Word: skinnerism
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...SKINNER'S PURPOSE is to prove the humanists wrong. This most intimate of case studies documents almost every behavioral influence in his life. Vignettes of ancestors three generations back provide the genetic angle. Next comes the history of reinforcements and punishments which channel his growth. As a boy, for instance, he stole a trinket from a store, and felt guilty for a week. Later we learn of family field trips to prisons, and a grandmother's promises of hell "like the inside of a potbellied stove" for sinners. The connection is obvious...
...always present, with a front-seat view of everything he does? Freud recognized the risks involved in self-analysis, but rejected the loss to the behavioral sciences imposed by Watson's prohibition and so ignored it. Through exhaustive self-examination, he arrived at the principles of introspective psychology. Skinner overcomes the stricture by stepping outside himself. He considers only those aspects of himself which are publicly observable. The book includes excerpts from high school compositions, letters home, and his early poetry (which would have been better off only privately observable...
...THIS POINT I must confess a certain bias in this review. I have long admired Skinner and his philosophy. He holds out to the uninitiated a few reasonable axioms. Once you swallow them--as I did--you are swept along by a dogma as internally consistent and all-encompassing as Marxism. With precision and specificity, Skinner tackles the philosophical dilemmas of the ages--free will, consciousness, and "the good." But the person Skinner leaves us with is a mere puppet, without purpose and dignity. He speaks of the self as nothing more than "the small part of the universe which...
...have with himself? Long before he turned to psychology--which was not until his twenties--he kept careful diaries of interesting occurrences. He hoped to be a writer then and composed poems and short stories by the notebook. Wittingly or not, almost all had a common protagonist--himself. Skinner was preoccupied with himself throughout his youth, but only as an alien object, a specimen. (In his first experiment with behavior modification, he invented a Rube Goldberg contraption to raise a "Hang Your Pajamas" sign in his doorway when he stepped...
Particulars of My Life, the opening volume of Skinner's autobiography, ends as he packs his bags to leave for graduate study in psychology at Harvard. Still to come are his years of pioneering research, his prolific writing career, and his eventual rise to the position of spokesman for the school of behavioristic psychology. The book does have its personable side, for Skinner doesn't balk at recounting more commonplace exploits that we can sympathize with: for example, his bumbling adolescent sexual adventures, reminiscent of those of Holden Cauldfield and Woody Allen. But although ordered, it is not cohesive...