Journal of Religion and Health, Vol. 21, No. 1, Spring 1982

A Transpersonal Critique of Behaviorism E D W A R D E. T H O R N T O N A B S T R A C ~ Behavioral psychology has been neglected by pastoral psychologists to the hurt of both. An examination of the principles of behaviorism and some of the data on the behavioral treatment of the neuroses is followed by an analysis of B.F. Skinner's philosophy of science. A critique is developed from the perspective of transpersonal psychology, concluding with a possible reconciliation of the opposites of behavioral and transpersonal ways of knowing.

Behavioral psychology is conspicuously absent in the literature of pastoral psychology.' Other than a few symposia on B. F. Skinner 2 and a spate of reviews of Skinner's Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971), most of which discount the empirical as well as the philosophic components of behaviorism, an ostrich posture characterizes the pastoral response to the behaviorist challenge. An ostrich is highly vulnerable! And so are we if we remain inattentive to behavioral psychology. The first word to be said about behaviorism is that it works! It is also popular and highly respectable in university psychology programs and counseling clinics. It is dominant in educational psychology and is the daily bread of public school teachers. It is also anathema to most humanists and to traditional religionists. When humanists and theists agree on naming a contemporary devil, we are inclined to join in to chant their exorcism with them and to relegate the matter to the vaults of inattention. Yet we have learned that to attend to what is neglected usually yields a high payoff. Our purpose, therefore, is to open the vault, explore its contents, allow our resistance to what we find there to be seen for what it is, and finally to try to integrate the "not me" aspects of behaviorism into a "not yet, b u t becoming" profile that transcends behaviorism, humanism, and traditional theism. We do so committed to an emerging transpersonal model. Although the purpose of this article does not allow for a discussion of transpersonal psychology, it does require a definition: Transpersonal psychology is the s t u d y of subjective processes associated with energy transformations between persons and cosmic entities. A transpersonal approach takes subjectivity to its ultimate limits and there, at the outer limits of subjectivity, discovers an absolute objectivity, a cosmic Other. The cosmic Edward E. Thornton, Ph.D., is the Lawrence and Charlotte Hoover Professor of Pastoral Care, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky. 0022-4197/8211300-0008500.95

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entities with which transpersonal psychology is concerned are empirical entities--known by experience and subject to verification by experiment. The curious may check the footnotes at this point2 Otherwise, we simply declare our own bias and proceed to give behavioral psychology as honest a reading as possible. Behaviorist principles will be identified and explained initially. Applications to the treatment of the neuroses will be noted. The primary spokesman of behaviorism as a philosophy, B. F. Skinner, will be engaged and the merits of the system summarized. Finally, a critique is developed from a transpersonal perspective, out of which emerges the possibility of a reconciliation of opposites. Behaviorism is an application of certain principles of learning to the totality of human functioning. The basic principle is that "personality is acquired and maintained through the use of positive and negative reinforcers." Reinforcers are anything that increases the probability of a behavior occurring again. They may be positive, such as eye contact, hellos, expressions of appreciation and affection, or promotions and awards. They may be negative (aversive), such as avoidance, criticism, or punishment. Reinforcers may be applied through personal relationships as in modeling or through the impersonal structures of pay raises, improved benefits, and promotions in status. (Demotions, static pay scales, and layoffs are reinforcers also.) Whatever the variables, the principle is the same: Personality, like a computer, is programmed by reinforcers that are, in the main, within one's environment. 4 Behavior is lawful according to behaviorists. The central aim of psychology, therefore, is the prediction and control of behavior. B. F. Skinner brings the issue of prediction and control to its most provocative point in his book, B e y o n d Freedom and Dignity. 5 Here he advances a basic behaviorist dogma that all behavior conforms to discernible psychological laws. The so-called lawfulness of behavior is taken to mean that human beings are determined by the reinforcers that are given in heredity and operative in environment. The ability to predict behavior on the basis of these laws gives to those who are strong and clever the ability to control behavior. One is free only to avoid or escape the aversive stimuli in his environment. Freedom means the ability to control the reinforcers that shape one's behavior, maximizing positive reinforcers and minimizing negative ones. Applying his thesis to the prediction and control of larger social systems, Skinner says: We are all controlled by the world in which we live and part of that world has been and will be controlled by men. The question is this: Are we to be controlled by accident, by tyrants, or by ourselves in effective cultural design?~ Behaviorists not only take a strongly deterministic view of human behavior but also reject mentalism. All concepts of mental functioning such as mind, consciousness, and volition; fears, loyalties, dreams, and ideals; psychodynamic motivations or spiritual aspirations are rejected "on the grounds that they are not objectively verifiable and do not have direct reference to natural

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events. ''7 Clearly the computer is the model. Persons behave as they are programmed to behave. Environmental stimuli produce behavioral responses. What happens within the organism that receives the stimuli and affects the behavior is secondary and derivative to the external stimuli being applied. Behaviorism today has moved beyond the original formulation of Pavlov, Thorndike, and Watson, i.e., S-R (Stimulus-Response), to a revised formulation: S-O-R (Stimulus-Organism-Response). The inclusion of the organism in the equation does not invalidate the computer analogy, however. Rather, the organism is understood to be the product of past reinforcement schedules and]or genetic determinants unique to itself. What appear to be autonomous, original responses to stimuli are, in reality, behaviors that are conditioned by peculiarities in the construction of the human computer at conception and by previous programs fed into the computer throughout one's growth. Applied to the neuroses, behaviorism means to Eysenck and Rachman that "there is no neurosis underlying the symptom, but merely the symptom itself. Get rid of the s y m p t o m . . , and you have eliminated the neurosis. '~ Offensive as this is to persons "conditioned" to interpret experience in terms of shame and guilt, selfishness and sin, or the antidotes of penitence and will power, unselfishness and faith, evidence abounds to support the behaviorist's assumptions. An analysis of the first thousand cases treated by the methods of behavior therapy and reported in the literature revealed that "behavior therapy had been successfully used in a wide range of neurotic conditions including: phobias.., hysteria.., enuresis.., sexual disorders...tics...obsessional neuroses...tension states...children's d i s o r d e r s . . . " and even in some cases, psychotic disorders2 Approximately eighty percent of these patients were cured or markedly improved. The length and amount of treatment required to effect these recoveries were significantly smaller than those required by prevailing modes of therapy (comparisons being made with analytic or other relational types of therapies).'~ No wonder, then, that most behaviorists find "the very notion of personality is unnecessary. '''I Watson's 1930 definition of personality still fits the perceptions of most behaviorists that personality "is the sum of activities that can be discovered by actual observation for a long enough period of time to give reliable information."2 The Goliath of behaviorism today is B.F. Skinner. Skinner is an intellectual giant: the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, recipient of the National Medal of Science from President Lyndon Johnson, and the Gold Medal of the American Psychological Foundation. Standing astride a small mound of empirical data, Skinner taunts humanistic psychologists and transpersonalists alike. He presents himself as a protagonist opposed to every thinker from the ancient Greeks to the twentieth century. Our strength, says Skinner, is in science and technology, and our weakness is the failure to develop a science and technology of human behavior.13 A technology of behavior is possible, however, provided we reorder our values to give behavioristic psychology a high place, reject traditional views of an "inner man" or of mentalism, and look to the environment

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exclusively for clues as to the determinants of behavior. '4 The errors of traditionalism are all rooted in the assumptions of freedom and dignity, t h a t is, in a view of an autonomous man. This view must be replaced by an understanding of the environment as a selecting and shaping determinant of man. Once man loses his sense of individual identity in a species identity and undertakes the task of designing better environments, we will have better men. If one raises questions of value, Skinner replies t h a t the survival of one's culture is the ultimate value, human engineering the ultimate hope. ~5 Responding to criticisms of his assumptions and claims in Beyond Freedom and Dignity, Skinner wrote a sequel, About Behaviorism {1974). 16 Here he a t t e m p t s to write a philosophy of a science of behavior. The central issue for Skinner's apologia is the function of mental processes associated with feelings, purposes, and a sense of self, or as Skinner tags it, " m e n t a l i s m . " Mentalism m u s t be ignored in a science of behavior because it inhibits scientific curiosity about the sources of behavior in bodily states and environmental (operant} conditioners. The prediction and control of behavior are the goal of a science of behavior, and to achieve certainty in prediction and control the behavioral scientist m u s t a t t e n d exclusively to the organism's external environment. The internal environment of self-awareness, self-control, and self-transcendence is secondary and behaviorally impotent, anyway. Attention to such mentalistic matters can only divert a true science and lead it down a dead-end road to nowhere.'7 Skinner does not deny the existence of mentalisms. He only denies their importance. Subjective or private events are not unobservable, Skinner admits. But he "questions the nature of the object observed and the reliability of the observations. ''~s The reality being observed is the body, and most somatic functioning is beyond the reach of introspection. In a word, the human species "begins and remains a biological system, and the behavioristic position is t h a t it is nothing more than that. ''~9 The content of introspection, therefore, is epiphenomenal; it is derived from bodily functions and environmental reinforcers. Finally, then, headaches, heartaches, and the silent, internal dialogues with one's self amount to the same thing. Each is an organismic response to the environmental stimuli, useful as a signal of stress perhaps but otherwise of no value in the prediction and control of behavior. Specific to the charge t h a t behaviorism assigns no role to a self or sense of self, Skinner answers t h a t a sense of self in a scientific or technological sense is also a sense of self. A self is defined as "a repertoire of behavior appropriate to a given set of contingencies. ''2~ Skinner explains the phenomena of multiple selves--the self known (or resisting being known} as distinct from the knowing self, the self controlled (or uncontrolled} as distinct from the controlling self--by saying t h a t one may have two or more repertoires generated by different sets of contingencies. 2~ The dominant repertoire may be said to be conscious, the subordinate to be unconscious. Does behaviorism dehumanize persons? Skinner answers: The essential issue is autonomy. Is man in control of his own destiny or is he not? 9 9But man remains what he has always been, and his most conspicuous achievement

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has been the design and construction of a world which has freed him from constraints and vastly extended his range. = Behaviorism is not reductionistic, Skinner asserts. It simply provides an alternative account of the same data about human beings? ~ With regard to the issues of morality and justice, Skinner assumes t h a t all morality is the product of social conditioning, and, therefore, t h a t behaviorist science is a superior tool for the analysis and reconstruction of a socially beneficial morality. ~4 Forgetting for the m o m e n t t h a t he disposed of m y t h s as "little more than invented causes of . . . s u p e r s t i t i o u s behavior, seemingly uncaused, ''~ Skinner appeals to the Greek m y t h of Jason and the Golden Fleece to clinch his point about the moral superiority of behaviorism. The argonauts of the psyche have for centuries sailed the stormy seas of the mind, never in sight of their goal, revising their charts from time to time in the light of what seemed like new information, less and less sure of their way home, hopelessly lost. They have failed to find the Golden Fleece?~ By inference, however, the behaviorists will find the Golden Fleece. With more than usual modesty, Skinner says, We need to know a great deal more about complex contingencies of reinforcement, and it will always be hard to deal with that particular set to which any one person is exposed during his life, but at least we know how to go about finding out what we need to know?7 Behaviorism as a science is generating data t h a t require belief in the unity of body and mind. It requires theology to be grounded in the bones and blood of living organisms, to reject the dichotomy of sacred and secular. It requires medicine to become wholistic and to abandon, in the psychotherapeutic domain, the pejorative uses of the terms patient, sick, neurotic, delinquent, and the like. Behaviorist data demonstrate the limits of mental processes in controlling behavior. Organisms learn much without the intervention of cognitive and/or affective states of consciousness. Learning occurs directly through the skin, the organs, the autonomic nervous system, as has been documented in biofeedback research as well as in behavioral laboratories. 2s Learning occurs also through trial and error and is reinforced or extinguished through the consequences of the behavior involved. The teaching and learning of effective communication, whether as counselors, marital partners, business colleagues, or parents, is taking a large leap forward as a result of behaviorist research. Management of patients, inmates, and subordinates in all the social hierarchies of the culture becomes more effective and less abrasive as managers accept behaviorist findings about the social cost of aversive methods of control (punishment} and the high payoff in efficiency and profits from positive reinforcement. Ethically, the behaviorist vision of life requires intentional behavior. Personal passivity and social conformity in the face of

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pain and oppression are unwarranted. Theoretically, at least, the behavioral scientist is able to engineer environments that yield high quotients of pleasure and assure the survival of the culture, if not of all the individuals within it. Behaviorism as a philosophy has allowed its grandiosity to go unbridled, however. No one has fostered this grandiosity more than B. F. Skinner. Skinner's messianic pretensions abound, giving his writing a propagandistic flavor that, in the history of thought, smacks of half-truth. He is competitive not only with the idealists and the humanists of ancient and modern times but also with his peers among the behavioral scientists. He himself behaves in an isolationist way. As Peter Homans observes, Skinner pays no attention to either the historical or the sociological context in which he offers his behaviorist ideology. Although he is clearly on the positivist side of the centuries-old debate between humanists and positivists, he presents his case de novo. On nearly every page he calls for his readers to make a commitment in favor of modernity and against tradition. His basic view of personality has an obvious precursor in Gilbert Ryle's The Concept of Mind, but Skinner acknowledges no predecessors except the early behaviorists. Ryle drove the ghost from the machine and showed that then no machine remained. Skinner, however, has the advantage of having lived for several decades with computers. He understands that computers continue to run even without a ghost--until they break down and need repairs or a new program, that is. 29 Skinner's grandiosity gets out of hand most embarrassingly in his claims that behaviorist psychologists are ready to undertake social engineering for total political units of society. Meredith W. Watts, writing in the American Political Science Review, 3~ faults Skinner on four issues: (1) His simplistic assumptions about complexity and structure in social engineering. Skinner assumes naively that laboratory findings are applicable to complex sociopolitical systems, with no supporting evidence, incidentally. (2) Skinner's de facto ontological reductionlsm. He translates traditional terms into behaviorist language, adheres rigidly to an experimental paradigm, and is unwilling to handle complex interaction. Again Skinner's claims for society exceed his data. 13) According to Skinner, design (or social engineering) is an extension of the evolutionary processes of "selection," and this process is assumed to be self-validating. Both assumptions are totally unwarranted. To live on this side of Nazi social engineering and to assume that the implicit controls of a scientific community upon what happens in a laboratory will apply to similar processes within political systems is blind optimism at best, and at worst cynical manipulation. (4) Finally, Watts concludes that Skinner's social speculations are not well enough grounded to allow the development of an empirical theory of social control. They may be applied in a gradual way perhaps, but not with the grandiosity of Skinnerian evangelism. The noted British positivist, Sir Karl Popper, and the earlier pragmatists, William James and John Dewey, knew better. They became reconciled to the slow process of "incrementalism." It remains to be seen, of course, whether Skinner's assault on the giants of the past proves that he, too, is a giant, or only that he is both

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n a i v e a b o u t h i s t o r y a n d m i s g u i d e d a b o u t h o w l e a r n i n g occurs w h e n one is dealing w i t h a h u m a n s o c i e t y i n s t e a d of pigeons. P r o f e s s o r K e n n e t h C a u t h e n s t a t e s the d i l e m m a in which S k i n n e r i a n s live a n d w o r k in a n a m u s i n g way: Only if Skinner is wrong can his program of cultural design be initiated. Only if he is right can it be carried out. A schedule of contingencies can be produced that would make use of the principles of operant conditioning to create a desirable society only if we are free. The venture would be successful only if we are determined. Hence, Skinner finds himself in the unhappy position of offering a program that will not work if he is right, and it will not work if he is wrong. The only way a program of cultural design created by humans for humans can work is that either some are free and some are determined or that all are somewhat free and somewhat determined. According to Skinner we are all strictly determined, but his program requires that at least some be partly free. The blind cannot lead the blind. But if all can see, a program designed for the completely blind will run into difficulties. Skinner's program requires that there be at least one God or gods who stand outside the machine to redesign it. But Skinner is an atheist. Skinner's program requires that some be psychologists and some be pigeons. But Skinner gets the two confused. Sometimes he speaks as if we are all pigeons. Sometimes he thinks we are all psychologists. What really worries me is that he may get the idea that he is the psychologist and I am the pigeon. 3' B e h a v i o r i s t s g e n e r a l l y a n d S k i n n e r i a n s in p a r t i c u l a r are in s e a r c h of c e r t a i n t y - - o b j e c t i v e , verifiable d a t a t h a t will e n a b l e t h e m to p r e d i c t a n d control b e h a v i o r . T h e y h a v e little t o l e r a n c e for a m b i g u i t y a n d so m u s t d i s c o u n t s u b j e c t i v i t y a n d " m e n t a l i s m , " self a n d spirit. T h e y blind t h e m s e l v e s to t h e p a r a d o x a t the h e a r t of t h e i r o w n s y s t e m . T h e c e n t r a l p a r a d o x in S k i n n e r ' s t h e o r y is t h a t we are controlled e n t i r e l y b y our e n v i r o n m e n t , y e t it is a n e n v i r o n m e n t " w h i c h is a l m o s t wholly of o u r o w n m a k i n g . ''32 S k i n n e r c h o o s e s a b s o l u t e e n v i r o n m e n t a l d e t e r m i n i s m of t h e b e i n g s w h o s h a p e t h e i r o w n e n v i r o n m e n t s . H e d i s p o s e s of the " i n n e r m a n " of p u r p o s e s , aims, a n d goals, y e t w r i t e s a p h i l o s o p h y of the science of b e h a v i o r a d d r e s s e d to the " i n n e r m a n " of his r e a d e r s for the p u r p o s e of m o b i l i z i n g p u r p o s e s , aims, a n d goals in s u p p o r t of b e h a v i o r i s t science2 3 H e q u o t e s H a m l e t to m a k e t h e p o i n t t h a t m a n is the " p a r a g o n of a n i m a l s . " B u t he does violence to t h e t e x t : In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals! 34 S k i n n e r ' s i n a b i l i t y to a f f i r m the p a r a d o x of p e r s o n s as a n g e l s a n d a n i m a l s , of p e r s o n s m a d e in t h e i m a g e of God, r a i s e s t h e p o s s i b i l i t y t h a t he is blind to his o w n r e l i g i o u s n e s s and, therefore, v u l n e r a b l e to ego-inflation or, in religious l a n g u a g e , to idolatry. T h e religious f a i t h of the b e h a v i o r i s t s is in t e c h n o l o g y , a n d t h e idol in t h e t e m p l e of t e c h n o l o g y is the c o m p u t e r . Since o u r s is a t e c h n o l o g i c a l age, t h e p r i e s t s of a b e h a v i o r a l t e c h n o l o g y receive s t r o n g p o s i t i v e r e i n f o r c e m e n t f r o m

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the culture at every turn. Is it any wonder that they become grandiose? They are conditioned by the culture to claim religious ultimacy for the technological faith of the culture. Behaviorist faith is finally pessimistic. It is faith in a process without purpose or hope of consummation. Skinner says, " M a n will presumably continue to change, but we cannot say in what direction. ,,35 He confesses his utter despair by adding, "The human species will never reach a final state of perfection before it is exterminated--'some say in fire, some in ice,' and some in radiation."3s Set this word of despair beside the core value of behaviorism, i.e., that survival of the organism is the only criterion of value by which to assess the positive and aversive character of reinforcers, and the promise of "good news" in behavioral technology evaporates. Behaviorist faith may be ethically impotent as well. Intending to increase control of behavior, behaviorism appears to undermine internal control absolutely. Persons are seen to be unique b u t not responsible. Though an individual focuses many lines of development in a unique set, he is "merely a stage in a process which began long before he came into existence and will long outlast him. ''3~ One is not even responsible for any species trait or cultural practice that he may introduce. For though the trait of behavior becomes a part of the species or culture, it does so through cultural selection, relieving the initiator of responsibility--and of credit as well as of blame2 s The most radical challenge of behaviorism inheres in the new view of reality generated by quantum physicists such as David Botun and neurophysiologists such as Karl Pribram. In their view, matter and brain alike are organized like a hologram. Particles function like waves rather than objective, predictable objects. Brain cells function like frequency analyzers {a point well established in the auditory, motor, and visual systems of the brain). 39 Holographic theory affirms that the part contains the whole. In terms of visual stimuli, every element of the original image is distributed over the entire storage area. Remembering is re-collecting the dismembered mnemonic events. 4~ Memories are resistant to damage, as holograms are resistant to damage. The re-collecting from a very few surviving parts is sufficient to reproduce the whole original image, since each part contains the whole2' Knowing is, then, image processing rather than information processing. Stimulus-response is an adequate model for what Bohm calls the "explicate order" of sensory reality, but altogether inadequate for the "implicate order" of what now appears to be an alternate reality. Frequency analysis in the visual cortex, according to Pribram, deals with the density of occurrences only and not with the qualities of time and space. In fact, time and space are collapsed in the holographic model of brain functioning. This opens the door to mystic consciousness as a physiologically verifiable phenomenon of central importance to the efficient operation of the brain2 2 The consequences of this convergence in the research of physicists and neurophysiologists are immense. Specific to the issue of knowing and behavioral psychology, the consequence is to open the whole realm of clairvoyance and the so-called paranormal to scientific {ergo respectable}

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inquiry. In so doing behaviorism m a y be cured of its grandiosity, acknowledging that it has to do only with the realm of ordinary, sensory reality, and relinquishing its need to disparage research in the realm of transpersonal and mystic reality. Ironically, the behaviorism of Skinner with all of its rejection of "mentalism" contains a germ of mysticism. The goal of life for Skinner is imaginatively portrayed in W a l d e n Two, 43 a utopian community, in which the members relinquish a sense of individual identity (and with it the fear of death) and merge into a species identity "shaped by evolutionary contingencies of survival.' ,44 Skinner is calling for spiritual aspiration. He calls his disciples to begin the long spiritual journey toward the death of the ego. His vision of merging into species identity is of a piece with the witness of mystics throughout history that the unitive experience is the primary mark of mystic consciousness. Walter Pahnke's research on experimental mysticism establishes the point that in the experience of unity the ego or the sense of individuality fades away. One merges with all humankind as well as with a "ground of being" beyond all empirical distinctions. 45 The death of individuality relieves one of the fear of death itself. The final hope of the behaviorist, therefore, is that the experience of mystic consciousness will prevail and persist, enabling one to participate in a utopian community and be at peace with oneself in the face of one's destiny in death. Unhappily, the behaviorist denies the significance of mystic consciousness both to the individual and to the culture whose survival is the behaviorist's ultimate concern. In rejecting the importance of empirical evidence for a transpersonal self and for mystic consciousness, Skinner abandons an objective, environmental basis for hope and direction in human experience. The mystic's unitive experience invites exploration of an objective otherness within the environment, that is, the cosmic dimension of the environment. Perhaps the Achilles heel of Skinner's behaviorism is not environmental determinism after all. Perhaps it is that S k i n n e r ' s e n v i r o n m e n t is too small. The struggle to reconcile the evidences of determinism and freedom in human experience did not begin with Skinner. Christian theologians have engaged the issue for two millenia and repeatedly affirmed the paradox that persons are radically b o u n d - - t h a t is, conditioned by environmental factors--and also responsible. This nonsense makes sense in religious experience. 46 It makes sense in being awake to cosmic determinants of behavior. One knows one's self free not to waken, but knows that this freedom is illusion. In remaining closed to transpersonal reality one is enslaved to sensory reality and is, indeed, largely determined by the operant conditioners described in behaviorist research. Awaking to transpersonal reality, one is not autonomous in the humanistic sense of the word. One becomes aware of a more radical bondage, to determinants that affect even the awakening itself. Yet, paradoxically, one becomes free to enter and foster an alternative culture, a community of faith. One finds purpose, then, not in the survival of the culture of one's origin, but in the survival of the community of faith which is operantly conditioned by the objective otherness of the cosmic environment as well as by

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theempirical world of see-touch reality. This otherness is known in Christian experience in the person of J e s u s of Nazareth and the continuing incarnation of the Spirit of God in the community that names J e s u s as Christ, the Lord. Skinner tags himself an advocate of "radical behaviorism," but it appears that he is not nearly as radical as the transpersonalists. He begs the question about the environment. The basic question is about the nature of reality, about the true scope of the environment. When one removes the parentheses of sensory empiricism from one's view of reality and admits the evidence for a transpersonal environment, the mystic becomes a behaviorist and behaviorists become theologians as well. First, however, the behaviorists must own the m y s t e r y at the heart of their own experience--as scientists and as persons--and relax their demand for the power to predict and control behavior absolutely. They m u s t risk becoming open to their own radical conditionedness and to trusting the cosmic operant to be for them rather than against them. That is the good news implicit in a transpersonal view of personality. Both the limitations and the unclaimed possibilities of behaviorism are disclosed in the ancient Greek m y t h of Jason and the Golden Fleece. As noted previously, Skinner appealed to the m y t h of the Golden Fleece in one of his most impassioned appeals for religious commitment to behaviorist science. 47 The resonance between Skinner and the mythic hero J a s o n is strong. J a s o n was a victim of an evil scheme to prevent him from coming into his kingdom. His uncle had been appointed by J a s o n ' s father to an interregnum but did not want to relinquish power to Jason, the rightful heir. Instead he sent Jason in search of the Golden Fleece. To recover the Golden Fleece and return it to the land of his origin was to prove himself ready to rule the kingdom. Now the Golden Fleece was a sacred object symbolic of divine intervention (in a very ancient time} to save another rightful heir from danger at the hands of an indifferent father and an evil stepmother. The Golden Fleece came from a ram provided by the God Mercury to save the royal children who were in danger. Upon reaching the eastern land of a kindly king, the ram was sacrificed to Zeus and the Golden Fleece preserved under the watchful eye of a sleepless d r a g o n : 8 Skinner's affinity with J a s o n suggests that he perceives his cause to be that of the true heir, possessing royal {divine} prerogatives for ruling the human race. In longing for a successful voyage to recover the Golden Fleece, Skinner appears to be longing for divine certification of his right and readiness to rule. He has long since recruited a crew of bright, behaviorist psychologists to be his crew of Argonauts. They, like J a s o n and the original Argonauts, set out on a poorly charted sea aspiring to return as heroes. Perhaps Skinner feels prepared for the ordeals the Argonauts must undergo. In the far country they m u s t tame the aggressions of both animals and men. J a s o n was required b y the king of the Eastern land to yoke to the plough two fire-breathing bulls with brazen feet; then to sow the teeth of a dragon from which it was known that a crop of armed men would spring up and would turn their weapons against their producer, that is, J a s o n {Skinner). Finally they would have to steal the Golden Fleece from under the sleepless eye of the

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dragon who was set to guard it as a sacred trust, that is, the religions of tradition, both humanist and theist. Before reaching the far country, however, the Argonauts had to negotiate the Symplegades or Clashing Islands. These were two small rocky islands that floated on the surface of the seas. Whenever an object passed between them, they came together, crushing and grinding to atoms whatever was caught between them. Negotiating this passage suggests in our contemporary interpretation of the myth the problems of method in behavioral science. All of these dangers Skinner and his Argonauts have braved. Still, the Golden Fleece remains in the far-off country. Perhaps the behaviorists need to read the myth of Jason once more. Were they to do so, they would discover that Jason could not have prevailed without first the wisdom and cooperation of the Old Wise Man, Phineus, who instructed them in the use of a dove to sail safely through the Symplegades. But, finally, it was the love and powers of Medea, the daughter of the king who possessed the Golden Fleece, that enabled Jason to prevail and possess the treasure. Medea was intimate with the Goddess Hecate, the goddess of death, sorcery, and witchcraft. Jason first had to promise marriage to Medea, that is, to make a comitment of love and loyalty to her who lived on intimate terms with the ultimate in "mentalism," the "inner man," and transpersonal realities. She, then, and she alone, was able to help him subdue the ultimate in animal aggression, in human cruelty and ingratitude, and, finally, in religious, dragon-like watchfulness over the cherished prize. Were the behaviorists to take the myth of Jason seriously and not merely as a stimulus to their grandiosity, they would question the adequacy of an exclusively masculine orientation to their quest, they would examine honestly the limits of rationality and of behaviorist methods as presently defined. They would attend as well to the feminine reality which is a part of their environment also. They would allow themselves to love and to pledge their loyalty to the reality of their own psyches, the soul-guide within. Then the power would be theirs. In making a commitment to their Medea, however, they would be transformed. Behaviorism would include transpersonalism. Mystics would be recognized as behaviorists, too. In fact, the whole issue between them would be transcended, the languages of both transformed. As the sacred is reunited at long last with the secular, the Golden Fleece with the rightful king, the Argonauts with their ladies, the sensory with mystic reality, the psychologist with the theologian, humankind will be the beneficiary. At least, that is, until a new king deprives the next rightful heir of the kingdom and another hero's journey must be begun.

References 1. Huckaby, P., "Survey of the Response to Behavioral Psychology in Recent Religious Literature," Pastoral Care, 1975, 39, 262-270. 2. See the Symposium on B. F. Skinner's Beyond Freedom and Dignity, consisting of three essays: Scott, C. F., "An Existential Perspective on B. F. Skinner"; Hodgson, P. C., "Freedom, Dignity and Transcendence"; and Wilcoxen, H.C., "The Evidence is the Thing,"

Edward E. Thorn ton

3.

4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. i6. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26 . 27 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40 . 41 . 42. 43. 44. 45.

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in Soundings, 1972, 60, 3, 335-368. See also the Symposium "Beyond Freedom and Dignity'" consisting of three essays: Platt, J., " A Revolutionary Manifesto"; Black, M., " A Disservice to All"; a n d Toynbee, A., " A n Uneasy Feeling of Unreality"; plus a response by Skinner himself, " I have been misunderstood . . " in The Center Magazine, 1972, 5, 2, 33-65. While these symposia probe behaviorism from scientific, philosophical, and theological perspectives, no one addresses the challenge as a pastoral psychologist. For an orientation to transpersonal psychology, consult the personality theorists C. G. J u n g and Roberto Assagioli. For laboratory data, see Charles Tart, Robert Ornstein, Herbert Benson, B a r b a r a Brown, and the Aldine Annuals: Biofeedback and Self-Control. For theory building on the basis of current research, see Lawrence Le Shan, H u s t o n Smith, and Ira Progoff. Relevant journals include: Transpersonal Psychology, Altered States of Consciousness, Synthesis, and Parabola. Corsini, R.J., ed., Current Personality Theories. Itasca, Illinois, F. E. Peacock Publishers, Inc., 1977, pp. 182-192. Skinner, B. F., Beyond Freedom and Dignity. New York, Knopf, 1971. , " F r e e d o m and Control of Man," The American Scholar, 1955, 25, 55. Corsini, op. cit., p. 178. Eysenck, H. J., and Rachman, S., The Causes and Cures of Neurosis. London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975, p. 10. Ibid., p. 262. Ibid., p. 266. Ibid., p. 14. Ibid. Skinner, Beyond Freedom and Diginity, op. cit., pp. 3-5. Ibid., p. 8. Ibid., p. 215. Skinner, B. F., About Behaviorism. New York, Knopf, 1974. Ibid., p. 13-14. Ibid., p. 16-17. Ibid., p. 44. Skinner, Beyond Freedom and Dignity, op. cit., p. 199. Loc. cir. Skinner, About Behaviorism, op. cit., pp. 239-240. Ibid., p. 241. Ibid., p. 244. Skinner, Beyond Freedom and Dignity, o19. cit., p. 30. . . . About Behaviorism, op. cit., pp. 165-166. Ibid., p. 165. Brown, B., New Mind, New Body Bio-Feedback: New Directions for the Mind. New York, Harper & Row, Publishers, 1974. See P. H o m a n s ' s review of Beyond Feedom and Dignity in Christian Scholar's Review, 1975, 4, 256-260. W a t t s , M. W., American Political Science Review, 1975, 69, 230-237. An unpublished paper by Professor Kenneth Cauthen, Colgate Rochester/Bexley Hall/Crozer Theological Seminary, Rochester, N.Y. Skinner, Beyond Freedom and Dignity, op. cir., pp. 205-206. __, About Behaviorism, op. cit., p. 251. Ibid., p. 239. Skinner, Beyond Feedom and Dignity, op. cir., p. 208. Ibid. Ibid., p. 209. Ibid., p. 209-210. Pribram, K., "Holographic Memory," Psychology Today, February, 1979, 12, 73. . . . "The Neurophysiology of Remembering," Scientific American, January, 1979, 220, 77. . . . "Holographic Memory," op. cit., p. 72. Ibid., pp. 71-84. Skinner. B. F., Walden Two. New York, Macmillan Co., 1948. __, Beyond Freedom and Dignity, op. cit., pp. 211, 214. Pahnke, W. N., and Richards, W. A., "Implications of LSD and Experimental Mysticism," Psyche and Spirit. New York, Paulist Press, 1973.

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46. For an exposition of the point addressed directly to Skinner, see Hodgson, P.C., "Freedom, Dignity and Transcendence: A Response to B. F. Skinner," Soundings, Fall, 1972, 55, 347-358. 47. Skinner, About Behaviorism, op. cit., pp. 165-166. 48. "The Golden Fleece," Bulfinch's Mythology. New York, T h o m a s Y. Crowell Company, 1970, pp. 120-134.