Previous
Gary Cohn
MacCurdy is a psychiatrist who wrote about morale. More specifically, MacCurdy studied London’s overall response to German bombings during World War II, wanting to know how Londoners managed to stay so calm during the eight-month bombardment. According to MacCurdy’s analysis, traumatic events effectively break a population into three groups: the “direct hits,” the “near misses,” and the “remote misses.” In London, the direct hits were those who were killed or injured by the bombs; the “near misses” were those who were nearby and were perhaps wounded; the “remote misses” were those who were far enough away that they escaped completely unharmed. MacCurdy found that the “remote misses” developed new outlooks on life, suddenly feeling invincible and incredibly happy. Because the bombings turned the majority of London into “remote misses,” then, the German attacks had the unintended effect of emboldening the entire population. Gladwell turns to this research as a way of illustrating the idea that even traumatic experiences can have positive outcomes.
J. T. MacCurdy Quotes in David and Goliath
The David and Goliath quotes below are all either spoken by J. T. MacCurdy or refer to J. T. MacCurdy. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 5: Emil “Jay” Freireich Quotes
But to MacCurdy, the Blitz proved that traumatic experiences can have two completely different effects on people: the same event can be profoundly damaging to one group while leaving another better off. […] Too often, we make the same mistake as the British did and jump to the conclusion that there is only one kind of response to something terrible and traumatic. There isn’t. There are two […].
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire David and Goliath LitChart as a printable PDF.
"My students can't get enough of your charts and their results have gone through the roof." -Graham S.
J. T. MacCurdy Character Timeline in David and Goliath
The timeline below shows where the character J. T. MacCurdy appears in David and Goliath. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 5: Emil “Jay” Freireich
To make his point, Gladwell references the work of J. T. MacCurdy , a psychiatrist studying morale. MacCurdy divided the London bombing victims into three categories: the...
(full context)
