gat

parents to surrender quietly:
I am trying to dangle a stimulus in front of you which if acted upon will
gradually change this universe. For the universe will change if you bring your
children up not in the freedom of the libertine, but in behavioristic
freedom....Will not these children in turn with their better ways of living and
thinking replace us as society, and in turn bring up their children in a still more
scientific way, until the world finally becomes a place fit for human habitation?
It was an offer School wasn’t about to let your kid refuse. Edna Heidbredder was the first insider
to put the bell on this cat in a wonderful little book, Seven Psychologies (1933). A psychology
professor from Minnesota, she described the advent of behaviorism this way seven decades ago:
The simple fact is that American psychologists had grown restive under
conventional restraints. They were finding the old problems lifeless and thin,
they were "half sick of shadows" and...welcomed a plain, downright revolt.
[Behaviorism] called upon its followers to fight an enemy who must be utterly
destroyed, not merely to parley with one who might be induced to modify his
ways.
John B. Watson, a fast-buck huckster turned psychologist, issued this warning in 1919: The
human creature is purely a stimulus-response machine. The notion of consciousness is a "useless
and vicious" survival of medieval religious "superstition." Behaviorism does not "pretend to be
disinterested psychology," it is "frankly" an applied science. Miss Heidbredder continues:
"Behaviorism is distinctly interested in the welfare and salvation—the strictly secular
salvation—of the human race."
She saw behaviorism making "enormous conquests" of other psychologies through its "violence"
and "steady infiltration" of the marketplace, figuring "in editorials, literary criticism, social and
political discussions, and sermons.... Its program for bettering humanity by the most efficient
methods of science has made an all but irresistible appeal to the attention of the American public."
"It has become a crusade," she said, "against the enemies of science, much more than a mere
school of psychology." It has "something of the character of a cult." Its adherents "are devoted to
a cause; they are in possession of a truth." And the heart of that truth is "if human beings are to be
improved we must recognize the importance of infancy," for in infancy "the student may see
behavior in the making, may note the repertoire of reactions a human being has...and discover the
ways in which they are modified...." (emphasis added) During the early years a child may be
taught "fear," "defeat," and "surrender"—or of course their opposites. From "the standpoint of
practical control" youth was the name of the game for this aggressive cult; it flowed like poisoned
syrup into every nook and cranny of the economy, into advertising, public relations, packaging,
radio, press, television in its dramatic programming, news programming, and public affairs shows,
into military training, "psychological" warfare, and intelligence operations, but while all this was
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