Shankar Vedantam

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.

Scott tried to become his own psychologist.

If he couldn't convince psychologists that he had potential, he decided he would prove his case to himself.

Scott had one other pivotal interaction with the world of psychology and IQ tests.

When he was in high school, he requested access to some of the classes his friends on the gifted track were taking.

He was told to go see his school psychologist to get permission.

Scott was now 17 years old.