Highlights from selected articles.
From Edwin A. Locke’s “Behaviorism and Psychoanalysis: Two Sides of the Same Coin”:
B.F. Skinner’s Behaviorism & Freud’s Psychoanalysis dominate the field of psychology, showing remarkable differences on the surface, but striking similarities in their fundamentals.
Skinner: “A person does not act upon the world, the world acts upon him.”
Freud: men are “savage beasts” controlled by unconscious sexual and aggressive instincts.
Behaviorism would say that men are animals. Psychoanalysis would say that animals are men.
Both agree that the causes of man’s actions are completely out of his control.
Both hold the same standard of mental health: conformity to society.
Both implement pragmatism into politics.
Both claim that man is not a rational being.
For Behaviorist, mental health isn’t a meaningful concept. Man’s mind does not govern his behavior.
For Psychoanalyst, a healthy ego must mediate between the id and superego–which are two strong irrational desires which make the ego impotent, and designs a view for conformity to the standards of others as a substitute for the objective standards which only reason can provide.
(Read the whole article and more in The Objectivist Forum)
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