by DK
In later life as an academic at Harvard, Skinner also expanded on the implications of his findings in numerous articles and books. Walden Two (1948) describes a utopian society based on behavior learned with operant conditioning. The book’s vision of social control achieved by positive reinforcement caused controversy, and despite its benign intent was criticized by many as totalitarian. This was not a surprising reaction, given the political climate in the aftermath of World War II.
Radical behaviorism
Skinner remained true to his behaviorist approach, coining the term “radical behaviorism” for the branch of psychology he espoused. Although he did not deny the existence of thought processes and mental states, he believed that psychology should be concerned solely with the study of physical responses to prevailing conditions or situations.
In his book, Beyond Freedom and Dignity, Skinner took the concept of shaping behavior even further, resurrecting the philosophical debate between free will and determinism. For the radical behaviorist Skinner, free will is an illusion; selection by consequences controls all of our behavior, and hence our lives. Attempts to escape this notion are doomed to failure and chaos. As he put it: “When Milton’s Satan falls from heaven, he ends in hell. And what does he say to reassure himself? ‘Here, at least, we shall be free.’ And that, I think, is the fate of the old-fashioned liberal. He’s going to be free, but he’s going to find himself in hell.”
Views such as these gained him notoriety, and prompted some of his fiercest critics. In particular, the application of his behaviorist ideas to the learning of language in Verbal Behavior in 1957 received a scathing review from Noam Chomsky, which is often credited as launching the movement known as cognitive psychology.
Some criticism of Skinner’s work, however, has been based on misunderstanding the principles of operant conditioning. Radical behaviorism has often been linked erroneously to the European philosophical movement of logical positivism, which holds the view that statements or ideas are only meaningful if they can be verified by actual experience. But it has in fact much more in common with American pragmatism, which measures the importance or value of actions according to their consequences. It has also been misinterpreted as presenting all living beings as the passive subjects of conditioning, whereas to Skinner operant conditioning was a two-way process, in which an organism operates on its environment and that environment responds, with the consequence often shaping future behavior.
In the 1960s, the focus in psychology swung away from the study of behavior to the study of mental processes, and for a time Skinner’s ideas were discredited, or at least ignored. A reappraisal of behaviorism soon followed, however, and his work found an appreciative audience in many areas of applied psychology, especially among educationalists and clinical psychologists—the approach of cognitive behavioral therapy owes much to his ideas.
"Skinner has an unbounded love for the idea that there are no individuals, no agents—there are only organisms."
Thomas Szasz
Classical conditioning creates an automatic behavioral response to a neutral stimulus, such as salivating in expectation of food when a bell is rung.
Operant conditioning creates a higher probability of repeated behavior through positive reinforcement, such as releasing food by pulling a lever.
B.F. SKINNER
Burrhus Frederic Skinner was born in 1904 in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania. He studied English at Hamilton College, New York, intending to be a writer, but soon realized that the literary life was not for him. Influenced by the works of Ivan Pavlov and John B. Watson, he studied psychology at Harvard, gaining his doctorate in 1931 and becoming a junior fellow. He moved to the University of Minnesota in 1936, and from 1946 to 1947 ran the psychology department at Indiana University. In 1948, Skinner returned to Harvard, where he remained for the rest of his life. He was diagnosed with leukemia in the 1980s, but continued to work, finishing an article from his final lecture on the day he died, August 18, 1990.
Key works
1938 The Behavior of Organisms: An Experimental Analysis
1948 Walden Two
1953 Science and Human Behavior
1957 Verbal Behavior
1971 Beyond Freedom and Dignity
See also: William James • Ivan Pavlov • John B. Watson • Zing-Yang Kuo • Joseph Wolpe • Albert Bandura • Noam Chomsky
IN CONTEXT
APPROACH
Reciprocal inhibition
BEFORE
1906 Ivan Pavlov publishes the first studies on stimulus-response techniques, showing that behavior can be learned through conditioning.
1913 John B. Watson publishes Psychology as a Behaviorist Views It, establishing the basic tenets of behavioral psychology.
1920 John B. Watson’s Little Albert experiments demonstrate that emotions can be classically conditioned.
1938 B.F. Skinner publishes The Behavior of Organisms, presenting his theories on how human behavior relates to biology and the environment.
AFTER
1961 Wolpe introduces the concept of systematic desensitization.
For most of the first half of the 20th century, psychotherapy was dominated by Freudian psychoanalysis, which assumes that anxiety results from conflicting forces deep within the psyche. This conflict can only be alleviated through a lengthy, introspective analysis of both the individual’s conscious and subconscious thoughts, including their formative experiences. But South African-born psychiatrist Joseph Wolpe had treated soldiers for anxiety brought on by post-traumatic stress disorder (then known as “war neurosis”) during World War II, and had found these psychotherapeutic practices ineffective in helping his patients. Talking to these men about their experiences did not stop their flashbacks to the original trauma, nor did it end their anxiety.
"Behavior depends upon the paths that neural excitation takes."
Joseph Wolpe
Unlearning fear
Wolpe believed that there must be a simpler and quicker way than psychoanalysis to address the problem of deep anxiety. He was aware of the work of behaviorists such as Ivan Pavlov and John Watson, who had successfully taught animals and children new behavioral patterns through stimulus-response training, or classical conditioning. They had been able to make a previously unfelt emotional response to an object or event become automatic. Wolpe reasoned that if behavior could be learned in this way, it could also be unlearned, and he proposed to find a method of using this to help disturbed war veterans.
Wolpe had discovered that a human being is not capable of experiencing two contradictory states of emotion at the same time. It is not possible, for example, to feel great anxiety of any kind, when you are feeling very relaxed. This inspired him to teach his patients deep-muscle relaxation techniques, which he went on to pair with simultaneous exposure to some form of anxiety-inducing stimuli—a technique that became known as reciprocal inhibition.
Wolpe’s patients were asked to imagine the thing or event that they found disturbing. If they started to become anxious, they would be encouraged to “stop imagining the scene and relax.” This approach gradually blocked out a patient’s feelings of fear. Just as the patient had previously been conditioned by his experiences to become anxious when recalling certain particularly harrowing memories, he now became conditioned—within a very short time—to block out his anxiety response, by focusing on the directly contradictory feeling of being totally relaxed.
Wolpe’s reciprocal inhibition succeeded in reconditioning the brain by focusing solely on symptoms and current behavior, without any analysis of a patient�
��s past. It was also effective and brought fast results, and led to many important new techniques in the field of behavioral therapy. Wolpe himself used it to develop a systematic desensitization program to cure phobias, such as fear of mice or flying, which is still widely used.
Phobias such as fear of mice have been treated successfully using methods developed from Wolpe’s idea of reciprocal inhibition: the pairing of deep relaxation with exposure to the feared object.
JOSEPH WOLPE
Joseph Wolpe was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. He studied medicine at the University of Witwatersrand, then served in the South African Army, where he treated people for “war neurosis.” Returning to the university to develop his desensitization technique, he was ridiculed by the psychoanalytic establishment for attempting to treat neuroses without first identifying their cause. Wolpe relocated to the US in 1960, taking US citizenship. Initially, he taught at the University of Virginia, then became a professor of psychiatry at Temple University, Philadelphia, where he set up a respected behavioral therapy institute. Renowned as a brilliant teacher, Wolpe continued to teach until he died of lung cancer, aged 82.
Key works
1958 Psychotherapy by Reciprocal Inhibition
1969 Practice of Behavioral Therapy
1988 Life Without Fear
See also: Ivan Pavlov • John B. Watson • B.F. Skinner • Aaron Beck • W.H.R. Rivers
INTRODUCTION
At the turn of the 20th century, behaviorism was becoming the dominant approach to psychology in the US; psychologists in Europe, however, were taking a different direction. This was largely due to the work of Sigmund Freud, whose theories focused on psychopathology and treatment rather than the study of mental processes and behavior. Unlike behaviorism, his ideas were based on observation and case histories rather than experimental evidence.
Freud had worked with the French neurologist Jean Martin Charcot, and was much influenced by the latter’s use of hypnosis for the treatment of hysteria. From his time with Charcot, Freud realized the importance of the unconscious, an area of nonconscious thought that he felt was key to our behavior. Freud believed that accessing the unconscious by talking to his patients would bring painful, hidden memories into conscious awareness where the patient could make sense of them, and so gain relief from their symptoms.
New psychotherapies
Freud’s ideas spread across Europe and the US. He attracted a circle at his Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, which included Alfred Adler and Carl Jung. However, both these men came to disagree with elements of Freud’s theories, going on to develop their own distinct psychodynamic approaches based on Freud’s groundwork. Well-known therapists Melanie Klein and Karen Horney, and even Freud’s daughter Anna, also broke away from Freud. Despite these differences of opinion, however, Freud’s basic ideas were modified rather than rejected by the next generation of psychoanalysts, and subsequent theories place the emphasis on different areas. Erik Erikson, for example, took a more social and developmental approach, while Jung was to formulate the idea of a collective unconscious.
For the first half of the 20th century, psychoanalysis in its various forms remained the main alternative to behaviorism, and it faced no serious challenges until after World War II. In the 1950s, Freudian psychotherapy was still practiced by therapists, especially in France by Jacques Lacan and his followers, but new therapies appeared that sought to bring about genuine change in patients’ lives. The somewhat eclectic Gestalt therapy was developed by Fritz and Laura Perls and Paul Goodman, while existential philosophy inspired psychologists such as Viktor Frankl and Erich Fromm, who gave therapy a more sociopolitical agenda.
Most importantly, a group of psychologists keen to explore a more humanistic approach held a series of meetings in the US in the late 1950s, setting out a framework for an association known as “the third force,” which was dedicated to exploring themes such as self-actualization, creativity, and personal freedom. Its founders—including Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, and Rollo May—stressed the importance of mental health as much as the treatment of mental disorders.
Perhaps the most significant threat to psychoanalysis at this time came from cognitive psychology, which criticized psychoanalysis for its lack of objective evidence—either for its theories or its efficacy as treatment. In contrast, cognitive psychology provided scientifically proven theories and, later, clinically effective therapeutic practices.
Cognitive psychotherapy
Cognitive psychologists dismissed psychoanalysis as unscientific and its theories as unprovable. One of the key concepts of Freudian analysis—repressed memory—was questioned by Paul Watzlawick, and the validity of all forms of memory was shown to be unstable by Elizabeth Loftus. Cognitive psychology instead offered evidence-based psychotherapies such as Albert Ellis’s Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) and Aaron Beck’s cognitive therapy. Freud’s emphasis on childhood development and personal history inspired much developmental and social psychology, and in the late 20th century psychotherapists such as Guy Corneau, Virginia Satir, and Donald Winnicott turned their attention to the family environment; while others, including Timothy Leary and Dorothy Rowe, focused on social pressures.
Though Freud’s original ideas have often been questioned over the years, the evolution from Freudian psychoanalysis to cognitive therapy and humanistic psychotherapy has led to huge improvements in mental health treatments, and has provided a model for the unconscious, our drives, and behavior.
IN CONTEXT
APPROACH
Psychoanalysis
BEFORE
2500–600 BCE The Hindu Vedas describe consciousness as “an abstract, silent, completely unified field of consciousness.”
1567 Swiss physician Paracelsus provides the first medical description of the unconscious.
1880s French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot uses hypnotism to treat hysteria and other abnormal mental conditions.
AFTER
1913 John B. Watson criticizes Freud’s ideas of the unconscious as unscientific and not provable.
1944 Carl Jung claims that the presence of universal archetypes proves the existence of the unconscious.
The unconscious is one of the most intriguing concepts in psychology. It seems to contain all of our experience of reality, although it appears to be beyond our awareness or control. It is the place where we retain all our memories, thoughts, and feelings. The notion fascinated Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist Sigmund Freud, who wanted to find out if it was possible to explain things that seemed to lie beyond the confines of psychology at the time. Those who had begun to examine the unconscious feared that it might be filled with psychic activity that was too powerful, too frightening, or too incomprehensible for our conscious mind to be able to incorporate. Freud’s work on the subject was pioneering. He described the structure of the mind as formed of the conscious, the unconscious, and the preconscious, and he popularized the idea of the unconscious, introducing the notion that it is the part of the mind that defines and explains the workings behind our ability to think and experience.
Hypnosis and hysteria
Freud’s introduction to the world of the unconscious came in 1885 when he came across the work of the French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, who seemed to be successfully treating patients for symptoms of mental illness using hypnosis. Charcot’s view was that hysteria was a neurological disorder caused by abnormalities of the nervous system, and this idea provided important new possibilities for treatments. Freud returned to Vienna, eager to use this new knowledge, but struggled to find a workable techn
ique.
He then encountered Joseph Breuer, a well-respected physician, who had found that he could greatly reduce the severity of one of his patient’s symptoms of mental illness simply by asking her to describe her fantasies and hallucinations. Breuer began using hypnosis to facilitate her access to memories of a traumatic event, and after twice-weekly hypnosis sessions all her symptoms had been alleviated. Breuer concluded that her symptoms had been the result of disturbing memories buried in her unconscious mind, and that voicing the thoughts brought them to consciousness, allowing the symptoms to disappear. This is the case of Anna O, and is the first instance of intensive psychotherapy as a treatment for mental illness.
Breuer became Freud’s friend and colleague, and together the two developed and popularized a method of psychological treatment based on the idea that many forms of mental illness (irrational fears, anxiety, hysteria, imagined paralyses and pains, and certain types of paranoia) were the results of traumatic experiences that had occurred in the patient’s past and were now hidden away from consciousness. Through Freud and Breuer’s technique, outlined in the jointly published Studies in Hysteria (1895), they claimed to have found a way to release the repressed memory from the unconscious, allowing the patient to consciously recall the memory and confront the experience, both emotionally and intellectually. The process set free the trapped emotion, and the symptoms disappeared. Breuer disagreed with what he felt was Freud’s eventual overemphasis on the sexual origins and content of neuroses (problems caused by psychological conflicts), and the two parted; Freud to continue developing the ideas and techniques of psychoanalysis.
