Shankar Vedantam

But as a kid, Scott felt the adults in his life were sending him a clear message.

The outcome of Scott's IQ test was the opposite of what he had secretly hoped for.

His dream was that he would do so well that the psychologist would recommend he move to a prestigious school near his Philadelphia home.

It was called the Haverford School.

Now, each day on his way to his new school, he'd pass Haverford.

To Scott, his dream school might as well have been on Mars.

By the sixth grade, Scott was back in public school, but still on the special ed track.

That was the year he discovered that along with kids like him who had special needs, there was another category of kids who were really special.

It felt awful.

There were more psychological tests as time passed.

Scott found himself simultaneously angry with psychologists and fascinated by them.

On one occasion, his mother took him to see a therapist.

In Scott's young mind, psychologists had all this power.

They were able to peer into your head and see things no one else could see.

When they said stuff, people listened to them.

The things they wrote down in their charts changed your life.

They determined which school you went to and which school you didn't go to.

Scott felt psychology had shaped his life for the worse.

If he could become a psychologist himself, he was sure he could do better.

Sometimes he'd imagine himself giving talks about psychology to rapt audiences.