From mechanistic to functional behaviorism.

A shift from mechanistic behaviorism to functional behaviorism is presented against the background of 2 historical traditions, one with an emphasis on form, the other with an emphasis on function. Skinner's work, which made more contributions to a functional behaviorism than to a mechanistic behaviorism, exemplifies this shift. The 2 traditions and an account of Skinner's development of functional relations are presented in order to show Skinner's contributions to aligning modern behavior analysis with the functional tradition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Radical behaviorism misrepresented: A response to Mahoney.

Comments on M. J. Mahoney's (see record 1990-03226-001) discussion of scientific psychology (SP) and radical behaviorism (RB). The difference between SP and RB lies not in what Mahoney takes to be RB's failure to be scientific, but in the fact that Mahoney simply equates SP to cognitive psychology. Five misconceptions about fundamental issues in RB are addressed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Radical behaviorism, internal states, and the science of psychology: A reply to Skinner.

Responds to B. F. Skinner (see record 1988-00027-001) by addressing his 2 central misconceptions involving psychology's lack of empirical rigor and adverse effects of attention to variables that are not directly observable. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Becoming relational: From abstract systems to embodied relations.

Reviews the book, Relational being: Beyond self and community by Kenneth J. Gergen (see record 2009-10534-000). The primary plea of the book is that psychology consider a relational rather than individual (much less subindividual) conception of its phenomena. Gergen encourages us to "treat what we take to be the individual units as derivative of relational process" (xxi). This notion of a fundamentally relational subject is one that the reader is invited to explore and to test against other, more traditional, ways of constructing being. It is a proposition entertained and evaluated in terms of its implications but it is not presented as the real, true, or most factual account of human experience. Throughout the text, Gergen attempts to replace the individual or monological expositional style with a more dialogical, plural kind of textual negotiation. The book is constantly questioning and coming to terms with itself, its critics, and its limitations. The book is, as Bakhtin (1973) might have it, multivocal. Gergen invokes his own authorial voice, but also his voice as an embedded, historical being. Each chapter is peppered with anecdotes and personal reflections woven into the overall narrative as concrete counterpoint to the abstractions of theoretical argument. In the process, Gergen is surprisingly intimate, personal, and generous with his private life and history. The book also becomes something more human, narrative, and funny than is usual in theoretical exegesis. This style is quite inviting, partly because it is rooted in everyday life but also because it explicitly invites, and even voices, the critic, the question, and the doubt. Ultimately, what is compelling in the pages of Relational Being is what is fundamentally compelling about relationalism itself—namely, the way that it displaces abstract system as the core of meaning and replaces it with embodied relation. This displacement has the potential to redress some of the essential distortions at the heart of Enlightenment reason—particularly that venerable tradition of riding one’s chosen theoretical hobby horse into the face of concrete, lived experience (and into the face of the doubting, suffering, demanding other that stands in the way). Relational practice moves us away from the distortions that inevitably come when we make everything we encounter instrumental to some idea that we cherish (and, in the process, become blind to whatever lived truth first made that idea sing for us). Relational practice asks us, instead, to continually return to the lived relation and so continually rupture and remake the narratives by which we understand it. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Hermeneutics and behaviorism.

Comments on the work of M. J. Packer (see record 1986-10720-001) on the relevance of hermeneutics to psychological concerns, describing it as another example of assessing behaviorism without reference to current views as expressed by behaviorists themselves. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Bakan and behaviorism.

Comments on D. Bakan's article "Clinical Psychology and Logic" (see record 1958-01108-001). In the aforementioned article, that part of Bakan's argument which leads him to conclude that the method of science may not be relevant to the study of human behavior, in addition to containing certain errors of reasoning, seems to reflect an essential misunderstanding of what is meant by the method of science. In addition to rejecting the method of science solely on the untenable basis of its fallacious equation with what he takes to be the behaviorist position in psychology, Bakan adduces as evidence in further support of his criticism certain observations made by Tolman, Rogers, and Hebb regarding the methods they employ in arriving at what they hope to be fruitful hypotheses in their respective areas of endeavor. This evidence is, of course, entirely irrelevant to the issue of the applicability of the scientific method to psychology. The method of science does not prescribe, proscribe, or in any way legislate the procedure to be adopted in arriving at a fruitful hypothesis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Existential behaviorism: A transactionalistic approach to self-determination.

Existential behaviorism is a transactionalistic approach to the free will-determinism controversy in psychology. This relativistic view gives equal importance to both schools, advocating that self-determination involves the free choice of shaping one's own destiny using, perhaps, a knowledge of cause and effect principles of behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

From dissociation to negotiation: A relational psychoanalytic perspective on multiple personality disorder.

Presents a model for conceptualizing the dynamics and treatment of multiple personality disorder (MPD) that integrates trauma/dissociation theories with postclassical psychoanalytic perspectives. MPD is conceptualized as a chronic trauma syndrome and as a particular variation of narcissistic personality organization involving an overreliance on omnipotent defenses, the collapse of intersubjective experiencing, and derailments of the developmental lines of aggression, fantasy, and the use of transitional phenomena. Emphasis on empathy, recognition, confrontation, and interpretation from within the transference-countertransference matrix is recommended to facilitate contactful dialog and negotiation in the interpersonal world and between traumatically dissociated, often opposing, aspects of the self. The MPD patient's capacities for mutuality, paradoxical experiencing, and restorative fantasy are seen as central to integration. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Kimble and behaviorism.

Contends that G. A. Kimble's (see record 1989-28023-001) suggestion that psychology can be seen as an integrated discipline misrepresents radical behaviorism (i.e., behavior analysis). The behavior-analytic approach to "private events" preserves the goals outlined by Kimble for an integrated psychology, yet avoids the problems associated with logical positivism. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Existentialism and behaviorism: Some differences settled.

The existential and objective trends, predicted over a decade ago by Rogers, have been clearly manifested. Existentialists and behaviorists, viewing one another as stereotypic models, have failed to see their common underlying humanistic assumption. No longer need the two schools be separated by the free will-determinism duality. As behavioural technology advances, behaviourism leaves the Skinner box and becomes more prepared to assume the challenges of confronting human complexities. However, behaviourists still lack the semantically "warmer" language with which to communicate their increasingly broadening scope of activities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Which behaviorism? A reply to Mahoney.

Comments on M. J. Mahoney's (see record 1990-03226-001) discussion of scientific psychology and radical behaviorism (RB). Although the discussion raises valid points, there are important problems that require clarification to preclude the discussion from being taken as the last word on RB and scientific psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On cognitivism and behaviorism.

Comments on the article by R. W. Robins et al (see record 1999-00297-003) which examines trends in the prominence of 4 major schools of psychology by examining citation index trends and the content of articles in mainstream journals and dissertations. The author argues that behaviorism was never in the position of being the dominant school in mainstream scientific psychology to begin with, and it was not overtaken by cognitivism in the sense that behavior analysis is a field that has experienced continuous growth for decades. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Diatribe is not dialogue: On selected attempts to attack and defend behaviorism.

Describes the emotional nature of responses to M. J. Mahoney's (see record 1990-03226-001) discussion of the differences between scientific psychology and radical behaviorism. Responses are offered to comments from R. W. Proctor and D. J. Weeks (see record 1991-06227-001), E. K. Morris (see record 1991-06224-001), C. J. Lonigan (see record 1991-06220-001), and W. J. Wyatt (see record 1991-06231-001). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Broadening our conceptual frameworks: Can we reintroduce relational strategies and implicit representational systems to the study of psychopathology?

In the context of current studies of parental depression, methodological and conceptual issues related to the study of relational behavior are highlighted in this commentary. These issues include the need to develop measures of relational behavior that are well-validated in high-risk samples, the need to develop relational assessments focused around central motivating systems, the need for methods that describe a variety of individual relational patterns rather than focusing primarily on single linear dimensions of behavior, and the need to consider the implicit and explicit meaning systems that guide behavior in close relationships. It is suggested that a relational systems perspective might provide a more comprehensive framework for understanding the results of accumulated research in this area than a simpler mood-disorder model. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Herrnstein and the evolution of behaviorism.

Disagrees with R. J. Herrnstein's (1971) examination of the evolution of behaviorism. Specific areas of disagreement include Herrnstein's assertions that, "tacitly" or explicitly, the present author (a) minimized the role of phylogenic behavior, (b) "forswore exact prediction and instead sought quantitative laws," (c) incorrectly identified "the natural lines of fracture along which behavior and environment actually break," (d) assumed that there were only a few "drives," (e) unjustifiably overlooked the "hedonic value of stimuli," and (f) became interested in behavioral engineering only at a relatively late date. Herrnstein's theory of self-reinforcement in the explanation of behavior clearly attributable to natural selection is considered to be an unnecessary appeal to environmentalism. A science of behavior must deal with both phylogeny and ontogeny, but Herrnstein has not pointed toward a useful rapprochement. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Early behaviorism and verbal mediating responses.

Largely overlooked are many "earlier behavioristic or stimulus-response analyses of increasingly complex behavioral phenomena in part by means of concepts and principles involving mediating responses and stimuli… primarily but not exclusively, verbal mediating responses and stimuli… . Meyer, Watson, Hunter, Dashiell, Kantor, and others clearly anticipated the essential features of many more recent analyses." Watson's ideas and those of his contemporaries are discussed. Hull is regarded as "the transition" between the earlier and more recent concepts concerning verbal mediating responses. From Psyc Abstracts 36:02:2AD85G. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The convergence of cognitive behaviorism and ego-psychology.

This article begins by detailing central ego-psychological concepts. The next section documents the convergence of cognitive behaviorism on these earlier contributions. The third section indicates likely possibilities for future developments in cognitive behaviorism that will enhance congruence with ego-psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Functional behaviorism: A plan for unity in psychology.

Functional behaviorism is an evolutionary stimulus-response psychology that applies to all behavior from reflexes to personality. It treats psychological phenomena as compounds of 3 processes--cognition, affect and reaction tendency--which are governed by 3 fundamental operating principles: (a) Behavior is an expression of potentials activated by instigation; (b) behavior is under the simultaneous control of excitation and inhibition; and (c) behavior is a blend of adaptation to events the individual cannot control and coping when control is possible. This view provides an organization that brings unity to the science of psychology. It is an offering of peace to the warring factions in the field. It holds out the hope of creating coherent programs of education in the discipline. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Protestant relational ideology and (in)attention to relational cues in work settings.

M. Weber (1947) proposed that exposure to Calvinist Protestantism is associated with limited attention to relational concerns in work settings. Two experiments provide support for this proposition. Study 1 showed that Protestant European Americans raised in traditions of Calvinism were less attentive to affect in spoken words when primed with a work context relative to a nonwork context, and to participants raised as Catholics in either context. Study 2 used an unconscious mimicry paradigm to measure relational focus and showed that within a work setting, male Protestants mimicked a confederate's foot shaking less than male non-Protestants and women in either group. Within a nonwork setting, male Protestants mimicked more and did not differ from male non-Protestants. Women showed greater mimicry than men. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)