The Behavior Analyst 1995, 18, 377-384 No. 2 (Fall)

Searching in Ruins for Truth:The Life and Works of John B. Watson-

A Review of Modern Perspectives on John B.Watson and Classical Behaviorism

Peter HarzemAuburn University

Not many who have seen the greatmovie, Amadeus, will forget its finalscene in which Mozart's body is tippedfrom a rickety carriage into a pauper'sgrave. And they will remember therattle of the wheels as the carriagemakes its way, in rain and mud, to itsdestination. The scene is a poignantrepresentation of the ways each age inhistory has treated some of its genius-es. The century that is about to endsaw this done to John Broadus Watson(1878-1958) who was born into direpoverty in a small town in South Car-olina, and who rose twice to greatheights in two different professions,only to be assailed each time: first bythe intrigues of jealousy and of un-wholesome academic politics, and sec-ond by fate, when Rosalie, his secondwife, whom he truly and deeply loved,died. After this, Watson's remainingyears became, by all evidence, years ofmarking time, waiting-waiting, itwould seem, for the end. It was inthose years that Watson withdrew tohis small farm in Connecticut, drank agoodly amount, put on excessiveweight, and, in short, let himself go.The true and full story of this great

thinker's life has not been told. Whathas been told in the two biographiesthat exist (Buckley, 1989; Cohen,1979) is incomplete, biased, and ex-

Todd, J. T, & Morris, E. K. (Eds.). (1994).Modern perspectives on John B. Watson andclassical behaviorism. Westport, CT: Green-wood Press.

Address correspondence to Peter Harzem, De-partment of Psychology, Auburn University, Au-burn, Alabama 36849-5214 (E-mail: HARZE-PE@mail.auburn.edu).

aggerated in aspects that show Watsonin the most unfavorable light possible.Character assassination is, perhaps, thesecond or third oldest profession; thereader who cares about the music ofMozart may remember, too, the aria Dr.Bartolo sings in Rossini's opera, "TheBarber of Seville," in praise of slanderand gossip. That was penetrating socialcommentary at the time, and it appliesequally now (just observe politicalcampaigns), satirizing as it does theuse of defamation as a device to ad-vance one's way in life. That is howWatson's life and his scholarly workwere denigrated, beginning in his life-time and continuing to the present.The misinformation about the life

and works of Watson is now so wide-spread and so firmly established thatbringing the facts to light may wellhave become impossible. As an aside,it is worth noting that how Watson wasdefamed merits special study as a cu-rious social phenomenon. Unlike manyin history, the defamation took on alife of its own, growing and embel-lished by those who, with few excep-tions, have no discernible gain fromwhat they do.

Against this background, the bookedited by Todd and Morris brings somewelcome fresh air into the subject. Itis, as are many edited books, an un-balanced and frustrating mixture ofchapters, some of a high quality andsome, sadly, not. Fortunately, however,the good outweigh the bad, and thiswork should set us on the path to un-derstanding not only the fundamentalhumanity of Watson's life and theastonishing breadth of his work but

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also the real foundations of his behav-iorism. I believe it is safe to assumethat most readers of this journal havedevoted their careers to the pursuit ofbehavioral studies. It is surely fittingthen that they, who are persuaded bybehaviorism, should more than anyoneelse give weight to understanding thefoundations on which their life's workrests.

It is commonplace to say that behav-iorism has its origin in Watson's be-haviorist manifesto-more correctly,his paper entitled "Psychology as theBehaviorist Views It"-that was pub-lished in the Psychological Review in1913. Despite the concerted efforts ofthe old guard and despite the departureof its founder from academic life, thesubsequent remarkable rise of behav-iorism is known but needs briefly to berevisited here.

In the United States especially andthe English-speaking world generally,the rise of behaviorism can be tracedthrough not one but several separatelines. Three of these, essentially differ-ent from each other, have been partic-ularly significant. One was, of course,the influence of Watson's own work.He brought out the distinct identity ofbehaviorism, whereas behaviorism hadbeen a tacit but unmistakable feature ofthe other lines developing at about thesame time. The second was the rise ofthe age of grand theories of learning.That significant phase in psychologybegan with, and it may be said, wasinaugurated by Edward L. Thorndike'stheory of learning. Thorndike's AnimalIntelligence was published in 1898;thereafter, in the first half of this cen-tury, research and theoretical debatearising from the theories of learningdominated psychology. Even now,their legacy in contemporary psychol-ogy is discernible in every aspect ofthe discipline. In the present context, itis helpful to note that Watson, the stu-dent of Angell and a product of theChicago school of functionalism, cameto psychology by a route different fromthat of those who developed learningtheories. He was never a learning the-

orist. The learning theorists, however,were behaviorists by, so to speak, theinescapable characteristic of the re-search that gave rise to their theories;that is, they experimented on behavior.When behaviorism emerged from Wat-son's writings as a distinct "school" ofpsychology, the learning theories sim-ply and naturally, without any decla-ration or other flourish, came to bewhat they were: behaviorist theories.

It is generally overlooked that atabout the time Watson began to writein psychology, Pavlov, too, had devel-oped a behaviorist theory of learning.His was primarily a physiologicallearning theory, sometimes regarded asa personality theory, and as might beexpected from a distinguished physi-ologist steeped in the tradition of em-pirical investigation, it was unequivo-cally of a behaviorist kind. In themeantime, another major learning the-orist and behaviorist, Edwin R. Guth-rie, together with S. Smith, had beenworking on a book, General Psychol-ogy in Terms ofBehavior, published in1921, just 2 years after Watson's Psy-chology from the Standpoint of a Be-haviorist. The grandest, although themost cumbersome and aesthetically theleast pleasing, was Hull's theory oflearning. This theory became over-whelmingly influential in psychology,and it firmly established, for some timeto come, the behaviorist philosophy ofpsychology as a given for theories oflearning, and more generally, for muchof psychology. Tolman's Purposive Be-havior in Animals and Men was pub-lished in 1932. His, and also, in thisregard, the Gestalt psychologists' werebehaviorist theories, although nowquite erroneously considered to be cog-nitive notions. Focused on the devel-opment of their empirical theories,none of these great psychologists ex-plicitly pronounced conceptual corol-laries to their theories, namely, anyphilosophies for the science of psy-chology. Nonetheless, their behavior-isms were different from each other insignificant respects. Thus, in theoriesof learning are to be found a variety of

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kinds of behaviorism that was never,from its very beginnings, a single, in-variant set of dicta.The distinct philosophy of science

explicitly named behaviorism was de-veloped by Watson. Moreover, to in-crease even further the complexity ofthe matter, Watson, like other greatscholars, did not arrive at an invariant,frozen form of behaviorism and stopthinking thereafter. Instead, throughouthis working years, including the yearsafter his departure from academic em-ployment, he tinkered with it, revisedit, and changed his views about ex-pressing particular aspects of it. Thesevariations seem to trouble some of theauthors of this book who find faultwith Watson for adjusting his views.This discomfort arises, however, onlyif one begins with the premise thatonce a theory is proposed, its propo-nent should stick with it through thickand thin. But, in fact, the better schol-ars always see their theories and philo-sophical assertions as tentative, open tochange in the light of new knowledgeand further reflection. This was so forSigmund Freud (a fact that frustratedsome of his followers), and it was sofor B. F Skinner (a fact in which, Ihope, his followers will rejoice).The third line converging on behav-

iorism had its origins in the thoughtsof Russell and Wittgenstein, and de-veloped through the writings of GilbertRyle, J. L. Austin, and others collec-tively known as the Oxford group orthe linguistic philosophers. These greatscholars showed that the so-calledmentalistic terms in language cannotpossibly be mentalistic, because wordsand phrases arise only from what iscommunally observed. Ryle, with hischaracteristic subtle humor, referred todualism as the "official theory," andcoined the term "ghost in the ma-chine" in refuting this deeply in-grained view of life in western thought.The essence of Ryle's and others'views was that to understand the mean-ing of words and phrases one mustlook to how they are used, that is, howthey behave in language. This brief ac-

count is, I have to confess, a blatantoversimplification. Unfortunately, inthe bounds of the present review, thematter must be left there. However, theinterested reader who reads Ryle'sbook, The Concept ofMind (1949) willbe richly rewarded, and perhaps will beastonished at how akin its theses are tothe views held by most behaviorists.To sum, by the time when, in the

early 1930s, behaviorism came to bethe major intellectual force in the dis-cipline of psychology (for evidence,just see the vehemence of its enemies)there were already a variety of behav-iorisms, differing from each other infundamental ways and creating a com-plexity of penetrating enlightenment.(For a full discussion of various typesof behaviorism and the classification ofbehaviorisms, see Harzem & Miles,1978.)The publisher's blurb for the Todd

and Morris book juxtaposes "historicalclassical behaviorism" and "modemradical behaviorism." This dualitytheme occurs throughout the book andit is the fundamental premise on whichthe editors' and most of the book's au-thors' perspectives of the history of be-haviorism apparently rest. It is, how-ever, a mistaken theme that distorts notonly what Watson contributed but alsothe history of the development of be-haviorism and its varieties. The beliefthat there were two behaviorisms-classical and radical-and now there isone-radical-is widespread, and isheld, I believe, by most who read thisjournal. The mistake of using the termclassical behaviorism as a name for theclass of all things other than radical be-haviorism is no minor matter. It is quiteunnecessarily damaging to the intellec-tual caliber of radical behaviorism.Surely, neither the influence nor the in-tellectual standing of radical behavior-ism can be advanced by rewriting itshistory. Evidence is unmistakable thatdistortions of history have a way ofleading to disaster. When history is re-vised to political ends, the result is so-cial turmoil; when it is revised in con-nection with a theoretical or philosoph-

380 PETER HARZEM

ical posture, the result is the alienationof those scholars who hold accuracysupreme and therefore on whose workthat posture mostly rests.

In case this is misunderstood: Thisis a basic issue, not confined to butmerely echoed in this book, and itneeds to be corrected before it becomesentrenched. I believe Todd and Morrisare unlikely to object to this, and ifthey are, no doubt they will write inrefutation. In their introduction theynote that "an improved account of be-haviorism is necessary" (p. xxiii), and,in their characteristically unassumingmanner much appreciated by thosewho personally know them, they offerthe book as a "modest attempt to ex-pand ... the serious scholarly investi-gation of behaviorism" (p. xxiii).Thus, on balance, this is a good, valu-able beginning, to be read by everyradical behaviorist. With that, let usnow turn to its merits.The first chapter of the book is the

best. Here, Franz Samelson examinesand speculates on the influences thatled to the publication of Watson's 1913article. Particularly pertinent for anystudent of behaviorism are the ques-tions he raises, some previously askedand repeated here by the author, othersposed afresh. Among the former kind,Samelson notes, is one that had beenpuzzled over by Woodworth, who hadwritten, "'the historian fifty yearshence ... will assign much signifi-cance to ... behaviorism; but I admitthat I am puzzled ... exactly where hewill find its significance to lie" (1931,p. 89).'1

I think there is no puzzle here: Thequestion is like being puzzled at theimportance given to, say Newton's dis-covery of gravity, because everyonealready knew that unsupported objectsfall; or it is like being puzzled at thecelebration of the introduction of pas-teurization to surgery, because every-

' I could not find this in my copy of Wood-worth's book (7th printing but not a new edition)and give here the reference provided by Samel-son.

one, at least those who dealt withcooking and preserving food, alreadyknew that boiling postpones fermenta-tion. Newton's genius was in seeing thescientific implications of, and Pasteur'swas in seeing the reasons for, theseotherwise ordinary phenomena. I al-ready noted the natural and tacit be-haviorist characteristic of the theoriesof learning. Watson's genius was inseeing and explicitly bringing out thescientific significance of concentratingon that which is inevitable in any psy-chological research, namely the ob-serving and recording of behavior, andthereby eliminating the verbal and con-ceptual clutter that gets in the way ofmaking good sense of what is ob-served.

Perhaps the most significant pointthat strongly bears on this chapter, andthe book in general, is this: What ismost important is not whether Samel-son's, or my, or someone else's answerto Woodworth's puzzle is the correctone; the importance lies in testingmany ways of approaching the ques-tion and seeing the relations and con-tradictions among the possible answersand the ensuing implications. This isthe real significance of the issues raisedby Samelson, more than his answers.And this is the way history, and partic-ularly the history of ideas, can best beunderstood.

James Todd's chapter provides an in-valuable service to future scholars ofbehaviorism. Quintessential behavioranalyst that he is, he has done whatbehavior analysts excel in above allelse: He has systematically and pains-takingly analyzed the references toWatson and behaviorism in 130 booksin English, published between theyears 1920 and 1989. Data are sum-marized in clear and telling graphs, andthere is much to be distilled from themeven beyond Todd's excellent discus-sion. Here is a host of material to beused for years to come by those wish-ing to study behaviorism. All this, to-gether with the archival information in-cluded in the book (an almost completebibliography of Watson's publications

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and a list of archival collections relat-ing to Watson's life) by themselvesmake the book invaluable to any inter-ested scholar. The brief account ofTodd's exchange with Gould and Mar-ler is essential reading for behaviorists,radical or otherwise, because it accu-rately exemplifies the difficulty of in-teracting with scientists, no matter howfamous (not quite the same as eminent)who are prepared to abandon standardsof scholarship, such as reading theoriginal material on which they havewritten commentary, in pursuit of sup-porting a position to which they are,apparently, doggedly committed, comewhat may.

Yet another excellent chapter is byAlexandra Logue. She has carefullyoutlined the development, over manyyears, of Watson's research pursuits,his gradual shift to working with hu-man subjects, and some of the changesin his views of behaviorism. Moreover,she gives the reader a rare bonus byproviding a glimpse of the positiontaken by Rosalie Rayner Watson as tobehaviorism and, it will not escape thecareful reader, into how she and herhusband related to each other in theirmarriage. Rosalie Rayner was, in thebest sense of the phrase, a liberatedyoung woman and a graduate of VassarCollege, a college with a longstandingtradition of producing independentlyminded people, not easily persuadedby unexamined ideas (Jane Fonda,Jackie Kennedy, Mary McCarthy, Mer-yl Streep, and Mary Cover Jones, toname but a few). Fitting into this im-pressive line, Rosalie, too, was anemancipated, cultured person with im-peccable good taste and freedom ofthought. Daughter of an influentialfamily (her father was Isidore Rayner,a Senator from Maryland), she defiedtheir concerted pressures to break herrelation with Watson and married himjust a little more than a week after hisdivorce was final. In the years to come,she disagreed with her husband, notabout behaviorism but about what hethought followed from taking behav-iorism as the foundation of one's ac-

tions. John Watson believed that, inchild-rearing, emotions should be sup-pressed and one's interactions with achild should be confined, as much aspossible, to discipline by reason. Thereis also evidence, however, that try ashe might, he was unable strictly to ap-ply this to his own family, largely be-cause Rosalie would not permit it. Sheloved, as she described them, the dra-ma of life, giggles, and a tear in theeye for poetry. The reader will be de-lighted by the direct quotation Loguegives, and will be enriched by goingone step beyond to the original articleby Rosalie Rayner. She was, all the ev-idence attests, a wonderful, culturedwoman of independent thought, soundreason, emotional warmth, and lastinglove.

William Baum's chapter, which iscommentary on the other chapters, is adisappointment because we have cometo expect better from this author. It hasmany inaccuracies, and one is left withthe impression that the author neededseveral more weeks to revise it. For ex-ample, there is the patently inaccuratesuggestion that Lashley, Meyer, Dun-lap, and Jennings, together with Wat-son, formed a group at Johns Hopkins,and that the idea of behaviorism arosecollectively from them. In fact therewas no such group, and Watson haddifferent relations with each of theseindividuals. For example, Meyer wasWatson's superior who granted him re-search rooms in his laboratory andwith whom Watson persistently andsometimes acrimoniously disagreed.Meyer played a part in Watson's de-parture from Johns Hopkins. Lashleywas Watson's student, and of those sur-rounding him in good days he was theonly one who remained faithful whenbad times came. (Lashley died some 6weeks before Watson, and to spareWatson, who was very ill by then, hisfamily chose not to inform him.) Baumincorrectly asserts that "Watson left offstudying animals in favor of human ba-bies" (p. 134). Watson studied adulthumans too, and he did so in his earlieryears. What occurred was a shift, part-

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ly dictated by the circumstances, ratherthan an abrupt change. Baum gratui-tously claims that William James owedhis influence to his physically attrac-tive characteristics and "brilliant po-lemicism" (p. 134). Even worse, heminimizes the substantial contributionsto the literature of both James and Wat-son by asserting that James's (and byimplication Watson's) "influence farexceeded what might be expected onthe basis of his writings" (p. 134) (anastonishing comment by any measure).

Reluctantly, I now turn to two chap-ters in this book that I found offensiveand that detract from it.

Kerry W. Buckley's chapter, entitled"Misbehaviorism," merely repeats thefalse portrait of Watson, painted by slyinnuendo and biased selection of epi-sodes, to be found in his biography ofWatson, Mechanical Man: JohnBroadus Watson and the Beginnings ofBehaviorism (1989). There was noth-ing of a balanced, scholarly nature and,for that matter, nothing new in thatbook, and there is none in its abbrevi-ated version here. Judging by thesewritings, Buckley is much given to atechnique of slipping in adverbs andadjectives that serve to diminish theobject of the sentence. To take just afew examples, when Watson receives apay increase at Johns Hopkins, thepresident of the university is said''generously" to increase his pay(thereby implying an undeserved favoror later ingratitude); when Watsonwrites of his frustration at complexitiesinvolved in working on human emo-tions, the task, it is said, "did not elicitfrom him an attitude of humility"; thetone of Watson's articles is said to be"brash" and "self-assured"; Watson'sstyle is said to be "messianic"; Watsonis said to have replied to a colleague"smugly," and so on. This method ofadding negative colorings, each minorby itself, is bolstered at the larger scaleby the selection of snippets from Wat-son's life and career that apparentlyserve the author's agenda. When allthis is combined on the large canvas,the result is a portrait of a man none

of us would like. But it is a false por-trait. Unfortunately, correction of falseimpressions created in this way takeslonger and demands greater effort thandoes the creating of them.The second of the two chapters that

sounds a discord is by John C. Burn-ham. He visited Watson at the Con-necticut farm in 1955, less than 3 yearsbefore Watson's death. Burnham givesa brief account of this visit, which, hesays, resulted in "very little content"(p. 68). This may well beg the ques-tion, why write a chapter about it?Nevertheless, the information Burn-ham has to offer is interesting in aneighborhood gossip sort of way. Weget here a fleeting glimpse of the bro-ken, sad, and yes, bitter Watson in thelast years of his life.Watson told Burnham about meeting

some psychoanalysts, including ErnestJones. Watson apparently also said heonce sent "a friend" to see Jung. (Ibelieve, incidentally, that the "friend"was Watson's son, who later became apsychoanalyst, but this must be takenwith caution because my evidence is,at present, weak.) These anecdotes, to-gether with Watson's published refer-ences to psychoanalysis, suggest, con-trary to the established belief, that hewas a person with firm opinions and anopen mind, surely a rare but ideal com-bination for anyone who would be ascholar.Burnham seems to find cause for

complaint in Watson's offering him aglass of whisky-he says Watson "in-sisted"-although Watson himself didnot drink any because, Watson toldhim, "his doctor would not let himdrink" (p. 67). Burnham complainsthat he drank the whisky although hewas a teetotaler, a fact he omitted totell Watson. And so on, and so forth.

It is not difficult to take all this asfairly harmless gossip. In due course,however, the story becomes offensivewhen Burnham not only reiterates butembellishes the picture of Watson as a"ladies' man." He suggests that Wat-son "may have been one of the greatlovers in all of history" and that "each

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time" he inquired from others aboutWatson's work he "heard about instead... some woman with whom he sup-posedly went to bed" (pp. 69-70). Re-gardless of whether Burnham is merelyreporting what others said to him, orhe has, with the passing of time, em-bellished what he had heard, this isfalsehood. It is more offensive to thememory of Rosalie Rayner Watsonthan to John Watson because, by thetime the interview took place, Watsonwould not have cared what "they" say.

Watson's son James B. Watson haswritten on this subject as follows.

He had all of the he-man attributes of ErnestHemingway, but he limited his hunting prowessto clay pigeons on the skeet range.....He was well before his time in his advocacy ofsex education, people living together withoutmarriage, and freedom from the normal sexualinhibitions so prevalent in the 20's and 30's, butwhile voicing these revolutionary principlesalong with those on child raising which almostgot him deported, he maintained a superb senseof ethicacy, decency and responsibility. (1981)

It is interesting to note, in passing, thatthese lines might as well have beenwritten about Bertrand Russell (withwhom Watson continued to correspondlong after he left Johns Hopkins). Thereader may recall that Russell, whowas a visiting professor in the UnitedStates, was actually deported for viewsquite similar to Watson's, on thegrounds that he advocated what wasthen called "free love." (He wrote abook on the social problems of the in-stitution of marriage.) Fortunately forRussell, however, his scholarly repu-tation did not suffer, because at thattime, in the circles in which he moved,persecuting one for doctrinaire reasonswas not the practice.The editors bear a responsibility for

letting the "some woman with whomhe went to bed" commentary get intoprint without any substantiating evi-dence. The point here is not about cen-sorship, but relates to the editorial re-sponsibility of filtering out unsupport-ed conclusions. Many a reader of thisjournal will be familiar with the prac-tice of editorial rejection on these

grounds; it is an entirely appropriate, ifat times infuriating, practice.The remaining chapters to which I

have not specifically referred provideinteresting reading, and although I donot agree with some of their assertions,they raise stimulating issues. On bal-ance, then, Todd and Morris have ed-ited a good book. It is, I think, a bookthat not only behaviorists but all whoaspire to scientifically understand thebehavior of organisms (that is, the be-havior of organisms, but perhaps evenbetter, the book and the behavior) havea duty to read. But they must read itquestioningly, bearing in mind that thechapters are dealing with facts thathave been mixed with, and buried un-der, false information for many de-cades. All falsehood could not havebeen separated from facts at one fellswoop, and it has not been. Neverthe-less, this is a good start, and the issuesI raise must not be allowed to fade. Incase the reader dismisses them asmerely a matter for history, even if in-teresting, let me end as follows. I bor-row a metaphor from the great psy-chologist Kenneth MacCorquodale:The camel's nose is in the tent. Thecamel in the case of John B. Watsonwas ignored and therefore entered thetent and devastated its contents. Anoth-er camel has its nose in the tent withthe other great behaviorist of our times,B. F Skinner. Tolerating that state ofaffairs for one great scholar does notbode well for the next scholar, and itdoes not bode well for behaviorism.

REFERENCES

Buckley, K. W. (1989). Mechanical man: JohnBroadus Watson and the beginnings of behav-iorism. New York: Guilford Press.

Cohen, D. (1979). J. B. Watson: The founder ofbehaviorism. London: Routledge & KeganPaul.

Harzem, P., & Miles, T. R. (1978). Conceptualissues in operant psychology. Chichester, En-gland: John Wiley & Sons.

Ryle, G. (1949). The concept of mind. London:Hutchinson.

Smith, S., & Guthrie, E. R. (1921). General psy-chology in terms of behavior. New York: Ap-pleton-Century-Crofts.

Thomdike, E. L. (1898). Animal intelligence:

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An experimental study of the associative pro-cesses in animals. Psychological ReviewMonograph Supplements, 2, No. 8.

Tolman, E. C. (1932). Purposive behavior in an-imals and men. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

Watson, J. B. (1981). Unpublished address abouthis father presented in a symposium at the An-

nual Convention of the American Psycholog-ical Association. (Psychology Archives, Ak-ron, Ohio)

Watson, J. B. (1913). Psychology as the behav-iorist views it. Psychological Review, 20,158-177.

Woodworth, R. S. (1931). Contemporaryschools ofpsychology. New York: The RonaldPress.