The Ghost in the Machine Read Free

The one exception is psychology, which seems
to lie plunged into a modern version of the dark ages. By psychology
I mean in the present context academic or 'experimental' psychology,
as it is taught at the great majority of our contemporary universities,
and as distinct from clinical psychiatry, psychotherapy or psychosomatic
medicine. Freud, and to a lesser degree Jung, are, of course, immensely
influential, but their influence is more strongly felt in the humanities
-- in literature, art and philosophy -- than in the citadel of official
science. By far the most powerful school in academic psychology, which at
the same time determined the climate in all other sciences of life, was,
and still is, a pseudoscience called Behaviourism. Its doctrines have
invaded psychology like a virus which first causes convulsions, then
slowly paralyses the victim. Let us see how this improbable situation
came about.
     
     
It started just before the outbreak of the First World War when a
professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, named John Broadus
Watson, published a paper in which he proclaimed: 'the time has come when
psychology must discard all reference to consciousness. . . . Its sole
task is the prediction and control of behaviour; and introspection can
form no part of its method.' [1] By 'behaviour' Watson meant observable
activities what the physicist calls 'public events', such as the motions
of a dial on a machine. Since all mental events are private events which
cannot be observed by others, and which can only be made public through
statements based on introspection, they had to be excluded from the domain
of science. On the strength of this doctrine, the Behaviourists proceeded
to purge psychology of all 'intangibles and unapproachables'. [2] The
terms 'consciousness', 'mind', 'imagination' and 'purpose', together
with a score of others, were declared to be unscientific, treated as
dirty words, and banned from the vocabulary. In Watson's own words, the
Behaviourist must exclude 'from his scientific vocabulary all subjective
terms such as sensation, perception, image, desire, purpose, and even
thinking and emotion as they were subjectively defined'. [3]
     
     
It was the first ideological purge of such a radical kind in the domain
of science, predating the ideological purges in totalitarian politics,
but inspired by the same single-mindedness of true fanatics. It was
summed up in a classic dictum by Sir Cyril Burt: 'Nearly half a century
has passed since Watson proclaimed his manifesto. Today, apart from
a few minor reservations, the vast majority of psychologists, both in
this country and in America, still follow his lead. The result, as a
cynical onlooker might be tempted to say, is that psychology, having
first bargained away its soul and then gone out of its mind, seems now,
as it faces an untimely end, to have lost all consciousness.' [4]
     
     
Watsonian Behaviourism became the dominant school, first in American
academic psychology and subsequently in Europe. Psychology used to be
defined in dictionaries as the science of the mind; Behaviourism did away
with the concept of mind and put in its place the conditioned-reflex
chain. The consequences were disastrous not only for experimental
psychology itself; they also made themselves felt, in clinical psychiatry,
social science, philosophy, ethics, and the graduate student's general
outlook on life. Although his name was less familiar to the public,
Watson in fact became, next to Freud, and Pavlov in Russia, one of the
most influential figures of the twentieth century. For, unfortunately,
Watsonian Behaviourism is not a historical curiosity, but the foundation
on which the more sophisticated and immensely influential neo-Behaviourist
systems -- such as Clark Hull's and B.F. Skinner's -- were built. The
more painful absurdities in Watson's books are forgotten or conveniently
slurred over, but the philosophy, programme and strategy of Behaviourism
have remained