou was always preparing. He took numerous courses outside his academic programs, read well beyond his required curricula, and audited classes even as a faculty member. As a result, his travels were progressive, selected by their approximations to the psychology he was seeking. He eventually found it in the integration of two systems—an integration of his own making. By the time he retired, he had earned awards for lifetime achievements in several fields. In some of them, he was an outstanding contributor to the end. In others, he was left out standing in them at the end. This is part of his story.
