Separate Disciplines: The Study of Behavior and the Study of the Psyche

Abstract

The study of behavior differs fundamentally from the study of the psyche and logically cannot share the same discipline. However, while disciplines might be defined through technical exercises, they function through exercises of political power. The evolution of a discipline, though based on field and laboratory data interpreted within a specific paradigm and justified publicity by its utility to solve personal and social problems, follows a course of development in the political arenas of the academies and the professions. We happen to have a discipline, roughly connoted by the label "behavior analysis," without an academic home (the present ones haphazardly tolerate our activities), without a professional organization (the present one lobbies only "for behavior analysis"), and without a true professional name (the present one implies an approach not a discipline). No scientific community lasts long without a supporting professional infrastructure. In explicitly asserting ourselves as a discipline, we confront a number of difficult issues such as continuing to work in departments antithetical to behaviorism and a number of problems such as what we call ourselves to identify our professional and scientific concerns. (For example, we need a term descriptive of our science in its broad sense. That term is not psychology. Too many people persist in maintaining its commitment to cognitivism. On whatever term we agree, "behavior" should constitute its stem, for our efforts focus there, not in the putative underlying psyche or its current cognitive update.) The focus of our concerns and the solutions of our problems rest on one issue: Will our discipline prosper most as a branch ofpsychology or as an independent discipline? Slowly, but surely, our actions demonstrate that the latter is the preferred option, but these actions, though fortuitous, occur almost by accident. By specifically programming to achieve an independent professional status we increase the probability of doing so.

The Debate About Praxics: Some Comments Meant Especially for Students

“…Praxics needs to drag along an ism with it, assert Fraley and Vargas (1986). Similar arguments were made in papers by Leigland (1985) and Malagodi and Branch (1985).…”

“…And for some years I have been tabulating job listings in the APA Monitor, which are good indicators of the composition of future psychology departments (Epstein, 1984a(Epstein, , 1985b(Epstein, , 1986a in press-a, in press-b, in press-c) have kept us on the wrong track for more than half a century; no true science of behavior has emerged. We are wont to say that behavior is "multiply determined," but we study only a trivial assortment of variables, and our clinical impact remains small (Lindsley, 1985 We have wasted our time trying to wrest Fraley and Vargas (1986) assert that praxics "sounds more like a movement for a political party than a scientific discipline" (p. 56), but, curiously, it is they who insist that analysts of behavior must be card-carrying believers in an ism ("radical behaviorism"), and it is they who would continue to limit the study of behavior to the narrow range of variables and methods typical of the operant approach.…”

“…(Alas, only the latter exists at the moment.) "Praxics" is an "awful" name, according to Deitz (1986), and so is "behaviorology," a name for behavior analysis which both Los Horcones (1986) and Fraley and Vargas (1986) seem to claim (it seems safe to say that the term was considered and rejected by others a half century ago). Barry (1986) thinks "praxics" is "simply awkward and limiting in scope" (how is it limiting?…”

Irreconcilable Differences and Political Reality in These Dark Ages

“…Does this mean that only one or the other discipline makes sense? Not necessarily, but it does mean that they are different disciplines, as has been suggested before (e.g., Epstein, 1985;Fraley & Vargas, 1986) (McDowell, 1990). For example, the truth of the proposition that contingent time out suppresses oppositional behavior can be examined by arranging a time-out contingency while counting instances of oppositional behavior.…”

Behavior and Perestroika

“…It was inevitable that the study of behavior and the study of the psyche would become separate disciplines (see Fraley & Vargas, 1986). The core paradigms or approaches of these two disciplines are incommensurable.…”