545 skinner as self-manager give a man a fish and he won't

545

JOURNAL OF APPLIED BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS 1997, 30, 545–568 NUMBER 3 (FALL 1997)

SKINNER AS SELF-MANAGER

ROBERT EPSTEIN

CAMBRIDGE CENTER FOR BEHAVIORAL STUDIES

AND SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY

B. F. Skinner was a remarkably productive, creative, and happy individual, in large partbecause of his expertise in self-management, a set of self-change skills that derive to someextent from his own scientific and theoretical work. Skinner’s ardent defense of deter-minism appears to conflict with his views on self-control; although determinism can bereconciled with these views, we would be best served by dispensing with the ‘‘ism’’ andfocusing instead on relevant data and data-driven theories. Contemporary research onself-control has diverged from Skinner’s formulation in a number of ways, especially infocusing on cognition and choice. The extraordinary success Skinner had in applyingself-management principles to his life should inspire us to take a closer look at thepotential value such principles may have for society.

DESCRIPTORS: B. F. Skinner, self-control, self-management

Give a man a fish and he won’t be hun-gry.Teach a man to fish and he will neverbe hungry.

The Talmud

Two decades ago, when I was 23, mymother announced to the members of hermah-jongg club that I was spending thesummer working with B. F. Skinner. Tryingto be gracious, one of her friends replied,‘‘How nice! Isn’t that a toothpaste compa-ny?’’

It annoyed me to be reminded that noteveryone knew who Skinner was. He hadbeen my idol since I learned about his workin a college psychology course in 1971, andI had spent the next 5 years collecting andreading everything he had ever published. Tome, he was the most outstanding scientistand thinker of our time, and behaviorism,the school of psychology he had helped tocreate, was the key to solving humanity’s ills.

Not everyone shared my views. In fact,

I am grateful to Julie S. Vargas and the B. F. SkinnerFoundation for providing access to Professor Skinner’sstudy.

Direct correspondence to the author at 933 Wood-lake Drive, Cardiff by the Sea, California 92007(E-mail: [email protected]).

Skinner was, and still is, controversial. Hisbook, Beyond Freedom and Dignity, was abest-seller in 1971, but most of the reviewswere caustic. Skinner was a fascist, somesaid. His views were Machiavellian. Hewould rob us of our freedom and our dignityand use the behavioral sciences to controlour every move (consider Agnew, 1972;Chomsky, 1971; Claiborne, 1971; Marwell,1972; Rubenstein, 1971; ‘‘Skinner’s Uto-pia,’’ 1971; cf. Carpenter, 1974; Catania &Harnad, 1988; Machan, 1974; Modgil &Modgil, 1987; Proctor & Weeks, 1990).

In 1968 Skinner was awarded the Nation-al Medal of Science by President Johnson; in1971, he received the Gold Medal of theAmerican Psychological Foundation; and in1972, he was given the Humanist of the YearAward of the American Humanist Associa-tion. His early research with rats and pigeonshad helped to lay a foundation for the dis-ciplines variously called behavior therapy,behavior analysis, behavior modification, theexperimental analysis of behavior, and be-havioral medicine, which, between them, ac-count for more than 20 academic journals(also see Bellack, Hersen, & Kazdin, 1990;Blechman & Brownell, 1988; Catania &Brigham, 1978; Eysenck & Martin, 1987;

546 ROBERT EPSTEIN

Gentry, 1984; Melamed & Siegel, 1980;Rimm & Masters, 1979; Sjoden, Bates, &Dockens, 1979). Skinner’s work also in-spired improvements in child-rearing tech-niques (Becker, 1971; Patterson, 1975;Stewart & Vargas, 1990), training methodsfor developmentally disabled children (Her-sen, van Hasselt, & Matson, 1983; Matson& McCartney, 1981; Thompson & Gra-bowski, 1977; Whitman, Scibak, & Reid,1983), psychopharmacology and substanceabuse treatment (Blackman & Sanger, 1978;Goldberg & Stolerman, 1986; Grabowski,Stitzer, & Henningfield, 1984; Iversen, Iver-sen, & Snyder, 1987; Krasnegor, 1979; Mc-Kim, 1986), management and productivitytechniques in business and industry (Con-nellan, 1978; Daniels & Rosen, 1983; Res-cigno, 1984), classroom management tech-niques (Axelrod, 1983; Fagen & Hill, 1977;Jones, 1990; Kaplan, 1991; McIntyre, 1989;O’Leary & O’Leary, 1977; Peterson & Te-nenbaum, 1986; Sabatino, Sabatino, &Mann, 1983; Skinner, 1969; Wheldall,1987), and computer-aided and pro-grammed instruction (Atkinson & Wilson,1969; Bullock, 1978; Holland & Skinner,1961; Lumsdaine & Glaser, 1965; Mager,1984; Ruskin, 1974; Skinner, 1968; Skinner& Krakower, 1968).

The controversies, the accomplishments,the honors, the weighty credentials—allmade B. F. Skinner a formidable characterindeed. It was with more than a small degreeof fear that I wrote to Skinner at his Harvardaddress in 1976 and asked to meet with him.Because I was a graduate student workingwith one of his former students, he invitedme to visit him at his home in Cambridge.Anxiously, I circled his neighborhood for 2hours before the time of the scheduled visit,and, to my amazement, when the appointedmoment finally arrived and Skinner swungopen his front door, I did not throw up. Infact, we got along so well that within a fewweeks, I found myself editing the second

volume of his autobiography, and the fol-lowing year I was admitted to the doctoralprogram in psychology at Harvard, where hewas Edgar Pierce Professor of PsychologyEmeritus.

Each day of our collaboration broughtnew projects and new excitement, and, as Igot to know Skinner better, my awe beganto subside. He insisted, for one thing, thatI call him ‘‘Fred,’’ and it’s hard to be in aweof someone named Fred (his full name isBurrhus Frederic Skinner). We worked to-gether every day for 5 years at his home, athis office, and, ultimately, at the ColumbanSimulation Laboratory, a new laboratory wecreated roughly 20 years after he had aban-doned his laboratory research career (Baxley,1982; Epstein, 1981; Skinner, 1983b).

Fred’s manner was casual and far from in-timidating. He often leaned back in his chairas he spoke, and his eyes sparkled with theenergy of a man in his 20s, even though hewas past 70. He told jokes and recited lim-ericks, and he loved to hear new ones.‘‘There once was a family named Stein,’’ hetold me one day, ‘‘There was Gert, Ep, andEin. Gert’s poems were bunk, Ep’s statueswere junk, and no one could understandEin!’’ Fred grinned ear to ear, and so did I,even though I wasn’t sure at the time whotwo of those Steins were. (Some of Fred’sjokes were, understandably, a little out ofdate.)

Gradually, I found myself relating to FredSkinner as a person and even as a friend. Theawe was gone, but not for long. You see, asI got to know Fred better, I began to admirehim in a new way, one that never subsided,one that is still important for all of us: Fredwas, quite simply, a brilliant ‘‘self-manager.’’

The Evolution of Skinner’s Views onSelf-Control and Self-Management

Self-management—the deliberate appli-cation of principles of self-change—was notjust an academic topic for Fred. Nor was it

547SKINNER AS SELF-MANAGER

something he practiced occasionally. It wasa lifestyle, especially in his later years. I can’toveremphasize the importance of this dis-tinction. Below I will summarize his pub-lished work on self-control and self-manage-ment and will subsequently offer examplesof how he used self-management techniques.But a few examples and a brief analysis can’tbegin to capture how pervasive self-manage-ment was in his life. It was much more thana few gizmos and timers. It was what manywould call an attitude. He managed his ownbehavior almost continuously. When I wasin graduate school, a fellow student men-tioned that Fred seemed to dispose of en-velopes and junk mail in an especially effi-cient way. I had never noticed this before,but it was true. When he opened his mailin the morning, he usually positioned hischair and trash can so that the very slightestflick of his wrist did the job. This was noaccident, and it was part of the reason hewas able to reply to virtually every letter heever received, even until the end (Vargas,1990).

We manage our own behavior when wedeliberately alter the variables of which thatbehavior is a function; that is, when we actin some way in order to change our subse-quent behavior. Some people do this fre-quently and well, others do it rarely andpoorly. Skinner appears to have had goodself-management skills even as a boy. In hisautobiography he recounts the invention ofa Rube Goldberg-like device to remind himto hang up his pajamas in the morning. Hehad been failing to do so, and his motherwas complaining.

The clothes closet in my room was nearthe door, and in it I fastened a hookon the end of a string which passedover a nail and along the wall to a nailabove the center of the door. A signreading ‘‘Hang up your pajamas’’ hungat the other end. When the pajamas

were in place, the sign was up out ofthe way, but when I took them off thehook at night, the sign dropped to themiddle of the door where I wouldbump into it on my way out. (Skinner,1976, pp. 121–122)

Presumably, prompted by the sign, he hungup his pajamas thereafter. One behavior(constructing the device) had changed theprobability of another (hanging up pajamas),and the first occurred in order to affect thesecond.

One behavior often changes the probabil-ity of another accidentally, but this is notself-management. This phenomenon, calledautomatic chaining or simply autochaining, iscommonplace, and it also plays an impor-tant role in creativity and problem solving(Epstein, 1990, 1991, 1996). You may turnyour head for no apparent reason, see a mag-azine, and begin reading. Turning one’s headchanges the visual field, as does walking intoanother room or opening the refrigerator,and behavior changes as a result. It is thedeliberateness that distinguishes self-man-agement from autochaining.1

1 I have used the language of intentionality in thispaper to communicate more readily with my readers,but a rigorous statement of Skinner’s formulation ofself-control does not require such language. If one be-havior (say, setting an alarm clock) occurs because itchanges the likelihood of another (say, getting out ofbed), the first behavior is ‘‘controlling’’ and the secondbehavior is ‘‘controlled.’’ As is true of all operants, anynumber of phenomena might have produced the firstbehavior originally: instructions, modeling, shaping,or generative processes (Epstein, 1990, 1996), for ex-ample. Its occurrence might have been verbally me-diated by a self-generated rule (‘‘I’ll bet I’d get up ear-lier if I set an alarm clock’’), and that rule, in turn,might have had any number of origins. Odysseus hadhis men tie him to his mast (controlling behavior) tolower the probability that he would steer toward theSirens’ song (controlled behavior). This is an elegantinstance of self-control, but it was entirely instructiondriven: Circe had told him to do it. The origins ofself-controlling behavior are sometimes trivial and ob-vious and sometimes profound—sometimes driven byinstructions or models and sometimes the result of‘‘problem solving’’ (cf. Epstein, 1996).

548 ROBERT EPSTEIN

It was an accidental sequence, not self-management, that apparently led Skinner toquit smoking. He had been an avid pipesmoker since graduating from college in1926. In 1941, he quit, in part, he recalled,because of an article he had read in Sciencein 1938 suggesting that smoking led to earlydeath and in part because of headaches hewas experiencing from a new blend of to-bacco. Wrote Skinner, ‘‘I had unintention-ally arranged a kind of aversive therapy’’(Skinner, 1979, p. 253). A third factor, alsoaccidental, seems especially noteworthy giv-en his later theoretical views:

I often listened to broadcasts of evan-gelical preaching, which I found fasci-nating simply as verbal behavior. I likedto listen to a preacher named LukeRader, who specialized in distinguish-ing between controlled and controllingselves. One day he was denouncing thedemon rum. Someone had complainedthat he could not control his drinking,and Rader said something like this:‘‘What do you mean you can’t controlit? Isn’t it your arm that raises the glassto your lips? Do you mean to tell methat you can’t control your arm?’’ Ifound the theme helpful in self-man-agement. (Skinner, 1979, p. 253)

Fred’s first published statements on self-control and self-management appear in his1948 novel, Walden Two, portions of whichwere inspired by monthly discussions he hadbeen having with philosophers and literarycritics at the University of Minnesota (Skin-ner, 1979). Chapter 14 of the novel is en-tirely about self-control. Professor Castle, ahostile visitor to Walden Two, questions Fra-zier, the radical founder of this behaviorallyengineered utopian community, about child-rearing practices in the community. Thecommunity deliberately teaches ‘‘self-con-trol’’ (the word is in quotation marks in Fra-zier’s speeches) to its children in order to

make them more independent, but, says,Frazier, ‘‘don’t be misled, the control alwaysrests in the last analysis in the hands of so-ciety’’ (p. 105).2

Frazier explains that he and an assistant,Simmons,3 faced the challenge of translatingvarious practices of self-control, some de-rived from organized religion, into specifictraining techniques. At the age of 3 or 4,children are taught to tolerate delayed grat-ification using lollipops in a special way:

‘‘We give each child a lollipop whichhas been dipped in powdered sugar sothat a single touch of the tongue canbe detected. We tell him he may eat thelollipop later in the day, provided ithasn’t already been licked.’’ (p. 107)

The children are taught that one way theycan accomplish this is to put the lollipop outof sight. ‘‘In a later experiment the childrenwear their lollipops like crucifixes for a fewhours’’ (p. 108).

Castle, predictably, calls such practices ‘‘adisplay of sadistic tyranny’’ (p. 108), but an-other visitor says he wishes he had beentaught such skills when young. Says Frazier,notably,

‘‘Some of us learn control, more or lessby accident. The rest of us go all ourlives not even understanding how it ispossible, and blaming our failure onbeing born the wrong way.’’ (p. 108)

The community provides early ‘‘ethicaltraining’’ in this way, says Frazier,

2 The page numbers have only limited value here,I’m afraid, because there are at least five different num-bering schemes for various editions of Walden Two.The numbers I give here are from the 1962 paperbackedition, the one that sold most widely.

3 Simmons is the middle name of Fred S. Keller,Skinner’s longtime friend and colleague, and, manyyears later, the developer of the personalized system ofinstruction or ‘‘Keller Plan,’’ a teaching system forchildren of many ages (Keller, 1968, 1977; Keller &Sherman, 1974). Another example of life imitating art.


‘‘A group of children arrive home aftera long walk tired and hungry. They’reexpecting supper; they find, instead,that it’s time for a lesson in self-control:they must stand for five minutes infront of steaming bowls of soup.

‘‘The assignment is accepted like aproblem in arithmetic. Any groaning orcomplaining is a wrong answer. In-stead, the children begin at once towork upon themselves to avoid any un-happiness during the delay. One ofthem may make a joke of it. . . . [At amore advanced stage] the childrencount off—heads and tails. Then a coinis tossed and if it comes up heads, the‘heads’ sit down and eat. The ‘tails’ re-main standing for another five min-utes.’’ (pp. 109–110)

Castle becomes increasingly upset withFrazier’s account and demands to know whatthe children gain through such abuse. Frazierrhapsodizes,

‘‘What they get is escape from the pettyemotions which eat the heart out of theunprepared. They get the satisfaction ofpleasant and profitable social relationson a scale almost undreamed of in theworld at large. They get immeasurablyincreased efficiency, because they canstick to a job without suffering theaches and pains which soon beset mostof us. They get new horizons, for theyare spared the emotions characteristicof frustration and failure. They get—’’His eyes searched the branches of thetrees. ‘‘Is that enough?’’ (p. 112)

The real world, Frazier argues, provides onlyhaphazard training in self-control, but Wal-den Two strives to make ‘‘every man a braveman’’ (p. 114). ‘‘What is the virtue of acci-dent?’’ he asks (p. 115, italics in original).

The community is also organized to en-courage a variety of practices in adults, such

as the productive use of leisure time, whichSkinner, years later, characterized as self-management skills, but they are not de-scribed as such in the novel. Toward the end,by which time the reader has learned thatevery adult in the community (except Frazierhimself!) is fulfilled and happy, Frazier ex-claims, ‘‘The happiness and equanimity ofour people are obviously related to the self-control they have acquired’’ (p. 177, italicsin original).

I dwell at length on this early and some-what crude formulation to demonstrate thealmost fanatical importance Frazier, verymuch Skinner’s surrogate, attaches to self-control skills and training. If Skinner everhad doubts about Frazier’s extreme views,they grew less as he got older (Skinner,1983b). In some sense all of Walden Two isa treatise on self-control, both for the indi-vidual and for society; each becomes profi-cient in controlling itself for its ultimategood. As Segal (1987) puts it in an insightfulessay about the novel, ‘‘Skinner envisioned aworld where psychology is the preeminentscience, and its chief task is to teach self-knowledge and self-control’’ (p. 150). In-deed, one finds statements about self-controlin Skinner’s later writings that are as extremeas Frazier’s. For example, in notes he madefor a debate with Carl Rogers in 1962, hecalled self-control ‘‘man’s only hope’’ (Skin-ner, 1983b, p. 223), and in casting aboutfor themes for a second novel (which he nev-er completed), he considered self-control:

Why not self-control—a new Pilgrim’sProgress—the hero gradually discover-ing how to control himself by control-ling the world in which he lives,adapting techniques for controllingothers to control oneself? That wasclose to the theme I had found mostmoving in literature. (Skinner, 1983b,p. 246)

Skinner’s developing views on self-control

550 ROBERT EPSTEIN

and related topics were incorporated intoNatural Sciences 114, the course he designedaround his own scientific and theoreticalwork upon becoming a professor at Harvardin 1948. His views were expressed in detailin 1953 in Science and Human Behavior, thetextbook that was based on the content ofthis course. The entire third section of thebook, more than 60 pages long, is concernedwith the functioning of the individual, andvirtually all of this material is relevant to anunderstanding of self-control. The first ofthe four chapters in this section is entitled‘‘Self-Control,’’ with that term, once again,in quotation marks.

The unsavory theme of Science and Hu-man Behavior is that all human behavior iscontrolled, an assertion that sent so many ofSkinner’s students to the Harvard health ser-vices with complaints of depression that thecounselors there named a syndrome after hiscourse (Skinner, 1983b). Lest the readerthink he is straying from the theme, he be-gins the ‘‘self-control’’ chapter with a re-minder: ‘‘Implicit in a functional analysis isthe notion of control. When we discover anindependent variable which can be con-trolled, we discover a means of controllingthe behavior which is a function of it’’ (Skin-ner, 1953, p. 228). The fact that the indi-vidual might be able to do this on his or herown is, he argues, no threat to his assertionthat all human behavior is determined by‘‘external variables.’’ Note the number ofwords in quotation marks in the passage be-low:

We must consider the possibility thatthe individual may control his own be-havior. A common objection to a pic-ture of the behaving organism such aswe have so far presented runs some-what as follows. In emphasizing thecontrolling power of external variables,we have left the organism itself in a pe-culiarly helpless position. Its behavior

appears to be simply a ‘‘repertoire’’—avocabulary of action, each item ofwhich becomes more or less probableas the environment changes. It is truethat variables may be arranged in com-plex patterns; but this fact does not ap-preciably modify the picture, for theemphasis is still upon behavior, notupon the behaver. Yet to a considerableextent an individual does appear to shapehis own destiny. He is often able to dosomething about the variables affectinghim. Some degree of ‘‘self-determina-tion’’ of conduct is usually recognizedin the creative behavior of the artist andscientist, in the self-exploratory behav-ior of the writer, and in the self-disci-pline of the ascetic. Humbler versionsof self-determination [no quotes thistime] are more familiar. The individual‘‘chooses’’ between alternative coursesof action, ‘‘thinks through’’ a problemwhile isolated from the relevant envi-ronment, and guards his health or hisposition in society through the exerciseof ‘‘self-control.’’

Any comprehensive account of hu-man behavior must, of course, embracethe facts referred to in statements ofthis sort. But we can achieve this withoutabandoning our program. When a mancontrols himself, chooses a course of ac-tion, thinks out the solution to a prob-lem, or strives toward an increase inself-knowledge, he is behaving. He con-trols himself precisely as he would con-trol the behavior of anyone else—through the manipulation of variablesof which behavior is a function. His be-havior in so doing is a proper object ofanalysis, and eventually it must be ac-counted for with variables lying outsidethe individual himself. (pp. 228–229,italics added)

People engage in self-control, says Skin-


ner, because some behaviors have ‘‘conflict-ing consequences,’’ or, more precisely, be-cause some responses produce reinforcersthat are correlated with delayed punishment(Epstein, 1984b; Goldfried & Merbaum,1973b). Drinking alcoholic beverages mayproduce ‘‘unusual confidence’’ now but ahangover or ‘‘disastrous’’ consequences later.The delayed negative consequences may pro-duce conditioned anxiety that we can escapefrom by engaging in behavior that keeps usfrom drinking: ‘‘Any behavior which suc-ceeds in doing this will be automatically re-inforced’’ (Skinner, 1953, p. 230).

The positive and negative consequencesgenerate two responses which are relat-ed to each other in a special way: oneresponse, the controlling response, affectsvariables in such a way as to change theprobability of the other, the controlledresponse. The controlling response maymanipulate any of the variables ofwhich the controlled response is a func-tion; hence there are a good many dif-ferent forms of self-control. (p. 231)

So for Skinner, as for Luke Rader thepreacher, self-control consists of a special re-lationship between two behavioral reper-toires, the ‘‘controlling’’ and ‘‘controlled,’’brought about by a special class of reinforc-ers, those that are correlated with delayedpunishment. Such reinforcers are known insome quarters as ‘‘temptations.’’ Sweets,drugs, alcoholic beverages, unprotected sex-ual intercourse, and so on, are special rein-forcers of this sort that give rise, or at leastthat should give rise, to controlling reper-toires.

In the sections that follow, Skinner givesa remarkably comprehensive list of examplesof controlling repertoires, sorted into cate-gories of behavior-change techniques that wenormally use in attempting to change thebehavior of other people: (a) We use physicalrestraint when we clap our hands over our

mouths (the controlling response) to keepfrom coughing or cursing (the controlled re-sponse). We achieve a similar result when wemove out of a situation in which we are like-ly to behave badly. (b) We remove discrimi-native stimuli to alter subsequent behaviorwhen we close doors to eliminate distrac-tions or when we put sweets out of sight toreduce the likelihood that we will eat them.We arrange a discriminative stimulus whenwe tie a string around a finger to remindourselves of an appointment. (c) We use de-privation when we pass up an extra helpingat lunch in order to save room for dessert,and we use satiation when we drink largeamounts of water before going to a cocktailparty in an attempt to cut down on ourdrinking at the party. (d) We manipulateemotional states when we remove sensitivestimuli from our sight or when we delay act-ing by counting to 10. (e) We arrange forcertain behaviors to have aversive conse-quences when we set an alarm clock or whenwe make a resolution. (f ) We induce changesin our behavior and emotional states whenwe take drugs. (g) We avoid engaging in onebehavior sometimes simply by doing some-thing else. For example, we ‘‘change the sub-ject’’ in conversation, and we avoid ‘‘the rav-ages of hatred’’ by ‘‘loving our enemies.’’

On the possibility of self-reinforcement,self-punishment, and self-administered ex-tinction, Skinner is uncertain.

The place of operant reinforcement inself-control is not clear. . . . Self-rein-forcement of operant behavior presup-poses that the individual has it in hispower to obtain reinforcement but doesnot do so until a particular response hasbeen emitted. That might be the caseif a man denied himself all social con-tacts until he had finished a particularjob. Something of this sort unquestion-ably happens, but is it operant rein-forcement? It is certainly roughly par-

552 ROBERT EPSTEIN

allel to the procedure in conditioningthe behavior of another person. But itmust be remembered that the individ-ual may at any moment drop the workin hand and obtain the reinforcement.We have to account for his not doingso. It may be that such indulgent be-havior has been punished—say, withdisapproval—except when a piece ofwork has just been completed. . . . Theultimate question is whether the con-sequence has any strengthening effectupon the behavior which precedes it. Isthe individual more likely to do a sim-ilar piece of work in the future? (1953,pp. 238–239)

Surprisingly, Skinner does not answer thesequestions definitively in his text; nor did heat any point in his career. A. C. Catania, oneof his students, offered such an analysis in1975, showing that self-reinforcement, and,by implication, self-punishment, could notbe shown to be instances of self-adminis-tered operant conditioning under any con-ditions. In other words, the way Skinner de-fined reinforcement and punishment, thereis no such thing as self-reinforcement andself-punishment. The procedures that are of-ten so labeled are sometimes effective, butthey are best viewed as examples of self-monitoring or self-discrimination, not self-administered reinforcement or punishment(cf. Bandura, 1976; Catania, 1975, 1976;Goldiamond, 1976a, 1976b).4

Skinner ends the chapter with yet anotherreminder of his theme—in fact, a whole sec-tion, called ‘‘The Ultimate Source of Con-trol.’’ Here, emphatically, he repeats his ar-gument that self-controlling repertoires areproduced by the environment, with somerepertoires specifically taught by our culture.

4 In his commentary on Herrnstein’s (1977) article,‘‘The Evolution of Behaviorism,’’ Skinner (1977a) at-tacked Herrnstein’s particular use of the term self-re-inforcement, but the issues they were debating are notrelevant to the present discussion.

If this is correct, little ultimate controlremains with the individual. A manmay spend a great deal of time design-ing his own life—he may choose thecircumstances in which he is to livewith great care, and he may manipulatehis daily environment on an extensivescale. Such an activity appears to ex-emplify a high order of self-determi-nation. But it is also behavior, and weaccount for it in terms of other vari-ables in the environment and history ofthe individual. It is these variableswhich provide the ultimate control.(1953, p. 240)

A Freudian interpretation of Fred’s need tobegin and end his account of ‘‘self-control’’ (inquotes) with these stern defenses of determin-ism is tempting indeed. Suffice it to say herethat Skinner didn’t trust us to appreciate hisviews on ‘‘self-determination’’ (in quotes)without coming to question his views on de-terminism. I think his fears were justified, amatter to be discussed further below.

In the chapters that follow in this sectionof the book, Skinner extends his analysis tothinking, decision making, problem solving,and other higher order phenomena that in-volve behavior and internal states not acces-sible to others. The same basic principles ap-ply. For example, we work on ourselves to‘‘make a decision’’ by exposing ourselves tonew sources of information. We help our-selves remember lost names by using ‘‘self-prompts’’ and ‘‘self-probes’’—for example,by running through the alphabet.5 The‘‘self,’’ argues Skinner, is an ‘‘organized sys-tem of responses’’ (1953, p. 286), and suchsystems can interact, as we saw in his ac-count of controlling and controlled re-

5 Similar topics are dealt with in Verbal Behavior,Skinner’s book on language production, published in1957.


sponses.6 ‘‘Self-knowledge’’ is behavior thatdescribes other behavior or the variables ofwhich other behavior is a function, and thusself-knowledge can play a role in the for-mation of controlling repertoires (cf. Segal,1987).

A Self-Managed LifestyleSkinner’s later reflections on self-control

and self-management (which is simply thepractice of techniques of self-control) arewholly consistent with the theoretical for-mulation he presented in 1953 (e.g., seeSkinner, 1968, pp. 191–193, 1974, pp.194–199). But in his later writings we seemore frequent accounts of his own self-man-agement practices, and, ultimately, extensiveadvice on how to become a self-manager. Iwill summarize some of these writings below,but, before doing so, I will attempt to givethe reader a sense of the self-managed life-style Fred led. As I indicated earlier, a list ofexamples doesn’t do justice to the topic, butat least it is a start.

To my knowledge, and all of the rumorsnotwithstanding, Fred did not rely on ‘‘be-havior modification’’ techniques to ‘‘control’’people. Quite the contrary. He was relaxed,natural, and gentle in most of his dealingswith other people. His interpersonal stylewas made milder, if anything, by the scien-tific principles he helped to develop, becausehis research convinced him that punishmentwas a poor tool for changing behavior, so heavoided using it in his everyday life.

Fred avoided manipulating others, but hemost certainly manipulated his own behav-ior, and he did so with great success. Hebrought all of his ingenuity and all of hisscientific principles to bear each day on ev-

6 Skinner (1989) modified his definition of self: ‘‘Ina long chapter called ‘Self-Control’ in Science and Hu-man Behavior, I used self very much as I would nowuse person. . . . [A] person, as a repertoire of behavior,can be observed by others; the self, as a set of accom-panying internal states, is observed only through feel-ing or introspection’’ (p. 28).

ery aspect of his own actions, large andsmall, and when he failed, he recalculatedand tried again.

Sometimes the results were grand, andsometimes they were silly. Fred used to writein his study in the early mornings, and atone point I remember him being concernedabout his fidgeting. He would write for afew minutes and then fidget in his chair andget up. What, he wondered, was causing himto stop writing? Could it be the seat of thechair? He slit open the sides of the cushion,pulled out some foam, and stuffed new foamin, shaping the cushion to conform to hisposterior. Sure enough, the bottom line im-proved: He was able to write for far longerperiods with the modified (but very shabby!)cushion. He had changed his environmentin a very simple fashion in order to changehis own behavior.

He knew that reinforcers are important inmaintaining behavior—especially long, com-plicated performances—so he made hisworld as reinforcing as possible. We oftenworked in the shop in his basement, nearthe top-secret pigeon-guided missile nosecone he had invented for the army in the1940s and the stack of old teaching ma-chines he had invented in the 1950s. Onone occasion we needed to create a devicethat would move a spot of light along ascreen for what began as an experiment onautoshaping (see Epstein & Skinner, 1980),and Fred’s idea was to place a small lightbulbin the middle of a loop that had a holepunched in it. From the side, it would ap-pear that a small dot of light was moving by.For the loop, Fred cut a strip from an oldadding machine cover, and for spindles, Fredfound some empty spools of thread. I in-stalled a motor and began to wire in thebulb when Fred suggested that we plug thedevice in the wall. ‘‘Why?’’ I asked, ‘‘It’s notfinished yet.’’ ‘‘Well, to see it go, of course,’’Fred replied, his eyes illuminated. In otherwords, let’s produce a reinforcer.

554 ROBERT EPSTEIN

Fred kept lists of things to do, becausepeople who keep lists of things to do domore things. He made schedules for himselfto keep himself on track. We all use dailyand weekly schedules, but Fred made long-term schedules as well—even 10- and20-year schedules (Skinner, 1979, 1983b).

He knew that the right stimulus workedas a prompt to strengthen weak behavior, sohe developed ways to work on himself toremember names and numbers that hecouldn’t bring to mind. He would runthrough the alphabet or try different rhyth-mic patterns (‘‘formal prompts’’) or he’d re-view and repeat related material (‘‘thematicprompts’’). He insisted that, given enoughtime, he could recall any fact about his past.Self-prompting works because we are betterat recognizing than recalling. In his note-books, Fred recorded dozens of instances.Consider the following:

Recalling an episode that occurred in1946, I could not get the name of thetenor who did not appear because hisplane was grounded in Chicago and hewas driven by mistake to Bloomington,Illinois, rather than Bloomington, In-diana, and I went through the alpha-bet. At L, M, I almost got the name;it was clearly very close. I continuedand went through again. Again, astrong but unformed response at L, M.A third time, after some miscellaneousrecall of related material, I got it—Lauritz Melchior. Both L and M, andin that order! (Epstein, 1980, p. 208)

I heard an announcement on the radiothat a radical piece of music by Pro-kofiev was to be played. The announcermentioned Stravinsky, Diaghilev, andpossibly one or two other people. Themusic was very strange. A few minuteslater, as it was being played, I tried torecall Prokofiev. I kept getting Petrouch-

ka. I started through the alphabet.With great force, letters would suggestRussian composers. My research cen-tered on p . . . r . . . Respighi invadedRussia momentarily, and Raskolnikoffbecame a composer. I kept thinking ofan old book of Russian piano pieces,trying to visualize the pages of a polkaby the man whose name I was lookingfor. (p. 50)

One may use a partially recalled verbalresponse to prompt a complete re-sponse in the listener. To the chauffeurfrom the Merck Company who wasdriving me from Philadelphia to WestPoint, I said I preferred going througha section called something like Mish-ocken. ‘‘Conshohocken,’’ he said atonce. I could have done the same thingby working on myself to get an even-tually complete response. Since I rec-ognized his response as correct, I couldhave recognized my own recollection assoon as the prompt worked. (p. 284)

Fred knew that unpleasant tasks becomemore pleasant if we arrange our environmentappropriately. At one point he used to gethimself to ride his exercise bike in the morn-ing by positioning reading materials over thehandlebar, and when we worked together hehad a small television set there. He’d pedalwhile watching the morning news.

He knew that the best ideas are oftenfleeting, so he developed special ways to cap-ture them. He kept a notebook or a taperecorder by his bed and by his pool, for ex-ample. He knew that writing was a delicateand easily disrupted activity, so he tookpains to shelter it from disruptions. He builtspecial shelves so that his dictionaries andother reference books were always at arm’sreach (Figure 1). He used his writing deskfor serious writing only; he answered lettersand paid bills elsewhere. He made memo-


randa with whatever was at hand: If heplanned to bring a book home from the of-fice, he would toss it where he would be sureto see it on his way out.

He made himself more productive by us-ing clocks and timers, and he used file fold-ers and special indexing systems to help toorganize his thoughts, especially as he be-came more concerned about the debilitatingeffects of aging. He never let deterioratingeyesight or hearing have its way with him.He compensated, often with gadgets of hisown making. At one point he wore largeplastic ear flaps, resembling Mickey Mouseears, to amplify his hearing; they workedwell, he said, but he stopped wearing thembecause they startled visitors. Although hesuffered from glaucoma, with large magni-fying glasses and good light he continued toread voraciously. When his wife expressedconcern about the presence of a magnifyingglass he had installed in their living room,he built a swing-away arm that kept it hid-den under a coffee table.

He knew that leisure time promotedboth creativity and good health, so hescheduled leisure hours every day. Hewatched football games and read mysterynovels without guilt. He was Type SM—aself-manager—not Type A.

I am trying at this point simply to con-vey the flow, the style, of Fred’s life. It wasimmensely positive, optimistic, fulfilling—often joyous—with self-management skillsplaying a central role. In his 1974 defenseof behaviorism, he stated the possibilitythis way:

Not only has the most ardent behav-iorist feelings like everyone else; onbalance he has quite possibly moreenjoyable ones, because there arestates of the body—associated, for ex-ample, with failure, frustration, orloss—which are far from enjoyable orreinforcing, and they are less likely to

be experienced by those who practicescientific self-knowledge and self-management. (Skinner, 1974, p. 271)

I knew Fred in his 70s and 80s, bywhich time his ship had long since comein. It is clear that he was not as relaxed andfulfilled in earlier stages of his life, but, asI have shown, he had had a passionate in-terest in self-improvement through self-management since the 1940s or possiblyeven earlier. In the 1950s and 1960s, hewas stressed and overworked, mainly be-cause of the success of many of his proj-ects. A former graduate student of his inthe early 1960s once told me that he onlysaw Skinner ‘‘in between plane flights,’’and others have complained about his fail-ure to read theses and provide guidanceduring a period of years when he was im-mensely busy. There are many indicationsin his notebooks and autobiographicalwritings that he was striving during thisdifficult period to improve his situationthrough the deliberate manipulation ofconditions. In one note, written around1961, he exclaims ‘‘I need to relax!’’ (Skin-ner, 1983b, p. 214) and not long after be-gins the first of many notes on his attemptsat ‘‘intellectual self-management,’’ his at-tempt to improve the quality and original-ity of his thinking and writing:

I begin to see myself more clearly inrelation to the daily environment inwhich I live from hour to hour. . . .Am I now leading a more ‘‘rational’’life? In the traditional sense, no. Mybehavior is still controlled by the samevariables—mostly reinforcing conse-quences—acting through the sameprocesses. I am arranging these vari-ables rather than allowing them to turnup at random or from irrelevant sources,but that is not ‘‘reason.’’ . . . How amI to find the conditions under whichI will make the contributions which

556 ROBERT EPSTEIN


←

Figure 1. Skinner’s basement study at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, about a year after his death.He both slept and worked here, and his family has kept it the way he left it. (a) He designed his desk top andthe area around it to keep himself productive without effort. He built the cubbies himself, even the crude slide-out drawers (center top). Frequently handled books were all within easy reach (dictionaries, writer’s manuals,copies of his own books, etc.), and they all had special places so he never had to search for them. At left is acard file containing behavioristic ‘‘translations’’ of hundreds of common terms, which he hoped would be thebasis of a behavioral dictionary. He had trouble reading his handwriting because both his vision and handwritingwere poor in later years; the bulky dictation machine (lower right) kept him going. The makeshift wooden box(extreme lower right) contained pill containers organized into sections, to help him take the right pill at theright time. (b) A small piece of cardboard covered the face of the clock near his desk. When writing, he wouldflip the cardboard down to keep from being distracted. (c) Wires and strings run everywhere in the study.Several here are attached to a large illuminated magnifying glass. They run to pulleys in the ceiling and fromthere to a nearby wall, where they terminate in counterweights that Fred cast of concrete. The arrangementallowed him to position the magnifying glass easily over his reading. In the background are, among other things,photographs of Pavlov, Fred S. Keller, the ping-pong playing pigeons, and one of his grandchildren. (d) Fredwould read, watch television, or listen to classical music from a leather armchair. On the arm he glued amakeshift wooden tray to hold the remote control device for the television; the tray kept him from losing theremote. On the coffee table lay a string (not visible) that was connected to a mechanical finger about six feetaway. By pulling the string, Fred could press the pause button on his tape recorder. ‘‘With a glue gun,’’ Fredwould say, ‘‘you can make anything,’’ and so he did. (e) Fred slept in a module sent him as a token of esteemby a company in Japan. The company had briefly advertised the module in the United States, and Fred,prompted by an ad, suggested that the company create a version of the module for babies—a high-tech ‘‘aircrib’’; the company declined. (f ) An enlargement of the note from above his desk, detailing his medicationschedule from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.

are most likely to be uniquely mine?(Skinner, 1983b, pp. 214–215, italicsadded)

As a way of launching himself in newdirections, Skinner decided to disengagehimself from research completely as of thesummer of 1962 (his involvement hadbeen minimal anyway since 1957), and healso decided to take early retirement at age60 (in 1964). He wasn’t simply escapingby such actions; he was ‘‘arranging vari-ables.’’ He took stock of his situation fre-quently, often in writing, and plannedchanges accordingly. For example, in anote in 1963 he pledged the following:

1) Further reduction of office and de-partmental work. No lecturing.Minimal correspondence.

2) Organizing, filing, clarifying ma-terials, getting a better over-all viewof what is to be done, being able torelate a current interest or idea to aproject.

3) Minimal social stimulation. . . .4) Unguilty relaxation. Light reading.

TV. Music seems too disturbing.(Skinner, 1983a, p. 244)

In four publications during his last de-cade, Fred translated his own self-manage-ment practices into specific recommenda-tions for others. Three (Skinner, 1981,1983a, 1987b) are concerned with intel-lectual self-management per se, and thefourth (Skinner & Vaughan, 1983) coverssomewhat more general issues of self-man-agement in old age. In ‘‘How to DiscoverWhat You Have to Say,’’ Skinner offers ad-vice to students: (a) Keep yourself in goodcondition. You will think and write moreclearly if your body is in good shape. (b)Write in the same place each day and donothing else there. (c) Write at the sametime each day. (d) Surround yourself withthe best writing materials you can get. (e)Write every day. (f ) Start small, and buildup. (g) Schedule leisure time and use it

558 ROBERT EPSTEIN

productively.7 (h) Capture new ideas asthey occur. Carry a notebook, and put oneby your bed. (i) Surround yourself with ap-propriate stimulation: the right audience,reading materials that stimulate yourthinking, new situations. (j) Make outlinesto organize your thoughts before you castthem into prose. Very large sheets of blankpaper (without lines) are helpful for thispurpose, so you can show relationshipsamong ideas graphically.8 (k) Write first,without concern for style. Edit later.

In 1982 Fred gave a paper at a meetingof the American Psychological Associationcalled ‘‘Intellectual Self-Management inOld Age,’’ which was published the follow-ing year. Reaction to the talk was so posi-tive that, with assistance from M. E.Vaughan, Fred expanded the paper into ashort book called Enjoy Old Age. The paperand book make many practical recommen-dations that follow directly from Fred’sown self-management practices, amongthem: (a) Supplement your failing senseswith appropriate devices: glasses, brightlights, magnifying glasses, hearing aids,book recordings, headphones, strong fla-

7 The Greeks, said Skinner, call this eutrapelia. Inaddition to reading novels and watching sports ontelevision, Fred often did nontaxing, work-relatedwork: punching holes in paper, cutting and pasting,reading a classic that might bear on his work. I faultedhim one day for spending so much time in leisureactivities, and he replied that I had a ‘‘cruel superego.’’

8 Fred gave me many things over the years that Itreasure, among them a two-volume first edition ofWilliam James’s Principles of Psychology, signed byFred, and a cumulative record Fred generated in 1932.My oddest treasure is a roll of large, somewhat yel-lowed sheets of paper. Fred told me that they were leftover from a stack he had used to organize his thinking,design experiments, and so on, and he encouraged meto use them for the same purpose. Somehow, I justcouldn’t bring myself to deface them, knowing whatthey had been intended for. Will they end up in amuseum someday? The label on the exhibit will read,‘‘Sheets of paper once owned by eminent psychologistB. F. Skinner. He intended to write on them, but wedon’t know what.’’

vorings in food.9 (b) Supplement failingabilities and a lack of stimulation with newtypes of stimulation, such as spectatorsports and pornography. (c) Learn newskills to improve recall: Make notes, act onsomething when you think of it, reviewwritten materials, prompt yourself, and soon. When all else fails and you are in anembarrassing situation, improvise. For ex-ample, if you need to introduce yourspouse to someone whose name you haveforgotten, try this:

My wife and I use the following strat-egy: If there is any conceivable chancethat she could have met the person, Isimply say to her, ‘‘Of course, you re-member . . . ?’’ and she grasps the out-stretched hand and says, ‘‘Yes, ofcourse. How are you?’’ The acquain-tance may not remember meeting mywife, but is not sure of his or her mem-ory, either. (Skinner, 1983a, p. 240)

(d) Leisure time should be truly relaxing.Give up demanding activities and competi-tions. (e) Get your rest!10 (f ) Make it easy

9 Fred wore a hearing aid for the last 20 years ofhis life, but he still had trouble hearing in lecture hallsin which the ambient noise level was high. He oftencould detect only sporadic words or phrases from thequestions he was getting, but he chose to make dorather than to ask the questioner to repeat the ques-tion. Even so, he almost always answered the questioncorrectly. He told me that he was able to do this be-cause he generally received the same questions againand again; his answers, he said, were virtually ‘‘pack-aged.’’ Only rarely would he answer a question thathad not been asked. The answer, usually elegant,would produce many quizzical expressions in the au-dience, but no one ever seemed to suspect the extentof his hearing impairment or the method he was usingto answer questions.

10 Skinner (1983b) refers to a memorandum de-scribing a standing order in Hitler’s army. When of-ficers were observed to suffer any of 18 different signsof mental fatigue, they were obligated to take an im-mediate vacation. (Skinner adds, ‘‘Fortunately for theworld, [Hitler] did not apply the order to himself,’’ p.241.) He suggested that we review the actual memoone day, and we found that I was suffering from 17of the 18 signs of fatigue. Notably, Fred wasn’t suffer-ing from a single one.


to behave. Have appropriate materials with-in easy reach. (g) Use files or other aids tohelp organize your thinking. Skinner(1987a) described two ‘‘three-dimensionaloutlines’’ he had recently invented to helphim in this way and claimed they ‘‘theyworked so well that I wish I had had themwhen I was younger’’ (p. 379).

Fred’s use of self-management techniqueswas easy and natural for him. In no way didit smack of the ‘‘tyranny’’ of the self-controltraining of Walden Two. It was like a gamethat he played, a puzzle to be solved, and heenjoyed the process as much as the results.He also took pride in self-management, be-cause it seemed to show a powerful, practicalside to his science that was lacking in otherbranches of psychology or psychiatry. Con-sider the following entries from his note-books, each written in the 1960s:

Freud was unable to stop smoking ci-gars, up to 25 a day, though smokingmust have been obviously related to theheavy ‘‘catarrh’’ he suffered from mostof his life, as well as to the protractedcancer of the jaw in his last years . . .an astonishing lack of self-understand-ing or self-control. Was he not both-ered by it, or did much of his theoryspring from the need to acknowledgethat the habit was ‘‘bigger than hewas’’? (Epstein, 1980, p. 341)

I have, I think, made good use of myanalysis of behavior in managing myown life, particularly my own verbalbehavior. Can the psychoanalysts andthe cognitive and humanistic psychol-ogists say as much? Did Freud ever re-port the use of his theory to influencehis own thinking? Are cognitive psy-chologists particularly knowledgeableabout knowledge? Are humanistic psy-chologists more effective in helping

other people because of their theories?(p. 75)

Fred’s most important self-managementpractice is implied in his writings but is no-where clearly stated. He always spent a fewminutes each day, often scattered through-out the day, searching for and analyzing vari-ables of which his behavior seemed to be afunction. It is not enough to live your life,he told me; you also need to analyze it andmake changes in it frequently and regularly.

Resolving the Tension BetweenSelf-Control and Determinism

Skinner (1953) framed his seminal chap-ter on self-control with a defense of deter-minism, and he framed the term itself inquotation marks. In what sense is determin-ism compatible with his conception of self-control? If Skinner truly believed in deter-minism, did he truly believe in self-control?Is self-control a trivial epiphenomenon forSkinner, or does it overlap with the idea ofself-determination?

Extreme philosophical determinism en-compasses all events, by definition, so it cer-tainly encompasses the ‘‘controlling’’ self. Inthat sense, Skinner is technically correct:The behaviors we label ‘‘self-managing’’ arefully ‘‘determined.’’ But remember thatphilosophical positions are, in effect, justfantasies. They are interpretations of data.Like pure logic or pure mathematics, theyare not always good predictors of events inthe world, and they have no trouble coex-isting with very different interpretations ofthe same data (cf. Quine, 1969). The realquestion is whether the behavioral phenom-ena Skinner described in his characterizationof self-control are trivial. If so, self-controldisappears as a topic worthy of further con-sideration. If not, we must ask what self-control practices accomplish for the individ-ual.

The best way to settle the issue, I believe,

560 ROBERT EPSTEIN

is to examine two extreme cases. First, con-sider the individual who has no self-controlskills. In Skinner’s view, such a person fallsprey to all immediate stimuli, even thosethat are linked to delayed punishment. See-ing a chocolate cake, she eats it. Handed acigarette, she smokes. Given an opportunityto steal, she steals. She may make plans, butshe has no ability to carry them out, becauseshe is entirely at the mercy of proximalevents. She is a sailboat blowing uncontrol-lably in a gale, like the characters in FrankNorris’s classic, McTeague.

At the other extreme we have a skillfulself-manager, like Fred Skinner. He, too, setsgoals, but he has ample ability to meet them.He has the skills to cast dangerous reinforc-ers aside. He identifies conditions that affecthis behavior and alters them to suit him. Hetakes temporally remote possibilities into ac-count in setting his priorities. External fac-tors still affect him, but he is lookingthrough a very large window. The wind isblowing, but he sets the boat’s destinationand directs it there.

These two individuals are profoundly dif-ferent. The first is being controlled in almosta linear fashion by her immediate environ-ment. The second is, in a nontrivial sense,controlling his own life. They are differentin their ability to function, to negotiatethrough life. In our culture, the first mightconceivably smoke, drink, commit crimes,take drugs, squander money, and so on. Thesecond, well practiced in foregoing imme-diate pleasure when long-term gain is atstake, and well equipped with the relevantself-management skills, would presumablyhave a ‘‘meaningful’’ life, the meaning beingthe realization of long-term goals.

In a very real sense, Skinner’s concept ofself-control is the equivalent of self-deter-mination, because the practice of self-controlhas a profound impact on one’s life (cf.Theophanous, 1975). Note that self-control,in spite of the quotation marks, was not one

of the many ‘‘by-products’’ or ‘‘collateralproducts’’ that Skinner talked about and dis-missed. ‘‘Mind’’ was an epiphenomenon toFred, a useless and even dangerous concept(consider Blanshard & Skinner, 1967; Skin-ner, 1963, 1974, 1977b, 1990). Feelingswere real for him, as the passage I quotedabove states clearly, but they played no caus-al role in behavior, so they were at best ‘‘col-lateral products’’ of environmental eventsand therefore unimportant in an analysis ofbehavior (Skinner, 1945, 1974, 1987a). Andfree will was, to Fred, simply an illusion(Rogers & Skinner, 1956; Skinner, 1955–1956, 1971). Self-management—the prac-tice of self-control—fits none of the triviacategories. It encompasses a set of powerfulskills and procedures that produce substan-tive change.

Our two cases differ in yet another re-spect, and here the ironies begin to perco-late. The woman who lacks self-control skillsfeels controlled. She may believe in free will(in fact, in our culture, it’s a safe bet thatshe does) but her own life is out of control.A belief in free will only exacerbates her frus-tration. She should be able to will herself outof any jam, but ‘‘willpower’’ proves to behighly unreliable.11 In contrast, the self-manager feels that he is in control. Ironically,like Skinner, he may believe in determinism,but he not only feels that he is in control,he is in fact exercising considerably morecontrol over his life than our impulsive sub-ject.

Critics have often argued that Skinner’sviews on free will are depressing and debil-itating. As Carpenter (1974) put it, ‘‘if a per-

11 Willpower corresponds to the behavior of ‘‘doingsomething else,’’ one variation of which is to ‘‘holdvery still.’’ I remember being so nervous once that tokeep myself from shaking I ‘‘shook myself in the otherdirection’’ (or so I told people), the result being noshaking at all. So willpower as such is just the tip ofthe self-management iceberg; it is just one of manytypes of self-management, and other types are poten-tially more helpful for most people.


son’s belief in autonomy could be extin-guished, it is likely that he would become sopassive that he would exhibit symptoms ofpsychosis’’ (p. 117). But Fred himself was astrict and ardent determinist. He believedsincerely that he was not an autonomous en-tity but merely a ‘‘locus’’ through which en-vironmental and genetic forces acted (Skin-ner, 1983b). Yet he lacked passivity to sucha degree as to be able to rouse Carpenter andmany other critics to fits of passion (considerAgnew, 1972; Chomsky, 1971; cf. Epstein,1987b). Many of the critics overlooked oneof Fred’s most important theses, namely thatthe causes of behavior can be located andmanipulated, even by the individual himselfor herself. Determinism is not necessarilyequivalent to fatalism, and Skinner’s partic-ular version of determinism is the very an-tithesis of fatalism.

As Skinner himself showed both by anal-ysis and practice, self-control is both real andpowerful. It would seem to be determinismthat is the less substantive concept. Skinner’squotation marks around the self-controlchapter (and around the term itself ) addnothing to his analysis. He could have of-fered the same analysis and have rejected de-terminism, just as our impulsive subjectcould have embraced it.

As I have argued extensively elsewhere(e.g., Epstein, 1984a, 1985a, 1987a,1987b), behaviorism began as a movementto reform psychology, and when it began tofail in its early years, it rapidly evolved intoa school of philosophy. It became the the-odicy of its devotees, a rationale for why itsadherents should be allowed to appropriatepsychology departments (Epstein, 1985b). Ifa science of behavior had been allowed togrow and flourish—perhaps as an indepen-dent field, the way Kuo (1937) and othersproposed—behaviorism as such would havedisappeared. When we separate the sciencefrom the philosophy, the scientist from the

philosopher, the tensions and ironies disap-pear completely.

One solution, then, to the determinismproblem is to scrap determinism; the self-control literature stands well on its own.While we’re at it, perhaps we should aban-don a few other isms, as well, including be-haviorism itself, as Fred Keller himself sug-gested from time to time (e.g., Keller, 1984).Isms are common in the early stages of sci-ence (consider Hopkins, 1934), but they aretroublesome later on, as we have seen inSkinner’s presentation of self-control. It willtake the concerted and coordinated effortsof specialists in many disciplines to shed sig-nificant light on human behavior, by far themost complex subject matter science hasever tackled. It is time we went about thisimportant business as colleagues, not ideol-ogists.

Self-Control After Skinner

Skinner’s early analysis of self-controlhelped to inspire educators and clinicians todevelop and test many applications of self-control techniques with a variety of popu-lations and a variety of problems. Some basicresearch on self-control, mainly with ani-mals, is also an outgrowth of Skinner’s work.Because Fred wrote little about self-controlbetween 1953 and 1981, and because henever conducted research on the topic, it isunderstandable that research and applicationhave diverged from his formulation (see Ka-roly, 1982, and Kazdin, 1978, for reviews ofthe different approaches). There are some ex-ceptions. For example, in yet another case oflife imitating art, Newman and Bloom(1981) reported success reducing cigarettesmoking in undergraduates employing thedelay-of-gratification procedure Skinner de-scribed in Walden Two (also see Hartig &Kanfer, 1973; Mischel, 1974). And Epstein(1984b) presented a simple model of self-control that is consistent with Skinner’s(1953) formulation, along with supporting

562 ROBERT EPSTEIN

data: Pigeons that are close in time to rein-forcers correlated with delayed punishment(i.e., to ‘‘temptations’’) behave as if the pun-ishment doesn’t exist. When remote in timefrom such reinforcers, they behave moreprudently.

Contemporary work has diverged fromSkinner’s work in primarily three ways: First,some researchers and practitioners (e.g.,Bandura, 1976; Mahoney & Thoresen,1974; Watson & Tharp, 1972) take self-ad-ministered reinforcement and punishmentprocedures seriously, despite vigorous criti-cisms (e.g., Brigham, 1982; Catania, 1975,1976; Goldiamond, 1976a, 1976b). The de-bate is usually not about whether the pro-cedures work but why they work, the criticsmaintaining that technical definitions of re-inforcement and punishment don’t allow usto test for ‘‘self-reinforcement’’ and ‘‘self-punishment’’ in any meaningful way. Whenprocedures so labeled seem to be effective,the critics say other mechanisms are at work.The debate is unlikely to be resolved, be-cause reinforcement and punishment are de-fined in different ways by different practi-tioners. Although it has been argued—con-vincingly, in my opinion—that Skinner’sown concepts of reinforcement and punish-ment make self-reinforcement and self-pun-ishment meaningless, matters are complicat-ed by the fact that Skinner himself has oc-casionally used self-reinforcement in a func-tional account of behavior (e.g., Skinner,1957, pp. 438–446).

Second, with the infusion of cognitivetheories into behavior therapy (see Kazdin,1978), many now emphasize the importanceof cognition in self-control (e.g., Cautela,1971; Kanfer, 1970; Kanfer & Karoly, 1972;Kanfer & Phillips, 1970; Karoly & Kanfer,1982; Mahoney & Thoresen, 1974; Mei-chenbaum, 1977; Stuart, 1977). Skinner of-fered accounts of private events during hiscareer (e.g., Skinner, 1945, 1957, 1963), buthe also objected to modern analyses of cog-

nition as he understood them (e.g., Skinner,1977b, 1990).

Finally, most animal research on self-con-trol has been conducted in the framework ofa choice model of behavior, according towhich self-control is said to be exhibitedwhen an organism chooses a larger, more de-layed reinforcer over a smaller, more imme-diate reinforcer (Ainslie, 1975; Logue, 1988;Mazur & Logue, 1978; Navarick & Fantino,1976; Rachlin, 1974). But Skinner neversaw any value in choice models, so definingself-control in that context had no meaningfor him. His clearest statement of his posi-tion on research on choice appeared in 1986(also see Skinner, 1950):

To return to choice and especially toregard a single response as a choice be-tween responding and not respondingare, I think, steps backward. Choice issomething to be explained, not to beused in the analysis of basic processes.. . . It is true that if a man does not doone thing, he will do another or donothing, and that if you want him todo A and not B, you have only to makethe ‘‘expected utility’’ of A greater thanthat of B as by describing favorableconsequences of reinforcing A morefrequently. But you are changing onlyrelative probabilities. Contingencies ofreinforcement are much more powerfulthan the ‘‘expected utilities’’ that followfrom instruction, and rate of respond-ing is a more direct measure of proba-bility than a choice between alterna-tives. (Skinner, 1986, p. 232)

Skinner’s original notion that self-controlinvolves the practice of skills for avoidingreinforcers correlated with delayed punish-ment has certainly been incorporated intoseveral contemporary views (e.g., Epstein,1984b; Goldfried & Merbaum, 1973b;Thoresen & Mahoney, 1974), and many ofthe techniques of self-control he outlined


have been taught for millennia by organizedreligions and were even described in thewritings of ancient Greek and Roman phi-losophers (consider Bolin & Goldberg,1979; Schimmel, 1977, 1979).

Such techniques have been essential tohuman civilization because they allow indi-viduals to avoid or escape dangerous, im-mediate reinforcers with minimal or no helpfrom other people. Without self-controlskills, we would need constant monitoring,as indeed young children do. Our parentsand our clergy have been the main purveyorsof such skills, but so many people lack theseskills that it is clear that society is failing toteach them adequately. As a result, a greatmany people are blowing aimlessly in thewind, and society seems to be foundering.As Segal (1987) states,

Individuals cannot gain self-controlwithout help. . . . If our intellectual andcreative capacities are to be fully real-ized, if we are to acquire interpersonalskills and moral values consonant withthe interests of the group and a reper-toire of knowledge and skills for self-control and self-expression, it can onlybe as the result of learning experiencesthat the social milieu provides for us.. . . The wise society fosters research onbehavior so that it can exploit the re-sultant technology for the purpose ofrearing intelligent, creative, thoughtful,loving, moral, and self-controlling citi-zens. (p. 151)

Teaching self-control practices serves twoimportant functions for society: It createscitizens who fulfill their potential and thusare in a position to make greater contribu-tions to the group, and it gives society amechanism for assuring that individuals willrespect the long-term interests of the group.Some reinforcers are correlated with punish-ers so long delayed that only the individual’sprogeny will experience them (cf. Skinner,

1971, 1973). Abusing our natural resourcesis a prime example. When society teaches usto use self-control skills to save water, to re-cycle our trash, to turn down our thermo-stats, it creates a better world for our de-scendants.

By conveying what we know about self-control and self-management, behavioral sci-entists and practitioners can play a specialrole in helping society do its job. In a Sid-dhartha-style book I completed recently (Ep-stein, 1997), intended for a popular audi-ence, I have provided a simple frameworkfor teaching basic self-management skills. Ayoung man whose life is in disarray (hesmokes, drinks, overeats, loses things, pro-crastinates, and so on) seeks advice from hisparents, teachers, and friends, but no onecan help. Then he remembers his old UncleFred (modeled, shamelessly, after Fred Skin-ner), whose life always seemed to be in per-fect harmony. In a series of visits, Uncle Fredreveals to him the three ‘‘secrets’’ of self-management, all Ms: Modify your environ-ment, monitor your behavior, and make com-mitments. Fred also reveals and explains the‘‘self-management principle’’: Behaviorchanges behavior. After each visit, the youngman (who has no name) tries out a newtechnique, and his life is changed radicallyfor the better. In one scene, he sees a class-room of remarkably creative and insightfulchildren who have been trained in self-man-agement techniques in a public school. It isfiction, of course, but the technology is wellestablished and the possibilities are wellwithin reach.

Dying with His Boots On

Fred had at least three close brushes withdeath before finally succumbing to compli-cations arising from leukemia in August of1990. In 1971 he began experiencing angi-nal pain, so severe that he wrapped up hisaffairs, expecting to die in short order. In thelate 1970s, a tumor began to grow on the

564 ROBERT EPSTEIN

side of his face; by the time it was removed,it was nearly the size of a golf ball. Becauseit involved the parietal gland, a colleague la-beled it ‘‘Pavlov’s revenge’’ (Fred wasamused). The chief of surgery at Massachu-setts General Hospital removed most of thetumor, but a portion remained, because thecancerous tissue enveloped facial nerves. Thetumor was determined to be malignant, soFred was subjected to radiation therapy forseveral months. The radiation killed most ofthe taste buds on his tongue and made ittorturous for him to eat.

A few years before he died, Fred fell inhis kitchen, causing blood vessels to rupturein his brain. Six large holes were drilled inhis skull to relieve the pressure, and he wasforced to lie perfectly still on his back forweeks in the hospital. And then, finally, inthe fall of 1989, the leukemia. He was toldhe had 2 or 3 months to live.

Fred faced all of these difficulties with thesame optimism and ingenuity he applied toevery other aspect of his life. He searchedfor relevant variables and altered them tokeep himself going as well as possible, andthat was usually very well indeed. Faced withheart problems, Fred changed his diet, lost16 pounds, modified his exercise routine,and cut back on commitments. When sub-jected to the radiation therapy, at one pointhe improvised a shield of lead foil to protecthis tongue and admonished his physician fornot having thought of such a device. Hedealt with his glaucoma, his hearing loss, hisfailing memory with equal finesse.

I visited his bedside the day after his tu-mor was removed, not more than an hourafter he was informed that it was malignant.He was lucid but showed no signs of dis-tress, absolutely none. He told me about thereasonably good food and the great backrubs at the hospital. He said he had no re-grets. ‘‘I’ve had a good life,’’ he said.

The leukemia did not keep him fromworking, and just 8 days before his death,

the American Psychological Associationawarded him its first Citation for Outstand-ing Lifetime Contribution to Psychology.Fred delivered a 15-minute speech extem-poraneously to a packed audience in Bostonin accepting the award, and, just hours be-fore his death, he put the finishing toucheson a manuscript based on that speech: ‘‘CanPsychology Be a Science of Mind?’’ (Skinner,1990). He had always wanted to die ‘‘withhis boots on,’’ according to his daughter, andhe came very close. ‘‘Near the end,’’ shewrote, ‘‘his mouth was dry. Upon receivinga bit of water he said his last word, ‘Mar-velous’’’ (Vargas, 1990, p. 410).

Life, to Fred, was a series of joys to relishand challenges to overcome, and he did bothextremely well. He never bothered with thefour stages of the terminally ill, perhaps be-cause they smacked too much of traditionalpsychology. He just lived!

Fred was the most creative, most produc-tive, and happiest person I have ever known.I cannot prove that his exceptional self-man-agement skills were the cause, but I have nodoubt whatsoever that they were, and bothSkinner and his alter-ego, Frazier, made sim-ilar claims.

In retrospect, I learned more from observ-ing Fred behave than I did from his minis-trations or his books.12 Fred as a behaving

12 The literature on self-control and self-manage-ment grew slowly during the 1960s (e.g., Ferster,Nurnberger, & Levitt, 1962; Goldiamond, 1965) andreached a crescendo of sorts in the early and mid-1970s, with at least eight books documenting the suc-cess of self-management techniques in a variety of set-tings (e.g., Foster, 1974; Goldfried & Merbaum,1973a; Kanfer & Goldstein, 1975; Mahoney & Tho-resen, 1974; Stuart, 1977; Thoresen & Mahoney,1974; Watson & Tharp, 1972; Williams & Long,1975). The flurry came at about the time I was fin-ishing college (1974), and I was fascinated. Late in1975 I helped to conduct a clinical study on self-control (Epstein & Goss, 1978) and decided then toenter graduate school in psychology to learn moreabout the topic. That trip I made to Fred Skinner’shome in the fall of 1976 was for the same purpose,and I got far more than I bargained for.


organism was the paramount example of thescience of behavior put to good effect on adaily basis, a microcosmic Walden Two fullyactualized.

As a philosopher, Fred was and will re-main controversial. As a scientist, he was ex-ceptional, but we must not fall into the trapof learning science from his writings, just aswe do not learn physics from Isaac Newton.As a person, as a behaving organism, Fredstill has a great deal to teach us all.

REFERENCES

Agnew, S. T. (1972, January). Agnew’s blast at be-haviorism. Psychology Today, pp. 4, 84, 87.

Ainslie, G. W. (1975). Specious reward: A behavioraltheory of impulsiveness and impulse control. Psy-chological Bulletin, 82, 463–496.

Atkinson, R. C., & Wilson, H. A. (Eds.). (1969).Computer-assisted instruction: A book of readings.New York: Academic Press.

Axelrod, S. (1983). Behavior modification for the class-room teacher (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.

Bandura, A. (1976). Self-reinforcement: Theoreticaland methodological considerations. Behaviorism,4, 135–155.

Baxley, N. (Producer). (1982). Cognition, creativity,and behavior: The Columban simulations [Film].Champaign, IL: Research Press.

Becker, W. C. (1971). Parents are teachers: A childmanagement program. Champaign, IL: ResearchPress.

Bellack, A. S., Hersen, M., & Kazdin, A. E. (Eds.).(1990). International handbook of behavior modi-fication and therapy (2nd ed.). New York: Plenum.

Blackman, D. E., & Sanger, D. J. (Eds.). (1978).Contemporary research in behavioral pharmacology.New York: Plenum.

Blanshard, B., & Skinner, B. F. (1967). The problemof consciousness—a debate. Philosophy and Phe-nomenological Research, 27, 317–337.

Blechman, E. A., & Brownell, K. D. (1988). Hand-book of behavioral medicine for women. New York:Pergamon.

Bolin, E. P., & Goldberg, G. M. (1979). Behavioralpsychology and the Bible: General and specificconsiderations. Journal of Psychology and Theology,7, 167–175.

Brigham, T. (1982). Self-management: A radical be-havioral perspective. In P. Karoly & F. H. Kanfer(Eds.), Self-management and behavior change: Fromtheory to practice (pp. 32–59). New York: Perga-mon.

Bullock, D. H. (1978). Programmed instruction. En-

glewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology Pub-lications.

Carpenter, F. (1974). The Skinner primer: Beyond free-dom and dignity. New York: The Free Press.

Catania, A. C. (1975). The myth of self-reinforce-ment. Behaviorism, 3, 192–199.

Catania, A. C. (1976). Self-reinforcement revisited.Behaviorism, 4, 157–162.

Catania, A. C., & Brigham, T. A. (Eds.). (1978).Handbook of applied behavior analysis: Social andinstructional processes. New York: Irvington.

Catania, A. C., & Harnad, S. (Eds.). (1988). Theselection of behavior: The operant behaviorism of B.F. Skinner: Comments and consequences. New York:Cambridge University Press.

Cautela, J. R. (1971). Covert conditioning. In A. Ja-cobs & L. B. Sachs (Eds.), The psychology of pri-vate events: Perspectives on covert response systems.New York: Academic Press.

Chomsky, N. (1971, December 30). The case againstB. F. Skinner. The New York Review, pp. 18–24.

Claiborne, R. (1971, October 10). B. F. Skinner’sgame plan for human society. Chicago TribuneBook World, p. 6.

Connellan, T. J. (1978). How to improve performance:Behaviorism in business and industry. New York:Harper & Row.

Daniels, A., & Rosen, T. A. (1983). Performance man-agement: Improving quality and productivitythrough positive reinforcement. Tucker, GA: AubreyDaniels & Associates.

Epstein, R. (Ed.). (1980). Notebooks: B. F. Skinner.Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Epstein, R. (1981). On pigeons and people: A pre-liminary look at the Columban Simulation Pro-ject. The Behavior Analyst, 4, 43–55.

Epstein, R. (1984a). The case for praxics. The Behav-ior Analyst, 7, 101–119.

Epstein, R. (1984b). An effect of immediate rein-forcement and delayed punishment, with possibleimplications for self-control. Journal of BehaviorTherapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 15, 291–298.

Epstein, R. (1985a). Animal cognition as the praxistviews it. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews,9, 623–630.

Epstein, R. (1985b). Further comments on praxics:Why the devotion to behaviorism? The BehaviorAnalyst, 8, 269–271.

Epstein, R. (1987a). Comparative psychology as thepraxist views it. Journal of Comparative Psychology,101, 249–253.

Epstein, R. (1987b). In the yellow wood (Afterword).In S. Modgil & C. Modgil (Eds.), B. F. Skinner:Consensus and controversy (pp. 333–335). Sussex,England: Falmer Press.

Epstein, R. (1990). Generativity theory and creativity.In M. A. Runco & R. S. Albert (Eds.), Theories

566 ROBERT EPSTEIN

of creativity (pp. 116–140). Newbury Park, CA:Sage.

Epstein, R. (1991). Skinner, creativity, and the prob-lem of spontaneous behavior. Psychological Science,6, 362–370.

Epstein, R. (1996). Cognition, creativity, and behavior:Selected essays. Westport, CT: Praeger.

Epstein, R. (1997). Self-help without the hype. Atlanta,GA: Performance Management Publications.

Epstein, R., & Goss, C. (1978). A self-control pro-cedure for the maintenance of nondisruptive be-havior in an elementary school child. BehaviorTherapy, 9, 109–117.

Epstein, R., & Skinner, B. F. (1980). Resurgence ofresponding after the cessation of response-inde-pendent reinforcement. Proceedings of the NationalAcademy of Sciences, USA, 77, 6251–6253.

Eysenck, H. J., & Martin, I. (Eds.). (1987). Theoret-ical foundations of behavior therapy. New York: Ple-num.

Fagen, S. A., & Hill, J. M. (1977). Behavior man-agement: A competency-based manual for in-servicetraining. Rockville, MD: Montgomery CountyPublic Schools.

Ferster, C. B., Nurnberger, J. I., & Levitt, E. B.(1962). The control of eating. Journal of Math-etics, 1, 87–109.

Foster, C. (1974). Developing self-control. Kalamazoo,MI: Behaviordelia.

Gentry, W. D. (Ed.). (1984). Handbook of behavioralmedicine. New York: Guilford.

Goldberg, S. R., & Stolerman, I. P. (Eds.). (1986).Behavioral analysis and drug dependence. NewYork: Academic Press.

Goldfried, M. R., & Merbaum, M. (Eds.). (1973a).Behavior change through self-control. New York:Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

Goldfried, M. R., & Merbaum, M. (1973b). A per-spective on self-control. In M. R. Goldfried & M.Merbaum (Eds.), Behavior change through self-con-trol (pp. 3–34). New York: Holt, Rinehart &Winston.

Goldiamond, I. (1965). Self-control procedures inpersonal behavior problems. Psychological Reports,17, 851–868.

Goldiamond, I. (1976a). Fables, armadyllics, and self-reinforcement. Journal of Applied Behavior Analy-sis, 9, 521–525.

Goldiamond, I. (1976b). Self-reinforcement. Journalof Applied Behavior Analysis, 9, 509–514.

Grabowski, J., Stitzer, M. L., & Henningfield, J. E.(Eds.). (1984). Behavioral intervention techniquesin drug abuse treatment. Rockville, MD: NationalInstitute on Drug Abuse.

Hartig, F. H., & Kanfer, F. A. (1973). The role ofverbal self-instructions in children’s resistance totemptation. Journal of Personality and Social Psy-chology, 25, 259–267.

Herrnstein, R. J. (1977). The evolution of behavior-ism. American Psychologist, 32, 593–603.

Hersen, M., van Hasselt, V. B., & Matson, J. L.(Eds.). (1983). Behavior therapy for the develop-mentally and physically disabled. New York: Aca-demic Press.

Holland, J. G., & Skinner, B. F. (1961). The analysisof behavior: A program for self-instruction. NewYork: McGraw-Hill.

Hopkins, A. J. (1934). Alchemy: Child of Greek phi-losophy. New York: Columbia University Press.

Iversen, L. L., Iversen, S. D., & Snyder, S. H. (Eds.).(1987). New directions in behavioral pharmacology.New York: Plenum.

Jones, V. F. (1990). Comprehensive classroom manage-ment: Motivating and managing students (3rd ed.).Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Kanfer, F. (1970). Self-regulation: Research, issues,and speculations. In C. Neuringer & J. L. Michael(Eds.), Behavior modification in clinical psychology(pp. 178–220). New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

Kanfer, F. H., & Goldstein, A. P. (Eds.). (1975).Helping people change: A textbook of methods. NewYork: Pergamon.

Kanfer, F. H., & Karoly, P. (1972). Self-control: Abehavioristic excursion into the lion’s den. Behav-ior Therapy, 3, 398–416.

Kanfer, F. H., & Phillips, J. S. (1970). Learning foun-dations of behavior therapy. New York: Wiley.

Kaplan, J. S. (1991). Beyond behavior modification: Acognitive-behavioral approach to behavior manage-ment in the school (2nd ed.). Austin, TX: Pro-Ed.

Karoly, P. (1982). Perspectives on self-managementand behavior change. In P. Karoly & F. H. Kanfer(Eds.), Self-management and behavior change: Fromtheory to practice (pp. 3–31). New York: Perga-mon.

Karoly, P., & Kanfer, F. H. (Eds.). (1982). Self-man-agement and behavior change: From theory to prac-tice. New York: Pergamon.

Kazdin, A. E. (1978). History of behavior modification:Experimental foundations of contemporary research.Baltimore, MD: University Park Press.

Keller, F. S. (1968). ‘‘Good-bye, Teacher . . .’’ Journalof Applied Behavior Analysis, 1, 79–89.

Keller, F. S. (1977). Summer and sabbaticals: Selectedpapers on psychology and education. Champaign,IL: Research Press.

Keller, F. S. (1984). A note on the founding of theCenter. The Current Repertoire [Newsletter of theCambridge Center for Behavioral Studies], 1, 1.

Keller, F. S., & Sherman, J. G. (1974). The KellerPlan handbook: Essays on a personalized system ofinstruction. Menlo Park, CA: W. A. Benjamin.

Krasnegor, N. A. (Ed.). (1979). Behavioral analysisand treatment of substance abuse. Rockville, MD:National Institute of Drug Abuse.


Kuo, Z. Y. (1937). Prolegomena to praxiology. TheJournal of Psychology, 4, 1–22.

Logue, A. W. (1988). Research on self-control: Anintegrating framework. Behavioral and Brain Sci-ences, 11, 665–709.

Lumsdaine, A. A., & Glaser, R. (Eds.). (1965). Teach-ing machines and programmed instruction: A sourcebook. Washington, DC: National Education As-sociation.

Machan, T. R. (1974). The pseudo-science of B. F.Skinner. New York: Arlington House.

Mager, R. F. (1984). Preparing instructional objectives(2nd ed.). Belmont, CA: Pitman Managementand Training.

Mahoney, M. J., & Thoresen, C. E. (1974). Self-con-trol: Power to the person. Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole.

Marwell, G. (1972). Review of B. F. Skinner’s BeyondFreedom and Dignity. Contemporary Sociology, 1,19–23.

Matson, J. L., & McCartney, J. R. (Eds.). (1981).Handbook of behavior modification with the men-tally retarded. New York: Plenum.

Mazur, J. E., & Logue, A. W. (1978). Choice in a‘‘self-control’’ paradigm: Effects of a fading pro-cedure. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Be-havior, 30, 11–17.

McIntyre, T. (1989). The behavior management hand-book: Setting up effective behavior management sys-tems. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

McKim, W. A. (1986). Drugs and behavior: An intro-duction to behavioral pharmacology. EnglewoodCliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Meichenbaum, D. (1977). Cognitive behavior modi-fication. New York: Plenum.

Melamed, B. G., & Siegel, L. J. (1980). Behavioralmedicine: Practical applications in health care. NewYork: Springer.

Mischel, W. (1974). Processes in delay of gratifica-tion. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experi-mental social psychology (Vol. 7). New York: Aca-demic Press.

Modgil, S., & Modgil, C. (Eds.). (1987). B. F. Skin-ner: Consensus and controversy. Sussex, England:Falmer Press.

Navarick, D. J., & Fantino, E. (1976). Self-controland general models of choice. Journal of Experi-mental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 2,75–87.

Newman, A., & Bloom, R. (1981). Self-control ofsmoking: I. Effects of experience with imposed,increasing, decreasing, and random delays. Behav-iour Research and Therapy, 19, 187–192.

O’Leary, K. D., & O’Leary, S. G. (1977). Classroommanagement: The successful use of behavior modifi-cation (2nd ed.). New York: Pergamon.

Patterson, G. R. (1975). Families: Applications of sociallearning to family life (Rev. ed.). Champaign, IL:Research Press.

Peterson, S. K., & Tenenbaum, H. A. (1986). Behav-ior management: Strategies and techniques. Lan-ham, MD: University Press of America.

Proctor, R. W., & Weeks, D. J. (1990). The goal ofB. F. Skinner and behavior analysis. New York:Springer-Verlag.

Quine, W. V. (1969). Ontological relativity and otheressays. New York: Columbia University Press.

Rachlin, H. (1974). Self-control. Behaviorism, 2, 94–107.

Rescigno, D. (1984). Behavior modification in businessand industry: A selected bibliography. Chicago: CPLBibliographies.

Rimm, D. C., & Masters, J. C. (1979). Behavior ther-apy: Techniques and empirical findings (2nd ed.).New York: Academic Press.

Rogers, C., & Skinner, B. F. (1956). Some issues con-cerning the control of human behavior: A sym-posium. Science, 124, 1057–1066.

Rubenstein, R. L. (1971, September). Review of B.F. Skinner’s Beyond Freedom and Dignity. Psychol-ogy Today, pp. 30–31, 95–96.

Ruskin, R. S. (1974). The personalized system of in-struction: An educational alternative. Washington,DC: American Association for Higher Education.

Sabatino, D. A., Sabatino, A. C., & Mann, L. (1983).Discipline and behavioral management: A handbookof tactics. Rockville, MD: Aspen Systems Corp.

Schimmel, S. (1977). Free will, guilt, and self-controlin rabbinic Judaism and contemporary psycholo-gy. Judaism, 26, 418–429.

Schimmel, S. (1979). Anger and its control in Grae-co-Roman and modern psychology. Psychiatry, 42,320–337.

Segal, E. F. (1987). Walden two: The morality of an-archy. The Behavior Analyst, 10, 147–160.

Sjoden, P., Bates, S., & Dockens, W. S. (Eds.). (1979).Trends in behavior therapy. New York: AcademicPress.

Skinner, B. F. (1945). The operational analysis of psy-chological terms. Psychological Review, 52, 270–277, 291–294.

Skinner, B. F. (1948). Walden two. New York: Mac-millan.

Skinner, B. F. (1950). Are theories of learning nec-essary? Psychological Review, 57, 193–216.

Skinner, B. F. (1953). Science and human behavior.New York: Macmillan.

Skinner, B. F. (1955–1956, Winter). Freedom andthe control of men. American Scholar, 25, 47–65.

Skinner, B. F. (1957). Verbal behavior. New York: Ap-pleton-Century-Crofts.

Skinner, B. F. (1963). Behaviorism at fifty. Science,140, 951–958.

Skinner, B. F. (1968). The technology of teaching. NewYork: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

Skinner, B. F. (1969). Contingency management inthe classroom. Education, 90, 93–100.

568 ROBERT EPSTEIN

Skinner, B. F. (1971). Beyond freedom and dignity.New York: Knopf.

Skinner, B. F. (1973). Are we free to have a future?Impact, 3, 5–12.

Skinner, B. F. (1974). About behaviorism. New York:Knopf.

Skinner, B. F. (1976). Particulars of my life. New York:Knopf.

Skinner, B. F. (1977a). Herrnstein and the evolutionof behaviorism. American Psychologist, 32, 1006–1012.

Skinner, B. F. (1977b). Why I am not a cognitivepsychologist. Behaviorism, 5, 1–10.

Skinner, B. F. (1979). The shaping of a behaviorist.New York: Knopf.

Skinner, B. F. (1981). How to discover what you haveto say—talk to students. The Behavior Analyst, 4,1–7.

Skinner, B. F. (1983a). Intellectual management inold age. American Psychologist, 38, 239–244.

Skinner, B. F. (1983b). A matter of consequences. NewYork: Knopf.

Skinner, B. F. (1986). Some thoughts about the fu-ture. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behav-ior, 45, 229–235.

Skinner, B. F. (1987a, May 8). Outlining a science offeeling. The Times Literary Supplement, pp. 490,501–502.

Skinner, B. F. (1987b). A thinking aid. Journal ofApplied Behavior Analysis, 20, 379–380.

Skinner, B. F. (1989). The initiating self. In B. F.Skinner, Recent issues in the analysis of behavior(pp. 27–33). Columbus, OH: Merrill.

Skinner, B. F. (1990). Can psychology be a scienceof mind? American Psychologist, 45, 1206–1210.

Skinner, B. F., & Krakower, S. (1968). Handwritingwith write and see. Chicago: Lyons and Carnahan.

Skinner, B. F., & Vaughan, M. E. (1983). Enjoy oldage: A program of self-management. New York:Warner Books.

Skinner’s utopia: Panacea, or path to hell? (1971, Sep-tember 20). Time, pp. 47–53.

Stewart, B., & Vargas, J. S. (1990). Teaching behaviorto infants and toddlers. Springfield, IL: Charles CThomas.

Stuart, R. B. (Ed.). (1977). Behavioral self-manage-ment: Strategies, techniques and outcome. NewYork: Brunner/Mazel.

Theophanous, A. C. (1975). In defense of self-deter-mination: A critique of B. F. Skinner. Behaviorism,3, 97–115.

Thompson, T., & Grabowski, J. (Eds.). (1977). Be-havior modification of the mentally retarded (2nded.). New York: Oxford University Press.

Thoresen, C. E., & Mahoney, M. J. (1974). Behav-ioral self-control. New York: Holt, Rinehart &Winston.

Vargas, J. S. (1990). B. F. Skinner—the last few days.Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 23, 409–410.

Watson, D. L., & Tharp, R. G. (1972). Self-directedbehavior: Self-modification for personal adjustment.Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole.

Wheldall, K. (1987). The behaviourist in the class-room. London: Allen & Unwin.

Whitman, T. L., Scibak, J. W., & Reid, D. H. (1983).Behavior modification with the severely and pro-foundly retarded: Research and application. NewYork: Academic Press.

Williams, R. L., & Long, J. D. (1975). Toward a self-managed life style. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Received January 27, 1997Initial editorial decision March 25, 1997Final acceptance April 3, 1997Action Editor, David P. Wacker

545 skinner as self-manager give a man a fish and he won't

Documents