The Handy Psychology Answer Book. Lisa J. Cohen

was very crude, however, and still focused largely on hypnotism and suggestion. Ultimately it was psychoanalysis that had the widest impact on the later development of psychotherapy.

      What was controversial about Freud?

      Freud was famous (or infamous) for his fights with detractors and is still a somewhat controversial figure. From the beginning Freudian theory tended toward the dogmatic. Although Freud was flexible in his own thinking, and he reworked his own theories multiple times, he was less tolerant of the divergent views of his followers. He rejected both Carl Jung (1875-1961) and Alfred Adler (1870-1937), who questioned the primacy of libido as the motivating force.

      In Freud’s time, his theories were particularly controversial for their emphasis on sexuality, which was rarely discussed openly in Victorian times. His emphasis on child sexuality was viewed as being perverted. By the mid-twentieth century, however, Freudian theory was criticized mainly for its lack of scientific data. Although he aspired to make psychoanalysis a science, Freud never tested his theories with the methods of empirical research, preferring instead to rely on his clinical observations.

      How has Freudian theory influenced culture?

      Freud has had enormous influence on contemporary culture, so much so that we often barely notice. Any attention to the unconscious meaning of slips of the tongue, jokes, or dreams can be traced directly to Freud. Awareness of the impact of childhood experiences on adult emotional adjustment, the importance of sexuality, and the value of talking out our feelings, let alone the now international industry of psychotherapy, all owe their debt to Freud. Freudian ideas also captured the imagination of a wide range of famous artists throughout the twentieth century, such as the surrealists, the writer Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), and filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980).

      JOHN B. WATSON AND B. F. SKINNER

      Who was John B. Watson?

      John Broadus Watson (1878–1958) spearheaded the triumph of behaviorism in American psychology. Reacting against the emphasis on introspection promoted by both Wundt and James, he believed that the only object of psychological study should be observable behavior. He criticized the introspective approach as imprecise and dependent on unverifiable, and therefore unreliable, subjective judgments. Influenced by the Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov’s work on associative conditioning, he reduced all of psychology to stimulus-response chains.

      Having also spent the beginning of his career studying rats in mazes, Watson further broke down the division between animal and human research, stating that stimulus-response behavioral chains in animals did not meaningfully differ from those in humans. In other words, the only worthwhile subject of study in psychology was how animals or people behaved in response to carefully observed stimuli. Moreover, he felt the purpose of such study was the prediction and control of behavior.

      This viewpoint was articulated in a 1913 publication entitled Psychology as the Behaviorist Sees It. While behaviorism became less restrictive in later years, this celebration of observable behavior and disdain for subjective experience dominated American academic psychology until the middle of the twentieth century.

      The American psychologist John B. Watson established the specialty of behaviorism, which promotes the study of observable behavior only.

      What was unusual about Watson’s personal life?

      Watson had an unusually dramatic and difficult life. Born into poverty with an alcoholic, womanizing, and violent father who abandoned the family when Watson was only twelve, Watson seemed more likely to enter a life of crime than to become a pioneer in the field of psychology. He was, in fact, arrested twice before he managed to convince the president of a South Carolina college to admit him as a freshman at the age of sixteen.

      The brash confidence displayed by his appeal to the college president was characteristic of the ambition and audacity that would later propel his career. He excelled academically and quickly progressed from student to graduate student to assistantship to professor at the University of Chicago and then, by age thirty, to chairman of the psychology department at Johns Hopkins University. At age thirty-seven he was made president of the American Psychological Association.

      Unfortunately, Watson remained a compulsive womanizer and during a particularly indiscreet extramarital affair, his wife found evidence of his dalliance and showed it to the president of the university, who promptly demanded his resignation. In 1920 such scandal could ruin one’s reputation and it ended Watson’s career as an academic psychologist. Ever resilient, however, he eventually obtained a position at the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency, applying his psychological expertise to advertising campaigns on a wealth of household products. He married the woman with whom he had been having an affair and had two children with her. Unfortunately, she died quite young, which was, by many accounts, a devastating loss for him.

      We can speculate about the relationship between Watson’s painful childhood and his choice of psychological theories. Is it entirely a coincidence that an emotionally troubled child would grow up to shun exploration of the mind? Nonetheless, whatever personal appeal behaviorism might have had for Watson, its dominance in American academic psychology for several decades is unarguable.

      Who was B.F. Skinner?

      Burrhus Frederick (B.F.) Skinner (1904–1990) was a famous champion of behaviorism. He wrote several books, including Walden Two and About Behaviorism, in which he spelled out his views on psychology, in particular the idea that observable behavior was the only valid object of scientific study. Like John B. Watson before him, he had a flair for public relations and knew how to get his ideas into the public eye.

      Skinner made numerous long-lasting contributions to behaviorism. He was interested both in the theory of behaviorism and its application to everyday problems. His two most important contributions include the principles of operant conditioning and the techniques of behavioral modification. He was also interested in educational methods and in techniques of animal training. Although Skinner’s radical behaviorism has been out of fashion for several decades, many of his core ideas survive. While they cannot explain all of human psychology, they do offer important insights into a broad range of behavior. Moreover, the techniques he proposed are still fundamental tools in a dramatically broad range of disciplines.

      What is Skinner’s concept of operant conditioning?

      Building on Edward Thorndike’s earlier Law of Effect, Skinner elaborated on the way animals and humans learn from rewards and punishments. If a behavior is followed by a reward, it is likely to be repeated. If it is followed by a punishment, it is less likely to be repeated. Through research on rats and other animals, Skinner explored in great detail how the timing, frequency, and predictability of rewards and punishments affect behavioral change. These basic concepts of operant conditioning were viewed as the foundation of all learned behavior in both humans and animals. While we now know that there are many complex forms of thought that operant conditioning cannot explain, these principles do tell us a tremendous amount about basic forms of learning and memory.

      What was Skinner’s contribution to behavioral modification?

      Another critical contribution that Skinner made was to translate his laboratory research on rats and other animals into a new form of psychotherapy termed behavioral modification. Although John B. Watson had declared the purpose of behaviorism to be the prediction and control of behavior, he did not have much success in formulating specific techniques to be applied to everyday life.

      In contrast to Watson, Skinner worked out rules about how to change human behavior through the manipulation of reinforcement contingencies, in other words, the manipulation of rewards and punishments. Skinner favored the use of rewards over punishment to modify behavior, as