The control exercised by the group and by religious and governmental agencies, as well as by parents, employers, associates, and so on, restricts the selfish, primarily reinforced behavior of the individual. It is exercised for just that reason. Certain by-products, however, are not to the advantage of the controller and are often harmful both to the individual and to the group. These are especially likely to be encountered when the control is excessive or inconsistent.
Escape. The individual may simply run away from the controller. The hermit escapes from the control of the ethical group by physically withdrawing from it, as the boy runs away from home; but the controllee may be “withdrawn” without being actually separated. Escape from religious control is represented by disbelief and defection, and from various forms of governmental control by desertion, evasion, renunciation of citizenship, and breaking jail.
Revolt. The individual may counterattack the controlling agent. He may respond to criticism from the group by criticizing it in turn; the liberal accuses the group of being reactionary, the libertine accuses it of being prudish. Vandalism is a more concrete example of counteraggression—toward the group as a whole or toward a specific subgroup, as in the willful destruction of school property. Religious revolt may be directed toward a specific agency, as in protestant reform, or against the theological system used in control, as in atheism. Revolt against governmental control is exemplified, not only by political revolution, but, when the structure of the group permits, by impeachment or a vote of no confidence.
Passive resistance. Another result, far less easily described, consists of simply not behaving in conformity with controlling practices. This often follows when the individual has been extinguished in efforts to escape or revolt. The behavior is epitomized by the mule which fails to respond to the aversive stimulation of the whip. The child, unsuccessful in avoiding or revolting against parental control, simply becomes stubborn. The employee, unable to escape (by resigning) or to revolt in vandalism or other acts of violence, simply “slows down,” “sits down,” or “strikes.” Thoreau’s civil disobedience, practiced perhaps most conspicuously by Gandhi, is the parallel reaction to governmental control.
The controlling agency usually deals with these by-products by intensifying its practices. The escapee is captured and confined more securely. The revolt is put down, and the revolutionist shot. The apostate is excommunicated. A fire is built under the mule, and Thoreau is jailed. The agency may also meet this problem by preparing the individual in advance to control his own tendencies to escape, revolt, or strike. It classifies these types of behavior as wrong, illegal, or sinful, and punishes accordingly. As a result any tendency on the part of the individual to escape, revolt, or strike generates aversive self-stimulation, a reduction in which may reinforce behavior acceptable to the agency. But in the long run the problem cannot be solved in this way. Intensification of control may simply multiply the difficulties. Physical restraint or death may effectively eliminate behavior, but the individual is no longer useful to the group. Restraint is unsuccessful in controlling the covert behavior in which the individual may plan escape or revolt. Restraint also cannot control many sorts of emotional reactions. Techniques designed to generate additional self-control of emotional behavior are, as we have seen, especially inadequate.
The by-products of control which incapacitate the individual or are dangerous either to the individual or to others are the special field of psychotherapy. We shall discuss this as a kind of controlling agency. Among the kinds of behavior which it treats we may distinguish certain effects primarily in the field of emotion and others in operant behavior.
Fear. The controlling practice which leads the individual to escape also gives rise to the emotional pattern of fear. Reflex responses in glands and smooth muscles are first elicited by the aversive stimuli used in punishment and later by any stimuli which have occurred at the same time. These responses may be accompanied by a profound change in operant behavior—an increase in the strength of any behavior which has led to escape and a general weakening of other forms. The individual shows little interest in food, sex, or practical or artistic enterprises, and in the extreme case he may be essentially “paralyzed by fear.”
When the stimuli which have this effect are supplied by the punishing agent, the individual suffers from an excessive fear of his father, the police, God, and so on. When they arise from the occasion upon which punished behavior has occurred, the individual is afraid of such occasions. Thus if he has been punished for sexual behavior, he may become unduly afraid of anything which has to do with sex; if he has been punished for being unclean, he may become unduly afraid of filth; and so on. When the stimuli are generated by the punished behavior itself, the individual is afraid to act—he is, as we say, afraid of himself. It is often difficult, for either the individual himself or anyone else, to identify the stimulation responsible for the emotional pattern. If the condition recurs frequently, as is especially likely to be the case with self-generated stimuli, the fear may become chronic.
The phobias represent excessive fear reactions to circumstances which are not always clearly associated with control. But the fact that they are “unreasonable” fears—fears for which no commensurate causal condition can be found—suggests that they are primarily responses to punishment and that the fear generated by excessive control has simply been displaced (Chapter X).
Anxiety. A common accompaniment of avoidance or escape is anxiety. As we saw in Chapter XI, fear of a future event may be aroused by specific stimuli which have preceded punishing events or by features of the general environment in which such events have occurred. Anxiety may vary in intensity from a slight worry to extreme dread. The condition includes both responses of glands and smooth muscles and marked changes in operant behavior. We imply that the condition is due to controlling practices when we call it shame, guilt, or a sense of sin.
Anger or rage. The emotional pattern which accompanies revolt includes responses of glands and smooth muscles and a well-marked effect upon operant behavior which includes a heightened disposition to act aggressively toward the controlling agent and a weakening of other behavior. The emotion may be displaced from the controlling agent to other people or to things in general. A mild example is a bad temper; an extreme one, sadism. The temper tantrum appears to be a sort of undirected revolt.
Depression. Emotional responses associated with passive resistance are of several kinds. The stubborn child also sulks; the adult may be depressed, resentful, moody, listless, or bored, depending upon minor details of control. (Boredom arises not simply because there is nothing to do but because nothing can be done—either because a situation is unfavorable for action or because the group or a controlling agency has imposed physical or self-restraint.)
All these emotional patterns may, of course, be generated by aversive events which have nothing to do with social control. Thus a storm at sea may generate fear or anxiety, a door which will not open may engender frustration or rage, and something akin to sulking is the emotional counterpart of protracted extinction, as at the end of a long but fruitless struggle to win an argument or repair a bicycle. By far the greater part of the inciting circumstances of this sort, however, are due to the control of the individual by the group or by governmental or religious agencies.
The effects may be severe. Productive patterns of behavior are distorted by strong emotional predispositions, and the operant behavior which is strengthened in emotion may have disastrous consequences. Frequent or chronic emotional responses of glands and smooth muscles may injure the individual’s health. Disorders of the digestive system, including ulcers, and allergic reactions have been traced to chronic responses in fear, anxiety, rage, or depression. These are sometimes called “psychosomatic” disorders. The term carries the unfortunate implication that the illness is the effect of the mind upon the body. As we have seen, it is sometimes correct to say that an emotional state causes a medical disability, as when a chronic response of glands or smooth muscles produces a structural change, such as an ulcer, but both cause and effect are somatic, not psychic. Moreover, an earlier link in the causal chain remains to be identified. The emotional state which produces the disability must itself be accounted for and treated. The manipulable variables of which both the somatic cause and the somatic effect are functions lie in the environmental history of the individual. Some psychosomatic “symptoms” are merely parallel effects of such a prior common cause. For example, an asthmatic attack is not the effect of anxiety, it is part of it.
Control through punishment may also have unforeseen effects upon operant behavior. The process of self-control miscarries when the individual discovers ways of avoiding aversive self-stimulation which prove eventually to be ineffective, troublesome, or dangerous. Emotional reactions may be involved, but we are concerned here with the operant effect only.
Drug addiction as a form of escape. Certain drugs provide a temporary escape from conditioned or unconditioned aversive stimulation as well as from accompanying emotional responses. Alcohol is conspicuously successful. The individual who has engaged in behavior which has been punished, and who therefore feels guilty or ashamed, is reinforced when he drinks alcohol because self-generated aversive stimuli are thus suppressed. A very strong tendency to drink may result from repeated reinforcement, especially if the aversive condition is severe. The word “addiction” is often reserved for the case in which the drug provides escape from the aversive effects called withdrawal symptoms, which are produced by the earlier use of the drug itself. Alcohol may lead to this sort of addiction, but such drugs as morphine and cocaine show it more clearly. Addiction at this stage is a different problem, but the earlier use of the drug can usually be explained by its effect upon the consequences of punishment.
Excessively vigorous behavior. The individual may show an unusually high probability of response which is not “well adapted to reality” in the sense that the behavior cannot be accounted for in terms of current variables. It can sometimes be explained by pointing to an earlier history of control. When effective escape is impossible, for example, a highly aversive condition may evoke ineffective behavior in the form of aimless wandering or searching. Simple “nervousness” is often of this sort. The individual is uneasy and cannot rest, although his behavior cannot be explained plausibly in terms of its current consequences.
Sometimes there are obvious consequences, but we need to appeal to an earlier history to show why they are reinforcing. For example, behavior may provide a measure of escape by generating stimuli which evoke reactions incompatible with the emotional by-products of punishment. Thus in “thrill-seeking” the individual exposes himself to stimuli which evoke responses incompatible with depression or boredom. We explain why the “thrill” is reinforcing by showing that it supplants an aversive result of excessive control. Sometimes the behavior to be explained can be shown to be a form of “doing something else.” A preoccupation which does not appear to offer commensurate positive reinforcement is explained by showing that it avoids the aversive consequences of some other course of action. Some compulsions and obsessions appear to have this effect. A preoccupation with situations in which punished behavior is especially unlikely to occur may be explained in much the same way. When the excessive behavior is an extension of a technique of self-control in which the environment is altered so that it becomes less likely to generate punished behavior, the effect is Freud’s “reaction formation.”
Excessively restrained behavior. The special caution with which one drives a car after an accident or near accident may also be generated by the aversive events used in control. Repeated punishment may produce an inhibited, shy, or taciturn person. In the so-called “hysterical paralyses” the restraint may be complete. The etiology is usually clear when the paralysis is limited to a particular part of the topography of behavior. Thus the individual who is excessively punished for talking may stop talking altogether in “hysterical aphasia.” No control, aversive or otherwise, will succeed in generating verbal behavior. Similarly, the individual who has been punished—perhaps only through self-generated aversive consequences—for striking a friend may develop a paralyzed arm. This is different from the paralysis of fear. It is the difference between being too frightened to move and being afraid to move. The first of these conditions can be generated by an event which is not contingent upon behavior, and it is usually not localized topographically. The second is a result of the punishing consequences of previous movement.
Defective stimulus control. When behavior has been severely punished, either by a controlling agency or by the physical environment, the individual may come to make ineffective or inaccurate discriminative responses. A stimulus similar to that which evoked the punished behavior may evoke no response whatsoever. When the stimulus pattern is complex, we say that the individual “refuses to face the facts.” When, for example, he does not see a very obvious object, we say that he suffers from a “negative hallucination.” All reactions to a given mode of stimulation are absent in hysterical anesthesia. A child may begin by “paying no attention” to a nagging parent, but the behavior of “doing something else instead” may be so successful in avoiding aversive stimulation and possibly aversive emotional responses to such stimulation that a complete “functional” deafness may develop.
A commoner result is simply defective discrimination. In projection, for example, the individual reacts incorrectly or atypically to a given state of affairs, and his behavior can often be traced to the avoidance of effects of control. In a “show of bravado” a situation is characterized as nothing to be afraid of and is therefore less likely to generate the fear for which the individual has been punished. In some hallucinations a situation in which punishment has been received is “seen” as free of any threat. In a delusion of persecution a distorted reaction to the environment permits the individual to escape from the aversive self-stimulation generated by behavior or a failure to behave for which he has been punished.
Defective self-knowledge. The individual may also react defectively to stimuli generated by his own behavior. In simple boasting, for example, he characterizes his own behavior in a way which escapes aversive stimulation. He boasts of achievement to escape the effects of punishment for incompetence, of bravery to escape the effects of punishment for cowardice, and so on. This sort of rationalizing is best exemplified by delusions of grandeur in which all aversive self-stimulation may be effectively masked. It has already been shown that complete lack of self-knowledge—a form of negative hallucination or hysterical anesthesia restricted to self-stimulation—can be attributed to the avoidance of the effects of punishment (Chapter XVIII).
Aversive self-stimulation. One may injure oneself or arrange to be injured by others. One may also deprive oneself of positive reinforcers or arrange to be so deprived by others. These consequences may or may not be contingent upon behavior in the form of punishment, and we have seen that the effect of the contingency is, in any case, not clear. Such self-stimulation is explained if it can be shown that the individual thus avoids even more aversive consequences. If a conditioned aversive stimulus characteristically precedes the unconditioned by an appreciable interval of time, the total effect of the prolonged conditioned stimulus may be more aversive than that of the briefer unconditioned stimulus. The individual can then escape from the anxiety of impending punishment by “getting it over with.” The murderer in Dostoevski’s Crime and Punishment turns himself over to a punishing governmental agent. Religious confession occurs because expiation is less aversive than a sustained sense of sin. It has been argued, particularly by Freud, that “accidents” are sometimes a species of aversive self-stimulation which alleviates a condition of guilt or sin.
It is not always possible to find a specific history of punishment which will explain a given instance of aversive self-stimulation. Why an individual injures himself or arranges to be injured by others “masochistically” may be difficult to explain. In the absence of a more obvious explanation, it may be argued that such behavior reduces a sustained state of shame, guilt, or sin. When many different kinds of responses have been punished under many different circumstances, conditioned aversive stimuli may be widely distributed in the environment, and a condition of anxiety may be chronic. Under these circumstances aversive self-stimulation may be positively reinforcing. Another possible explanation of masochistic self-stimulation is that the process of respondent conditioning has been effective in the wrong direction. In punishment aversive stimuli are paired with the strongly reinforcing consequences of, say, sexual behavior. The expected result is that sexual behavior will automatically generate conditioned aversive stimuli—but the aversive stimuli used in punishment may become positively reinforcing in the same process.
Behavior which is inconvenient or dangerous to the individual himself or to others often requires “treatment.” Formerly this treatment was left to friends, parents, or acquaintances, or to representatives of controlling agencies. In simple “good advice” a course of action which should have advantageous consequences is recommended. A great deal of casual therapy is prescribed in proverbs, folklore, and other forms of lay wisdom.
Psychotherapy represents a special agency which concerns itself with this problem. It is not an organized agency, like a government or religion, but a profession, the members of which observe more or less standardized practices. Psychotherapy has already become an important source of control in the lives of many people, and some account is therefore required here.
Diagnosis. The psychotherapist must of course know something about the patient whom he is treating. He must have certain information about his history, about the behavior which calls for treatment, and about the current circumstances in which the patient lives. The examination of the patient has been heavily emphasized in clinical psychology. How to conduct an interview, how to take a life history, how to analyze trains of thought in free association, how to determine probabilities of response from projective tests or dreams, and how to use these probabilities to infer histories of deprivation, reinforcement, or emotional stimulation have all been studied. Tests of intelligence and other traits have been devised to enable the therapist to predict how readily the patient will react to various kinds of therapy.
It is often implied that diagnosis, merely as the collection of information about the patient, is the only point at which a science of behavior can be helpful in therapy. Once all the facts about an individual have been collected, treatment is left to good judgment and common sense. This is an example of a broad misunderstanding of the application of the methods of science to human behavior. The collecting of facts is only the first step in a scientific analysis. The demonstrating of functional relationships is the second. When the independent variables are under control, such relationships lead directly to control of the dependent variable. In the present case, control means therapy. An adequate science of human behavior should make perhaps a greater contribution to therapy than to diagnosis. Nevertheless, the extension of science to therapy has met with resistance, possibly for certain reasons to be considered in Chapter XXIX.
The steps which must be taken to correct a given condition of behavior follow directly from an analysis of that condition. Whether they can be taken will depend, of course, upon whether the therapist has control over the relevant variables.
Therapy. The initial power of the therapist as a controlling agent arises from the fact that the condition of the patient is aversive and that any relief or promise of relief is therefore positively reinforcing. To explain why the patient turns to the therapist in any given instance requires the analysis of a rather complicated history, much of which is verbal. Assurances of help, various forms of evidence which make such assurances effective, the prestige of the therapist, reports of improvement in other patients, slight signs of early improvement in the patient himself, evidences of the wisdom of the therapist in other matters—all enter into the process but in much too complex a way to be analyzed here. In addition the therapist may use variables which are available to him in personal control or as a member of the ethical group or which derive from his resemblance to members of the patient’s family or to governmental or religious agents who have already established control in other ways.
All in all, however, the original power of the therapist is not very great. Since the effect which he is to achieve requires time, his first task is to make sure that the time will be available. The therapist uses whatever limited power he originally possesses to make sure that the patient will remain in contact with him—that the patient will return for further treatment. As treatment progresses, however, his power increases. As an organized social system develops, the therapist becomes an important source of reinforcement. If he is successful in providing relief, the behavior of the patient in turning to him for help is reinforced. The therapist’s approval may become especially effective. As his knowledge of the patient grows, he may also use positive reinforcers which are, in a sense, beyond his control by pointing up contingencies between particular forms of behavior and particular consequences. He may demonstrate, for example, that various aversive events actually result from the patient’s own behavior. He may suggest modes of action which are likely to be positively reinforced. Once the therapist has acquired the necessary control, he may also suggest schedules or routines which affect levels of deprivation or satiation, which arrange for the presentation of stimuli leading to the conditioning or extinction of emotional reflexes, which eliminate stimulating situations having unfortunate consequences, and so on. These schedules, adopted first because of the verbal control of the therapist, eventually acquire other sources of strength if their effect upon the condition of the patient is reinforcing.
The nonpunishing audience. The commonest current technique of psychotherapy is due to Sigmund Freud. It has been characterized in many different ways in many different theories of behavior. So far as we are concerned here, it may be described simply in this way: the therapist constitutes himself a nonpunishing audience. The process through which he does this may take time. From the point of view of the patient, the therapist is at first only one more member of a society which has exerted excessive control. It is the task of the therapist to establish himself in a different position. He therefore consistently avoids the use of punishment. He does not criticize his patient nor object to his behavior in any way. He does not point out errors in pronunciation, grammar, or logic. In particular, he avoids any sign of counteraggression when the patient criticizes or otherwise injures him. The role of nonpunisher is made clearer if the therapist frequently responds in ways which are incompatible with punishment—for example, if he returns a conspicuous demonstration of friendship for aggressive attack or dismisses the patient’s report of punishable behavior with a casual, “That’s interesting.”
As the therapist gradually establishes himself as a nonpunishing audience, behavior which has hitherto been repressed begins to appear in the repertoire of the patient. For example, the patient may recall a previously forgotten episode in which he was punished. Early experiences in which aversive control was first felt, and which have been long repressed, often supply dramatic examples. The patient may also begin to describe current tendencies to behave in punishable ways—for example, aggressively. He may also begin to behave in punishable ways: he may speak ungrammatically, illogically, or in obscene or blasphemous terms, or he may criticize or insult the therapist. Nonverbal behavior which has previously been punished may also begin to appear: he may become socially aggressive or may indulge himself selfishly. If such behavior has been wholly repressed, it may at first reach only the covert level; the individual may begin to behave verbally or nonverbally “to himself”—as in fantasying punished behavior. The behavior may later be brought to the overt level. The patient may also begin to exhibit strong emotions: he may have a good cry, make a violent display of temper, or be “hysterically” silly.
If, in the face of such behavior, the therapist is successful in maintaining his position as a nonpunisher, the process of reducing the effect of punishment is accelerated. More and more punished behavior makes its appearance. If, however, the therapist becomes critical or otherwise punishes or threatens to punish, or if previously punished behavior begins to be emitted too rapidly, the process may suddenly cease. The aversive condition which arises to reverse the trend is sometimes spoken of as “resistance.”
There is a second stage in the therapeutic process. The appearance of previously punished behavior in the presence of’ a nonpunishing audience makes possible the extinction of some of the effects of punishment. This is the principal result of such therapy. Stimuli which are automatically generated by the patient’s own behavior become less and less aversive and less and less likely to generate emotional reactions. The patient feels less wrong, less guilty, or less sinful. As a direct consequence he is less likely to exhibit the various forms of operant behavior which, as we have seen, provide escape from such self-generated stimulation.
The principal technique of psychotherapy is thus designed to reverse behavioral changes which have come about as the result of punishment. Very frequently this punishment has been administered by religious or governmental agencies. There is, therefore, a certain opposition between psychotherapy and religious and governmental control The opposition is also seen when the psychotherapist advocates changes in established controlling techniques. For example, he may recommend a modification of police action against young offenders or certain types of psychopathic personalities. This opposition has attracted considerable attention. Representatives of some religious agencies have accused psychotherapists of fostering immoral tendencies, and, for similar reasons, government officials have resisted reforms proposed by psychotherapists.
Although there is a fundamental opposition in the behavioral processes employed, there is not necessarily any difference in the behavior which these three agencies attempt to establish. The psychotherapist is interested in correcting certain by-products of control. Even though he may dispute the efficacy of certain techniques, he will probably not question the need for the behavior which the religious or governmental practice is designed to establish. In avoiding the by-products of excessive control, he may reinstate a certain amount of selfish behavior in the individual by weakening the aversive stimulation which results from religious or governmental control; but he will agree that selfish behavior must be suppressed by the group and by agencies operating within and for the group, and he must prepare his patient to accept this control.
The techniques available to religious and governmental agencies are extremely powerful, and they are frequently misused with disadvantageous results both to the individual and to the group. Some degree of countercontrol on the part of psychotherapy or some similar agency is therefore often needed. Since the variables under the control of the therapist are relatively weak, and since he must operate within certain ethical, religious, and legal limits, he can scarcely be regarded as a serious threat. Whether we can decide ultimately upon the “best” degree of religious or governmental control will be considered in Section VI.
What is “wrong” with the individual who displays these by-products of punishment is easily stated. A particular personal history has produced an organism whose behavior is disadvantageous or dangerous. In what sense it is disadvantageous or dangerous must be specified in each case by noting the consequences both to the individual himself and to others. The task of the therapist is to supplement a personal history in such a way that behavior no longer has these characteristics.
This is not, however, the traditional view. The field of psychotherapy is rich in explanatory fictions. Behavior itself has not been accepted as a subject matter in its own right, but only as an indication of something wrong somewhere else. The task of therapy is said to be to remedy an inner illness of which the behavioral manifestations are merely “symptoms.” Just as religious agencies maximize salvation or piety, and governmental agencies justice, freedom, or security, so psychotherapy is dedicated to the maximizing of mental health or personal adjustment. These terms are usually negative because they are defined by specifying unhealthy or maladjusted behavior which is absent in health or adjustment. Frequently, the condition to be corrected is called “neurotic,” and the thing to be attacked by psychotherapy is then identified as a “neurosis.” The term no longer carries its original implication of a derangement of the nervous system, but it is nevertheless an unfortunate example of an explanatory fiction. It has encouraged the therapist to avoid specifying the behavior to be corrected or showing why it is disadvantageous or dangerous. By suggesting a single cause for multiple disorders it has implied a uniformity which is not to be found in the data. Above all, it has encouraged the belief that psychotherapy consists of removing certain inner causes of mental illness, as the surgeon removes an inflamed appendix or cancerous growth or as indigestible food is purged from the body. We have seen enough of inner causes to understand why this doctrine has given psychotherapy an impossible assignment. It is not an inner cause of behavior but the behavior itself which—in the medical analogy of catharsis—must be “got out of the system.”
The belief that certain kinds of “pent-up” behavior cause trouble until the organism is able to get rid of them is at least as old as the Greeks. Aristotle, for example, argued that tragedy had a beneficial effect in purging the individual of emotional behavior. On the same analogy it has been argued that competitive sports permit both the participant and the spectator to rid themselves of aggressive tendencies. It has been argued that the human infant has a certain amount of sucking behavior which he must eventually get rid of, and that if he does not exhaust this behavior in the normal process of nursing, he will suck his fingers or other objects. We have seen that it is meaningful to say that an organism is disposed to emit behavior of a given form in a given amount. Such behavior spends itself in the process of extinction, for example. But it does not follow that a potential disposition causes trouble or has any other effect upon the organism until it has been spent. There is some evidence that sucking behavior in the infant is reinforced by nursing and is then made more rather than less likely to occur. It is also a tenable hypothesis that competitive sports generate rather than relieve aggressive tendencies. In any case, the variables to be considered in dealing with a probability of response are simply the response itself and the independent variables of which it is a function. We have no reason to appeal to pent-up behavior as a causal agent.
On the assumption that the inner causes of neurotic or maladjusted behavior are subject to gross physiological assault, cures are sometimes attempted by administering drugs, by performing surgery upon the nervous system, or by using drugs or electric shock to set off violent convulsions. Such therapy is obviously directed toward a supposed underlying condition rather than toward the behavior itself or the manipulable variables outside the organism to which the behavior may be traced. Even “functional” therapy, in which external variables are manipulated, is often described with the same figure of speech. The therapist is regarded as rooting out a source of trouble. The conception is not far removed from the view—which large numbers of people still hold—that neurotic behavior arises because the Devil or some other intruding personality is in temporary “possession” of the body. The traditional treatment consists of exorcising the Devil—driving him out of the individual by creating circumstances which are appropriately aversive to him—and some treatments of multiple personality differ from this only in avoiding theological implications. The lesser demons of modern theory are anxieties, conflicts, repressed wishes, and repressed memories. Just as pent-up emotion is purged, so conflict is resolved and repressed wishes and memories are released.
This view of mental illness and therapy owes most to Sigmund Freud. It appears to have withstood assault largely because of Freud’s contributions in other directions. His great achievement, as a disciple of his said recently, was to apply the principle of cause and effect to human behavior. Aspects of behavior which had hitherto been regarded as whimsical, aimless, or accidental, Freud traced to relevant variables. Unfortunately, he chose to represent the relationships he discovered with an elaborate set of explanatory fictions. He characterized the ego, superego, and id as inhabitants of a psychic or mental world subdivided into regions of conscious, co-conscious, and unconscious mind. He divided among these personalities a certain amount of psychic energy, which flowed from one to the other in a sort of hydraulic system. Curiously enough, it was Freud himself who prepared the way for dismissing these explanatory fictions. By insisting that many mental events could not be directly observed, even by the individual himself, he widened the scope of the psychic fiction. Freud took full advantage of the possibilities, but at the same time he encouraged an analysis of the processes of inference through which such events might be known. He did not go so far as to conclude that references to such events could be avoided altogether; but this was the natural consequence of a further examination of the evidence.
Freud’s conceptions of mental disease and therapy were closely related to his conception of a mental life. Psychoanalysis was regarded as depth psychology, concerned with discovering inner and otherwise unobservable conflicts, repressions, and springs of action. The behavior of the organism was often regarded as a relatively unimportant by-product of a furious struggle taking place beneath the surface of the mind. A wish which has been repressed as the result of aversive consequences struggles to escape. In doing so it resorts to certain devices which Freud called “dynamisms”—tricks which the repressed wish uses to evade the effects of punishment. Therapy is concerned with discovering the repressed wish and rooting it out, or occasionally repressing it more securely, so that the symptoms will disappear.
The present view of therapy is quite different. The Freudian wish is a device for representing a response with a given probability of occurrence. Any effect of “repression” must be the effect of the variables which have led either to the response itself or to the repressing behavior. We have to ask why the response was emitted in the first place, why it was punished, and what current variables are active. The answers should account for the neurotic behavior. Where, in the Freudian scheme, behavior is merely the symptom of a neurosis, in the present formulation it is the direct object of inquiry.
Let us consider the apparent result of the struggle of a wish to express itself. An example which permits us to observe the principal Freudian dynamisms is sibling rivalry. Let us say that two brothers compete for the affection of their parents and for other reinforcers which must be divided between them. As a result, one brother behaves aggressively toward the other and is punished, by his brother or by his parents. Let us suppose that this happens repeatedly. Eventually any situation in which aggressive action toward the brother is likely to take place or any early stage of such action will generate the conditioned aversive stimulation associated with anxiety or guilt. This is effective from the point of view of the other brother or the punishing parent because it leads to the self-control of aggressive behavior; the punished brother is now more likely to engage in activities which compete with and displace his aggression. In this sense he “represses” his aggression. The repression is successful if the behavior is so effectively displaced that it seldom reaches the incipient state at which it generates anxiety. It is unsuccessful if anxiety is frequently generated. Other possible consequences, which are described by the so-called dynamisms, are as follows:
The same punishment may lead the individual to repress any knowledge of his aggressive tendencies (Chapters XVII and XVIII). Not only does he not act aggressively toward his brother, he does not even “know” that he has tendencies to do so.
He may control himself by changing the external environment so that it is less likely to evoke aggressive behavior, not only in himself but in others. As an example of reaction formation, he may engage in social work, in campaigns against racial discrimination, or in support of a philosophy of brotherly love. We explain his behavior by showing that it contributes to the suppression of his own aggressive impulses and hence toward a reduction in the conditioned aversive stimulation resulting from punishment (Chapter XV).
He may actually injure his brother but rationalize his conduct. For example, he may discipline his brother “for his own good” or may be especially energetic in carrying bad news to him “because he ought to know the worst.” These expressions describe the behavior in such a way that punishment is withheld by others and conditioned aversive stimulation fails to be generated in the individual’s own behavior (Chapter XVIII).
He may sublimate his aggression by taking up an occupation in which such behavior is condoned. For example, he may join the armed services or the police or get employment in an abattoir or wrecking company. This is response induction if different forms of the behavior of striking are strengthened by a variable which strengthens striking his brother (Chapter VI); it is stimulus induction if different stimuli which show any property in common with his brother evoke striking.
He may fantasy injuring or killing his brother. If this also generates aversive stimulation, he may fantasy injuring or killing other people. If he has the talent, he may write stories about the murder of a brother, or if there is anxiety in connection with the word “brother,” about other murders (Chapter XVIII).
He may dream of injuring or killing his brother or, if this generates aversive stimulation, of injuring or killing someone who symbolizes his brother—perhaps an animal which in another part of the dream takes on his brother’s features (Chapter XVIII).
He may displace his aggression by “irrationally” injuring an innocent person or thing (Chapter X). This may occur simply because emotional responses show stimulus induction—a man who is angry with an absent office boy takes it out on another employee—or because the displaced behavior will not be punished, at least so severely—a man who is angry with his boss takes it out on the office boy.
He may engage in aggressive wit by saying something which in one sense injures his brother but in another escapes censure. The remark is injurious and punishable if it is attributed to one variable, but not if it is attributed to another. The response is witty simply in the sense of being a function of two variables (Chapter XIV).
He may identify himself with prize fighters or with characters in a sadistic movie or in stories about men who injure or kill their brothers, in the sense that he will be highly disposed to imitate their verbal and nonverbal behavior (Chapter XIV). He will be reinforced by such stories and will report this fact, together with the emotional reaction common to positive reinforcers, by saying he “enjoys” them.
He may project his aggression by describing a picture in which two men are fighting as a picture of brothers (Chapter XIV), in the sense that he is disposed to imitate such behavior and to suppose that the men in the picture are responding to the same variables.
He may respond aggressively in a Freudian slip—for example, by saying, “I never said I didn’t hate my brother” instead of “I never said I hated my brother” (Chapter XIV).
He may forget to keep an appointment with his brother or with anyone who resembles him (Chapter XIV).
He may escape anxiety about punishment by “punishing himself”—by masochistic behavior, by forcing himself to undertake arduous or dangerous work, or by encouraging accidents.
He may develop certain physical symptoms, especially when he is with his brother. These may be a characteristic form of competitive behavior from which he gains an advantage, or the presence of his brother may arouse strong responses of glands and smooth muscles which have an injurious effect.
It would be difficult to prove that all these manifestations are due to the early punishment of aggressive behavior toward a brother. But they are reasonable consequences of such punishment, and the early history may be appealed to if no other variables can be discovered to account for the behavior. (If the behavior has no connection with such a history, there is so much the less to explain in a scientific analysis.)
Such manifestations are simply the responses of a person who has had a particular history. They are neither symptoms nor the surreptitious expression of repressed wishes or impulses. The dynamisms are not the clever machinations of an aggressive impulse struggling to escape from the restraining censorship of the individual or of society, but the resolution of complex sets of variables. Therapy does not consist of releasing a trouble-making impulse but of introducing variables which compensate for or correct a history which has produced objectionable behavior. Pent-up emotion is not the cause of disordered behavior; it is part of it. Not being able to recall an early memory does not produce neurotic symptoms; it is itself an example of ineffective behavior. It is quite possible that in therapy the pent-up emotion and the behavioral symptom may disappear at the same time or that a repressed memory will be recalled when maladjusted behavior has been corrected. But this does not mean that one of these events is the cause of the other. They may both have been products of an environmental history which therapy has altered.
In emphasizing “neurotic” behavior itself rather than any inner condition said to explain it, it may be argued that we are committing the unforgivable sin of “treating the symptom rather than the cause.” This expression is often applied to attempts to remove objectionable features of behavior without attention to causal factors—for example, “curing” stammering by a course of vocal exercises, faulty posture by the application of shoulder braces, or thumb-sucking by coating the thumb with a bitter substance. Such therapy appears to disregard the underlying disorder of which these characteristics of behavior are symptoms. But in arguing that behavior is the subject matter of therapy rather than the symptom of a subject matter, we are not making the same mistake. By accounting for a given example of disadvantageous behavior in terms of a personal history and by altering or supplementing that history as a form of therapy, we are considering the very variables to which the traditional theorist must ultimately turn for an explanation of his supposed inner causes.
There are many other ways in which behavior which calls for remedial action may be corrected. When the difficulty cannot be traced to the excessive use of punishment or to other aversive circumstances in the history of the individual, different therapeutic techniques must be developed. There is the converse case, for example, in which ethical, governmental, or religious control has been inadequate. The individual may not have been in contact with controlling agents, he may have moved to a different culture where his early training is inadequate, or he may not be readily accessible to control. Therapy will then consist of supplying additional controlling variables. When the individual is wholly out of control, it is difficult to find effective therapeutic techniques. Such an individual is called psychotic.
Sometimes the therapist must construct a new repertoire which will be effective in the world in which the patient finds himself. Suitable behavior already in the repertoire of the patient may need to be strengthened, or additional responses may need to be added. Since the therapist cannot foresee all the circumstances in which the patient will find himself, he must also set up a repertoire of self-control through which the patient will be able to adjust to circumstances as they arise. Such a repertoire consists mainly of better ways of escaping from the aversive self-stimulation conditioned by punishment.
Such constructive techniques may be needed after the nonpunishing audience of the therapist has had its effect. If the condition which is being corrected is the by-product of controlling circumstances which no longer exist in the life of the patient, alleviation of the effects of excessive control may be enough. But if the patient is likely to be subjected to continued excessive or unskillful control, therapy must be more constructive. The patient may be taught to avoid occasions upon which he is likely to behave in such a way as to be punished, but this may not be sufficient. An effective repertoire, particularly in techniques of self-control, must be constructed.
As another possible source of trouble, the individual may have been, or may be, strongly reinforced for behavior which is disadvantageous or dangerous. Behavior which violates ethical, governmental, or religious codes is often by its very nature strongly reinforcing. Sometimes, accidental contingencies may also arise. In Sacha Guitry’s film, The Story of a Cheat, a child is punished for some trivial misbehavior by being denied his supper. But the supper turns out to be poisonous, and the child is the only one of a large family to survive. The implication that the child will then dedicate himself to a life of crime is not entirely fanciful. Positive reinforcement in atypical situations produces other forms of ineffective or even crippling behavior. For example, the social reinforcement supplied by a particular person may become very powerful, and it may be contingent upon behavior which is not effective in the world at large. Thus when a solicitous parent supplies an unusual measure of affection and attention to a sick child, any behavior on the part of the child which emphasizes his illness is strongly reinforced. It is not surprising that the child continues to behave in a similar fashion when he is no longer ill. This may begin as simple malingering, when it is scarcely to be distinguished from the behavior of the malingerer who claims to have been injured in an accident in order to collect damages, but it may pass into the more acute condition of hysterical illness if the child himself becomes unable to identify the relevant variables or correctly appraise the possibilities of his own behavior. Other sorts of social consequences have similar effects. The child who is angry with his parents is reinforced when he acts in any way which injures them—for example, in any way which annoys them. If such a condition is long sustained, a repertoire may be established which will work to the disadvantage of the child in his dealings with other people. One obvious remedial technique for behavior which is the product of excessive reinforcement is to arrange new contingencies in which the behavior will be extinguished. The child is no longer reinforced with affection for feigning illness or with a strong emotional response for being annoying.
Just as the traditional conception of responsibility is abandoned as soon as governments turn to techniques of control other than the use of punishment, so the conception of therapy as the rooting out of inner causes of trouble is not likely to be invoked to explain these constructive techniques. There is, however, a roughly parallel explanation which has been applied to all techniques of therapy. When a therapist encounters a patient for the first time, he is presented with a “problem” in the sense of Chapter XVI. The patient usually shows a novel pattern of disadvantageous or dangerous behavior, together with a novel history in terms of which that behavior is to be understood. The particular course of therapy needed in altering or supplementing this history may not be immediately obvious. However, the therapist may eventually “see what is wrong” and be able to suggest a remedial course of action; this is his solution to the problem. Now therapeutic experience has shown that when such a solution is proposed to an individual, it may not be effective even though, so far as we know, it is correct. But if the patient arrives at the solution himself, he is far more likely to adopt an effective course of action. The technique of the therapist takes this fact into account. Just as the psychoanalyst may wait for a repressed memory to make itself manifest, so the nonanalytic therapist waits for the emergence of a solution from the patient. But here again we may easily misunderstand the causal relation. “Finding a solution” is not therapy, no matter who does the finding. Telling the patient what is wrong may make no substantial change in the relevant independent variables and hence may make little progress toward a cure. When the patient himself sees what is wrong, it is not the fact that the solution has come from within him which is important but that, in order to discover his own solution, his behavior with respect to his problem must have greatly altered. It follows from the nature of disadvantageous or dangerous behavior that a substantial change must be accomplished if the individual is to identify the relevant variables. A solution on the part of the patient thus represents a substantial degree of progress. No such progress is implied when the therapist states the solution. Therapy consists, not in getting the patient to discover the solution to his problem, but in changing him in such a way that he is able to discover it.
The therapist engages in therapy primarily for economic reasons. Therapy is a profession. The services which the therapist renders are reinforcing enough to the patient and others to permit him to exchange them for money (Chapter XXV). Usually the therapist is also reinforced by his success in alleviating the conditions of his patients. This is particularly apt to be true in a culture which reinforces helping others as a standard ethical practice. Frequently another important sort of reinforcement for the therapist is his success in manipulating human behavior. He may have a personal interest, for example, in proving the value of a particular theory of neurotic behavior or of therapeutic practice. These return effects upon the agency will determine in the long run the composition of the profession of psychotherapy and the uniformity of its practices.
At certain stages in psychotherapy the therapist may gain a degree of control which is more powerful than that of many religious or governmental agents. There is always the possibility, as in any controlling agency, that the control will be misused. The countercontrol which discourages the misuse of power is represented by the ethical standards and practices of the organized profession of psychotherapy. The danger of misuse may, as we shall see in Chapter XXIX, explain the current popularity of theories of psychotherapy which deny that human behavior can in the last analysis be controlled or which deliberately refuse to accept responsibility for control.