Word: pavlov
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...this kind of thinking that influenced Watson. Drawing, too, on the work of Pavlov, he repudiated the subjective concepts of mind and emotion and described human behavior as a succession of physical reflex responses to stimuli coming from the environment. It was the environment alone, he felt, that determined what a man is: "Give me a dozen healthy infants," he wrote in 1925, "and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select?doctor, lawyer, even beggarman and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities." The goal...
...Freudian psychoanalysis stems from the way each defines neurosis. To psychoanalysts, neurosis is the result of unconscious conflicts that influence behavior in complex, mysterious ways. But to behavior therapists, the unconscious does not matter: neurosis to them is a collection of bad habits that were learned much the way Pavlov's dogs learned to salivate at the sound of a bell. Believing that what has been learned can be unlearned, the behaviorists apply conditioning procedures developed in animal laboratories to break old habits and build new ones. Unlike psychoanalysis, which may go on for years, behavior therapy is often...
What about, for example, the aphasics of the counterculture? The ad writer may dingdong catch phrases like Pavlov's bells in order to produce saliva. The Movement propagandist rings his chimes ("Fascist!" "Pig!" "Honky!" "Male chauvinist!") to produce spit. More stammer than grammar, as Dwight Macdonald put it, the counterculture makes inarticulateness an ideal, debasing words into clenched fists ("Right on!") and exclamation points ("Oh, wow!"). Semantic aphasia on the right, semantic aphasia on the left. Between the excesses of square and hip rhetoric the language is in the way of being torn apart...
Certain shows incite conditioned-reflex laughter. A quip rings a bell on stage, or a performer twitches a facial muscle, and the audience laughs, in much the same way that Pavlov's dogs salivated. The playgoer has been given nothing in the way of genuine comic nourishment. He has merely been cajoled into an empty-bellied laugh...
There are other cases: the Russians have trained descendants of Pavlov's dog to carry mines to tanks. During World War II, a Swede trained young seals to carry limpet charges. They were rewarded with cream-a classic mobilization of guns and butter. Skinner regards the cat stratagem as overly complex but theoretically possible. "The only trouble is," he observes, "that cats get airsick...