Chapter 16 Skinner: Behavioral Analysis 459E
rik Erikson (see Chapter 8) believed that people go through a series of identity
crises, or turning points, that leave them vulnerable to major changes in how
they see themselves. One such person was Fred, a man who experienced at least
two such crises, and each led to significant turns in his life’s course. His first iden-
tity crisis occurred during young adulthood, when, armed with an undergraduate
degree in English, Fred returned to his parents’ home hoping to shape his identity
in the world of literature. His father reluctantly agreed to allow Fred 1 year to carve
out a niche for himself as a writer. He warned his son of the necessity of finding
a job, but he allowed Fred to convert the third-floor attic into a study.
Every morning, Fred climbed the two flights of steps and began his job as
a writer. But nothing happened. After only 3 months of trying to become a creative
writer, Fred realized that the quality of his work was poor. He blamed his parents,
their home town, and literature itself for his failure to produce any worthwhile
writing (Elms, 1981). He wasted time with nonproductive activities, sitting in the
family library for long periods of time, remaining “absolutely motionless in a kind
of catatonic stupor” (Skinner, 1976a, p. 287). Nevertheless, he felt obligated to
continue the charade of pursuing a literary career for the one full year he and his
father had agreed on. Fred eventually lost hope that he could make any contribution
to literature. In later years, he referred to this nonproductive time as his “Dark
Year.” Erik Erikson would have called it a time of identity confusion—a time for
trying to discover who he was, where he was going, and how he was going to get
there. The young man experiencing this “Dark Year” was B. F. Skinner, who later
became one of the most influential psychologists in the world but not until he
experienced a second identity crisis, as we discuss in our biography of Skinner.
Overview of Behavioral Analysis
During the early years of the 20th century while Freud, Jung, and Adler were rely-
ing on clinical practice and before Eysenck and Costa and McCrae were using
psychometrics to build theories of human personality, an approach called
behaviorism emerged from laboratory studies of animals and humans. Two of the
early pioneers of behaviorism were E. L. Thorndike and John Watson, but the person
most often associated with the behaviorist position is B. F. Skinner, whose
behavioral analysis is a clear departure from the highly speculative psychody-
namic theories discussed in Chapters 2 through 8. Skinner minimized speculation
and focused almost entirely on observable behavior. However, he did not claim
that observable behavior is limited to external events. Such private behaviors as
thinking, remembering, and anticipating are all observable—by the person experi-
encing them. Skinner’s strict adherence to observable behavior earned his approach
the label radical behaviorism, a doctrine that avoids all hypothetical constructs,
such as ego, traits, drives, needs, hunger, and so forth.
In addition to being a radical behaviorist, Skinner can rightfully be regarded
as a determinist and an environmentalist. As a determinist, he rejected the notion
of volition or free will. Human behavior does not stem from an act of the will, but
like any observable phenomenon, it is lawfully determined and can be studied
scientifically.