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do not run away because we are afraid but are afraid because we run away. In other words, what we feel
when we feel afraid is our behavior — the very behavior which in the traditional view expresses the feeling
250 and is explained by it. But how many of those who have considered James's argument have noted that no
antecedent event has in fact been pointed out? Neither «because» should be taken seriously. No
explanation has been given as to why we run away and feel afraid.
255 16. Whether we regard ourselves as explaining feelings or the behavior said to be caused by feelings,
we give very little attention to antecedent circumstances. The psychotherapist leams about the early life of
his patient almost exclusively from the patient's memories, which are known to be unreliable, and he may
260 even argue that what is important is not what actually happened but what the patient remembers. In the
psychoanalytic literature there must be at least a hundred references to felt anxiety for every reference to a
punishing episode to which anxiety might be traced. We even seem to prefer antecedent histories which are
265 clearly out of reach. There is a good deal of current interest, for example, in what must have happened
during the evolution of the species to explain human behavior, and we seem to speak with special
confidence just because what actually happened can only be inferred.
270 17. Unable to understand how or why the person we see behaves as he does, we attribute his behavior to
a person we cannot see, whose behavior we cannot explain either but about whom we are not inclined to
ask questions. We probably accept this strategy not so much because of any lack of interest or power but
275 because of a longstanding conviction that for much of human behavior there are no relevant antecedents.
The function of the inner man is to provide an explanation which will not be explained in turn. Explanation
stops with him. He is not a mediator between past history and current behavior, he is a center from which
280 behavior emanates. He initiates, originates, and creates, and in doing so he remains, as he was for the
Greeks, divine. We say that he is autonomous — and, so far as a science of behavior is concerned, that
means miraculous.
285 18. The position is, of course, vulnerable. Autonomous man serves to explain only the things we are not
yet able to explain in other ways. His existence depends upon our ignorance, and he naturally loses status
as we come to know more about behavior. The task of a scientific analysis is to explain how the behavior of
a person as a physical system is related to the conditions under which the human species evolved and
290 the conditions under which the individual lives. Unless there is indeed some capricious or creative
intervention, these events must be related, and no intervention is in fact needed. The contingencies of
survival responsible for man's genetic endowment would produce tendencies to act aggressively, not feel
295 ings of aggression. The punishment of sexual behavior changes sexual behavior, and any feelings which
may arise are at best by-products. Our age is not suffering from anxiety but from the accidents, crimes,
300 wars, and other dangerous and painful things to which people are so often exposed. Young people drop out
of school, refuse to get jobs, and associate only with others of their own age not because they feel alienated
but because of defective social environments in homes, schools, factories, and elsewhere.
305 19. We can follow the path taken by physics and biology by turning directly to the relation between
behavior and the environment and neglecting supposed mediating states of mind. We do not need to try to
discover what personalities, states of mind, feelings, traits of character, plans, purposes, intentions,
310 or the other prerequisites of autonomous man really are in order to get on with a scientific analysis of
behavior.
From: Beyond Freedom And Dignity, by B.F. Skinner. Copyright @ 1971 by B.F. Skinner. Reprinted in
Hogins and Yarber, «Models for Writing».
«HOW PSYCHOLOGY SANCTIONS THE CULT OF THE SELF»
by Michael Wallach and Lise Wallach
1. THEORIES IN ACADEMIC PSYCHOLOGY