For a fiction writer, this lack of documentation can be both vexing and liberating. To write this novel, I had to make decisions about when to follow the historical or scientific record, as it existed, and when to give imagination looser rein. For the purposes of avoiding adding to the misunderstandings that have surrounded the Albert B. story (see excellent work by Ben Harris for an analysis), I tried to remain mostly true to the day-by-day experiment details, as they are known. (Even John Watson was inconsistent in some details of various descriptions of the experiment.) In one aspect, I had to choose between widely disparate, controversial, and evolving interpretations about Albert B.’s true identity. Two major hypotheses have been advanced: that Albert B. was really a seriously ill baby named Douglas Merritte, who died at age six of hydrocephalus; or, quite to the contrary, that he was a boy named William Barger, who was not ill at the time of experimentation. Neither claim is conclusive, and other possibilities might still be advanced.
There is also the position, of course, that Albert B.’s real identity is not the point. We are fascinated by this experiment, some would say, not just because of the baby who endured morally disturbing, fright-inducing trials, but because it proved to be such a cornerstone of behaviorism—and an astonishingly flawed one at that. Regardless of our much-changed attitudes about experimental ethics (no American psychologists today would ever get away with subjecting infants to the many experiences that were commonplace in Watson’s lab), we recognize larger problems with the experiment’s design, limited sample size, subjective recording of results, and more.
Historical context should help us understand the limits of Watson’s methods and concepts; it would be all too easy to criticize some of his attitudes and experiments, overlooking the areas in which he sincerely attempted to pioneer a new, more objective, experimental approach to psychology. Just as it is tempting to judge him by imposing modern ethical standards, it is too easy to dismiss his scientific contributions now that psychology has enjoyed advances made possible by the cognitive revolution of the 1950s (a counterrevolution to behaviorism). While John Watson is no longer a household name, his influence is undeniable. A 2002 study placed him at number seventeen on the list of the top one hundred eminent psychologists of the twentieth century. (In a limited survey that made up part of the study, Watson earned an even higher ranking—in the fourth position, just behind B. F. Skinner, Jean Piaget, and Sigmund Freud. His lower overall “eminence” ranking is due to several factors, including the fact that his work is not often cited in modern studies, regardless of his broader historical influence.) It is worth noting, furthermore, that B. F. Skinner, number one in the “eminence” and survey rankings, was a behaviorist whose work grew out of Watson’s original principles. As readers of this novel will realize, Watson’s experimental work was only one aspect of his professional life—and, in terms of time spent and lives affected, perhaps not even the most critical one. In the field of advertising, and as a public figure and popular author with unyielding attitudes against attachment parenting, he had an influence—impressive, and in some ways alarming—that is impossible to quantify.
It will never be possible to know what John Watson and Rosalie Rayner Watson thought, in later life, about the Little Albert experiment, though John began to show signs of doubting some of his work, and Rosalie developed an acerbic, questioning tone in the few articles she published. It’s almost impossible to know what Rosalie’s final days were like. Only fiction can restore deeply personal, albeit hypothetical, accounts of lives that were deemed not worth recording or not worth protecting from erasure by others.
Beyond the parameters of the Little Albert experiment, Rosalie’s mostly undocumented life speaks to the challenges of ambitious young women scientists at that time. In the end, I hope I have been true to the spirit of both people, and I have been grateful for the opportunity to vicariously experience, through them, the social and scientific atmosphere of the late 1910s through early 1930s.
Sources and Recommended Reading:
For those interested in further investigating the mythologizing of the Little Albert experiment and the current debate about Albert’s possible identity, I strongly recommend the following scholarly articles:
Beck, Hall P., Sharman Levinson, and Gary Irons. “Finding Little
Albert: A Journey to John B. Watson’s Infant Laboratory.”
American Psychologist 64, no. 7 (Oct. 2009): 605–14.
Fridlund, Alan J., Hall P. Beck, William D. Goldie, and Gary Irons. “Little Albert: A Neurologically Impaired Child.” History of Psychology 15, no. 4 (Nov. 2012): 302–27.
Harris, Ben. “Whatever Happened to Little Albert?” American
Psychologist 34, no. 2 (Feb. 1979): 151–60.
———. “Letting Go of Little Albert: Disciplinary Memory,
History, and the Uses of Myth.” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 47, no. 1 (Dec. 2011): 1–17.
Powell, Russell A., Nancy Digdon, Ben Harris, and Christopher Smithson. “Correcting the Record on Watson, Rayner, and Little Albert: Albert Barger as ‘Psychology’s Lost Boy’.”
American Psychologist 69, no. 6 (Sept. 2014): 600–611.
Most likely, new additions to the debate will follow.
While John Watson was a prolific author, his most important general book, still worth reading today, is Behaviorism (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1930).
In addition to primary documents and works written by John Watson himself, my best source was Kerry W. Buckley’s Mechanical Man: John B. Watson and the Beginnings of Behaviorism (New York: Guilford Press, 1989). I was also educated and entertained by Ann Hulbert, Raising America: Experts, Parents, and a Century of Advice About Children (New York: Knopf, 2003); and Deborah Blum, Love at Goon Park: Harry Harlow and the Science of Affection (New York: Perseus, 2002). Both journalistically chronicle the science of behavior and parenting, pre- and post-Watson.
Acknowledgments
My first thanks go to veteran psychology textbook editor Christine Brune, who may not have known she was inspiring my next novel when she casually told me, at a party in 2012, about John Watson and recent developments in the Little Albert controversy.
Gratitude is due to the scholars who have done considerable detective work and thought deeply about the mythologizing role of textbook classics like the Little Albert experiment. This work is fiction, but it could not have been written without the scientific and historical foundations provided by Ben Harris, as well as Hall P. Beck, Sharman Levinson, Gary Irons, Alan J. Fridlund, and William D. Goldie.
At Soho Press, my editor, Juliet Grames, has played an essential role in the development of my novels and beyond that, kept me sane and hopeful about publishing. Her own love of books, travel, and food is contagious.
I’m also grateful to the support, wisdom and assistance of Bronwen Hruska, Paul Oliver, Meredith Barnes, Amara Hoshijo, Rachel Kowal, Janine Agro, and Gary Stimeling. Thanks to Gail Hochman and Marianne Merola, who kindly helped shepherd this and previous work into print. At Antioch University, in Los Angeles, Steve Heller provided feedback as well as encouragement during this book project’s sensitive infancy.
Writing friends and peer readers are invaluable, and mine include Kathleen Tarr, Kate Maruyama, Joan Wilson, Lee Goodman, Karen Ferguson, and family members C. Romano, Honoree Cress, and Eliza Romano, as well as Bill Sherwonit, Eowyn Ivey, the 49 Writers community, my colleagues in the University of Alaska–Anchorage MFA program, and my Antioch buddies: Chrissy, Michelle, Marianne, Wendy, and Jennifer.
This book required several intense rounds of research and writing time, which were facilitated by Trudy Hale at the Porches, a writing retreat in Charlottesville, Virginia, where I spent one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life, by the kind folks at Artscape Gibraltar Point in Toronto, where I enjoyed writing “the end,” and by the Alaska Council on the Arts.
Thanks to librarians and the resources made available at Vassar College, Johns Hopkins University, the Library of Congress, and the Archives of the History of American Psychology at the University of Akron, with thanks to director David Baker and special appreciation for the Cedric Larson Collection. Research for this book was made possible in part by a US Artists crowdfunding campaign, and I owe thanks to that organization as well as individuals who generously contributed: Aliza Sherman, Alyse Galvin, Amanda Coyne, Amy Houck, Andy Holleman, Anne Marie Moylan, Anonymous, Barbara Armstrong, Beth Rose and John Levy, Bill Sherwonit, Breawna Power Eaton, Caitlin Shortell, Carol Bryner, Cassandra Stalzer, Cherilynn Romano, Constance Huff, Dale Gardner, Dani Haviland, David Abrams, Don Rearden, Doug Leteux, Ernestine Hayes, Gabriel, Gayle Brandeis, Heather Lende, Jennifer Ettelson, Judith Sara Gelt, Juliet Grames, Karen Benning, Karen Ferguson, Laura Forbes, Linda K., Linda M. Green, Lorena, Lucia Zaczkowski, Mandy Moore, Marianne Cirone, Mike Finkel, Molly McCammon, Monica Devine, Morgan Grey, Nancy Lord, Olga Livshin, Pamela, Pazit Cahlon, Rosemary Austin, Ruth Glenn, Sherrie Simmonds, Steven Quinn, Susanna Mishler, Thomas Pease, and Wendy Hudson.
I’m also grateful to Stewart Ferguson, Richard Drake, Becky Harrison-Drake (and Mickey and Harrison, too) for friendship and hospitality during our bohemian phase, as well as for all-around family support, to those already named as well as Nikki, Leona, Theo, Evelyn, Sharon, Stewart, and Mildred. A final thanks for serendipitous assistance from D. Craig Elliott and James DiGirolamo of Baltimore.
Last but not least, thanks to my children, Aryeh and Tziporah Lax, and to Brian Lax, who patiently endured countless discussions about behaviorism, blank slates, and classical conditioning while also learning to live beyond all of our comfort zones, and in various time zones, during the writing and editing of this novel.
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