A Programing Contingency

Analysis of Mental Health

A Programing Contingency Analysis of Mental Health presents Dr. Israel Goldiamond’s

reflections on various ways we formulate behavioral and emotional problems, most often in
traditional terms of mental health disorders, mental diseases or illnesses, psychopathological
disorders, and so on –​what he calls a pathological orientation. Here, Goldiamond argues for
a groundbreaking alternative view from the vantage point of radical behaviorism.

The book begins by discussing contingency relations between behavior and its past and present
consequences, along with other environmental events. It reminds us that this approach sits
comfortably alongside other consequential systems in the social and biological sciences, par-
ticularly decision theory and evolution. This behaviorist system regards most important human
behaviors as being emitted rather than stimulus-​elicited. Described are some of the diverse
origins of behavior, including the effects of environmental consequences and the programing
procedures of social and cultural inheritance. The exposition includes decision matrices that
rationalize some of the programed patterns and the accompanying thoughts and emotions
commonly found in mental illness. As a result of this nonlinear contingency analysis, such
patterns may be considered adaptive rather than maladaptive. The book describes programs
based on those matrices and outlines how they might be applied to mitigate any problems or
costs associated with those patterns. It concludes by moving from individual analysis to social
analysis, with particular reference to some societal contingencies that may maintain the patho-
logical orientation and others that might shift our gaze in the direction proposed here.

Alongside Dr. Goldiamond’s original work, this volume features a new introduction from
Dr. Paul Thomas Andronis and Dr. T. V. Joe Layng, as well as an article tracing the history
of the nonlinear thinking of Dr. Goldiamond, first published in The Behavior Analyst. It will
be a must-read for anyone working in the analysis of and clinical intervention in problems
associated with mental health, or those more generally interested in the work of Israel
Goldiamond.

Israel Goldiamond, a pioneer in the field of behavioral psychology, was a professor in psych-
iatry, behavior sciences (biopsychology), and medicine (committee on nutrition and nutri-
tional biology) and Director of the Behavior Analysis Research Laboratory at the University
of Chicago. Goldiamond was a fellow of both the American Association for the Advancement
of Science and the American Psychological Association, and he served as the international
president for the Association for Behavior Analysis from 1977 to 1978.
Behavior Science
Series Editor: The Association for Behavior Analysis International

Applied Behavior Science in Organizations: Consilience of Historical and Emerging

Trends in Organizational Behavior Management
Edited by Ramona A. Houmanfar, Mitch Fryling & Mark P. Alavosius

A Programing Contingency Analysis of Mental Health

Israel Goldiamond

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/Behavior-Science/

book-series/ABAI
 A Programing
Contingency Analysis
of Mental Health

Israel Goldiamond
Cover image: © Martin Burch
First published 2022
by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2022 ABAI
The right of Israel Goldiamond to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data
A catalog record for this title has been requested
ISBN: 9781032196237 (hbk)
ISBN: 9781032196220 (pbk)
ISBN: 9781003260103 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/​9781003260103
Typeset in Minion Pro
by Newgen Publishing UK
 Contents

Foreword vii
Paul Thomas Andronis and T. V. Joe Layng

1 Introduction 1

2 The analytic system to be used 3

2.1 Confusions between formulations 3
2.2 Reactive and consequential relations 3
2.2.1 The reactive formulation 5
2.2.2 Consequential relations 5
2.3 Traditional and radical behaviorism 6
2.3.1 Comparative treatments of motivation 6
2.4 Operationism and inner events 8
2.4.1 Emotions, behavior, and contingencies 8
2.4.2 Awareness and contingencies 9
2.4.3 Instructions, instructional control, and abstraction 10
2.5 Other consequential systems 12
2.5.1 Cognate consequential systems in social science 13
2.5.2 Biological evolution as a cognate system 15
2.5.2.1 The species (behavior) problem 15
2.5.2.2 Purposiveness and teleology 16
2.5.2.3 Natural selection and breeding 17
2.6 Programing and paradigms 18
2.6.1 Implications for mental health 20
2.6.2 Implications for the paradigm 23
2.6.2.1 Relations of program history to contingencies 23
2.6.2.2 The consequential (operant) paradigm 24

3 The origins of behavior patterns 31

3.1 Sources 31
3.1.1 Programing sources 31
3.1.2 Reflexive sources 31
3.1.3 Physiologically induced sources 32
3.1.4 Genetic induction 32
vi Contents

3.1.5 Schedule-​induced behavior 32

3.1.6 Relations to contingencies 33
3.2 Cultural inheritance 33
3.2.1 Parental persistence with standard programs 34
3.2.2 Culturally available alternatives 35
3.2.3 Novel programing for standard outcomes 35
3.3 Programing disturbing and undisturbing contingencies 36
3.3.1 Problems to understanding 37
3.3.2 Some contingencies of disturbing behavior 38
3.3.2.1 Social matrices 40
3.3.2.2 Individual matrices 41
3.3.2.3 Matrices involving metaphors 41
3.3.2.4 The preempted deficit 41
3.3.2.5 Mutual disturbance 42
3.3.2.6 Blackmail contingencies 42
3.3.2.7 Garbage patterns 43
3.3.2.8 Outbreak matrices 43
3.3.2.9 Choice of symptoms 44
3.4 Programs for mental health/​illness 45

4 Societal contingencies of the pathology model 49

4.1 The individual social selection parallel 49
4.2 Contingencies of pathological ideology and alternatives 50
4.2.1 Consulting room contingencies 50
4.2.2 Patient support contingencies 50
4.2.3 Labeling contingencies 51
4.2.4 Contingencies supporting cross-​directional movement 52
4.2.5 L’envoi 53

References 55
Appendix A – The Search for an Effective Clinical Behavior Analysis:
The Nonlinear Thinking of Israel Goldiamond 58
T. V. Joe Layng
Index 79
 Foreword
Paul Thomas Andronis and T. V. Joe Layng

When do we dare to point to a work in psychology as a “tour-​de-​force”? Without any hesi-

tation, this can be said of Israel Goldiamond’s A Programing Contingency Analysis of Mental
Health. The argument Goldiamond makes in this short book is built carefully, step by step –​
from the philosophical underpinnings of the science of behavior, to societal contingencies
giving rise to traditional formulations of mental illness and practices derived therefrom –​
culminating in an alternative radical behaviorist (and highly humanistic) approach to clin-
ical analysis and treatment. This analysis is grounded equally in the experimental analysis
of behavior and careful observation of in vivo contingencies at work in free-​ranging human
behavior observed in the clinic. The force of the argument rests in its logic, coherence,
and overarching view that all human activity runs through a river of contingencies. It felt
as though most of these ideas were ahead of the times when they were first presented. We
suggest that in many ways they still are.
This is not a “how to” book. For those interested in the clinical applications of the approach
pioneered by Goldiamond and his students, there are other resources, such as the recently
published Nonlinear Contingency Analysis: Going Beyond Behavior and Cognition in Clinical
Practice. This is, instead, an analysis of the contingencies responsible for patterns often
requiring such intervention, and the societal contingencies that govern how such patterns
are viewed.
An earlier, briefer version of this book was originally delivered on May 15, 1978, as the
Presidential Address to the 4th Annual Convention of the Midwest Association for Behavior
Analysis (MABA was the progenitor to ABAI), held in Chicago, IL, at the Blackstone Hotel.
The talk went well beyond its allocated hour. The MABA talk occasioned what we recall as
mixed reactions. Some audience members were excited by its scope, depth, and the revealing
connections it made among conceptual issues, as evidenced by many animated discussions
that followed and continued through dinner and after. A few others mainly groused about
its length. The manuscript was later revised and expanded and was to appear as a chapter in
a book on philosophy and medicine. The length became an issue during the editorial pro-
cess, and Goldiamond withdrew it from the book. Since its most recent version, authored in
1983, the paper has been reedited for minor stylistic matters, more contemporary termin-
ology where necessary, and a few added references. But its present form remains substan-
tively unchanged from the original version and as potentially influential as it should have
been at the start.
In 1934, Jakob von Uexküll wrote an impactful treatise titled “A Stroll Through the Worlds
of Animals and Men.” In it, he described how the world as perceived by different organisms
viii Foreword

was indeed quite distinctive for each organism. Goldiamond lived in and distinctively saw a
world of behavioral contingencies. He not only spoke about contingencies but also lived them
and perceived them with a unique clarity. As newly minted grad students in Goldiamond’s
lab at the University of Chicago, what we heard and later read was a clearly articulated and
orderly tour of previously encountered ideas, contingency analyses, and examples familiar to
us from his course lectures, from regular free-​for-​all discussions during weekly lab meetings,
and from daily informal conversations walking with him the half-​mile between his home and
the lab, or the mile each way between our lab and the main campus. Many of these ideas had
come up in relation to ongoing human and animal experiments in our lab, current clinical
cases being managed by our various staff members, sharp questions posed by students in his
courses, and recently published work that had caught the attention of someone in our group.
At other times, the ideas were occasioned by data or concepts from other fields altogether
(like evolutionary/​developmental biology, physics, political science, economics, and so on)
that Goldiamond “just happened to come across” during his customary browsing through
broad swaths of scholarly literature. In his view, all these matters were interrelated –​and all
were amenable to analysis of the contingencies that gave rise to them.
Goldiamond, fondly known to us as Izzy, routinely assimilated these new materials and,
through careful formal analysis, brought them into accord with what he already knew. His
published works, appearing in the experimental, clinical, instructional, legal, and theoretical
literatures, comprise a continuous “fossil record” of the systematic evolution of his thinking
(see the appendix of this book for a detailed narrative of the paths his work took).
We recently rediscovered an unpublished manuscript of Izzy’s (titled “Contingencies of
Schizophrenia”) that slightly predates the present work. In it, he describes several kinds of
contingency relations he encountered many times over in his psychiatric casework, many
of which are described in the current book. This initial formulation was undoubtedly
influenced, at least in part, by a long discussion that occurred in a lab meeting, occasioned by
a pair of (then) recent popular books on transactional analysis, I’m Okay, You’re Okay (Harris)
and Games People Play (Berne), brought to our attention by one of our clinical postdocs. At
first, a few of us “committed” radical behaviorists dismissed the books as just pop psych-
ology, of no real interest, but… Goldiamond then proceeded to describe for us the derivation
of this popular form of transactional analysis from its empirical roots in cultural anthro-
pology and quickly pointed out that the transactions described could be viewed in terms
of the interlocking social contingencies they represented. A couple of weeks later, he began
dropping descriptions of some of these contingencies into his classroom lectures, using terms
like “blackmail contingencies,” “day in the sun contingencies,” “legitimating contingencies,”
“junk behavior,” and so on, which appeared with more formal exposition in the manuscript
on schizophrenia and subsequently in the present book on contingencies of mental health.
This anecdote is meant to illustrate what made Izzy’s thinking and tutelage so valuable
and engaging. First, he rarely dismissed any matter out of hand because it violated or ignored
some behaviorist orthodoxy. Smart people could be mistaken or plainly wrong, but there
was almost always some kernel of discernable stimulus control that might point the way
to something more important or useful in their work. He always took the time to explore
such options. He was always “constructional” and contingency-​analytic in his thinking, even
when following the wrong turns or missteps of other scholars. Second, with the wheels of his
wheelchair planted firmly, one pair on scientific grounds and the other in applied settings, he
always looked for ways to communicate dense technical matters in language that laypersons
(and students) could readily comprehend, using words like “occasion” for antecedents or dis-
criminative stimuli or the use of “blackmail” to describe one form of negative reinforcement
contingencies at work in certain social arrangements, and so on. Though his professional
newgenprepdf

Foreword ix

publications can be challenging reads for some, the people who sought help came prepared
with their own potent vocabularies, and Goldiamond tried to make contact with them as
much as possible on their own terms.
This brings us to a final point, namely, his concern with identifying or establishing a
common vocabulary as part of his larger vision that effective change procedures arose from
meticulous programing of contingencies. In his expanded model of the operant paradigm,
particularly when describing behavior change, the “program” was included as an explicit
variable. By program, he meant a systematic series of changes in occasions for behavior and
in the criteria for producing contingent consequences, leading from a subject’s entry reper-
toire to some targeted outcome. A person’s history, so central to much clinical lore, he treated
as a retrospective attempt to identify past programs that led to the person’s current status.
Together, history and the program pointed the way ahead. This book is one outcome of the
program that made Goldiamond’s contributions so unique.
 1
Introduction

Mental illness is presently defined in a variety of ways. It is defined as a pathology of thought

or affect that may or may not be manifest in behavior. It may be defined in terms of ways
of relating to the environment. Agreement is not universal. Mental illness, for example is
considered to be a myth (Szasz, 1961), a label of deviance applied by a society that may thereby
exacerbate the problem (Becker, 1963; Scheff, 1966), a “disjunction between two persons,”
one of whom is considered sane (Laing, 1969 p. 37). Where the patterns are interpreted to
indicate pathology, the pathology may be defined biologically, in organic or genetic terms (cf.
Rosenthal, 1970) or may be defined in terms of conditioned behavior disorders (cf. Rachman
and Teasdale, 1969), in addition to the more traditional psychodynamic and other psychi-
atric formulations, which have been in transition since, at least, Kraepelin’s formulations.
These differences in interpretation represent, to a considerable extent, serious efforts to
understand the patterns, to intervene when problems are perceived, and to relate interven-
tion and understanding so that one or both may be advanced. Accordingly, the differences in
interpretation relate to differences in professional intervention –​and social consequences: for
an example, we need not go so far afield as Nazi Germany but can reflect on this country’s
“eugenic sterilization laws which were passed … [for] eventual elimination of insanity and
feeblemindedness,” starting in 1907, and on the books of twenty-​seven states in 1968 (Paul,
1968, pp. 77–​78). The fact that such an approach is rationalized by a genetic model does not,
of course, associate present supporters of such models with such interventions but does dem-
onstrate the close relation between theory and practice in this field.
The fact that social institutions have been established for understanding, intervention, and
training in this field suggests that its phenomena may not be trivial. And the fact that there
is widespread involvement in the services offered suggests that the maintaining variables
may be widespread. Accordingly, the study of the phenomena of mental illness and of the
circumstances surrounding it may make contributions that extend beyond this special field.
The present discussion will focus on an analysis of these issues from the vantage point
of radical behaviorism (Skinner, 1974), to be defined shortly. I shall focus, in part, on the
relations between behavior and its past and present consequences and other environmental
events. Since this system is generally unknown except, perhaps, in rumor, I shall first spell
out the system and clarify its position on events such as emotion and thought. I shall relate
this system to other consequential systems in the social and biological sciences, namely, deci-
sion theory and evolution. A point-​by-​point correspondence between evolutionary theory
and radical behaviorism will be noted, with special attention given to the parallel between
breeding and behavior-​programing. Since the system considers behavior to be emitted
DOI: 10.4324/9781003260103-1
2 Introduction

rather than stimulus-​elicited, I shall next consider the diverse origins of behavior and dis-
cuss the effects of environmental consequences and of the programing procedures of social
and cultural inheritance upon such diverse behaviors. In the course of this analysis, some
decision matrices that rationalize certain programed patterns found in mental illness will be
presented, along with programs that might be applied. Finally, I shall move from individual
analysis to social analysis with particular reference to some societal consequences that may
maintain the pathological ideology; other possibilities will be noted.
 2
The analytic system to be used

2.1  CONFUSIONS BETWEEN FORMULATIONS

The term behavior analysis will be used here in the context of radical behaviorism, a term
applied by B. F. Skinner (1945, 1974) to distinguish it from more traditional behaviorisms.
The distinction is an important one. Attacks upon Skinner and his followers often cite the
philosophy of the latter (Day, 1969) and the scientific paradigms they employ.1 In part, the
confusion stems from the existence of at least two different underlying philosophies of and
approaches in a science of behavior. These often use similar terms to study similar topics
in different ways. In addition, two different sets of learning formulations similarly confuse
differences between them. These two sets of differences intersect in part.
These differences in psychologies are of interest to others. Any definitions of mental
health and mental illness must include a behavioral component. The general stance taken
toward behavior must affect the specific concepts it helps to define. Further, an interesting
paradox will become evident. Prevailing theories (and less systematic understandings) of
mental health often explicitly reject the philosophic stances they associate with behaviorism.
However, in so doing, they implicitly follow assumptions associated with behaviorism –​of
one kind, rather than another. Acceptance or rejection of these assumptions is among the
differences between the behaviorisms.
One of my purposes here is to make explicit these assumptions and their major implications
for theory and practice in mental health/​illness. In so doing, it will be necessary to distin-
guish between the different uses of similar terms. The occurrence of this confusion has an
understandable historical base that is irrelevant to the discussion. Accordingly, wherever
necessary, I shall attempt to substitute terms that more closely approximate common usage;
in such cases, technical jargon will be relegated to endnotes. Generally, my discussions of the
philosophies and learning formulations will be limited to their relevance to the mental health
issue under consideration.

2.2  REACTIVE AND CONSEQUENTIAL RELATIONS

Rather than opening with distinctions in the philosophies, I shall open with the learning
formulations whose differences contributed to the philosophies. These learning formulations
may be designated as the reactive and the consequential.2 The former conceptualizes behavior
in terms of its antecedent stimuli and explains behavior as a response (or reaction) to such

DOI: 10.4324/9781003260103-2
4 The analytic system to be used

events. The latter conceptualizes behavior in terms of its effects on the environment and
explains behavior through the consequences it produces. The differences are quite mean-
ingful in the psychological laboratory. In the former case, presentation of a stimulus will elicit
the behavior, as in a reflex. In the latter case, it is the occurrence of the behavior that produces
the stimulus, as in purchase of a commodity.
These differences reflect meaningful distinctions in other disciplines and approaches.
This will be evident if we attempt to explain a patient’s violent outburst in a psychiatric
ward. The observed events occur in the following older: an attendant informs a patient
that as long as the patient smokes, the attendant will avoid the fumes by sitting elsewhere.
The patient glares at the attendant and continues to smoke. Shortly thereafter, at the
scheduled time, the head nurse enters the ward. The patient begins to scream, crawls and
writhes on the floor, and is finally quieted. At the next day’s staff meeting, the head nurse
accuses the attendant of insensitivity and holds him responsible for an outbreak that set
the patient back.
If we state that the patient’s outburst was caused (precipitated) by the attendant’s remarks,
we are adopting the linear causality of the reactive position. In those terms, the attendant’s
provocation is the stimulus (L., to goad), and the patient’s outburst is the response (reac-
tion). We can restrict ourselves to observables and a simple stimulus→response relation.
We can infer an internal emotion as a mediating term or condition and consider a more
complex stimulus→emotion→response relation. The attendant’s remarks elicited resentment
and rage that elicited (or emerged as) the outburst. The conventional terminology is illustra-
tive: the patient “acted out,” i.e., an inner response emerged or became a stimulus for an outer
response. As is evident, the chain of reasoning is not restricted to the conditioning laboratory
nor to observables. The disproportionality of the response to the stimulus arousing it is an
“overreaction,” and it is this abnormality (in the literal sense) that suggests the existence of
pathology. At the least, the behavior is maladaptive or disturbed.
If we state that the patient’s outburst, by clearly bringing to the attention of the head
nurse the attendant’s slight, is governed by the retribution the outburst is likely to bring
on the attendant, we are adopting the stance of the consequential position. As stated
here, the patient’s outburst is governed by consequences it may produce at a later time.
It is not governed by linear antecedents. Causality flows away from behavior, rather
than toward it. We can restrict our statement to observables and an occasion-​(when)-​
behavior→consequence relation, or an occasion (when) an if -​behavior→, then conse-
quence relation holds. We can infer concomitant internal intent: to get even←I’ll act up,
or I’ll act up→(to) get even, but such inference is not necessary for the observable relation
to hold. That such patterns do occur repeatedly without the patient having figured out the
relations in advance, or at all, is suggested by the existence of concepts such as uncon-
scious motivation. As is evident, the chain of reasoning is not restricted to the learning
laboratory nor to observables. Presumably, yet another consequence is that the rebuke
may serve to keep the attendant in line. Such retributive manipulation, while disturbing to
the staff and eventually to the patient, is certainly neither abnormal nor unprecedented.3
Indeed, it may imply rather finely honed social skills on the part of the patient. At the
least, the behavior is adaptive, albeit disturbing.
The two learning formulations, when extended to this situation, speak of different
implications for mental illness and different approaches to the behaviors involved. The
formulations may be considered to be laboratory-​derived examples of different types of
reasoning that find more general use. Comparison of systems whose terms tend to be defined
explicitly, i.e., laboratory-​based systems, may help to understand related systems whose
differing implications for mental health may have been obscured by their greater reliance on
implicit and less precisely stated terms.
The analytic system to be used 5

2.2.1  The reactive formulation

As noted, in the reactive formulation, behavior is conceptualized in terms of its antecedent
stimuli. Hence the designation, S→R behaviorism, and hence the very terms themselves. The
behavior is the response (R) to a stimulus (S), or stimuli. That the response is a behavioral
reaction to an action is implied by the accepted designation for the time-​interval between a
stimulus and its response, namely, reaction time. Stimuli elicit behavior in a linearly causal
manner. The S→R relationship, of course, is conditional upon other circumstances. These can
include present arrangements and past associations with other stimuli, as in those present
relations derived from earlier conditioning.4
Classical mentalist approaches reject the automaticity implied. Nevertheless, mediation
between S and R through (mental) image or affect (M) often simply adds a mediating term.
Such mediation preserves the linear causality noted, namely, S→M→ R: the parents’ appearance
(after an absence) so angered (upset) the child that a tantrum was produced. Linearity is also
often found in formulations that impose organic mediation: the S→O→R models. Indeed,
Pavlov borrowed the term reflex from physiology to designate the relation whose clarification
is associated with him.

2.2.2  Consequential relations

As systematized by Skinner (1969, p. 7), the basic building block here is a “three-​term contin-
gency.” As noted, upon certain occasions, the critical stimulus follows upon (is produced by)
behavior: Oc-​(S→R) or, stated temporally, Oc-​(B→S).5 Behavior is not a response (reaction) to
a stimulus. Rather, the stimulus is the effect or consequence of behavior.6 It is the importance
of that consequence, and its occurrence contingent on behavior, that will govern the likeli-
hood of the behavior when the occasion for the (B→S) relation occurs. An occasion–​behavior
relation may emerge, Oc-​B, but the occasioning events neither elicit nor cause behavior. The
relationship between concluding grace and eating (an Oc-​B relation) differs from the rela-
tionship between the loaded food tray and salivation (an S→R relation). There is actually a
fourth element in the consequential relation, and that is the interrelation between the terms,
which enter into the precise definition of the contingency, e.g., the schedule; on occasion X,
each delivery of a consequence is contingent on every second occurrence of behavior, upon
every fifth, etc., in any of a variety of ratios that are fixed or that vary around an average (as in
a slot machine); the consequence is contingent on behavior at a fixed time interval since the
last delivery or at variable intervals. Other schedules are possible that have profound effects
on behavior, as will be noted.7
Classical mentalist approaches also reject the automaticity implied here. Mediating terms
express anticipation, expectation, purpose, and volition, among others. However, in contrast
to its effects in the reactive formulation, use of such terms does more than simply add a medi-
ating term. It often sets up processes that are independent of the consequence and render it
unnecessary. Further, it imposes the simple linear causality found in reactive formulations upon
a system that logically relates events otherwise. Rather than Oc-​(B→S), e.g., when a parent is
present, this child’s tantrums are maintained by the ensuing attention; the statement becomes
Oc-​M→B, viz when a parent is present, the child’s anticipation (of becoming the center of
attention) produces a tantrum. It is difficult to distinguish this drastic revision of the three-​
term contingency from the formal mediational statement of the reactive formulation, namely,
S→M→R.8
Traditional mentalist approaches have, on the one hand, denounced the simplicity of the
reactive conditioning model and have, on the other, so accepted its simple statement of linear
causality as to impose it on a system that relates events differently.
6 The analytic system to be used

2.3  TRADITIONAL AND RADICAL BEHAVIORISM

Intersecting the reactive and consequential approaches are several organized strategies
of analyzing behavior and its relation to other events. Skinner (1974), in his first chapter
(pp. 9–​20), singles out structuralism, methodological behaviorism, and radical behaviorism.
Developmentalism, mentalism, and physicalism are defined in passing.9 I have noted linear
similarities between mentalist, physicalist (organic), and classical behaviorist approaches.
To the extent that other approaches share linear causality, they provide formally equivalent
terms to explain behavior, despite other differences assigned to these terms. I shall designate
those approaches that share linear causality as traditional approaches. I shall define trad-
itional behaviorism as the behaviorist subset of the traditional approaches.10 They differ from
mentalism in adhering to operationism, and in other ways. Such differences between the
traditional approaches have tended to obscure the importance of their common reliance on
linear causality. Accordingly, an examination of traditional behaviorism may have relevance
for an analysis of mentalism.

2.3.1  Comparative treatments of motivation

As a case study of differences between traditional and radical approaches to behaviorism,
I shall consider the term motivation of behavior. The importance of the empirical referents
of the term does not have to be spelled out. The term, as stated, is linearly causal with
regard to behavior: M→B. The empirical problem, so stated, is how to produce M. In early
discussions of traditional behaviorism, the M→B statement was paralleled by D→B, with
drive (D) being operationally defined. At least one formulation of drive as used in trad-
itional behaviorism is highly congenial to translation into subjective formulation and has,
accordingly, been influential in traditional mentalism.11 In this formulation, one operation
entering into the definition of drive is time since, say, last feeding. The greater the depriv-
ation, the greater the hunger drive (or the level of motivation) for food and the stronger
the ensuing behavior relevant to the drive (appetitive behavior) and the setting. When the
food is found, the organism will consume it (consummatory behavior).12 Ingestion of food
reduces the time since last feeding and reduces hunger drive and its sequelae. These effects
on drive may be defined simply as drive reduction or as satiation. Although operationists
do not do so, the temptation to infer the subjective experiences of hunger and satiation
is strong, as is the effort to interpret them organically. Hence the search for physiological
correlates of subjective experiences or states. The formal requirements of linear causality are
fulfilled by any of these mediating terms.
Needless to say, behavior can be activated by other drives (subjective needs, physiological
states), such as security, recognition, or power. All of these formulations permit the question
of whether behavior is motivated by drive reduction (relief from tension, etc.) or by drive
fulfillment (goal attainment).
The same behavior–​environment relations may be considered without reference to a
linear formulation of activation of behavior (M→B). In a radical behaviorist formulation,
the motivational problem is expressed in terms of making potent (or potentiating) a contin-
gency component, either Oc, B, S, their relations, or combinations. Although it is not neces-
sary to deprive an organism to “motivate behavior” (one can manipulate the schedule, for
example), deprivation was used in the food example mentioned, and I shall therefore use it
here. Deprivation would simply be defined as a procedure (there are others) that affects the
potency of the consequence component of the contingency. The greater the period of depriv-
ation, the more potent the food consequence and the greater the likelihood of the behavior
that produces it, when the occasion for B→S occurs; since the occurrence of this occasion
The analytic system to be used 7

FIGURE 2.1  The form of the relation of deprivation to consequences and behavior

may be contingent on other behavior, the more potent a consequence it will be, and the
greater the likelihood of those behaviors that produce it when the occasion for B→S occurs.
The same observations are accounted for as before, but there is no reference to drive. The
form of the relation of deprivation to consequences and behavior, presented temporally and
restricted to “consummatory” behavior, for simplification, can be seen in Figure 2.1.
The form contrasts with the linearity of Dep→Drive→B. Rather than food-​deprivation
serving to increase hunger drive, or food-​ingestion serving to reduce it (B→Dt+​l< Dt, where
B is ingestion, and t is time), food ingestion serves to decrease the value (reinforcing function,
in the operant sense; see note 4) of food. This is a simple statement: if absence of food increases
its potency in the contingency, presenting it attenuates its potency. Deprivation and satiation
are simply the names of different poles of the same procedure for influencing the potency of
a consequence. The simplicity of these statements and the fact that such simplicity is present
are both obscured by the imposition of a separate mediating term that is defined independ-
ently. One could state that it was this term that occasioned the substitution or addition of
subjective or physiological mediators, or both, and that all these make linearity possible as
a consequence of such terminological behavior.13 However, I suspect that a better statement
may be that it is the necessity for linear causality (as an outcome of terminologizing) that
makes highly likely the behavior of using mediating terms on the occasions when we discuss
behavior, in either the theoretical contexts noted or the contexts of the clinic or mental health
centers.
The term, drive, is not necessary to at least one formulation; neither is the drive reduction–​
fulfillment controversy. A topic of equal status is the motivation of behavior. Substituting
the potentiation of a contingency, while not solving the empirical problem addressed,
offers a different approach by its very formulation. Rather than noting that behavior can be
motivated by differing drives, we might note that, just as occasions differ, so will behaviors,
consequences, and relations between these, as will the various empirical procedures that
make any one or more of these potent. And which of these elements is (or are) critical may
differ for the different problems to which mental health is addressed.
Consider gambling, for example. Specification of a gambling drive has posed problems.
If its consequence is money, the absence of money that should produce the drive is often the
very outcome of the pattern. This might account for the compelling hold of gambling. On the
other hand, this is an unusual way for a drive to function. Accordingly, excitement, risk, and
a gambling drive itself have served instead. Explanations of their own behavior by gamblers
have been used to support these and other explanations. However, it is known that behavior
established on variable interval and variable ratio schedules is highly resistant to extinction.
Such behavior requires only occasional reinforcement to maintain it. Pigeons, rats, monkeys,
and a variety of other animals have continued to behave for inordinately long periods of time,
without consequences, after such variable schedules have been in effect for short periods
of time. Gambling suggests attention to such schedules rather than to consequences.14 Other
patterns of mental health problems may require analysis in terms of other contingency
elements.
That motivation of behavior should be a term of little value to radical behaviorism may
upset preconceptions of those who visualize behaviorists as focused narrowly upon behavior.
The issue is not narrowness but rather explicitness.
8 The analytic system to be used

2.4  OPERATIONISM AND INNER EVENTS

In traditional behaviorism, terms are defined operationally, often in a highly sophisticated
manner. The mediating term is defined by at least two independent operations that converge
on the same term (Garner, Hake, and, Eriksen, 1956).15 Stimulus and response are pub-
licly observable, as are the arrangements, as were the past associations. Accordingly, such
nonobservables as emotions and thinking are either excluded or redefined in observable
terms that exhaust the definition. Any incorporations into the term of nonobservables are
considered surplus or as having “surplus meaning” and are therefore to be rejected. It is
probably this feature of traditional behaviorism that mentalists find most unpalatable, since
it seems to exclude the area of concern: there is more to this world than is found in thy phil-
osophy, Horatio.
Radical behaviorism takes issue with operationism as conventionally defined (see Moore,
1975, for discussion). In contrast to such operationism, the definitions of emotion, thinking,
etc., are not exhausted by their convergent operations, nor are they to be so redefined; they
are significant terms. In common with mentalism, radical behaviorism distinguishes between
public and private events and does not discard the latter. Emotions, thinking, etc., adhere to
the latter. However, in contrast to classical mentalism, private terms are not considered as
linearly causal to behavior. The task is to explain scientifically both sets of events and not to
prejudge the issue by making either linearly causal to the other. In this process, procedures
that are fruitful in an analysis of public behavior may also be fruitful in an analysis of private
events.

2.4.1  Emotions, behavior, and contingencies

A radical behaviorist analysis of emotions may be introduced by resort to Cannon’s familiar
statement, I see the bear, I am frightened, therefore I run. This statement was countered by
that of James-​Lange, namely, I see the bear, I run, therefore I am frightened. This states, in
essence, that it is the organic arousal, of which the behavior (running) is a component, that
is experienced as fear. The former partakes of the familiar S→M→B form (observable bear
stimulus, private fear mediator, observable running behavior). The latter partakes of the
familiar linear form S→B→M. The commonly accepted equation of behaviorism with rejec-
tion of private events has led to the assumption that behaviorists reject the former formula-
tion and accept the latter. This equation has blinded observers to the fact that it is precisely
the former formulation that finds ready acceptance in many clinical areas in psychology and
outside it, among many clinical behaviorists, and in writings of some radical behaviorists.
Such acceptance is facilitated by (a) the familiar S→M→R form and (b) the ready translation
of M into respondent formulation, (c) to which other elements may be added.16 In all events,
it is commonly accepted that emotions are respondents and reactions to the stimuli that elicit
them. However, neither the familiar nor the James-​Lange nor the respondent formulations
consider observable consequences (Skinner, 1971), and I shall consider emotions in such
a context, to exemplify a relation between behavior and emotion and observables that
accords with radical behaviorism. The example will be in the first person and will include
bears, behavior, and emotion to parallel the cited linear form of the two nonconsequential
formulations.
As background, we have a cabin in the woods and are out of food. Obtaining food will be a
consequence of hunting, and I go out with any rifle. (a) When I see the bear, the consequences
of firing are obtaining food, and I aim and press the trigger: Oc-​(S→B). Emotionally, I am
elated. However, all my ammunition turns out to be wet, and I produce only a click. The bear
growls and comes at me. (b) When I see the bear approaching, the consequences of staying
The analytic system to be used 9

are my destruction; I run and maintain my distance from the pursuing bear: Oc-​(S→B) or
Oc-​(B→S). Emotionally, I am frightened. Eventually I am backed up against a cliff. (c) When
I see the bear approaching, the consequence of impassivity is my mauling; I threaten and
swing my rifle as a club; the bear hesitates and keeps its distance; it is driven off, Oc-​(S→B) or
Oc-​(B→S).17 Emotionally I am fighting mad. In all three cases, given the same occasioning
bear, my behaviors change in accord with the shifting consequences of (a) food, (b) escape,
and (c) bear withdrawal. In all three cases, given the same occasioning bear, my emotions
change in accord with the shifting contingencies. My emotions do not linearly cause my
behaviors, nor do my behaviors cause my emotions. Both emotions and behaviors are governed
by the contingencies and their histories.18
In clinical treatment, one can concentrate on affect and its change through a variety of
procedures, including chemical or physical interventions; behaviorist-​oriented treatments
often also concentrate on “counting inners” or on considering emotions as covert responses
(“coverants, operants of the mind”). Change in affect (by any of these means)→change in
behavior. Behaviorist treatments may also view affect as a conditioned response, with change
in the conditioned stimulus→a change in affect. On the other hand, one can concentrate on
changing the contingencies into which both behavior and affect enter. Many patients who are
quite capable of reporting affect do not report the relevant contingencies (they do not tact
them; cf. Skinner, 1957). The recording of affect, and of circumstances of its experience, can
then be used to discover regnant contingencies. Many patients do not report affect. Patients
can be sensitized to their own emotions as signifying those environmental occasions when
behavior is importantly consequential. They can learn to identity these at early stages and act
accordingly, while emotion and related contingency are amenable to change (Goldiamond,
1974). Radical behaviorism neither ignores nor defines emotions out of existence. Those
forms of psychotherapy that utilize affect to uncover regnant contingencies are in accord
with application of radical behaviorism.
I shall resume discussion of emotions when schedule induction is considered.

2.4.2  Awareness and contingencies

There is considerable evidence that contingencies will govern their constituent behaviors
whether or not the individual is aware of them. In early laboratory research by Hefferline,
Keenan, and Harford (1959), subjects were unaware that environmental change was governed
by their behavior and were not even aware of the behavior, but the contingencies governed
their behavior. This also held when they were misinformed. Such terms as unconscious and
subconscious control imply similarities in clinical experience. And, in the growing bio-
feedback literature, the investigator is often the only one who knows the contingencies; the
subjects or patients simply try to produce the observable consequence (a light, tone, etc.,
when organic change meets the criterion set by the investigator), often without knowing just
what it is that they are doing, which is effecting change in the consequences. Since it is the
presence or absence of contingencies, rather than awareness or nonawareness, that govern
their constituent behaviors, the conscious–​unconscious dimension is irrelevant to the system.
A seminar recently conducted by a psychoanalyst is relevant. He noted that some of his
patients changed without having achieved insight into their problems; others who changed
had achieved insight. Insight was being implicitly defined as patient ascription of change in
a manner congruent with the therapist’s ascription of change. Stated otherwise, the patient
had learned to use the same system as the therapist in the same way.19 Such congruences, of
course, are achieved by other teachers, politicians, etc., and the common distinction between
“insight therapy” and “behavior therapy” is questionable when applied to approaches that
provide training of the type described. Be this as it may, other therapists have added that
10 The analytic system to be used

TABLE 2.1
Possible relations between change, no change, insight, and no insight.
Insight No insight

Change
No change

absence of change can also be accompanied both by presence and absence of insight; given
the four possibilities (insight, no insight, by change, no change; see Table 2.1), the change
outcome is the critical one both to therapist and patient.
If we define insight in terms of patient ascription in accord with a radical behaviorist
ascription, we can relate awareness of contingencies to achievement of outcome in a parallel
manner: such change can occur with and without awareness of the relevant contingencies,
and such change can be absent with and without such awareness.20 Which will occur will
depend on the conditions and on the program, and there has been experimental investiga-
tion of such relations. Where the critical issue is the change, analysis of procedures that can
be used to implement it has more than theoretical importance.
Human experience has repeatedly demonstrated that when social and other environ-
mental requirements change, people often persist in the patterns established and governed
by preceding requirements, despite the far greater benefits of the new or the high cost of
the old. Such persistence has also been demonstrated in operant laboratories when, say, S
is unchanged, but the schedule is changed, so that a different pattern of B is required for
S. People (and others) may persist in the patterns established and governed by preceding
contingencies, despite the greater benefits of the new and the cost of the old. For example,
Weiner (1970) changed schedules so that the behavior pattern reinforced under schedule
A was disadvantageous at B; the A pattern persisted. If a different schedule, C, was introduced,
whether in the sequence ABCBAB, or CAB, or others, patterns appropriate to Schedule B
were established –​providing patterns appropriate to Schedule C had been established at
some preceding time and not otherwise. Producing appropriate behavior required a prior
“developmental stage”; when that was absent in the person’s history, behavior appropriate
to Schedule B was absent (for that series). That gap could be filled by introducing Schedule
C, and its introduction constituted effective “therapy.”21 Did awareness (insight) accom-
pany such “therapy”? Weiner (personal communication) reports that no such insight was
exhibited. Subjects, when asked to explain differences in their behavior between B periods
that were not preceded by C and those which were, reported having “realized” all kinds of
events, except the schedules obtaining (see Goldiamond, 1965a, pp. 111–​112, for report of
similar subjective explanations). What was critical was the contingency history.
Indeed, the first (and still elegant) textbook to adopt a radical behaviorist orientation
(Keller and Schoenfeld, 1950) devoted a section (pp. 366–​371) to such history. The equation
of radical behaviorism and ahistory is a misreading.

2.4.3  Instructions, instructional control, and abstraction

If presence of insight, or awareness of contingencies, is irrelevant to control by contingencies,
instructions on the nature of the present contingencies or of those to be instituted may facili-
tate occurrence of the required patterns, or may not, depending on the conditions. Among
the critical conditions is whether or not consequences follow upon behavior in accord with
instructions about the rule.22 In marital counseling, for example, one spouse may follow a
therapist-​suggested rule, but the other spouse may then not reinforce, thereby increasing
The analytic system to be used 11

the likelihood of reinstatement of the partner’s original pattern. Parents may behave simi-
larly when the behavior of a child changes. In the laboratory, human perception experiments
are characterized by (a) presenting the contingency rule in advance of the occasions; such
advance presentation is designated as instruction (G., Einstellung). Then (b) the occasions are
changed, and corresponding changes in behavior are related to color (form, size, etc.) percep-
tion. Human abstraction and concept formation experiments reverse this (a, b) order. First,
(a) the occasions are changed; behaviors in accord with the contingency rule are reinforced
and are observed in order to assess when and if (b) behavior in accord with the contin-
gency rule has ensued.23 Accordingly, control by the contingency rule may emerge during the
presentation of occasions (Goldiamond, 1966; Skinner, 1966). Such emergence is designated
as abstraction. Novel presentations, unrelated to those used hitherto, may be presented (to
test abstractional control), and the observers may also be asked to state the rule (to test
awareness).
In situations outside the laboratory, people often follow rules of conduct relatable to his-
tories of Oc-​(B→S) relations; they may then (or may not) explicitly state the induced rules to
others and to themselves. As was noted in the discussion of psychotherapy, where change and
insight were related in four ways (absence and presence of each), a similar fourfold relation
holds in laboratory abstractional control and awareness and also in everyday rule govern-
ance of behavior and explicit induction of rules. Whichever of the various fourfold relations
hold, all are relatable to a history of Oc-​(B→S) relations. Thus, as used here, awareness,
insight, and explicit induction of rules are not the epiphenomena to which operationism
often assigns them. They do not linearly cause behavior (Oc→Awareness [etc.] →Behavior),
nor do behaviors cause awareness, etc. (Oc→Behavior→Awareness). Both awareness (insight,
explicit induction) and behavior are governed by the contingencies and their histories. The
fact that one can occasionally precede the other indicates causality no more than it does in
emotion and behavior. And, as in different classes of behavior with different histories, they
should not be expected to have identical contingency relations. Indeed, instructional con-
trol telescopes an extended history of interrelations between both classes of rule governance
of behavior.
Where people induce rules, they may instruct their young in them. Such instructions may
then function as they do in a perception experiment and govern specific Oc-​B relations in
advance of their occurrence. In psychotherapy, such instructions provided by the therapist,
or rules induced by the patient, may function similarly, with considerable savings. Similarly,
presentation of statements of contingencies may be used to induce rules that may then
function instructionally. In any case of instruction-​governed behavior, if the contingency
rule applied is incongruent with the actual Oc-​(B→S) arrangements, instructional control
may be transient. However, precaution is necessary here. Adventitiously reinforced behavior
is likely to be reinforced only intermittently. Related abstractions and instructions induced
from these are, because of the adventitious reinforcement attached to behavior under their
control, likely to be spurious. Because of the intermittency of the reinforcement, the spurious
instructions are likely to be long-​lived (cf. Skinner, 1977), despite the simultaneous avail-
ability of less spurious instructional and abstractional systems.
Although both require consequences for their control, the type of control over Oc-​B
relations maintained by instructional or abstractional control differs from the control over
B maintained by Oc. For example, one can respond to the same people in different ways.
A guide in a museum could name the subject of each portrait on display and do so accurately.
The guide could also name the artist, particular painting style, age at time of painting,
or other personabilia and could also make a variety of accurate statements about the subject.
A guide who accurately describes the painting style of each painting is not likely to have a
warm reception from a tour group of psychohistorians. The guide is in “contact with (the)
12 The analytic system to be used

FIGURE 2.2  The relation of set control to the stimulus control of behavior

reality” of the paintings but not of the audience. If the guide “catches on” and switches to
describing interpersonal problems of the artists, such behavior is equally in contact with
the paintings but also with audience reinforcement that governed the switch. Abstractional
control (attitude) is defined by which of the different categories or stimulus classes or sets
will be applied to each event: naming, style, income, status, clang association (giving a word
some of whose sounds resemble those of words typically occasioned by the stimulus), etc.
Instructions include telling the guide the stimulus class to apply ahead of time. They might
save the speaker grief or time. Stimulus control, as opposed to set control, will be defined
by the governance of behavior by the stimulus element in the set: for the diagnostic set, Oc
(patient A) –​Label of A, Oc (patient B) –​Label of B, … Oc (patient N) –​Label of N for the
weight set, Oc (patient B) –​Weight of B, Oc (patient C) –​Weight of C, … Oc (patient N) –​
Weight of N.24
These relations to behavior and occasions may be depicted as in Figure 2.2.
Where control by this contingency rule (set) temporally precedes Oc-​B, it is designated
instructional control and typically characterizes perception research, teaching, transmission
of rules. Where control by this contingency rule derives from prior Oc-​(B→S) relations, it is
designated abstractional control and typically characterizes abstraction concept formation
research, concept awareness, induction of rules. Either way, the control is over the Oc-​B
relation (over Oc, B, or the relation), and such control depends upon Oc-​(B→S). It should be
reiterated that instructional–​abstractional control is independent of awareness, ability to ver-
balize, etc., and is dependent on the contingencies that govern both classes of events.
One further point that is frequently overlooked will be made. Since in animal discrimin-
ation research, the subjects are typically not told the rule in advance, any rule control must
emerge during the experiment. Such emergence also characterizes human abstraction and
concept formation research. Accordingly, procedures that produce animal discrimination
and facilitate its analysis are highly relevant for the production and analysis of human abstrac-
tion and conceptualization (cf. Goldiamond, 1962) and its distortions (Goldiamond, 1964).
Behavior analysts make programmatic plans for subject and patient behavior. Through
application of appropriate controls, one can transfer such planning to one’s own behavior.
One then applies those requirements for self-​help and for awareness relevant to self-​control,
which are specified by the model (Goldiamond, 1965b, 1976b). Transfer of control to the
patient is a goal of most psychotherapeutic and other mental health programs.

2.5  OTHER CONSEQUENTIAL SYSTEMS

Charges of narrowness, and of the exclusion of the meaningful through rigorous application
of a system, have been leveled by the nonacademic against the academic, by the literate cul-
ture against the scientific, by traditional approaches against traditional behaviorists, and by
traditional behaviorists against radical behaviorists. In the present section, I shall note that
the consequential approach and the logic of radical behaviorism are relatable to significant
developments in social science and biological science. The developments are closely linked
to each other. The interrelations are often overlooked partly because of the different language
systems used, which designate identical relations in different terms, and partly because they
reside in different disciplines. The questions they seek to answer, and the approaches and
The analytic system to be used 13

stances they take, relate to different significant problems that characterize the different parent
disciplines. What one discipline regards as critical, another may regard as well formulated or
trivial. Accordingly, well-​developed formulations in one area may, if appropriately translated,
obviate the necessity to develop such formulation in another. Exploring commonalities may
then be of interest.

2.5.1  Cognate consequential systems in social science

Exchanges of services or commodities or both have entered into human interactions since
at least the beginnings of recorded history. Indeed, among the earliest clay tablets are mer-
cantile accounts. To condense the fine grain of interchanges between buyer and seller, I shall
simply note that the behaviors of one are the occasions and consequences that bracket the
behavior of the other. Thus, for the buyer, the display and ultimate delivery are stimuli that
bracket buying; these stimuli derive from merchant behavior.
Merchant behavior, in turn, is bracketed by stimuli that derive from buyer behavior. In
such interchange, a particular event is simultaneously the S of one and B of the other, pro-
ducing parallel extended chains. Maintenance of both chains depends on reinforcement of
behavior elements of each. These explicit interchanges of the marketplace are metaphorically
extended to other social relations through analytic systems that then retain the terminology
of the originating marketplace. Examples are transactional theory in anthropology and soci-
ology and exchange theory to sociology, which analyze the mutual maintenance of social
interchanges.25 Their relation to the formal statements of radical behaviorism is evident upon
examination of the explicit diagrams in Skinner’s analysis of verbal interchange between two
people (1957, Fig. 16, pp. 38, 39, 57, 84, 85). These utilize parallel lines for each speaker,
in which the behavior of one is a stimulus of the other in extended chains. The different
notational systems may include terms such as S​D, Sr (defined by whether the behavior of
one occasions or maintains the behavior of the other), roles (defined by the nature of what
one “exchanges” for what the other does), obligations (requirements for behavior). Such
differences in terminology are related to differences in the parent disciplines (psychology,
sociology, and anthropology, respectively). They obscure the otherwise striking similarities
in the common functional analyses employed. Indeed, the sanctions of social science are
functional equivalents of the aversive stimuli or negative reinforcers of behavioral psych-
ology and of the disincentives of economics.26
In each of the foregoing systems of interchange, for any one of the actors, behavior may
be followed by a consequence, which maintains the Oc-​(B→S) relation or which strains it (if
the S is a disincentive). However, in cost–​benefit analysis (or benefit–​cost analysis), behavior
results in two consequences, one favorable and one unfavorable. That which is gained is
accompanied by costs or penalties. In economics and planning, these are generally stateable
in quantifiable terms. The relevance of the method of analysis to problems in mental health is
exemplified by the psychotherapeutic adage that patients do not come in for treatment unless
they are hurting, that is, the costs outweigh the benefits –​as long as this relation is reversed,
they will not come in for treatment. Here, differences in explicitness between the policy and
clinical approaches have obscured the similarities in functional analyses. The extension of
cost–​benefit analysis to clinical problems also suggests a different interpretation of these
problems. Rather than regarding the behavior of patients as pathological and irrational, we
may regard it as rational –​if we consider it in terms of both its costs and benefits.27
Rationality or, rather, the various types of rationality, are explicitly defined in decision
theory. As employed in economics, the person is to choose or decide between at least two
courses of action. Depending on the states of the environment, the outcomes of these actions
14 The analytic system to be used

TABLE 2.2
2 × 2 matrix depicting the relation of courses of action and states of the environment.
Courses States of the environment
of action
State 1 State 2

Course 1 Outcome a Outcome b

Course 2 Outcome c Outcome d

will differ. For two patterns of behavior, intersecting with two possible environments, a
2 × 2 matrix is described, with a total of four outcomes entered (see Table 2.2). (There may
be more than two patterns and more than two states, making for a larger matrix, but the
rationale is the same, and the minimal case, of 2 × 2, will be considered here.) The environ-
ments may have different a priori probabilities, which will enter into the decision, as will
the different outlays (efforts) of the different behaviors; the effects of these will be entered.
(Again, for simplicity, I shall consider the a priori probabilities and outlays to be equal.)
A decision criterion or rule must now be applied to the matrix. The rule may be to optimize
utility (produce highest net for gains minus losses); it may be a minimax (gains are to be such
that losses do not exceed a given [maximal] level, in one form); it may be a maximin (losses
are tolerated provided gains do not fall below a given level in one form); it may be any of a
variety of other explicitly stateable rules. The choices will be adjusted to produce those four
entries in the consequence (or “payoff ”) matrix that satisfy the particular decision rule. This
system of analysis (Von Neumann and Morgenstern, 1947) is one of the most significant
advances in economics and is being extended to other disciplines in the social sciences (Luce
and Raiffa, 1957), perception and psychophysics (Green and Swets, 1966; Swets, 1967; Egan,
1975), clinical decisions in radiology (Lusted, 1971), and speech classification (Karp, 1975),
crime (Backer and Landes, 1974), among others. It appears to have implications for mental
health as well.28
The system may be used in two ways, normatively and descriptively. In the normative use,
the statement to a manufacturer might be, “If you are to optimize net (etc.), then you will
have to take the following into account, and you should then follow this strategy for deciding
when to buy, sell, etc.”29 In the descriptive use, one might examine (a) the long-​term patterns
of behaviors under scrutiny, (b) the various occasions for them, and (c) the consequences
that occur when occasions studied and behaviors scrutinized intersect, and then (d) try to
ascertain what particular decision rule or abstractional control is satisfied, rationalized, or
specified thereby. The assumption is that the differential probabilities of the two classes of
behavior (“preponderant direction of choices”) are rational, that is, that a decision rule can
be specified that describes the data. The burden of rationalization is therefore upon the inves-
tigator, and the behavior “makes sense.” That this is not farfetched will find support from a
different vantage point, when I discuss evolution, next. Be this as it may, this entire descrip-
tive analysis is post hoc and suffers from the weakness of all such analyses: any of a number
of after-​the-​fact analyses can be made. Which is then accepted may depend as much upon the
ingenuity of the writer in relating it to some worldview as it does upon its fit. However, there
is a way out. Given post hoc decision analysis, one can then set up an experimental situation
designed in accord with it and, by manipulating variables thereby designated, predict or,
more strongly, produce specified behavior.30
Subjective terminology is often applied in economics and other disciplines (the person
decided, chose, adopted this strategy, etc.). However, each term so designated has an explicit
referent that can be described as well without such terms. It is the functional relations
The analytic system to be used 15

between the terms and use of the terms in the explicit manner indicated that define whether
the requirements of decision theory are met. If manufacturers want to know what to do and
what course of action they should decide upon, the economic adviser will translate their
terms into the explicit ones discussed. Undoubtedly, people mull over their possible courses
of action and think about them. They will allocate their resources in a given way. As market
conditions (or signal-​noise ratios, payoff matrices, etc., in perceptual research) change, they
may think differently and “chew over” something else. They may allocate their resources in
a different way. Rather than state that their altered thinking altered their behavior (changed
Oc→changed M→changed B), or that their altered behavior altered their thinking (changed
Oc→changed B→changed M), we might state that decision thinking, planning, etc., and deci-
sion behavior both changed as functions of the changed contingencies.
Again, as in my discussions of emotions and awareness, it should not be assumed that
both decision thinking and decision behavior follow identical relations to contingencies, no
more than different classes of behavior will. And, because one can occur without the other,
or one can precede the other, it should not be inferred that priority of importance or causality
have been demonstrated.
The formulations of radical behaviorism are in accord with the consequential systems
noted. While the problems to which it is addressed, by virtue of its narrower laboratory base,
are not so encompassing, in social terms, as those of the latter, the same base has provided
experimental support for the common systems and the means for such validation, which
is not so readily available in the more social sciences. The complementary nature of these
differences when the same system is applied to different disciplines would appear to have
implications for these disciplines. At the very least, the one is not so narrow as is generally
thought, and the others are not so untestable as is generally thought.

2.5.2  Biological evolution as a cognate system

To illustrate the parallelism between evolutionary theory and radical behaviorism, I shall
present a thumbnail sketch of a critical problem to which evolution is addressed and the
solution offered. In parenthesis next to each important evolutionary term, I shall insert a
corresponding behavioral term. The reader can read the sketch twice, substituting behavioral
terms for evolutionary terms, or once to note the parallelism.

2.5.2.1  The species (behavior) problem

Given the thousands of species (patterns of behavior) that exist, with similarities and
differences between them, how does one account for these phenomena? One way, of course,
is to relate them to environmental differences and similarities. If one classifies species (behav-
ioral) environments into categories such as frigid, tropical, forest, desert, ocean (social class,
culture, town size, schools attended, parental characteristics of various types, including psy-
chological), among others, one would have to be nonobservant not to note environmental
relations to species (behavior). On the other hand, one would have to be foolish to assume
that speciation (behavior differentiation) is accounted for thereby, since there are obvious
species (behavior pattern) differences within the same environment, hence the exaltation of
correlation coefficients.
Accordingly, complex theories are developed that center around hypothesized prop-
erties assigned to species (behavior patterns of an individual) that differentiate one from
the other, e.g., entelechy or species fulfillment (e.g., personality structures or dynamics).
A major contribution of Darwin (Skinner) was to note that if environmental differences
were treated with the same fine-​grain detail accorded to species (behavior) differences
16 The analytic system to be used

(20  feet up a tall tree in a forest might be classified as “forest environment” along with
40  feet up it [a variable 20-​second interval schedule might be classified as an “intermit-
tent food schedule” along with a variable ratio whose reinforcements were equally spaced],
but these are different environments, and different species of insects [patterns of behavior]
may be found), then lawful relations between environments and species (behavior) can be
specified, given certain assumptions. A major assumption necessary is that offspring of a
biological family (repetitions of members of a class of behavior) are not identical but differ.
For a given environment, certain of the members will have a higher probability of sur-
vival (reinforcement) and, for a different environment, other members. The environment,
so to speak, selects which members survive (remain in the repertoire) to produce further
offspring (to recur); differences between these will be selected, and so on. Thereby, over
the course of thousands of generations over time (of occurrences of behavior over a life-
time), certain biological traits (behavior classes or sets) will be established and maintained,
others will be changed (shaped), others extinguished, etc. Species (behavior) stability over
thousands of years (lifetime, generations) are relatable to environments that are stable with
regard to those features that interact with the individuals (behaviors). The selection rule is
survival–​extinction (reinforcement–​extinction).
Needless to say, there was more to the theory than this, as there is more today, but this
suffices heuristically at this point in the discussion. Membership in groups has effects, as it
does in radical behaviorism (for both social groups and groups of behavior patterns), but this
discussion will be temporarily deferred. Darwin (Skinner) has been accused of not having
a theory and of simply being descriptive. However, the accusation of theoretical simple-​
mindedness may be countered by a tu quoque accusation against its makers of environmental
simple-​mindedness or oversimplification. Both “descriptive” and “theoretical” positions are
each complex and simple. One treats the environment as complex and thereby relates species
(behavior) differences to it in a simple manner. The other treats the environment as simple
and thereby relates species (behavior) differences to it in a complex manner.
As is evident, radical behaviorism can be considered as an application of an evolutionary
model to behavior. The parallels are treated in detail by Gilbert (1970), to whom I am indebted
for many of the points raised here. Typically, when application is made, it is of a natural
selection of behavioral traits homologous to the natural selection of physiological traits, i.e.,
through genetic selection. As will be discussed shortly, an evolutionary alternative to gen-
etic selection is possible. Be this as it may, the present discussion suggests that applications
of evolutionary models to behavior can be parallel on analogous grounds (s:e::b:e, species
are to their environments as behaviors are to their environments), as well as be homologous
(s(b)ºs(p) (selection of behavioral traits functions identically to selection of physiological
traits).

2.5.2.2  Purposiveness and teleology

A source of the accusation against radical behaviorists that they deprive mankind of pur-
pose should now be clear. This source is a misreading of the parallel between evolutionary
theory and radical behaviorism. Since environments select biological traits, it is considered
teleological thinking to attribute such selection to the species, i.e., giraffes developed long
necks in order to reach the leaves of trees, rather than giraffes with long necks had a greater
probability of survival in overgrazed plains. In parallel manner, it would appear to be teleo-
logical thinking to attribute behavior selection to the individual, i.e., the child developed
(learned) a scatological vocabulary speech in order to win approval of peers, rather than the
child’s “dirty” words had a greater probability of reinforcement in the street gang. It is this
audience that “selects,” i.e., will reinforce scatological terms more readily than other terms.
The analytic system to be used 17

The neck and speech analogies are exact. Presumably, arguments advancing purposiveness
and thinking to explain the changing behavior of children should be paralleled by arguments
advancing teleology and group-​mind to explain the evolution of species. The inference
follows logically and has created problems for those who, on the one hand, accept biological
evolution and who, on the other hand, accept the existence of purposive behavior. There are
at least four possibilities here. We should either (a) dispense with purposiveness and thinking
(p&t) to explain the behavior of individuals (x[b of i]) and thereby avoid the embarrass-
ment of postulating teleology and (species) mind (t&m) to explain the evolution of species
(x[e of s]), or (b) accept (p&t) to x(b of i) and thereby accept the permissibility of (t&m) to
x(e of i), or (c) accept (p&t) to x(b of i), but reject (t&m) to x(e of s) and thereby discard the
effort to develop parallel psychological and biological theories, especially where humankind
is concerned, or (d) accept parallelism between behavior patterns and species when behavior
is not relatable to purposiveness and thinking (e.g., reflexive, automatic, instinctive), but
reject parallelism when it is, that is, then accept (p&t) to x(b of i) and reject (t&m) to x(e of
s); we reconcile the former parallelism [of (b, i) and (e, s)], and the latter nonparallelism [of
(b, i) and (e, s)] through postulating the emergence of a special property of individuals when
intelligence is evolved; purposiveness and thinking are properties of intelligence.
Each of the four positions stated is readily relatable to stances in science, literature, and
philosophy. Such differences notwithstanding, they all reflect concern over parallelism
between explanation of behavior change and species change. This discussion opened with an
assertion that it is a misreading of radical behaviorism to equate it with depriving humankind
of purposiveness and thinking. Yet, position (a) seems closest to radical behaviorism, and
that position does seem to deprive humankind of purposiveness. The key is the emphasized
phrase in the use of purposiveness and thinking to explain the behavior of individuals. Such
use follows the linear model of causality of behavior discussed earlier, M(p&t)→B. As was
noted in the discussions of emotion, awareness, abstraction, and decision-​making, rejection
of the linearly causal use of these terms does not imply the rejection of their existence by
radical behaviorism. Rather, it implies their treatment in a different manner. If the contingen-
cies change so that consequences available earlier for a small outlay of behavior now require a
considerably higher outlay (which preempts outlays for other important consequences), the
pattern of behavior may be disrupted, alternative patterns followed by other consequences
may become more frequent, and so on. In such cases, one’s stated goals or purposes may
change before behavior changes (“I’m switching in order to …”), or after it changes (“Now
I realize what I must have been after …”), and similar inferences may be drawn for other
behavior and thinking. The same relation between p&t and behavior may be drawn as was
drawn earlier between each of the other subjective states discussed and behavior, namely,
both p&t and behavior change as functions of the changed contingencies and their histories.
The functional relations need not be identical.
If one accepts certain thought patterns as abnormal, in the statistical sense, related
abnormal behavior need not be interpreted as caused by the thinking, nor as the cause of the
thinking, nor as yet another symptom (along with the thought “disorder”) of an abnormal
state. Both behavior and thinking may be relatable in an orderly manner to atypical contin-
gencies, present or past.

2.5.2.3  Natural selection and breeding

Environmental change may shift survival probabilities for different members of a species,
thereby changing the species over time. Changes in cellular environment may influence
reproduction of genes; mutations that do not survive at one time may survive at another,
when a changed environment “selects” differently. In all events, thousands of species are with
18 The analytic system to be used

us, with both similarities and dissimilarities in structure and behavior. Humans enter the
scene in at least two different ways. Through predation, intrusion, and our works, we alter
the environment to create new selection factors. We also function as explicit evolutionaries
when we produce, through attenuation by culling and through selection for breeding,
changes in species characteristics. The implications for behavior have more support than
simple analogy to evolution. Before presenting such support, I shall note some precautions.
The study of past physical evolution is, theoretically, the study of past selection by previous
environments. Much of this has been accomplished through tracing the history of species
and by relating given structures to earlier ones. While the fossil records may present reason-
able grounds for inference, the relations of the behaviors of those organisms to the fine grain
of their environments are by no means so clear.31 And it was upon fine-​grain relation that the
Darwinian contribution rested. Case histories in illness, whether organic or mental, often
share a similar discrepancy between the comparative fine-​grain of the history of the problem
and the gross report of its selecting environments. Such etiologies are analogous to a descent
series of fossil records: precaution is suggested.
Two other evolutionary trends suggest precautions regarding the uses to which etiology
may be put in the effort to understand present behavior. These evolutionary trends are diver-
gent and convergent evolution. In divergent evolution, variant structures may function con-
siderably differently but may have been evolved from identical structures. The bat’s wing
and the human hand are, of course, ready examples of divergence from the same structure.
In convergent evolution, similar structures that function similarly may have evolved from
different structures. That the bat structure mentioned is called by a name (“wing”) used for
bird structures is a case in point. A pair of more striking examples of convergent evolution
is the Tasmanian wolf and the timber wolf. Both share commonalities in appearance and
behavior (hence the application of the more common name) but have markedly different
ancestries, the one being a marsupial and the other a carnivore.
In divergent environmental selection of behavior patterns and thought patterns, patterns
that at present differ considerably may have had common origins. Specifically, a variety
of normal and, say, schizophrenic patterns may have diverged from common childhood
patterns or common genetically induced patterns. One implication is that given common,
say, genetically induced schizophrenic patterns, the outcome need not be schizophrenia. The
starting patterns can be shaped to a variety of considerably different patterns. In conver-
gent environmental selection of behavior patterns and thought patterns, patterns that at pre-
sent are considerably similar may have had markedly different origins. Specifically, common
schizophrenic patterns may have converged from different childhood patterns or different
genetically induced patterns. One implication is that because we trace a given pattern to a
certain source, then other such patterns need not derive from that source but may derive
from others. Yet another implication is that, given silk and a sow’s ear, we may be able to
fashion equally useful purses from both.
Explicit and implicit contingency programing will now be considered. Their relation to
genetic and other variables will follow, under the next topic, the origins of behaviors.

2.6  PROGRAMING AND PARADIGMS

Commenting on the demonstrated ability of radical behaviorists to train animals, that is, to
change their present repertoires to explicitly specified outcome-​repertoires, the authors of a
textbook on learning theory noted:

It is not wise to dismiss [these] as merely signs of cleverness on the part of the trainers. These prac-
tical demonstrations serve as important empirical supports for certain aspects of the system –​a
The analytic system to be used 19

kind of support very much needed for learning theories, and notably lacking thus far. No other
learning theorist has been able to train an animal before an audience in a prompt and predictable
manner … [thereby] epitomizing the principles of his theory. … [Other] demonstrations have
generally relied upon exhibiting the results of earlier training. By contrast, Skinner’s pigeons can
be brought before a class and taught various tricks before the eyes of the audience.
(Hilgard and Bower, 1966, p. 144)

Such training involves (a) explicit specification of the outcomes desired, (b) selection amid
all the possible current repertoires of an individual, of those repertoires that seem to be the most
relevant sources of the desired outcome, (c) the explicit postulation of the series of transitional
repertoires and conditions necessary to transform the present patterns into the outcomes desired,
that is, the change procedures, and (d) the reinforcement of such transitional patterns when they
occur, to maintain the directionality specified. These four explicitly defined elements, namely,
outcome, current relevant repertoire, change procedures, and maintenance, enter into a program,
as the term is used in radical behaviorism. As is evident from the foregoing description, behavior
(among other contingency elements) is being bred. Changes in repertoire characteristics are spe-
cified, those patterns that are most promising are selected, and so on. The evolutionary model
is thus not a simple metaphorical analogy. There is almost a point-​for-​point correspondence
between the elements and relations of natural selection and of programing repertoire change.
A further correspondence is that such change is accomplished through meticulous attention to
the fine grain of the behavior, of the consequences, of the occasions, and especially of the contin-
gency relations between them, to an extent not found in other branches of psychological labora-
tory research. Generalizations (laws) are based on literally tens of thousands of occurrences of
behavior, recorded under one condition, then another, and so on, by a single organism run daily
for as much as two hours and in some instances for over two years (see Sidman, 1960b, for the
rationale).32 Such generalizations have led to the development of a technology of programing
that is related to the basic experimental analysis of behavior in the same manner that engineering
as a technology is relatable to physical science.33
Contingency elements other than behavior may be systematically programmed and
shaped. The occasions may be arranged and subtly changed so that children with develop-
mental delays who were considered untestable, but who initially discriminated between
light and dark (by pressing a lighted panel rather than a dark one), wound up discrimin-
ating between ellipses with an eccentricity of .95 and circles (eccentricity 1.00) (Sidman and
Stoddard, 1966).34 Such programmed change of occasions is called fading. The consequences
that maintain behavior may be changed, so that consequences hitherto ineffective become
effective –​a dramatic example being the maintenance of behavior through providing electric
shock as its payoff (Morse and Kelleher, 1970). The scheduled contingencies may be changed
so that 75,000 responses are required to produce a consequence –​and the pattern is not
disrupted. Complex programs that alter combinations of these elements and their relations
have also been reported (Premack, 1976); in this case, laboratory investigations of estab-
lishment of language in chimpanzees are being extended elsewhere to program such estab-
lishment for children with cognitive disabilities –​an excellent example of the relation of
laboratory investigation to application.
The four program elements noted are explicit in programmed instruction (p.i.)
(Hendershot, 1967, 1973; Markle, 1975), where textbook (or other) material is expli-
citly programmed. The (a) outcome is given by the title of the program; (b) current
relevant repertoire is given by the introduction, which states the course requirements;
(c) change procedures are in the individual frames in which the student writes an answer,
with the change from one frame to the next being the behavior required, or the stimulus
relations to it, or both; and (d) maintenance is typically through successful progression
20 The analytic system to be used

through the program. Each frame is then a miniprogram –​(a) the outcome of the pre-
ceding frame becomes (b) the current relevant repertoire for the next one. The occasions
(frame material), behaviors (answers), consequences (advance to next), and contingency
relations (advance when correct) of the three-​term contingency are evident. It should
also be apparent that changes produced by p.i. are not confined to the observables of the
three-​term contingency. Sidman and Sidman’s neurology text (1967), for example, teaches
the student participant knowledge of this field, and the first programmed text (Holland
and Skinner, 1961) taught a method of thinking about behavior and the contingencies
into which it enters. Stated otherwise, the explicit programs of radical behaviorism can
change not only behavior (and the contingencies governing it) but also those private
events governed by the same contingencies that govern the behavior.

2.6.1  Implications for mental health

Derived, as the system is, from the learning laboratory (although the technology extends fur-
ther), the outcomes of the programs are the establishment and construction of new repertoires.
The programs in p.i. and elsewhere are devoted not, for example, to undoing spelling errors
but rather to teaching correct spelling. The program titles, which specify the outcomes, are
classified by commonalities in that which is to be established (e. g., mathematics, physics,
composition), as are university departments. The thrust of the programs is not to eliminate
the entering ignorance, alleviate it, cure it, or teach the student to live with or adjust to it.
Entering students are not assigned to classes (or programs) on the basis of their deficiencies,
but rather on what they are to learn and how far they have come up to now, that is, their
strengths. The contrast with conceptualization in mental illness is striking. I have commented
elsewhere upon the distinction between the constructional or programing approach and the
pathological approach that presently pervades the field:

Help is often sought because of the distress or suffering that certain repertoires, or their absence,
entail. The prevalent approach at present focuses on the alleviation or the elimination of the
distress through a variety of means that can include chemotherapy, psychotherapy, or behavior
therapy. I shall designate these approaches as pathologically oriented (pathos, Gr., suffering,
feeling). Such approaches often consider the problem in terms of pathology which –​regardless
of how it was established, or developed, or is maintained –​is to be eliminated. Presented with
the same problem of distress and suffering, one can orient in a different direction. The focus here
is on the production of desirables through means which directly increase available options or
extend social repertoires, rather than indirectly doing so as a byproduct of an eliminative pro-
cedure. Such approaches are constructionally oriented; they build repertoires.

The fact that the outcomes are described differently is not simply a matter of verbal redef-
inition. The differences that can result become clearest when considered in terms of the four
elements of a program, previously noted:

1. Outcomes or targets. Although similar outcomes may be produced by the two orientations
when viewed in terms of distress alleviated, the outcomes of the two approaches are
not necessarily similar when viewed in terms of repertoires established. For example,
in a series of treatment sessions, one can progressively decrease stuttering and thereby
increase the ratio of fluent words to total utterances. One can progressively instate and
extend a specific fluency pattern that consists of well-​junctured speech and thereby
increase the ratio of fluent words to total (and decrease stuttering). Viewed in terms of
The analytic system to be used 21

elimination of stuttering or increase in fluency (the alternate statements can simply be

verbal redefinition), the outcomes may be similar. However, viewed in terms of patterns
established, the outcomes may be quite different. And the training procedures and other
program elements must also differ. This raises questions about outcome comparison.
2. Current usable (relevant) repertoires. Where the outcomes, in terms of repertoires to be
established, differ, the search for what is currently relevant must be oriented differently.
For example, one can focus on (and try to describe) what is wrong, or is lacking, in order
to correct it. In the other case, since one is trying to construct new repertoires, one must
focus on what repertoires are available, present, and effective. Accordingly, different data
bases are required. Where there is overlap in the data bases, they can be interpreted
differently. For instance, one can consider the presenting symptoms as among the path-
ologies to be overcome or eliminated; they can be considered as indicators of path-
ology to be specified. On the other hand, the presenting symptoms can be considered as
among the entry repertoires available for construction or program guidance; they can
be considered as successful instruments that produce reasonable outcomes to be spe-
cified and harnessed. For example, a pervasive cockroach phobia can be interpreted as
an unreasonable fear that is so crippling to the wife that she cannot move from room to
room unaided. On the other hand, it can be interpreted as highly successful instrumental
behavior that dramatically forces the husband to provide the legitimate attention that he
had hitherto withheld and deprived her of. The program thereby initiated is to teach him
to be responsive to her legitimate needs and to teach her to express these in ways that get
across to him more readily.
3. Sequence of change procedures. Given different target outcomes and different starting
points selected for their relevance to the outcome, the mediating procedures that con-
vert entry repertoire to target repertoire must also differ. The data that are considered
as designating progress will differ, as must assessment of therapeutic effectiveness. In
the phobia case just cited, although the phobia may progressively diminish, the graphs
will be of increasing communication. In the case of a severely regressed person with
schizophrenia, the change procedures have involved instatement of a multitude of spe-
cific repertoires, some in sequence and some concurrent.
4. Maintaining consequences. The contingencies of which each of the steps in a program is
a component may also differ in pathologically and constructionally oriented programs.
The consequences in one case may be progressive relief, diminution of aversive control,
or gradual progression to such relief. In the other case, they may be explicit reinforcement
of units in a progression or gradual progression toward the repertoire to be established.
In the latter case, assessment concentrates on reinforcers in the natural environment.
These reinforcers can be those that have hitherto been disrupting behavior. For example,
a mother considers herself at a loss in rearing her son. His obnoxious behavior continu-
ally enrages her, and both his misbehavior and her rage are increasing. She reports that
she is a complete failure. Our analysis is that she is a complete success. She has success-
fully shaped escalating misbehavior by ignoring it when it was mildly disturbing and
acting only when it had exceeded the previous limit to her tolerance. This suggests that
her attentiveness is a powerful reinforcer. His main way of getting it now is by infuri-
ating her. She is to use this reinforcer to maintain progression through a different kind
of program she will apply.

The symptom whose elimination is the target of a pathological approach may be considered
not only as a currently usable repertoire (the cockroach phobia mentioned) but also as an
important guide to critical reinforcers. For example, an obsessional patient talked rapidly
22 The analytic system to be used

and almost without stop about emanations attacking her thoughts; her eyes were piercing,
and she was agitated throughout. She had been an inpatient on and off and an outpatient for
20 years. Her black and purple costume made her immediately recognizable at the emer-
gency room, which immediately sent her to psychiatry. She was supported by a small pension
and lived alone and friendless in a small rented room. In the event that she was “cured,” what
could she find to occupy her all day? At the present, she came to the hospital and met all
kinds of different and bright people who cared. She belonged –​she had community. If we
were crazy enough to think we could “cure” her, she was not crazy enough to be “cured.” Such
elimination had been the thrust of the various preceding therapeutic efforts, which had made
little progress. We told her that regardless of her behavior, she was always welcome: she was
a permanent part of hospital records and was provided access to them. Community was a
critical reinforcer, and the intervention strategy opened with this provision while developing
other contingencies (Goldiamond, 1974, pp. 14–​16).
Such programs are not confined to consulting room treatment of a single patient. For
example, Keehn, a radical behaviorist of standing, set out to observe skid row alcoholics in
Toronto, using such an approach, rather than accepting their alcoholism as a symptom of
behavioral or mental pathology or as an effort to escape from unacceptable self or reality.
Many of the alcoholics once had established professional careers that were now closed to
them; they had been disowned by their families and previous referent groups. They were
outcasts. There was, however, one place where they had community, and in contrast to
the obsessional patient described, who found it in psychiatry, they found it on skid row.
The operant behavior required for such reinforcement was buying and sharing liquor. Any
ensuing medical or legal complications were the unfortunate costs attached to such behavior.
The program established by Keehn and his colleagues involved providing the critical conse-
quence of community by means of a farm leased by the provincial government. Membership
in that community was open to the alcoholics, contingent upon change in their drinking
patterns so that the province’s costs in terms of medical and police intervention would be
diminished. The members of the commune themselves set up the programs for each other,
with the consultation of the staff (Keehn et al., 1973). As was noted in the introduction to a
report on the program some six years after its inception,

We assume that in the skid row inebriate there is some repertoire of behaviors appropriate to
larger society. We accept the theory that new behavior can be learned and that a man’s self-​image
can be profoundly influenced by helping him build up an investment of appropriate behaviors.
We have adopted self-​determination and self-​help as the best means of behavioral change. We
believe that a separate community is required because of the special needs of skid row people,
but, although it is separate, we want it to be open to the larger community so that segregation is
minimized.
(Collier and Somfay, 1974. p. 6)

Fairweather et al. report a program with a similar community rationale involving consid-
erable self-​determination by long-​term residents of a mental hospital. “It is possible,” they
conclude, “that this kind of focus on social-​problem solution will turn attention once again
to the creation of social systems which are fitted to human needs” (1969, p. 343).35
One aim of individual psychotherapy, of course, is for the patients to be able to manage
their own lives. The attainment of this aim suggests to one school that treatment start off and
continue to be nondirective, to others that treatment open with explicit intervention (hence
the term), which is gradually withdrawn as patients improve. A radical behaviorist approach
with individuals would not differ from the approach to groups suggested by Keehn et al. and
The analytic system to be used 23

Fairweather et al., among others. This involves the development of the program in conjunc-
tion with the patient. To cite one successful outcome:

As an illustration of how collegiality arrangements of the type discussed can lead to application
of professional analysis and intervention by patients for their own problems, I shall cite the
report of an outpatient upon his return from vacation. He had had a history of hospitalization
for schizophrenia and his brother was recently hospitalized for the same problem. During his
vacation his wife walked out on him, leaving him alone in the motel. “I found myself sitting in
bed the whole morning, and staring at my rigid finger,” he said. “So I asked myself: ‘Now what
would Dr. Goldiamond say was the reason I was doing this? He’d ask what consequences would
ensue.’ And I’d say: ‘Hospitalization.’ And he’d say: ‘That’s right! Just keep it up and they’ll take
you away.’ And then he’d say: ‘But what would you be getting there that you’re not getting now?’
And I’d say: ‘I’ll be taken care of.’ And he’d say: ‘You’re on target. But is there some way you can
get this consequence without going to the hospital and having another hospitalization on your
record?’ And then I’d think a while and say: ‘Hey! My sister. She’s a motherly type, and she lives a
hundred miles away.’ ” He reported that he dragged himself together, packed, and hitch-​hiked to
his sister who took him in with open arms. The education occurred in the process of the analysis
of several months of written records.
(Goldiamond, 1976a, p. 33)

2.6.2  Implications for the paradigm

As was discussed earlier (in section 2.4.2, “Awareness and contingencies”), Weiner (1970)
reported that subjects confronted with a changed contingency requirement perseverated in
their previous patterns, despite the penalties now attached. However, if a specific schedule
was presented, the subjects could adopt the requirements that had hitherto eluded them.
Stated otherwise, to program change from A to B, C was necessary as a segment prior to
B. The program sequence required was ACB, or CAB. Those subjects whose histories prior to
B had included exposure to C could master B. Those who did not have this history could not
master B, unless C was then provided. Similarly, Morse and Kelleher report that to establish
shock as a reinforcer, a particular program was necessary and “such dependence on history
is a general phenomenon that goes beyond situations involving electric shocks. In any situ-
ation that requires a history of reinforcement, the schedule is a fundamental determinant
of behavior” (1970, p. 183). To breed organisms for certain characteristics is analogous to a
program to establish certain outcomes. The characteristics or outcomes at any point in the
program are products of their past breeding or outcome histories. Stated otherwise, program
and history are identical: history is a retrospective attempt to state what must have been the
program, viewed prospectively. And a program that specifies the desired progressive change
only in behavior will have a hard time getting there. And a history that reports only last
behaviors (behavior trends, ideological trends) will be similarly defective, as was noted in
the precautions raised regarding etiology and case study. The program must include the pro-
gressive contingencies, that is, the changing relations between Oc, B, Cons, and Contingency
relations. The history, if it is to be adequate, must be a history of the contingencies that preceded
the present situation.

2.6.2.1  Relations of program history to contingencies

These relations of program and history to the contingencies may be depicted as in Figure 2.3.
24 The analytic system to be used

FIGURE 2.3  The relations of program and history to the contingencies

FIGURE 2.4  The simple consequential or operant paradigm

The program may be viewed as a manipulative effort to breed from a contingency at time
t a specified new contingency at time t +​n. The effort may be directed toward breeding new
occasions to which behavior is responsive (fading), new behaviors (shaping), new governing
consequences (change in values), or any relations of these. Regardless of which is changed,
the program is effective only to the extent that all elements are considered and are effective.
History is the effort to trace back a contingency at time t +​n to earlier contingencies, t +​(n − 1),
t +​(n − 2), … t +​(n − n), as far back as the historian wishes. If the historians wish to study the
history of B, they must nevertheless study it in its context of bracketing occasions and selection
procedures of the environment. The same would hold for trends to Oc, S, or relations
between them.
It follows that whatever procedures serve to program contingencies, or to infer their his-
tories, may also be used to program the private events represented by these contingencies or
to infer their histories.

2.6.2.2  The consequential (operant) paradigm

As has been evident, any discussion of the three-​term contingency must include more than
three terms and their relations. It must include, so to speak, the supporting cast. These supports
have been discussed, as in Figure 2.4, in Diagram [1]‌, deprivational relations; Diagram [2],
instructional/​-​abstractional set relations; Diagram [3], program history relations. One fur-
ther term [4] is necessary, but its discussion can be deferred to the presentation of the com-
bination of [1], [2], and [3] as they affect the contingency. Taken all together, they may be
considered as the simple consequential or operant paradigm.
The paradigm may be depicted, in condensed form, as in Figure 2.4.
Some additional notes on these follow. For further discussion, see preceding text.

1. Potentiating variables. These are procedures that make the contingency potent.
Deprivation of a consequence can increase its potency, and satiation refers to decrease
to potency of a consequence through its presentation. Other procedures may enter (e.g.,
exercising, salt ingestion, or watching Lawrence of Arabia may increase its potency,
The analytic system to be used 25

dietary laws may decrease potency of certain foods, etc.). The potency of behavior may
be decreased by requiring too great an effort, among other means. Similarly, the potency
of a schedule may be influenced by the program, among other means.
2. Instructional, abstractional set relations. By virtue of their close ties with the occasioning
events, they follow similar relations to the contingency. They serve to select the par-
ticular stimulus (occasion) class (set), the response class (set), or both (i.e., respond to
color rather than form, behave orally rather than in writing). They refer to behavior in
accord with such relations, rather than to internalized understanding or abstraction.
3. Program history. The paradigm that is presented at any time between t and t +​n may
be conceptualized as a slice in a progression, or as a slide in a tray of such slides. The
program refers to the forward progression. The program need not be linear but can
involve branching, recycling, etc.
4. Props. These are events that are present during the establishment, change, or mainten-
ance of contingencies but do not enter into them. Change in the props (stimulus change)
will result in a disruption of behavior, although the contingency is still in effect. Such dis-
ruption is often subjectively described as distraction, e.g., sudden noise: if the disrupting
event is repeatedly or continually presented, the contingencies not having been changed,
then the behavior is restored to contingency control; the props are then broadened to
include such events. A program may be instituted to control for such disruption.
5. The contingency itself. This is presented in simplest form. The contingency may include
alternative occasions, or behaviors, or consequences, or relations, either singly or in
combination, as in decision theory. It may include a chain, in which each contingency is
a link, as in the frames or programmed instruction (Ocl-​[B; Oc2]-​[B; Oc3] … [B; Ocn]).
The occasions are defined by the contingency. Thus, the octagonal stop sign, the red light,
a policeman’s whistle –​are all stop “signals.” In the presence of any, the same [B (stop) →S
(safety)] holds. Since the occasions are in the same class, any one can substitute for the
others. Similarly, the behavior class is defined by the contingency. Stopping can involve
depression of a foot brake, pulling of a hand brake, stripping the gears. The behaviors may
be substituted for each other. Consequences are similarly defined as a class by the contin-
gency (safety, no-​ticket, stopping). Positive reinforcement is defined when (a) a conse-
quence is presented and (b) the three-​term contingency is thereby maintained thereafter.
Negative reinforcement is defined when (a) the consequence consists of a withdrawal of
an event and (b) the contingency is similarly maintained. Reversal, that is, withdrawing
the positive reinforcer or presenting the negative reinforcer, may produce punishment,
that is, the attenuation of behavior. In extinction, there is no contingency where there
once was. Contingency relations include not only these relations but also the various
schedules discussed earlier.36
6. Implications of the paradigm. If schedules are generally ignored in conventional reports
of behavior, so, too, are other elements of the paradigm. In a classic study, Azrin (1958)
reported that when noise was first introduced as prop (stimulus change), behavior was
disrupted instantly but recovered under repeated presentation of noise, since the contin-
gencies had not been changed. (Indeed, if behavior was established under noise, removing
noise disrupted behavior –​initially.) If, however, presentation of noise was accompanied
by a schedule change that was reliably related to noise, noise served as an occasion for
patterns of behavior specific to it. Finally, if delivery of noise was made contingent on
behavior (a consequence), rate of behavior was attenuated; such delivery served as pun-
ishment. Stated otherwise, the effects of noise in disrupting behavior may be transient
(when used as a prop change) or enduring (when used as punishment) or may be finely
attuned to new patterns of behavior (when used as an occasion). Similarly, drug effects
(cf. Thompson and Schuster, 1968; Weiss and Laties, 1975) are contingency-​element
26 The analytic system to be used

related. That different behaviors are tolerated under alcohol than would be otherwise
suggests that it can function for the user in an instructional context: when I get stewed,
different patterns will pay off. Needless to say, emotional and other states may serve
similarly, in addition to serving in the various other ways suggested by an element ana-
lysis of the paradigm. And treatments that have been discarded because they have not
worked may have been ineffective only because they were applied in a manner to equate
them with one paradigm element. That they may be effective when used as a different
paradigm element is overlooked because intervention was not analyzed in a contingency
context.

NOTES
1 Skinner defines behaviorism as the philosophy of the science of human behavior and “not [as] the science of
human behavior” (Skinner, 1974, p. 3).
2 There are no uniformly accepted terms. The following equivalents of reactive-​consequential are to be found in the
literature: (a) classical-​instrumental, (b) reflex-​instrumental, and (c) respondent-​operant. Pairs (a) and (b) tend to be
favored by traditional behaviorists and (c) by radical behaviorists, although the boundaries are permeable, and others
use the terms. Earlier terms were (d) Type S–​Type R, (e) Type I–​Type II, and (f) Pavlovian–​Skinnerian (Thorndikean).
The terms reflect either history (classical, I–​II. Pavlov–​Skinner) or functional relation (reflex, respondent: behavior
reacts to stimulus. Type S; instrumental, operant: behavior [Type R] serves as instrument or operates on the
environment).
The terms modify either conditioning, learning, response, or behavior, among other substantives. A major
general textbook of experimental psychology suggests that conditioning be confined to the reactive formulation
and learning or training to the consequential one, e.g., reflex, respondent, etc., conditioning and instrumental,
operant, etc., learning (Kling, 1971, p. 566; cf. Goldiamond, 1975a, pp. 82–​84).
3 See Leviticus 19:18; Romans 12:19; Hebrews 10:30. For further discussion of such disturbing behavior, see text.
4 In Pavlovian conditioning, a reflex (automatic S→R relation) such as blow→patellar response, and presumably innate
(unconditional), can serve as a basis for a new reflex if appropriate procedures (conditions) are introduced. Thus,
given (a) an unconditional reflex, US→UR (unc. stimulus, food; unc. response, salivation), if (b) a stimulus is paired
with food, CS, US→UR (conditional stimulus, tone, paired with US elicits UR, since (a) US→UR still obtains, then
eventually, (c) a conditional reflex will form, CS→CR (con. stimulus, tone, elicits con. response, salivation). For (c) to
be maintained, occasionally (b) must also occur. Hence, the US serves to reinforce the relation. Disestablishment of a
reflex through non-​presentation of the reinforcer is called extinction.
5 The typical notations used by radical behaviorists are SD-​R→Sr, or SD·R→Sr, or S+​-​R→Sr. The superscripts, D and r,
distinguish the two stimuli as discriminative (occasion) and reinforcing (consequences; see note 4). Both SD and S+​
refer to presence of (B→Consequence), and SD and S-​ to absence of that relation: SD-​(B→0) or S-​-​(B→0). Extinction
occurs under those conditions, and the organism discriminates (hence SΔ-​SΔ) between SΔ and SΔ (say a red and
green traffic light) by responding (stopping) differentially. I have replaced the R by a B since it is not in reaction to
the antecedent, despite its historically induced persistence.
6 Thorndike formulated the Law of Effect almost 70 years ago (Thorndike, 1913). In it, as Hilgard (1948) notes, the
definition of strength by probability of occurrence has “a very contemporary ring” (p. 24), with the “strengthening
or weakening” a result of the consequences. Thorndike “went further and insisted that the action of consequences
is direct, and need not be mediated by ideas” (p. 25).
7 Under many schedules, many instances of behavior will occur without consequences. In these situations,
Oc-​(B→S) relations will be observed much less frequently than Oc-​(B→0). At least one psychologist has stated
that when Oc-​B is not followed by S, behavior is sustained by hope (for S); hope is fulfilled and sustained by the
infrequent occurrence of S. If this occurs too infrequently, despair sets in, and behavior ends. (It will be noted that
the mediating terms derive from the necessity of linear causality of behavior, Oc→Hope→R.) One questions the
contribution of hope–​despair terms when they are synonymous with the presence and absence of the observable
behavior. Any procedures that influence behavior will influence hope.
In certain forms of explanation, a particular instance is considered to be explained when it is related to a more
general rule, e. g., X is jolly because X is fat follows such syllogistic format ([a]‌fat people are jolly, [b] X is a fat
person, [c] hence …). The recurrence of B when Oc-​(B→0), given only infrequent Oc-​(B→S), can be explained
by the schedule itself, without resort to hope. Within a very wide range, for a variety of species (rats, pigeons,
monkeys), for a variety of occasions (tones, hues, patterns), for a variety of behaviors (lever-​pressing, turning a
wheel, making a sound), for a variety of consequences (food, water, opportunity to exercise), specifiable patterns
of Oc-​B (when Oc-​[B→0]) will occur (behaving continually, intermittently; irregularly, regularly) depending on
The analytic system to be used 27

the (B→S) schedule (of which there are many). The schedule major premise ([a] Schedule Y behaviors are resistant
to extinction, [b] Behavior X is a Schedule Y behavior, [c] hence …) has not only considerable empirical generality
but also considerable experimental validation.
8 Some traditional learning theories also trivialize the status of consequences. This holds particularly for those that
distinguish between learning and performance. In these models, learning is a mediating (and the crucial) concept.
One can have S→L without R. In these models, for the learned behavior to occur, consequences may be necessary.
Such behavior is designated as performance, and S→L→P, if C; that is, consequences are necessary for performance
but not learning. Learning is inferred from changes in S→P relations for which C is necessary. In evolutionary
theory, evolution does not mediate as a concept between environment and organisms. Evolution relates environ-
ment to changes in species, for which consequences are critical. See subsequent text.
9 In developmentalism, changes in behavior follow upon changes in stages of development. Physicalism is defined
as a theory of knowledge that asserts that “when we introspect or have feelings we are looking at states or activities
of our brains” (Skinner, 1974, p. 11).
10 Such traditional behaviorisms are designated as methodological behaviorism by Skinner (1974, pp. 13–​16). This
term, although regarded as “somewhat unfortunate” since it must be “distinguished from behavioral method-
ology” by Hayes and Barlow (1977, p. 3), is accepted by them since its use is “well-​established.” In Skinner’s usage,
methodological behaviorism is non-​mentalist. However, as used in behavior modification, it is “frequently men-
talistic [and] mediational,” according to Hayes and Barlow. In accord with Skinner’s usage, they state that meth-
odological behaviorism is “hypothetico-​deductive; relies on group designs; emphasizes pre-​post measurement;
and embraces inferential statistics. The philosophy underlying this paradigm is operationism/​logical positivism.”
Those forms of behavior modification that are mentalist follow a traditional approach to linear causality. I shall
juxtapose traditional behaviorism and radical behaviorism, in accord with the usage of Day (1969). He refers to
conventional behaviorism in juxtaposition to radical behaviorism (p. 316).
11 The analysis of drive is a complex field, with many formulations. Their influence on disciplines outside their field
varies, and my discussion centers on one particular approach that has had considerable impact outside experi-
mental psychology, regardless of its present status within that field.
12 Both appetitive and consummatory behaviors may be considered as instrumental in obtaining consequences, but
their relation to antecedents is generally linear in the drive models.
13 The physiological mediator supplies an unsatisfactory answer to the question of why food is a reinforcer. Stating
that we eat because blood sugar level is down raises the question of why blood sugar is critical. If it is needed
for energy, why energy? If in order to behave, why behave? If to get food, why food? And we are back to our
starting point. Which discipline is propaedeutic to which depends on which arc in the circle just examined we
arbitrarily study and which cut-​off points we set to define the arc. By the same reasoning that we cannot under-
stand behavior without prior understanding of the physiology of the behaving organism (see physicalism, note
9), we can reason that we cannot understand physiology without prior understanding of the psychology of the
organism (cf. Skinner, 1950).
14 See note 7.
15 If only one operation defines a term, it is indistinguishable from it. (See note 7.) Cognitivist approaches distinguish
themselves from mentalist approaches in that they apply converging operations to define their term and accuse
mentalists of relying on only one operation.
16 For example, some time ago, S was paired with another stimulus that elicited fear and now elicits fear and anxiety
on its own. Withdrawal (running), by eliminating that S, relieves anxiety, and it is this (internal) consequence
that maintains the behavior. This formulation is the “two-​factor” theory in which S→respondent emotion, and
operant behavior has as its consequence→eliminating that emotion (see note 4). The emotion and its elimination
are inferred. Other mediating formulations are used.
17 Cf. the behavior of a cornered rat.
18 We should no more expect both to be governed in exactly the same way than we so expect two different classes of
observable behavior with different histories, e.g., the verbal behavior of representatives and their voting behavior.
One can occur without the other. Precedence does not indicate causality: if the bear can occasion fear before I run,
the bear can also occasion running before I feel frightened.
19 There is a presumption by some clinicians that what has been learned is what is actually operative; insight hence
has surplus meaning beyond the congruence noted. There are other definitions of insight in psychoanalysis, just as
there are in behavior analysis and in other psychologies (Goldiamond, 1977).
20 For example, in studies of concept learning with children, a series of presentations, each requiring a choice, is
made. Which choice is correct has been predetermined, in accord with a concept. (The presentations may be of
three triangles, in different sequences, with the middle-​sized one always correct.) When degree of correctness
reaches some criterion, the child may be asked to state the basis for choice, or be confronted by a different series
of presentations (say, of trios of circles with a different range of sizes), or both. Which of the four possibilities
discussed in the text will occur varies with experimental conditions and subjects. The definition of insight or
awareness in the text intersects the one used here but is not coterminous with it.
28 The analytic system to be used

21 Schedule A was Fixed Ratio (FR) 40 –​reinforcement followed upon every 40 button presses, for ten one-​hour
sessions. Schedule B was Fixed Interval (FI) 10 sec. –​reinforcement was delivered upon a button press occurring
at least ten seconds after the last delivery; every response at some other time resulted in a loss (of 1 percent
of the reinforcer). Only one button press every ten seconds was required here, but all ten one-​hour sessions
were characterized by the high behavior rate characteristic of FR performance. Schedule C was Differential
Reinforcement of Low Rates (DRL) 20 sec. –​behavior was reinforced only if the organism did not respond for 20
seconds after food delivery. Any behavior in between reset the timer to 20 seconds and delayed reinforcement by
that amount.
High-​rate behavior under FR is also reinforced under FI, that is, will produce reinforcement when behavior
coincides with the time interval. Penultimate behavior is unnecessary but is followed by final behavior and, there-
fore, gain. There was a cost in the (atypical) FI schedule here. Persistence of unnecessary behavior may be related
to persistence of gain. In DRL, high rate is inconsistent with any gain, hence high rate does not persist. Low-​rate
behavior enters the repertoire. See text for effects.
22 Cf. the army officer’s maxim: “Never give an order you are not prepared to back up.”
23 In perceptual research performed in accord with signal detection theory, consequences are attached to all behavior.
In operant perceptual research, variable interval or ratio schedules are applied, so that behavior is occasionally
reinforced. The precise relations obtained under such studies often differ from those experiments in which, once
instructions are given, consequential effects are implicit, rather than explicit.
24 A form of abstractional control is contextual control. In computer terminology, instructional-​abstractional con-
trol, on the one hand, and stimulus control (Oc-​B), on the other, are defined as the array and the display, respect-
ively. In a print shop, the array may be the drawers of different type fonts. The display would then be the letters in
a given drawer.
25 Transactional analysis in psychotherapy has incorporated highly specialized features and internalization. In psy-
choanalytic theory, the explicit consequences are designated as secondary gain (because of a hypothesized pri-
mary gain). The secondary gain is stated as internalized gratification, but this is readily translatable into explicit
consequences.
26 For relations to law, see Goldiamond (1976a, pp. 8–​9).
27 Thus, masochism has been considered irrational and abnormal. It seems to be maintained by painful consequences
that function to decrease behavior for most people rather than to reinforce it. However, masochism has rapidly
been established in experimental animals. The pigeon’s peck instantly delivers intense shock; the pigeon pecks
again, gets shocked; continues. If no shock is produced, the bird exhibits signs of distress, moves away, may later
try again, and will get back to work instantly if it shocks itself. This seems to replicate masochism, in that the
organism seeks out self-​induced pain. However, it turns out that when such pain is behavior-​produced, so, too, is
food, upon every fiftieth peck. When the shock apparatus is off, so is the food apparatus. Choice of Cost 50 shocks,
Benefit one meal; Cost 0, Benefit 0, seems to be an a-​rational choice, especially if the value of the meal is high
because of intense deprivation (Holz and Azrin, 1961).
28 Elsewhere, I have related admission decisions to a mental hospital to such matrices, as well as relating the use
of different conceptual systems to such matrices (Goldiamond, 1974, pp. 68–​70). The tendency by psychi-
atric institutions to over-​admit for suicidal threats is rational. The threatener may be admitted to the hospital
or rejected. The state of the environment (person’s likely behavior) may be non-​suicide, or suicide. Admission
of someone whose threats are idle (admit x non-​suicide)→waste of money, space. Admission of someone who
is serious (admit x likely suicide)→saving of life, accomplishment. Non-​admission of idle threat (non-​admit x
non-​suicide)→saving of money, space. Non-​admission of someone who is serious (non-​admit x suicide)→lawsuit
for negligence, scandal, etc. Accordingly, the criterion for admission must be extremely low, rather than strict.
Complex theories utilizing personality theory for staff have been advanced to account for what may be very simply
understood phenomena (cf. Scheff, 1966, pp. 105–​127).
29 Optimizing net gain is, of course, not the only possible decision criterion. When the manufacturer says: “I want
to optimize net gain,” he may be saying that this is what he is required to do by the stockholders. However, if an
airline decides to install only that amount of safety equipment that is balanced by losses in insurance claims to the
deceased, it will be in trouble. Accordingly, it may be required to apply a different criterion.
30 Control is a subset within the larger set, prediction. If one can control, one can predict. But one can predict without
ability to control. Hence, both can be used for validation, but control is the stronger.
31 Since bones are calcium structures, they constitute a large part of the fossil record. However, it is the muscles that
move them, and these functioning units can often only be inferred from the bones and their stress lines. And
such moving units enter into behavior, which required further inference since its record is vaguest. I am indebted
to Sherwood Washburn for these observations and must simply add that if behavior is inferential, the fine-​grain
environment contingencies are even more so.
32 In the typical psychological learning experiment, groups of organisms, separated according to experimental
conditions, are run for brief periods of time. Each organism produces a small number of responses, which is
entered as a single figure. Group averages of such figures are related to the conditions that distinguished them;
The analytic system to be used 29

statistical assessment becomes necessary. The logic of the single organism and group strategies is similar, but the
elements entered into the sets differ. The n (number of individuals grouped) in group research is not one in single-​
organism research (n ≠ 1). Rather, n is the number of occurrences of behavior in a condition and, accordingly,
n is quite large in single-​organism research. The different experiments or replications run in group research are
paralleled by the different individuals run under different conditions or replicated conditions.
33 The technology has entered various areas. As programmed instruction (p.i.), it teaches systematically what indi-
vidual textbooks are designed to teach; as programmed (or personalized) system of instruction (p.s.i.), it is applied
to systematize classroom instruction; as biofeedback, it selects for vascular, muscular, and other organic change;
as behavior modification, it is extended to patterns of classroom, clinical, and industrial interest, among others; as
behavioral pharmacology, it is extended to pharmacological-​behavioral analysis.
34 The eccentricity of ellipse is the ratio between its minor and major axes. For a circle, the diameter is uniform
throughout and, hence, the eccentricity is 1.00.
35 Braginsky, Braginsky, and Ring (1969) recommend the establishment of institutions that, in essence, provide
asylum on simple request for admission, rather than making this consequence contingent on those disturbing
operants that are classified as indicating mental illness. The hospital they studied had once been a private alms-
house, to which the indigent reported for care. They might stay for a while, then leave. If they stayed longer, they
were put to work. Many left for good; some could never get it together and returned regularly. (The poorhouse and
the county (poor) farm have been abolished, of course, but there remains the problem of poverty and of people
who can’t get it together in the absence of programs to this end.) The investigators ran a series of studies in which
patients were told that the purpose of the questionnaires was to find out who was well enough (to be discharged,
in one case, or put in a privileged ward, in the other) and were told which answers indicated improvement (set
a in one case, set b in the other) or deterioration. The patients presented themselves as mentally ill to stay in the
hospital, or to enter it, when these served their purposes.
The poor farm origin of many of our mental hospitals is attested by the fact that in several states, such hospitals
are under or allied to welfare departments (which formerly ran the farms) rather than to the health departments
that regulate public health and general hospitals.
36 The following example suggests the relevance of schedules. Two pigeons are each in identical cubicles (identical
props). Each pecks a disk to obtain food (Oc-​[R→Csq] identical), having been equally deprived (potentiation
identical). Intervals between delivery of food are, on the average, about 30 seconds apart for each. Despite all these
identities in the environment, the pigeons behave differently, and when extinction is introduced (by turning off the
feeder), the course of behavior will differ.
One pigeon was on a Variable Interval 32-​second schedule, that is, once food is delivered, a timer withdraws
the food magazine for that time interval (on the average), and only a peck after the timer has timed down and
locked will deliver food. The timer will then recycle. The other pigeon was on a Variable Ratio 64 schedule, that
is, once food is delivered, a counter withdraws the food magazine until that number of pecks has been cumulated
(on the average), at which point, food is delivered. The counter then resets. In one case, delivery of food is contin-
gent on a peck after a time interval (during which pecking was immaterial); in the other case, it is contingent on a
peck after a given number of pecks (for which behavior is essential). The time intervals are the same, because the
second pigeon pecks at a rate of about 2 per second. It is precisely such schedule relations that are critical in the
world around us (piece work, pay on time, time-​dictated deadlines, performance-​based contracts; take every two
hours, take when pain occurs, etc.) and that constitute the laboratory study of schedules that tend to be ignored
when environments are typically considered, and especially so in heritability studies.
 3
The origins of behavior patterns

If we question the application of linear causality to consequential behavior, that is, to behavior
that is not inconsequential or trivial, what are the origins of behavior? The question is not
a trivial one, nor is it paralleled by issues surrounding the Origin of Life. Genetic theories
are being advanced to areas of behavior as disparate as criminality, intelligence, and schizo-
phrenia. Physiological induction of emotional behavior has been demonstrated for some
time. These propositions have not only interventive effects (genetic counseling, eugenic ster-
ilization, chemotherapy) and social effects in terms of delivery systems and types of recipients
but also effects on research and understanding. Yet another implication is the relation of
behavior to evolution. If there is selection of behavior in the sense of the terms as used in
biological evolution, it would appear that genetic and physiological induction are critical.
This discussion of the origins of behavior patterns will be divided into three sections. First,
I shall consider some sources and relate them to environmental contingencies. Second, I shall
extend the evolutionary analogy raised earlier (species change and behavior pattern change)
to social inheritance as alternative for or supplement to biological inheritance of behavior,
in the context of contingencies as they relate to mental health. Third, I shall consider some
specific problems in mental health.

3.1  SOURCES
The major sources of current repertoires include the following.

3.1.1  Programing sources

In the same sense that certain present breeds of domesticated cattle have their origins in
cattle from which they were bred, a vast array of patterns of behavior (and other contingency
elements as they relate to behavior) have origins in program histories. The program may have
been explicit and highly systematic, as in p.i., or explicit and less systematic as in school edu-
cation, or implicit, as in parental and peer requirements and interactions.

3.1.2  Reflexive sources

Certain reflexes may be capitalized upon as sources for contingency programing or reactive
conditioning. The physiological apparatus of children permits vocalizations, and a wa:wa:
DOI: 10.4324/9781003260103-3
32 The origins of behavior patterns

sound may, in certain audiences, be shaped to wa:ta:, in others to vo:da, and in yet others to
a:wa: and so on. Reflexive swimming occurs during the first year of life and recurs in about
two years. If a program is not applied, as it is in the vocalization case cited, the sources of later
swimming will be in the first category.

3.1.3  Physiologically induced sources

Electrical stimulation of or surgery in certain areas of the brain can serve to reinforce pre-
ceding behavior or suppress or induce behavior: it can induce components of sexual behavior
and of aggressive behavior, among others. (For an excellent review, see Valenstein, 1973.)
Since there has been extensive laboratory investigation of aggressive behavior, and since it
will be discussed in other contexts as well, I shall focus on this behavior. Delgado (1969,
p. 129) electrically stimulated, through telemetry, the appropriate brain area of an adult
female monkey. She then attacked other monkeys, S→R. However, such attack was induced
by brain stimulation when she was with one group of monkeys. Stimulated similarly when in
a different group, she hardly attacked. S®|R. I shall return to this later.

3.1.4  Genetic induction

The occasions available for sighted organisms differ from those available for blind organisms,
and an environment with reflected light may select for one and not the other. Similarly, one
would expect selection of behavior, of relation of behavior to consequences, and of other
elements in the paradigm. Reflexes, susceptibility to electrical stimulation, and schedule
induction, to be discussed later, also enter. The extent to which highly complex patterns of
behavior are so determined is not as readily apparent but has recently been reopened in
sociobiology (Wilson, 1975), in addition to its more familiar postulations in criminology,
mental illness, mental testing, and linguistics. Indeed, inherited linguistic structure has now
been extended to inherited ethical structures in humans to account for ethical universals
(Stent, 1976).

3.1.5  Schedule-​induced behavior

A variety of behaviors of clinical relevance (e.g., pica, polydipsia [Falk, 1961], defecation
[Rayfield, Segal, and Goldiamond, 1978]) have been reliably induced when reinforcement has
been made contingent on workaday behavior (e.g., lever-​pressing for food) under specified
conditions. Similarly, behaviors of social relevance have been reliably induced. Instantaneous
and simultaneous attack upon each other can thereby be induced in animals who have never
been together. The effects have been obtained in practically all vertebrates tested (including
turtles, pigeons, rats, rabbits, monkeys). The attack conditions may be summarized as
follows: (a) noxious stimulation (e.g., shock, pinch) presented freely or made contingent on
workaday behavior: the stimulated animal will attack another, if present (Ulrich and Azrin,
1962), or inanimate objects, if not (Azrin, Hutchinson, and Saliery, 1964); or (b) a less favor-
able change in the reinforcement schedule, either through decreasing the amount or fre-
quency of reinforcement, or increasing the work requirement for the same reinforcement,
or stretching both to the limit, as in extinction, when reinforcement is absent no matter how
great the effort (Azrin, Hutchinson, and Hake, 1966). If an attack object is made available
only through specific behavior, an aggression-​induced animal will engage in that behavior,
produce the object, and attack. The opportunity to aggress thereby becomes a reinforcer for
the behavior specified (Azrin, Hutchinson, and McLaughlin, 1965). The size of the enclosure
The origins of behavior patterns 33

is critical: if small, attack is induced; if large, escape (for comprehensive reviews, see Gilbert
and Keehn, 1972; Keehn, 1976; Hutchinson, 1977; Staddon, 1977). Aggression by rats in a
small enclosure may be replaced by sexual mounting in a larger enclosure upon females and
males (Caggiula, 1972) and also upon inanimate objects (Caggiula and Eibergen, 1969). It
can be argued that what makes aggression reinforcing similarly affects such sexual assault.

3.1.6  Relations to contingencies

The extent to which the patterns or, more precisely, their constituent subpatterns are to be
assigned to one or more of the other sources noted (programing, reflexive, physiologically
induced, genetically induced), or should be classified separately (schedule-​induced), may
depend on further experimental analysis. Regardless of source, analysis thus far suggests
interesting subsequent relations to the programing environment. Given the necessary
conditions for aggression for two animals, a skirmish will ensue. If skirmishes are induced
on subsequent days, a change may occur within a short period of time. When the aggression-​
inducing conditions are now introduced, one of the animals will move to the attack. However,
the other will attempt to escape or will be propitiatory. What happened was that during the
skirmishes, one animal tended to win. Attack by the loser was increasingly punished. The
alternative behaviors in escape and avoidance were then selected on the occasion of the indu-
cing schedule change. Presumably, the accompanying emotional state was also reversed –​
for one.
We may now return to our discussion of Delgado’s data in which physiologically induced
aggression in one group was replaced by other behavior when electrical stimulation was then
applied. The monkey had occupied a dominant social position in the one group and a sub-
ordinate one in the other. The operant contingencies supplied by the social groups swamped
any physiological induction in this case (Delgado refers to such social effects as settings
for the behavior). In the case of the pigeons, the development of such social contingency
relations over time reversed the nature of the scheduled-​induced behavior in one case and
strengthened it in the other. Environmental contingencies also entered into the establish-
ment or nonestablishment of reflex-​based behaviors, or in the directionality of yet others,
some of which are genetically characteristic of a species.
A conclusion seems inescapable. Regardless of the source of the behavior pattern, if the
behavior affects the environment around it, once the behavior occurs and recurs, it enters the
public domain, that is, the domain of its environment. And once it does so, the source and
type of behavior can be swamped by those patterns required by the consequential contingencies.
Certain genetically induced physiological patterns may be triggered at different times by
developmentally related changes. However, what public behavior is induced will be governed
by not only the contingencies then extant but also the history of other members of its behavior
class, during exposure to a history of past contingencies.
Indeed, humans set up social systems that maintain environments within certain ranges.
Such limitations upon possible contingencies and programs will now be considered.

3.2  CULTURAL INHERITANCE

The analogy between breeding for specified traits and programing for special skills, as
noted earlier, is considerably more than a metaphor. For each point in one, there seems to
be a corresponding point in the other. Similarly, there is a strong correspondence parallel
between natural selection applied to species and environmental selection applied to patterns
of behavior.
34 The origins of behavior patterns

Social and cultural systems restrict the range of contingencies, as evidenced by the fact
that this discussion is being written in a language pattern into which the initial patterns of
numerous other people have also been programed. The programing includes both implicit
and explicit contingencies that, when applied, govern behavior with varying degrees of sys-
tematization. Such programing behaviors (as opposed to programed behavior) will have been
shaped in the training and other social interaction patterns of numerous members of our
culture. In certain subcultures, the contingencies governing programing behaviors will be
quite similar, in others less so.
Children are trained by their parents, that is, specific parental contingencies bracket spe-
cific behaviors of their children, in a sequence that includes implicit and explicit elements.
I shall assume that to the extent that the larger cultural and other environments remain con-
sistent over time, as they have in many traditional cultures, the similar cultural milieu will
maintain the applications of these training programs over generations. The programs applied
by parents to their children’s behaviors will be the programs applied by these children to their
children’s behaviors, when they are parents, and these children will apply the programs when
they are parents, to the program-​relevant behaviors of their children, and so on. I believe that
it is in this context that we can speak of cultural or social inheritance (cf. Medawar, 1977),
that is, the transmission of programing procedures from one generation to the next. (Social
institutions such as schools, religious and legal systems, and professions also transmit pro-
graming procedures. These may be analyzed similarly.) Such procedures include the implicit
or explicit selections of outcomes (expectations), procedures, and other program and con-
tingency elements discussed earlier. Programing survives, like individuals and species,
through environmental selection: the children do not walk off the edges of mesas and sur-
vive to transmit the programing procedures to other generations. New environments impose
new requirements, and programs may change. Some changes will be in terms of a natural
drift; others may be sudden and so large as to be incongruous with other critical programs
maintained by the system. Yet others may be sudden but small enough to be so congruent;
under certain conditions these may be perpetuated, under others not. The parallels to bio-
logical transmission, natural selection, genetic drift, mutations may be extended. We might
speak of the (culturally) selfish program or the (culturally) altruistic program, as glibly as we
do of such genes, or of behaviors that are only the program’s way of perpetuating programs
or of programs that are only the behavior’s way of perpetuating behaviors.
Into this well-​ordered scheme there enters an exceptional child. The child may be
slow. The child’s patterns of behavior or of receptivity to the environmental occasions or
consequences may deviate in other ways from those typical initial repertoires to which the
culturally inherited patterns of programing are geared. Such deviation can arise through
amniotic poisoning or through fetal abuse by alcoholic, addicted, or psychotic (among
others) mothers and fathers. It can arise through illness, accident, or related trauma. It can
be genetically induced through transmission or mutation. Regardless of the origins, the child
is either not responsive to the program or responds in ways to which the culturally inherited
program is not geared. I shall note three possibilities. Others exist.

3.2.1  Parental persistence with standard programs

The parents may persist in their use of the standard program. Through failing to obtain the
appropriate steps, or through being required to behave excessively to obtain these, they may
exhibit schedule-​induced anger or other emotional patterns. Such emotion, and the con-
cern involved, may then become parent outcomes that shape children’s patterns. It is the
child’s disturbing behavior that produces and may be maintained by such concern, especially
The origins of behavior patterns 35

if normative patterns do not produce concern so readily. And the parents, in more than one
scenario I have observed, notice that they become intensely involved as a consequence of
disturbing behavior and less involved as a consequence of normal behavior and, reasoning
that they are “rewarding misbehavior,” try to ignore this pattern. The child then escalates this
pattern, with induced emotion, to the point where the parents yield. An escalated pattern
has been reinforced. Over time and through repetitions, the disturbing patterns can become,
within their outcome-​governed limitations (control of parents), as sophisticated and adroit as
the more typical patterns are in other children. In the meantime, the parents are so delighted
over any nondisturbing behavior that they “reward it” immediately, thereby keeping it at
a primitive stage in the program. In the more typical program applications, it is precisely
these behaviors whose escalation and refinement the social environment progressively
requires during development.1 (Similarly, in high ratio performance, the investigator requires
increasing escalation of behavior.) The solution here is to train the parents to reverse their
programing procedures: yield instantly when disturbing behavior occurs, set the occasions
and programs for nondisturbing behavior, and gradually escalate the requirements here.
Such reversal requires considerable programing sophistication. For one thing, the child is
highly adept in programing skills; for another, the parents are now required to change their
patterns and develop new ones. Other problems enter.

3.2.2  Culturally available alternatives

Parents may apply alternative programs systematically available in the cultural repertoire
when the standard programs do not work (see Table 3.1). The data suggest that such alterna-
tive programs are neither random nor unlimited. There may also be cultural and biological
limitations.
These programs, not having been developed for all individually egregious behaviors,
may result in child outcomes that, while not normative, are clustered in similar groupings,
depending on the similarities between alternative programs –​children repertoires.

3.2.3  Novel programing for standard outcomes

Here, the parents may implicitly or explicitly define the necessary outcomes. They may simi-
larly select from the repertoire of the child those patterns that can be used as a basis for a
program directed toward the outcomes. They may then patiently innovate change procedures
by steps that transform current repertoires to outcomes and may apply appropriate reinforce-
ment all along. Stated otherwise, when confronted with initial patterns that deviate from
those with which culturally inherited programs and alternatives mesh, they do not attempt
to apply standard programs or “compensatory” alternatives (cf. Jensen, 1969). They apply a
new program based upon careful observation and monitoring of their child’s behaviors, as
they change theirs. Stated otherwise, they are applying, implicitly perhaps, the programing

TABLE 3.1
Possible outcomes obtained for disturbing and alternative patterns on different occasions given
different programs.
Behavior patterns Occasion 1 Occasion 2

Disturbing patterns Outcome a Outcome c

Alternative patterns Outcome b Outcome d
36 The origins of behavior patterns

procedures that are explicitly defined in p.i. Professionals might learn from such parents.
Needless to say, novel programs can also produce outcomes different from those intended.
I believe that such cultural programing inheritance accounts for the transmission of
mental illness from parents to offspring, and its nontransmission –​at least as well as gene-​
programed psychosis. One report (Heston, 1966) is of infants removed from schizophrenic
mothers at birth and reared elsewhere. Follow-​up when the infants were adults revealed an
unusual proportion of schizophrenic and other disturbing patterns. There were also normal
patterns. A genetic interpretation has been offered to counter the “schizophrenogenic
parent syndrome” that has been offered as an explanation. If we assume that the neonates
of the schizophrenic mothers tended to behave initially in manners to which the culturally
inherited programs are not keyed, then the adoptive parents may have engaged in any of the
three programing patterns noted (or others). The results obtained are as consistent with this
interpretation as they are with a genetic one.
Reports of fairly uniform proportions of schizophrenia throughout the world have been
interpreted to support a genetic explanation, since, after all, human beings share a common
gene pool that characterizes their humanity, defined biologically. However, they also share
commonalities in behavioral and other cultural patterns that distinguish them from other
species. Such patterns, including the employment of language, undoubtedly aid in the cul-
tural and social transmission of programing behaviors from generation to generation. The
reportedly similar proportions of schizophrenia throughout the world may be relatable to
similar proportions of different programing options and alternatives throughout the world.
Similarly, the linguistic data accounted for by inherited structures may be equally well
accounted for by divergent evolution of language programing from one common source.
Just as the vast majority of humans biologically descended from one source share common
organs, so, too, the vast majority of language-​programing procedures culturally descended
from one source may share common patterns. A biological theory of evolution does not
appear to be necessary to account for (genetically) inherited structure in language, or ethics,
for that matter. A biological theory of evolution does not appear to be necessary to account for
the replacement of one language over another, namely, that the speakers of one language had
a survival edge over the speakers of another, by virtue of the language differences. Language
programing behavior is one of a complex of social influences, which include different tech-
nologies, social organizations –​and accidents of geography and history. Such accidents are
found in biological evolution as well. The island on which a truly admirable species is found
may suddenly sink under the ocean –​through no “inferiority” of that species. And neither
are survival, nor spread of language, nor ethical system, nor other programs indicators of
survival value of these systems. Survival and spread may adhere to accident, to possession of
best bomb, or to immunity to virulent disease.

3.3  PROGRAMING DISTURBING AND

UNDISTURBING CONTINGENCIES
The proliferation of areas to which explicit programing behaviors are being applied indicates
the general applicability of the consequential framework discussed, as well as supporting the
relevance to behavior of a parallel to evolutionary selection (rather than of a homology of evo-
lutionary selection of behavior). It would appear that there exists considerable understanding
of programing procedures and contingency relations. Although these are being applied in
increasing manner as a technology that can help solve behavior problems, they are unfortu-
nately not being applied to the same extent to the understanding of such problems and their
development.
The origins of behavior patterns 37

3.3.1  Problems to understanding

In part, inattention to understanding derives from the necessity of careful monitoring of the
implicit or accidental programs that produce such outcomes. In effect, this requires a history
of not simply the behavior patterns but also the progression of contingencies, that is, the
behaviors and their bracketing environmental contingencies. Such studies as have been done
have been highly suggestive.
For example, Moss observed neonates at three weeks and three months and noted that
even at these early ages, mothers were differentially responsive to boys and girls: they stressed
musculature in boys and aroused them more; imitated their daughters more (1967, p. 27);
and “in keeping with cultural expectations the mother is initiating a pattern that contributes
to males being more aggressive or assertive, and less responsive to socialization” (p. 30). In
another study (Moss and Robson, 1968), fretting girls were talked to and boys held (cf. Korner,
1974). In the absence of such environmental selection data, explanatory roles are assigned to
inner instinctive differences (entelechies in evolution) and to terms such as attachment, but
“the shortcoming of the theory of attachment … is that it does not speak sufficiently to the
social interaction that is the key to socialization. Proximity is necessary but not sufficient”
(Bell, 1974, p. 9). Stated otherwise, attachment omits, at the very least, the schedule.
With regard to mental illness, the problem of such observation is compounded by a selec-
tion problem. The patient whose behaviors are disturbing occasions professional attention
only after the episodes have occurred. History must then replace direct observation of pro-
graming. While observation and programing thereafter can occur and can be used to infer
previous program history, they are limited by their post hoc nature. However, it should be
noted that Darwin’s model did not derive from the monitoring of ongoing evolution.2 It did,
however, replace other models that internalized evolutionary processes within the species.
A considerable body of observations buttressed the arguments advanced. While there have
been some evolutionary laboratories, the behavior analysts have been in a better position.
They (the environments) can change behavior patterns (species) within the laboratory
by culling and reinforcing selected constituent behaviors (individuals) and can do so for
extended periods of time. Of the various learning analysts, it is the radical behaviorists who
are closest to this model, as Hilgard and Bowers have noted. Accordingly, there are probably
many more supported relations available in this area than there were for Darwin in his time.
However, several precautions should be noted.
Darwin observed and related biological phenomena to their environments; those behavioral
phenomena which have been related to the fine-​grain of their environments have generally
not been the phenomena of mental health and mental illness but have involved basic labora-
tory behaviors. And behavioral theories in mental health have not been so encompassing
as those of Darwin (for early efforts see Sidman, 1960a, 1960b; Skinner, 1956). A counter-​
argument is that the laws of mechanics do not have to be reformulated for every different
type of machine, nor should they have to be reformulated for a behavior contingency ana-
lysis of mental health/illness. If the scientific analogy supports the extension of laboratory
behavior analysis to nonlaboratory behavior, a similar technology analogy suggests difficul-
ties. Although the same laws of mechanics apply to both airplane and automobile motors,
one would prefer an aircraft mechanic to an automobile mechanic to work with airplane
motors. The automobile mechanic might replace a required light aluminum alloy part by an
equally well-​fitting heavy steel part. Similarly, while reinforcement principles might overlap
in the school and the clinic, a school behaviorist might apply procedures in the clinic that
create other problems. Accordingly, one might extend what one can and cannot apply in
other science/technology relations to what one can and cannot apply in behavior analysis-​
application relations.
38 The origins of behavior patterns

Another extension may be noted. To the extent that mental health/​illness is a social problem,
as well as an individual one, analysis in terms of only one area may not serve to explain the
data, nor will treatment so derived. (Analogies will be found in other sciences.) Consider,
for example, a hospitalized patient, in whose case magnitude of settlement of a claim will
be contingent on magnitude of disability. Such outcomes can be (but are not always) highly
potent. The likelihood of patient participation in therapeutic programs is remote, whether
the programs involve physical therapy, psychotherapy, applied behavior analysis, behavior
therapy, or any other medically sponsored treatments, including medicine itself. Typically,
the patient is then classified as refractory or resistant (which are merely synonymous with
what is already observed), or as exhibiting denial (which integrates the behavior with a theory
assigning internal causation), or as being a goof-​off or a sociopath (a characterological assig-
nation [assassination?]). The professionals may flagellate themselves or their fields: they don’t
know how (internal causation), or the state of the art is not that advanced. What is at work
is the social system and the resolutions of conflicting and supporting interests expressed in
the laws and regulations. As Valenstein (1973) noted with regard to a related issue, “there is a
great danger in accepting the delusion that biological solutions are available for these social
problems” (p. 353). For biological, substitute any other solution based on individual change.
With regard to behavior analysis, a consequential-​contingency analysis is being affirmed,
rather than denied. What is at issue is the environmental source of the elements bracketing
behavior. In the case cited, it is under the control of the larger social system rather than of
the therapist, the hospital, the family, or other subcultures. And to the extent that the societal
consequences are contingent on the patient’s behavior, whether or not they are delivered is
under the patient’s control. And that is the problem –​to the “helping” professional.
With regard to present understanding, the theories that are now considered “classic”
have been developed within the life-​spans of most readers of this chapter. Their relation-
ship to effective practice may be attested by the continual proliferation of new theories and
treatments. Such proliferation suggests both that there is enough promise (success) in pre-
sent approaches to justify the quest and that such performance is wanting in many respects.
What seems to be needed is more fine-​grain data, of not only the behavior patterns but also
the bracketing environmental contingencies. Such data may provide not only for conceptual-
ization but also bases for breeding new behavior patterns.

3.3.2  Some contingencies of disturbing behavior

Disturbing behavior may be viewed as behavior that disturbs others. A unilinear (but not
necessarily linearly causal) contingency analysis might be applied to its contingencies in the
following manner: for the pattern to continue, the behavior of others upon such occasion
may serve as reinforcement. The likelihood of the disturbing behavior is thereby maintained
or increased in the future, when the appropriate occasion occurs. Reinforcement may be
negative or positive: the disturbing behavior either produces the “desired” effect or eliminates
an “undesired” state of affairs. That one should want to disturb others raises questions about
the pathology of the relation or of either or both of the parties. Reference is then made to the
costs as well as the benefits for the person, the significant other, or both, and it is inferred that
treatment will be sought only when the patient is “hurting” –​that is, the costs considerably
outweigh the benefits. And then, of course, therapeutic wisdom has it that the patients come
to get rid of the hurt but not necessarily to change their behaviors or personalities. While
the contingencies reflected undoubtedly do occasionally occur, there are more subtle and
complex situations they do not describe. An analysis in terms of alternative contingencies,
rather than unilinear contingencies (Goldiamond, 1975a), may describe both the complex
The origins of behavior patterns 39

situations and the (relatively) simpler ones noted. Such an analysis, of course, may be con-
veniently rationalized by decision theory, as well as raise programing questions.
The matrix would involve at least two patterns of behavior. One of these is the disturbing
pattern. The other is an alternative one. (There may be other alternatives, but the analysis is
not thereby complicated, although the computation may be.) If these alternatives are arbi-
trarily represented by rows, the occasions are represented by at least two columns. And the
four cells formed by the intersections represent the consequences for the four contingencies
described. Which behavior occurs will then become a function of the resolution of the matrix
through some decision criterion, an abstractional control applied to the matrix. The explan-
ation or the occurrence of the disturbing behavior then resides not in the “desired” effects
it produces or the “undesired” state of affairs it eliminates but rather in the relation of its
various outcomes to the various outcomes of its various alternatives. Adequate explanation
in unilinear terms is a special case of the foregoing. It obtains when the entries in the row of
alternative behavior are minor, in comparison to those in the row of the disturbing behavior.
The therapist’s task in psychotherapy (or behavior therapy or applied behavior analysis) may
be conceptualized as reversing the direction of this difference. In those therapies using a
constructional approach, the major thrust will be to raise the values of the alternatives. In
constructional behavior analysis, explicit programs will be developed in this context, with
outcomes specified, etc. This will especially hold where nondisturbing alternatives that
stand a chance of competitive selection are almost nonexistent. Prior efforts may have been
overwhelmed by environmental selection of the disturbing patterns or may not have been
programed further (as was noted for the child whose disturbing skills were advanced but
nondisturbing primitive) or may have been extinguished, etc. Where such alternatives hardly
exist, they must first be developed before a matrix can be defined.3 This may account for the
receptivity to operant investigators by institutions for people with cognitive disabilities or for
other populations where alternatives may not have been developed. Such populations should
be distinguished from those that have such repertoires but whose matrix resolution over-
whelmingly favors the disturbing behaviors to such an extent that the alternative repertoires
seem to be nonexistent.
One further variable, relatable to the matrix, should be considered. This is the compara-
tive behavior effort to engage in disturbing and nondisturbing alternatives. If the two levers
require different force (but produce similar outcomes), choice will be affected. If the effort
to shift from the present disturbing behavior to a desired alternative is greater than the net
gain (or other decision criterion) described by the matrix, there may be little shift. The small
steps of explicit programs reduce such effort but not necessarily the time. And if such use of
time preempts the time for disturbing patterns, the benefits of these patterns are then lost.
Competing benefits must then be built explicitly into program participation.4 Another resort
that finds use is to remove the individual from the environment that selectively reinforces
disturbing patterns. Such removal and change of scene in and of itself may not be effective,
unless the new environment does not so select and also selects for the alternatives in a sys-
tematic manner. Unless the comparative effort, or shift-​effort, variable is considered, there
may be little change. In our investigation of the contingencies governing drug addiction and
its alternatives, we noted that the present patterns of some addicts had little to offer in com-
parison to the alternatives considered desirable by both the addicts and the clinics in which
they were enrolled. However, in one case, developing the new repertoire would take at least
two years of concentrated effort, during which time benefits of the present pattern would be
absent. The present repertoire required little new effort: the addict was already engaged in
it. (Although such effort, investment, cost, etc., is handled in various ways in economics, it
requires special enough consideration here to require a third column in the matrix.)
40 The origins of behavior patterns

In the next few paragraphs, I shall present a few patterns of disturbing behavior that exem-
plify the foregoing analysis. A more extensive analysis could be made, and a typology of
disturbing behavior contingencies would also be more extensive. Accordingly, the examples
presented are illustrative rather than exhaustive.

3.3.2.1  Social matrices

It has been noted that during economic depressions, rates of mental illness and crime may
increase. These are often attributed to the personality disorganization caused by the social
stress. However, army enlistments also rise. This pattern of behavior is clearly not invol-
untary. Examination of behavior alternatives and their consequences may be helpful. One
means of obtaining necessities is through gainful employment. However, the alternative ways
of doing so are limited for the urban and rural poor, and even these means are diminished
during economic depressions. Alternative means of obtaining necessities are through psych-
otic behavior (mental hospitalization), criminal behavior (money or prison incarceration, or
both), or enlistment (military). These should increase during depression.
Indeed, the clientele of mental hospitals and prisons has been drawn from the urban and
rural poor, and these populations have contributed heavily to the ranks of raw recruits in the
military. Which requisite behavior is “selected” will depend on the selection patterns and
programs of the environments (“opportunities”). Indeed, one recidivist in a mental hospital
was quite explicit when he ran through his resources; he said, he could hold up someone, “but
they’re as poor as I am.” So, he attacked city property –​in full view of two Chicago policemen;
the computer printout at the station reported a psychiatric record, and he was reconsigned
to the mental hospital. This patient could define the contingencies. Others may not. As was
discussed earlier, whether or not the person is aware of the contingencies is irrelevant to their
control. With regard to the rational–​irrational dimension, appropriate payoff matrices can be
assigned to enlistment in any of the institutions mentioned. In this context, the behaviors are
rational. Indeed, the assignment of involuntariness and irrationality to psychotic behavior
has created a difficult legal situation in the area of criminal insanity, where killers have been
judged not guilty and released to kill again.
For some patients in mental hospitals, environmental programing has never been applied
in a variety of life skills other than the vocational. Such programing absence is not confined
to hospital populations, of course. Backwoods people have not been programed for certain
living skills in a crowded urban slum –​just as urban dwellers have not been programed for
woods skills, and just as rural teenagers are not “street-​wise.” Given such urban-​skill defi-
ciencies, when mental hospitals are closed down and the formerly “warehoused” patients are
consigned to retail outlets (“halfway-​houses,” “group homes”) that are concentrated in one
locality (e.g., Uptown in Chicago), they become easy prey for those elements of our urban
system for whom the behavior effort–​cost–​benefits of predation outweigh the effort–​cost–​
benefits attached to alternative patterns. The locality deteriorates further.
The campuses of mental hospitals could serve as programing centers for living skills, just
as the campuses of other institutions program academic and vocational skills. Such skills
in the latter institutions are programed for postgraduate living outside the institutions and
are constructional: they classify according to the different skills to be learned, rather than
attempting to cure an amorphous ignorance; they assess entering skills rather than entering
deficits; and in p.i. and p.s.i. (personalized systems of instruction), they program step by
step and do maintain progression with little drop out. The campuses of mental hospitals
could also be so used (cf. Fairweather, 1969; O’Brien and Azrin, 1973). Instead, they are
being dismantled. The societal matrices involved in such catchwords as “mainstreaming,”
The origins of behavior patterns 41

“institutionalization,” and “warehousing” are another story. In defense of Madison Avenue,

“pinpoint carbonation” was never elevated to the status of the social good, true, or beautiful.

3.3.2.2  Individual matrices

The obsessional patient mentioned earlier (section 2.6.1) could either talk compulsively or
speak sensibly; the alcoholics in the Keehn et al. project (same section) could drink to excess
or moderately, or could abstain. However, among the benefits of the disturbing behavior for
both was community membership (the costs differed for each). Among the costs of alterna-
tive behavior for both was isolation (the benefits differed). Obsession and alcoholism were
rational. Such matrices are peculiar to the individuals involved and are not necessarily spe-
cific to a social class, as were the matrices of the urban and rural poor noted in the preceding
section.
In both cases, programing involved making the same critical consequence contingent
on alternative behaviors that lacked the high costs attached to the disturbing patterns. The
alternatives were programed gradually through environmental changes planned in my office
in one case, and through a separate community in the other.

3.3.2.3  Matrices involving metaphors

Phobias often enter into this category, with the cockroach-​phobia patient (section 2.6.1) for
example. She was immobilized thereby and her husband swept and cleaned the house every
morning (to clear it of vermin), brought her breakfast in bed, and washed the dishes (to
deter vermin) before leaving for work. Whenever she recovered somewhat, his attentiveness
waned. The phobia was costly: she could not resume the professional work she had enjoyed,
nor could they go out together at night; further, her in-​laws were suggesting divorce. The
benefits to recovery are obvious, as is the matrix. There is a metaphor involved. Labeling the
disturbing behavior as a psychiatric problem is essential to the matrix. The patient would not
get the accruing benefits if she simply told her husband: “Look, you’ve been putting work
ahead of me and everything else since we’ve been married. I’ve worked to keep this marriage
together. How about you?” Indeed, earlier efforts in this direction had been extinguished.
Numerous psychiatric problems have this legitimate labeling function. Labeling theorists who
denounce such terms might reflect further on this metaphorical use for the patient, rather
than upon the psychiatrist’s benefits and the crippling effects of the label upon the patient. It
is the contingency matrix that produces the disturbing effects and governs the behavior and the
experienced emotions or thought patterns.
Programing in the phobia case involved making the same critical consequence (marital
involvement) contingent on alternative patterns. He was to supply this consequence and was
therefore as essential to the program as his wife.

3.3.2.4  The preempted deficit

A child is attentive to her parents and other adults. Their responsivity reinforces and refines
this behavior; she seeks out adults, and this successful pattern preempts interacting with
peers. The deficit produced thereby may put her at a social disadvantage later. Such deficits
do not seem to fit into present contingency-​matrices. However, they are the programed
outcomes of historically past matrix resolutions. Students who become skilled in copying
from others may get good grades, but the deficit in course material may put them at a disad-
vantage later.
42 The origins of behavior patterns

Programing involves starting with the present repertoire. She is to observe what her peers
do and try to transfer some of her skills with adults to them. Programing at this late date is
usually more costly than programing would have been at the appropriate time in the past
(especially for the student who cheated). Now it has to be supplied; then it was available. Now
the effort may compete with other benefits that were then unavailable, and an alternative
contingency matrix must be considered.

3.3.2.5  Mutual disturbance

Parents often punish disturbing behavior, which then stops. Thereby the child negatively
reinforces punitiveness by parents, that is, their punitive behavior (a) eliminates a state of
affairs and (b) is maintained thereby: they complain that they are constantly nagging. The
parents leave the child to his own devices when his behavior is not disturbing but are involved
when it is. Parent and child mutually select for mutually distressing patterns, in a reversal of
the positive interpersonal equivalent of political log-​rolling. (The child was mentioned in
section 2.6.1.)
In this case, programing involves reversal of parental selection procedures. They are to set
up conditions likely to occasion nondisturbing behavior and reinforce when it occurs, and
periodically do so when it is maintained.

3.3.2.6  Blackmail contingencies

In blackmail, the victim pays the blackmailer. The victim positively reinforces extortion. The
blackmailer negatively reinforces payment: exposure is averted. In interpersonal relations,
one member increases the heat until the other yields, as was noted in the earlier discus-
sion of the escalated breeding of increasingly skillful disturbing patterns (section 3.2.1).
Nondisturbing behavior was primitive.
Programing in that case involved a schedule reversal. Parents were to set up conditions
likely to occasion nondisturbing behavior and then gradually increase the behavior require-
ment for reinforcement. Disturbing behavior was to be reinforced immediately, before it
could escalate. Such programing seems counter to common sense: disturbing behavior is to
be reinforced immediately, and nondisturbing is to wait? However, (a) it was the “sensible”
reverse that produced the skillful disturbing repertoires and primitive nondisturbing reper-
toire, and (b) the trick often is in setting the occasions and handling the consequences. The
following example is illustrative:

The parents of a [woman of 22 with schizophrenia] reported that she was hallucinating a hus-
band and children at the dinner table and engaging them in extended conversation. If they
ignored her (extinction), they knew she would escalate (e.g., hallucinate pregnancy, etc.) until
they were forced to reply. If they were punitive, she might start screaming or might stay away
from the table and undo their intense efforts to get her there. If they agreed or inquired after the
“family” (reinforcement) this, too, might escalate the pattern. … [The question to be asked was:]
what is there about [the hallucinatory patterns] that can be reinforced: most 22 year old women
are married, and neighboring daughters were no exception. Her mother said, next time: “Sally,
you don’t know how delighted I am to hear you considering marriage just like _​_​_​_​and _​_​_​_​.
Believe me, nothing would make father and me happier than … , etc. … and that’s why we’re
doing _​_​_​_​and _​_​_​_​to make that day come sooner.” The parents had to be as ingenious as
their daughter in changing the words as they retained the theme to keep up with her changing
presentations of the same theme (she had had considerably more experience). By the third week,
The origins of behavior patterns 43

hallucinations were replaced by conversations with the existent family. What the parents said
was true, and she was treated with honest responses that respected her dignity and also moved
the program along.
(Goldiamond, 1974, pp. 51–​52)

3.3.2.7  Garbage patterns

Where schedules require high rates of pecking or bar-​pressing, the force of each behavior
decreases. High rates can be obtained in a variety of other ways, including stimulants,
schedule-​induction, and presentation of occasions with such history. If muscular effort is
then minimized, other efforts may also be. One may recite words with common sounds
or sentences with common themes. Efforts to “make sense” of these, if at high rates, may
make equal sense. Their sense derives from requirements to behave that exceed the available
contingencies.
Negative talk admirably meets these requirements. The set of exclusive statements typic-
ally contains many more elements than the set of inclusive statements (a journal is not the
Archives of this, or Bulletin of that, etc.). Rapid or continual verbal behavior can then readily
be obtained. It quickly ties into available contingencies when it is turned on listeners in the
form of descriptions of their deficiencies; by careful observation, the speaker can zero in
on those that score and hone this skill. In interpersonal communication, such behavior is
designated as pathological and results in contingency relations of the types discussed, among
others. In academic communications, it is often designated as criticism and is reinforced.
Since the types and sources are varied, no general programing procedures hold. The high
rate may be attenuated in a variety of ways, including pharmaceutical procedures, contin-
gency elements that attenuate behavior, and contingencies that harness the behavior, that is,
that make work for the idling hands, thereby relieving the devil of this task.

3.3.2.8  Outbreak matrices

Psychotic outbreaks have often been assumed to be irrational and nonconsequential
outbursts. However, the breaks, like other patterns under discussion, may have been meticu-
lously programed by the environment. At times, it is the culmination of a series of escalating
steps and serves to move the person into arrangements preferable to the present ones.5 One
patient took a lethal overdose of drugs and was immediately rushed to the hospital by her
succubus husband. Thereafter, he continually held vigil over the ward exit. During a lunch
break, and with the aid of her parents, she made her escape to their home.
An even more dramatic case was that of a female paraplegic who had married a man so objec-
tionable to her parents that they had disowned her. The previous year she had pointed a pistol
to her chest, and the bullet had entered her spine rather than her heart. She was determined to
return to her parents and not to her husband and was making little progress because she had
little to do with the therapies available. The staff was wondering into whose hands she could be
discharged. The patient took matters into her own hands. She denounced the hairdressers who
came in once a week as part of a Mafia conspiracy and spread this information. No one acted
on this. The following week she attached a sign to the back of her wheelchair. It read: “Don’t
blow for the commies. Hitler and Eichmann were right but didn’t finish the job.” This was
written notification; it was written into the nursing chart. Some of the psychologists said all
this was just talk and she could be given scissors for the grooming she liked.
The institution not having “listened” early in the escalation process, the patient now forced
its hand. That Thursday, when the ward door was wide open and “luckily” when three male
44 The origins of behavior patterns

attendants were passing by, she was observed bending over the bed of an aphasic patient,
a pair of sharp scissors in her upraised hand, stabbing at the patient. She was, of course,
instantly seized and transferred to the nearest mental hospital. This is not the end of the story.
Her parents took her back (Goldiamond, 1976c, pp. 105–​106).
In other cases, the spouse or other members of the family are alerted to what can happen
again if they persist in their misbehavior toward that family member. The outburst or outbreak
(interesting words) may come under other contingency control, as well. I recall one patient
who was violent throughout the hour (her alimony payments had not been made), throwing
books to the floor, knocking off the papers on my desk, and speaking abusively. However,
a relay rack near my desk, with expensive electronic gadgetry, was untouched. Apparently,
there was some environmental selection of the targets of the “uncontrolled” rage. Yet another
patient, whose constant demands for attention (the call light outside her door was on 20
times a day) the staff suddenly decided to ignore, did knock down the color-​television set and
thereby reinstated the program the staff had dropped.
Outbreaks often involve metaphorical components (matrix c). If the patient talks lucidly
during the outbreak or otherwise behaves in a manner interpreted as “normal control,” the
patient would not obtain the ensuing benefits. Indeed, the costs might be high. Behaving in a
manner so that the outburst is labeled as a “psychotic break” may attenuate the costs and pro-
vide the benefits (cf. psychotic murder), and such labeling becomes essential to the matrix.

3.3.2.9  Choice of symptoms

The same class of disturbing behaviors can meet the descriptive criteria of different elem-
ents of the typology sketched, and different classes of disturbing behaviors can meet the
descriptive criteria of any single element in the topology sketched. For example, stuttering
can preempt the learning of alternative patterns of social interaction, can fill the speaking
space and buy time for formulation of an answer, or can be used in a blackmail contingency,
among others. Similarly, a blackmail contingency can be implemented by depressed with-
drawal, by aggression, by hallucinating, by the stuttering noted. Such observations (of “sec-
ondary gain” to the psychoanalyst) have led to formulation of the following question: what
governs symptom choice by a patient? The complex answers given are cut through by the
evolutionary restatement: what governs symptom selection by the environment? As it does in
other cases, the environment will reinforce a variety of available patterns, and the next envir-
onment will tend to select a variety from among the then-​more probable, and so on, to shape
a disturbing behavior directionally. Thus, the parents of one child whose speech is affected by
organic trauma may act concerned and sympathetic when this occurs, and the parents of a
child in a similar situation are sympathetic when this occurs but speak encouragingly when
speech is normal. One environment selects for disturbing behavior and the other selects for
an alternative.
Organic patterns may be selected and programed as symptoms. Thus, one patient
complained that she blushed constantly and to such an extent that people noticed that she
was embarrassed and changed their conversations. This means of control was selected by
the environment: the speakers changed their conversations when she blushed and not when
other patterns occurred. Vascular changes had always been evident in her skin: it was the
“thin” skin often accompanying red hair, and the availability of such changes made them
ideal targets for environmental breeding. (Programing involved sensitizing her to such
change immediately: “Your skin is more sensitive to the embarrassing trend of a conver-
sation than your ears are. Listen to your skin. The instant it starts to warm up, listen to the
conversation carefully and start to change it then.”) A child who had been sluggish all his life
was given Ritalin to activate him. He had no close friends, and other repertoires were limited.
The origins of behavior patterns 45

Garbage behavior was produced, and he was hospitalized for a “psychotic outbreak.” The
ward attendants exhibited concern when he behaved like other patients there, and schizo-
phrenic patterns were rapidly imitated and established.
A symptom that is selected and shaped by the environment into a sophisticated pattern
may thus be organic, as well as behavioral. The burgeoning of a biofeedback technology
makes it unnecessary to elaborate programing of organicity (cf. Brady and Harris, 1977).
Such symptoms may function as operants in the same manner that the more readily
observable behavior operants do. The fact that environmental control over organicity can
be instated through contingencies into which biofeedback enters should not lead us to
the assumption that biofeedback is essential to environmental contingency control over
organicity. Programed biofeedback merely systematizes what has been going on for a long
time, just as p.i. systematizes book instruction and p.s.i. classroom instruction. And, these
technologies being new, they have been applied only to a small fraction of the vast areas
they systematize. Just as one can teach classes effectively without this technology, one can
alter patient organicity similarly. Indeed, other environments have been programing patient
organicity for some time, and patients may have been selecting the conditions that do so
over others that do not in accord with a contingency matrix. If a headache will serve as a
convenient social operant, a practiced person can nurse it along from origins that could have
been programed into other directions, as well.
It can be argued that biological evolution selects for behavior and thereby for the organs
involved, as readily as stating that evolution selects for organs that thereby permit behavior.6
And this may hold as well for environmental resolution of a contingency matrix into which
organicity enters and the consequent programing of organicity. Certainly, in general medi-
cine, major organic problems are attributed to persistent behavior patterns and are there-
fore governed by the social environment. One example is the behavior of smoking, with its
attendant effects on cancer and cardiac arrest. Smoking has been considered an addiction
and therefore under organic control, Drive→B. However, anyone who has smoked heavily
knows that very few of the cigarettes smoked belong in the relief-​from-​craving category.
Heavy smokers know they smoke but don’t know why. And compulsive eaters are not con-
tinually hungry. These behaviors of medical significance require fine-​grain contingency ana-
lysis. Such patterns of behavior, among others, can produce organic change that, given our
present knowledge, is irreversible. Ensuing environmental selection of behavior may then
program from a different base.

3.4  Programs for mental health/​illness

That the contingencies that govern the disturbing behaviors of the mentally ill are to be found
governing the behaviors of anyone else should be evident upon rereading the incomplete typ-
ology presented. Nor would a more complete typology alter this. To cite but a few examples
from the contingencies of everyday academic life:

1. Social matrices. College enrollment may increase during depression for those who can
afford it, and who have academic skills, for reasons similar to increase in mental hospital
enrollment for those who cannot afford college enrollment, and who have skills in using
the public system.
2. Individual matrices. Some academics publish profusely and find little good to write about
their colleagues; they are promoted (for critical acumen) and thereby enhance and main-
tain their community standing, in contingencies similar to those governing the destruc-
tive verbal behavior of the obsessional patient who maintained her community standing
thereby.
46 The origins of behavior patterns

3. Matrices involving metaphors. Reading abstruse material and getting paid for thinking
about it is sanctioned by attaching an academic label and, in a similar contingency, being
fearful of cockroaches and getting concerned attention for being immobilized by it is
sanctioned by attaching a psychiatric label. The reader may complete the remaining con-
tingencies, using observations in academia or elsewhere. Such scenarios, of course, are
not devoid of emotion.

By centering my discussion on rationalization of contingencies, I have paid very little

attention to the affect accompanying the contingencies. However, as was noted earlier
(Chapter 2, section 2.4.1, “Emotions, behaviors, and contingencies”), affect or emotions are
not excluded from the system. Indeed, since affect can often suggest the presence of a con-
tingency that is not apparent from content, its expression is explicitly solicited in at least one
type of programing (“treatment”) derived from the radical behaviorist model (Goldiamond,
1974, pp. 37, 74, 81, 82). The effort here is often to sensitize patients to their own private
affect as a guide to the burgeoning public contingencies they might then try to forestall or
strengthen while the contingencies may be malleable.
Because the behavior of patients is considered to be rational does not imply that the
patients are happy or are not miserable. The ascription of rationality simply states that a
model that rationalizes the matrix contingencies adequately describes the data. The child
whose disturbing behavior produces parental concern (which would not occur otherwise)
in the form of nagging and punishment (section 3.3.2.5, “Mutual disturbance”) is resentful
when he is stopped, and the parent whose nagging and punishment are negatively reinforced
by his stopping are upset at the time and for some time thereafter. It is their unhappiness
with this state of affairs, they report, that occasions their application for help (patients come
for treatment “when they’re hurting”).7 Stated otherwise, patients deserve consideration as
rational sufferers, and the suffering may be intense. Labeling them as mentally ill may increase
the suffering, but it may provide them access for care and help that our social system would
not provide if they were labeled in any other manner. As will be noted shortly, this holds for
branches of medicine other than psychiatry.
Aid to the suffering and relief of their distress has long been considered a humane and
noble undertaking, and much of the reverence for medicine as a calling derives from its asso-
ciation with this undertaking of help. In this task, diagnosis of a particular pathology (paqos,
Gr., suffering, disease; logos, Gr., word, discourse) plays a critical role. It implies a particular
course that the disease will follow and a particular therapy (qerapein, Gr., healing). The field
of mental illness continues with the humane undertaking. Here, too, there is diagnosis of
psychopathologies, on the basis of what is wrong or deranged. Among the treatments is psy-
chotherapy. When clinical psychologists, social workers, and others enter the field on the
grounds that they are equally capable of diagnosis and psychotherapy, they do so as helping
professionals, in the same tradition of humane aid. And when a different approach derived
from learning laboratories of experimental psychology enters, it, too, is a helping profession
that provides aid for those with behavior disorders, through behavior therapy; the newer
clinical psychologists claim similar origins but speak of cognitive disorders and cognitive
therapy. The continuity possibly reflects a philosophic continuity that, so to speak, is spoken
in the different tongues and manipulations of different disciplines. On the other hand, they
may reflect common and pervasive contingencies of our social system.
Before considering what social contingencies may be involved, the existence of a diver-
gent approach should be noted. This approach, too, is concerned with aid to the suffering
and relief of their distress and, accordingly, pursues the traditional aims discussed. However,
rather than diagnosing for specified pathology, whose elimination (or relief from which) is
The origins of behavior patterns 47

the outcome, it diagnoses for specified outcome, whose construction (or attainment) is the
outcome. A key difference between the two approaches, the pathological and the construc-
tional (Goldiamond, 1974), is the area to which specificity is assigned. There is a considerable
difference between specifying an obsession or compulsion and specifying particular inter-
personal or marital skills. Suffering or distress is eliminated or alleviated in the one by elim-
inating a pathology and in the other by establishing an outcome. If there is a difference in
which area is sharply bounded, there is a corollary difference in the unbounded area outside.
In the pathological case, health is simply defined as the unbounded area outside of pathology.
Substitution of terms such as health attainment for disease elimination supplies no informa-
tion not contained in the latter, since it is defined by it. Accordingly, initial assessment must
be of the well-​bounded set, pathology, rather than of the otherwise undetermined outcome
area around it. In the constructional case, the unbounded area is all of the multiple ways in
which matrix resolutions can be distressful. Accordingly, initial assessment is not of those
multiple ways but rather of what well-​bounded outcomes to construct, what current strengths
can serve as starting points, what transitional procedures make sense, and what reinforcers
to apply. Specificity of constructional outcomes makes possible the formulation of a contract
with programing limited to those aims and those aims only. These limitations parallel those
found in other contracts, commercial and legal, and in the constitutional contract between
the people and their representatives. It is the vagueness of pathologically derived outcomes
(“eliminating destructive tendencies”) in the mental hospital that rationalizes the substitu-
tion of a fiduciary relation for a contractual one and produces tension between constitution-
ally guaranteed rights of patients and protection of others by incarceration of patients (for a
more extended discussion, see Goldiamond, 1974).
An example of a social institution that is mainly constructional is found in the educa-
tional system. College students are classified by their “majors” (or “concentrations”), and
graduate and professional students by their degree programs or professions. Students whose
deficits differ sit in classes whose communality is governed by the specific outcome stated in
the catalog. Unfortunately, the effort to attain this is too often equated with the preparation
of an outline assumed to produce it, and students are expected to fail. In p.i., and p.s.i., the
program has been tested through meticulously kept records that have helped assess func-
tional relations between program interventions and specified student behavior outcomes.
Such assessment continues. Students are not failed. What is recorded is the point at which
they stop. They may resume at that point at some later time. The educational system, for all its
pathologies, has been able to reconcile mass institutions and individualized outcomes. This
it does by having a variety of outcome “packets,” each listed in the college catalog (and each
of which is broken up into smaller packets). The packets can be lectures, demonstrations,
group sessions, etc. The student’s individual curriculum is specified by which combinations
of packets are selected. Although the offering may be standard (in p.i. they are also tailored),
theoretically, decades may pass before one student repeats the curriculum of another. In
the field of mental health, such usable packets are being developed for the establishment
of differentiating skills, but, at present, these are dictated by the needs or populations of a
particular investigator. No statement is made that systematized development of p.c.i. (pro-
gramed clinical intervention) will solve all problems; the educational system certainly allows
for considerable individual professor–​student interaction and ravel programs. Certainly
there are a variety of basic living skills that should not have to be retaught for almost every
patient, as most psychotherapists will admit. The development of such packets could flow
from present practice –​if practitioners kept records of operant precision, relating the
fine grain of their interventions to the fine-​grain of the referent patient behavior and the fine
grain of other controlling environments. The practice of medicine (as distinguished from
48 The origins of behavior patterns

its best-​articulated ideology; see below) supplies one example. Meticulous records close to
the type discussed are kept. And the attending physicians do not mix every medicine them-
selves: they prescribe medicines and treatment from available stocks and other personnel.
Occasionally, there is a laying-​on of hands. The practice of p.i.–​p.s.i.–​p.c.i. and its radical
behaviorist rationale (which specifies the fine grains of the governing contingencies) is prob-
ably the closest working example.
It should not be assumed that medical (including psychiatric) practice is governed in its
entirety by the pathological orientation. For some time, and increasingly, the profession
has been applying constructional outcomes (to produce functioning of a specified type),
assessing current strengths, and so on, in meticulously well-​formulated programs. These
include detailed records to help assess functional relations between medical interventions
and the specified patient outcomes toward which the interventions were directed. What is
involved, then, is the existence of a variety of medical models. However, the pathological
model is, at present, the most precisely articulated one. Rhetoric directed against the
medical model logically rests on misassumed congruence between medicine and this model.
And this model has had so extraordinary a staying power that it has been extended to other
areas, e.g., social pathology, with all its symptoms.

NOTES
1 “Wa” at one age will be reinforced socially and by water. At a later age, “wa-​wa” may so be required. And at yet a
later date, “water” and “want water,” etc.
2 A graduate student, who was driving a university station wagon on which “Committee on Evolutionary Biology”
plainly appeared, stopped for gasoline at a station in Kansas. The owner’s wife then asked: “Tell me son, have you
seen any evolution going on?”
3 The behaviors need not be shaped. They may exist in the repertoire in different contingencies, and the task becomes
to transfer such control. A patient had never invited guests to dinner because she didn’t know how –​her mother
had been a recluse and had never had guests. The patient had, however, successfully directed television shows in
which guests on opposing sides of controversial issues talked. She was told to treat her dinner guests like talk-​show
guests –​seat neutrals between them at the table, etc.
4 A moral outcry may then be heard: “You shouldn’t pay people to get well!” This misses the economic point that
such payment may be less than the costs attached to disturbing behavior.
5 The statement can also be out of the present arrangements. However, research on children who run away from
home has found that they generally run to specific places, and apprehension of AWOLs in the Army has generally
been aided by assigning agents to the places they are likely to run to.
6 When, for example, reflected light is a condition under which one pattern of behavior produces consequences that
another pattern does not, the environment may thereby select organisms with a cluster of photosensitive cells.
There will be behavioral differences among such offspring, and the environment may then select the more com-
plex over less complex cluster, and so on, over thousands of generations. It is not that the mammalian eye permits
skilled behavior, but possibly that skilled behavior requires a mammalian eye.
7 Applying for treatment is operant behavior. However, the contingency specified (Ap→Tr) may be part of a meta-
phorical matrix. It may rationalize disturbing behavior (“I don’t know what gets into me when I act this way,
I must be sick”). It may also sanction disturbing behavior (“I don’t know (etc.) … , but you get worse before you get
better”), get the person out of difficulties (“I promised the judge I’d seek treatment”), be used punitively (“You’ve
made me so upset that I’m seeing a shrink”), produce control (“I’m not going to tell you what we talked about”), be
used to gain an ally (“And not only did they yell at me, but …”), and to provide other consequences, among which,
of course, is the help requested.
 4
Societal contingencies
of the pathology model

4.1  THE INDIVIDUAL SOCIAL SELECTION PARALLEL

The relation between social ideology and social movements has been debated for some time.
Do ideologies produce movements; movements, ideologies; or do both go together? In par-
allel with earlier discussions on the relation of behavior to emotions, awareness, conceptual-
ization, purpose, and decisions, I shall advance the argument that social ideology and social
movements are both governed by social contingencies in different functional relations, that
one can occur without the other or precede it, and that over the long run, changes in both
will reflect changes in contingencies.1 Accordingly, I shall present some evidence that bears
on this argument and then consider the contingencies governing a few ideologies in mental
health/​illness.
The case study will be that of p.i.: Skinner’s Science (1958) article brought teaching
machines and their rationale to the attention of an important audience. The article was one
of several on teaching, and especially teaching of science. The National Defense Education
Act was enacted that year. Educational theories and systems were being discussed, and legis-
lative action was taken. Their governing relation may have not been to each other but rather
to the fact that the Russians had penetrated space the previous year, with Sputnik I followed
by Sputnik II. The consequence toward which American policy was shifted was American
superiority. This was contingent on the production of scientific manpower and support of
training and education. NASA was founded. The social contingencies seem clear.
These particular contingencies were not responsible for p.i., which was an educational
extension of a radical behaviorism (“system of thought, ideology”) hitherto related to labora-
tory animal research. What the social system did in 1958 and thereafter was to make available
increased financial support for such research; further funding was made contingent on pro-
gress reports. The social system increased the probability of hitherto low probability educa-
tional behavior –​it reinforced, selected, or bred in that direction.2
Since that time, such selection has shaped p.i. into a variety of novel forms. A recognizable
mutation in the form of p.s.i. has been reinforced to the point that “about 2,000 [p.s.i.] courses
are being given each semester” at more than one hundred colleges and universities, according
to a Sunday Times article headlined by: “Self-​Paced Instruction. An Innovation That Stuck”
(Miller, 1977, p. 9).
The parallel of selection by the social system to evolutionary selection and individual
contingency programing is evident: “The statement, ‘There is nothing as powerful as an

DOI: 10.4324/9781003260103-4
50 Societal contingencies

idea whose time has come’ translates into the power of an ‘idea which rationalizes contingencies
whose time has come’ ” (Goldiamond, 1974, p. 116).

4.2  CONTINGENCIES OF PATHOLOGICAL IDEOLOGY

AND ALTERNATIVES
A system of thought and behavior as powerful as the pathological model obviously is
governed by widespread and recurrent social contingencies. Accordingly, my discussion will
be limited to a small segment of these.

4.2.1  Consulting room contingencies

Until recently, the major setting for modern Western medicine was the consulting room
or home; hospitals were extensions of these. Individual patients paid individual physicians
for services. Third-​party payment merely substitutes for the individual, and to the extent
that the federal government enters, short of socialized medicine, the tradition will con-
tinue. Psychologists and other nonmedical mental health professionals are now actively
campaigning for “Freedom of Choice” legislation to extend impending federal payment to
their private treatment, and among such professionals are those with a behavioral orientation.
Where the patient (or patient-​surrogates) pays the practitioner for services, the services
must be for the patient (or designee). The problem to be solved, then, is most likely to be an
individual problem, that is, one centered in the patient. The patient is mentally ill, or exhibits
psychopathology, or exhibits disturbed or disordered behavior. And the problem is then the
patient’s mind, psyche, or conditioning history. Such analysis is easy to adapt to a patho-
logical model with prestige and standing and presumably then taps the same supporting
social contingencies.
Those who have followed the history of behavior modification will observe one major
deviation from the consulting room and from the pathological model. It was in various state
institutions for children with cognitive disabilities, and in state mental hospitals for adults,
that the constructional model derived from radical behaviorist work first received appli-
cation to clinical problems. The aim was to construct new repertoires for the cognitively
disabled, teach language to the mute, etc., and, similarly, to construct or reinstate repertoires
for living outside for the mentally ill. The professionals involved were on the state payroll. They
were not being paid by the patients for services to them. (This is a later development.) And it
is of interest that in the state institutions for the cognitively disabled, at least where they were
given free access (this was typically not the case in mental hospitals) and developed construc-
tional delivery systems, they were able to succeed where the pathological systems had failed.
The relation of socioeconomic contingencies to treatment ideologies seems clear, in these
two cases.

4.2.2  Patient support contingencies

Yet another mainstay of the pathological model has been the withdrawal of social support
for the patient if the problem is not stated in terms of pathological treatment. For example,
one rehabilitation hospital set up third-​way (as opposed to halfway) houses for patients: they
could progressively move through them and toward home as their rehabilitation progressed.
The costs would become progressively cheaper as medical–​hospital involvement diminished.
Third-​party payment was withdrawn for stages outside the regular hospital. The physiatrists
Societal contingencies 51

(physical medicine physicians), faced with no financial support of patients for improvement
through the third-​way system, kept patients hospitalized.
A newspaper article that would be whimsical, did it not have overtones of the type
described, refers to the establishment of the second American hospital center for gambling.
Indeed, the legalization of gambling is compared to spread of pneumonia. “Everyone in this
room could contract pneumonia, so you wouldn’t bring someone with pneumonia into the
room and sneeze,” a psychologist is quoted as saying. The gambler, like the alcoholic (but
see Keehn reference earlier), requires admission to a “hospital to detoxify, where he could
become seriously ill or die if he doesn’t receive attention”; the hospital is necessary to “cope
with the more profound emotional problems that compulsive gambling usually masks” (the
quotations are from psychologists). Gamblers get very little sustained professional concern.
A psychiatrist notes that “psychiatrists don’t like these people. They lie, they require endless
buttering up. … And besides, they don’t pay their bills” (Slavin, 1977, p. 35).
The contingency issue raised by the article is that social support is provided only if the
behavior patterns involved are assigned a pathological label. Hence, the possibly forth-
coming designation of “pathological gambling” as a psychiatric problem in the forthcoming
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association would be “[a]‌
significant step forward” (Slavin, 1977, p. 35). While such pathology-​contingent support may
maintain socially undesirable professional patterns and undesirable patient patterns, it may
also maintain some desirable support for the sufferer and, therefore, for professionals. The
labeling issue is by no means one-​sided. An alternative strategy might be to attempt to pro-
vide social support for constructional programs, that is, those that do not label the person as
mentally ill, or behaviorally disordered, but consider patients to be rational sufferers who
require constructional outcomes. Such a social turnabout would also serve to orient profes-
sional behavior into constructional research and programing.

4.2.3  Labeling contingencies

There are other issues involved in labeling. As was noted earlier, the campuses of mental
hospitals could be used to train and establish living skills through constructionally oriented
programs. Instead, hospitals are being dismantled. Similarly, rehabilitation hospitals are
denounced as producing isolation from society, instead of returning patients to the main-
stream. However, such stay as noted earlier may be governed by the social system rather than
the professionals involved. Further, these institutions, like mental hospitals, can serve to pro-
tect families that might otherwise be shattered by the requirements of a mental patient or a
severely handicapped person. A question that might be asked is “how might the institutions
be better used?” Slogans directed against institutionalization and “warehousing of the men-
tally ill” simply serve to justify the dismemberment, as do catchwords like “mainstreaming.”
What is involved, of course, is the matrix resolution of various societal alternatives, and
competing and intersecting requirements of different social subsystems. Care is still needed
for the handicapped, and someone must bear the costs, but in “mainstreaming,” the costs
may be simply transferred from the public to the private sector, possibly the family. And
custodial care for the mentally ill in some “convalescent-​centers” seems to be less costly than
institutions engaged in programing living skills. However, the benefits of the latter would
appear to be greater. To assume that a decision matrix is being ignored is to ignore the fact
that agencies providing the funds for custody or programing are usually not the ones getting
the financial benefits. Agency behavior is then not irrational. Nor should it be assumed
that the social system is inept. The task is to make explicit the contingency matrices oper-
ating, for the competing social systems as it is for the individual. And social analysts often
52 Societal contingencies

simply supply rhetoric that diverts attention from the contingencies operating and from cost
transfers between federal, state, local, and various private sectors (cf. Miller, 1977).

4.2.4  Contingencies supporting cross-​directional movement

Where consulting-​room practice has been successful, this has by and large been with indi-
vidual problems. Successful treatment is possible here in two cases: (a) where the problem
is individual, as in the individual matrices discussed previously (Chapter 3, section 3.3.2.4,
“The preempted deficit”), or (b) where the problem is individual, but its origin resides in
widespread environmental conditions, social or otherwise. An individual addict may be
taught other ways, and a cancer patient might be helped, but it is more economical to treat
the environmental condition, as public health has done. Nevertheless, the suffering patient
can be helped –​but more will keep coming. However, individual treatment will be ineffective
under those conditions (c) where the individual problem is a function of social variables. The
patient whose impending disability settlement was contingent on magnitude of disability was
an example. In other cases, payments for living at home (and following a health mainten-
ance regimen) are often minimal when compared to payments and support when the person
is ill (has not followed the regimen). In such cases, “deterioration is being programmed”
(Goldiamond, 1976b, p. 130). Such patients, regardless of “attitude,” present the professional
with an almost unmanageable problem. Here, it is the widespread contingencies that first
require change.
Increasing concern is being expressed over the limitations of individually based elimin-
ation of pathology, the category (a) above, which has been a mainstay of this model. At pre-
sent, the concern is mainly heard in general medicine, about which such questions are asked
as: has biological treatment reached its limits, and is the increasing cost of such treatment
at all matched by a similar increase in cure rate? Or, should medicine move away from the
biological model and become a social science? In cardiac arrest, the suspect variables are
smoking, cholesterol, and hypertension. All of these involve patterns of behavior outside,
with extensive support from the social system. And yet, another case seems presented by
diseases such as diabetes. If patients could monitor signs outside and engage in appropriate
living habits, they might stay out of the hospital for longer periods of time, and when they
report, report on time, when the problem is more amenable to change.
The chronic handling of such patients poses problems for general medicine. First, its
practitioners are not trained in the behavior-​ contingency analysis treatment required.
Second, their orientation is toward medical delivery in hospitals, rather than programing
delivery outside. Third, the reward system in which they have practiced is of immediate
reinforcement of professional intervention. Long-​term effects and chronic care are mainly
reserved for psychiatry and the very few who go into physiatry. However, the meticulous
programing procedures of radical behaviorists do provide reinforcement at each step for the
programer, just as they do for the learner, and their meticulousness parallels recorded inter-
vention in medicine. (See Goldiamond, 1975a, pp. 29–​32 for further discussion of this point.)
In all events, general medicine is becoming increasingly attentive to interventions hitherto
not associated with medicine. Its theorists are becoming similarly attentive to nonbiological
variables (Engel, 1977).
Simultaneously, much of psychiatry is moving in the opposite direction, with increasing
emphasis on biological intervention and biological theory. As I have noted elsewhere:

Given the competition for the tax dollar, federal and state agencies are increasingly becoming
concerned about what they are getting for their money. This issue is also being raised by
Societal contingencies 53

consumer groups. … Psychiatrists, of course, in common with other medical colleagues, can
offer chemotherapies and other intrusive organic interventions. And these yield to cost–​benefit
analyses more readily than psychotherapy. Psychiatrists, accordingly, are increasingly stressing
the drug-​prescription approach they share with the rest of medical practice. They thereby assert
their rights to inclusion in what are, after all, health programs, as defined in the context of med-
ical insurance.

(Goldiamond, 1976d, p. 146)

And, we should expect growing emphasis and support of theory (ideology) that assigns
mental illness to biological or genetic variables. Nothing in the foregoing should be
interpreted as opposition to the acquisition of such knowledge, or to appropriate pharma-
cologic intervention, since it can serve expeditiously as part of a treatment program,
pathological or constructional (e.g., Goldiamond and Dyrud, 1968). I am merely reiter-
ating the relation of societal contingencies to professional behavior and ideology (theory).
It should be noted that this psychiatric trend toward organic interpretation may relate to
a socially required closer identification with the intervention procedures of general medi-
cine, as medicine is presently defined. Such definition is within a biomedical context, which
can accept mental illness most readily when the illness is interpreted literally. However,
the same economic considerations that govern increasing study of cost-​effectiveness and
thereby the accompanying movement to psychiatric interventions of a biomedical type
also govern increased attentiveness to societal interventions. And these economic contin-
gencies may also govern movement toward more socially oriented theories (ideologies) and
away from the present definitions of medicine, pathology, and illness, with their biomed-
ical referents.

4.2.5  L’envoi
Some societal contingencies may already be available to mesh with constructional approaches.
Professionals can be considered double agents, serving both their clients and the societal
system that licenses or certifies them and supports them in other ways. Where the outcomes
of the individual are consonant with those of the social system (the patient “desires” to get
back to work, and the social system also “desires” this), and the professionals hired by both
as the change agent do not produce the necessary change, then, perhaps, professionals may
turn to alternative models of intervention and the related alternative ideologies. Perhaps
such gradual change will bring about the shift –​if the systems are responsive, and if the
constructional approach has something to contribute, and if its practitioners are engaged in
contribution.
An alternative or supplementary task is possible. At present, economic and other con-
tingencies are geared to support pathological orientations and labeling. Indeed, economic
support of change is withdrawn when intervention is nonmedical, as biologically defined.
The supplementary task, then, is to redefine the science and discipline of medicine to include
variables and approaches other than the individual-​organic. The inclusion of such variables
makes it possible, at the very least, to have alternatives whose various outcomes we can com-
pare with those produced by the pathological model. Rather than rhetoric in this area, and
rather than arguments in support of one approach over another, it would seem that data are
needed on the costs, benefits, and efforts for the various alternative societal policies available.
Among the social models that lend themselves to explicit analysis is the constructional pro-
graming model that has been the subject of this discussion.
54 Societal contingencies

Setting up a decision matrix for our various options does not guarantee, of course, that the
decision rules that rationalize the matrix are to our liking. However, it might make evident
what rules are being applied, and this is a first step.
I address myself to medicine because impending federal entry into the societal contin-
gency matrix is being rationalized in terms of health. Much of medicine is already construc-
tional. And much of psychiatry and physiatry, among other specialties, is concerned with
contingency-​change, implicitly if not explicitly. Public health is concerned with environ-
mental intervention and is considering such life-​style behaviors as smoking and inappropriate
food ingestion to be public health problems; focus is on establishment of alternative behav-
ioral styles in these areas. And nonmedical professions and consumers’ groups are making
known their demands. These portents may be coincidental. However, they may suggest chan-
ging societal contingencies in search of a rationalizing ideology to replace or supplement the
pathological one. I herewith nominate a constructional programing approach.

NOTES
1 This discussion is condensed from “The professional as a double-​agent” (Goldiamond, 1978).
2 One difference should be made between ideology-​movement and awareness-​behavior. Ideologies are observable
patterns: their points are printed, circulated, and argued. Emotions, etc., are private events. What may be at issue in
an ideology-​movement discussion is two different patterns of observable behaviors of individuals, with each indi-
vidual exhibiting ideological and political behaviors that seem similar to those of other individuals (although on
close observation of tribal ceremonies, J. A. Jones [1977] reports, the contingencies of each participant’s behavior
are often different). Nevertheless, ideology is reflected by individual “consciousness raising,” to use the current
idiom, and the analogy to awareness becomes apt.
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 Appendix A
The Search for an Effective Clinical Behavior Analysis:
The Nonlinear Thinking of Israel Goldiamond*
T. V. Joe Layng

This paper has two purposes; the first is to reintroduce Goldiamond’s constructional
approach to clinical behavior analysis and to the field of behavior analysis as a whole,
which, unfortunately, remains largely unaware of his nonlinear functional analysis and its
implications. The approach is not simply a set of clinical techniques; instead it describes
how basic, applied, and formal analyses may intersect to provide behavior-analytic
solutions where the emphasis is on consequential selection. The paper takes the reader
through a cumulative series of explorations, discoveries, and insights that hopefully
brings the reader into contact with the power and comprehensiveness of Goldiamond’s
approach, and leads to an investigation of the original works cited. The second purpose
is to provide the context of a life of scientific discovery that attempts to elucidate the
variables and events that informed one of the most extraordinary scientific journeys in
the history of behavior analysis, and expose the reader (especially young ones) to the
exciting process of discovery followed by one of the field’s most brilliant thinkers. One
may perhaps consider this article a tribute to Goldiamond and his work, but the tribute
is really to the process of scientific discovery over a professional lifetime.
Key words: Israel Goldiamond, nonlinear functional analysis, constructional approach

Israel Goldiamond must have become excited as he looked at his data. He and William
Hawkins had just replicated results that had been obtained many times before. They had
been very careful to follow the procedures precisely. The experimental subjects had been
given a series of words made up of nonsense syllables to study. Some of the words were
studied for a brief period of time, others for longer periods of time. Once studied, the stimuli
were projected on a screen using a procedure known as the ascending method of limits.
In this procedure stimuli are presented at increasing intensity or at slower speeds until a

* This work was originally published as Layng T. V. (2009). The search for an effective clinical behavior analysis:
the nonlinear thinking of Israel Goldiamond. The Behavior Analyst, 32(1), 163–184. https://doi.org/10.1007/
BF03392181
APPENDIX A 59

response matches the stimulus presented, as indicated by a score sheet. The investigators
recorded each utterance of a word, and each score-​sheet entry that corresponded to a
stimulus presentation was scored as a correct identification. The score sheet was carefully
constructed such that it contained the nonsense words carefully studied as well as those only
briefly examined. Perception appeared to improve as a function of the training, producing
what psychophysicists refer to as lower thresholds. The more the training a subject received,
the more frequently the studied responses matched the score sheet, a complete replication.
Almost everything was the same. The nonsense words studied were the same, the presen-
tation method was the same, the speed of presentation was the same, and the score sheet
used by the experimenter was the same. In fact, they had produced the familiar logarithmic
function relating frequency of prior exposure to recognition threshold.
Goldiamond and Hawkins had made only one change to the procedure. No nonsense
words had ever been presented. The subjects had been presented only smudges. The
increasingly correct identifications that occurred as a function of training, as measured
by matches to the experimenter’s score sheet, had been obtained in the total absence of
nonsense words. The result could not be attributed to perception, for there was nothing
there to perceive.

THE FORMATIVE YEARS: GRADUATE WORK AT CHICAGO

Our story begins in the 1950s when Israel Goldiamond obtained a copy of Keller and
Schoenfeld’s (1950/​1995) Principles of Behavior. It was his first in-​depth introduction to
what was then called operant psychology, and it would change his life. Goldiamond, a
graduate student at the University of Chicago, had become keenly interested in perception
and its study through what is called psychophysics. Psychophysics is one of the founda-
tional areas of early experimental psychology. Great names in psychology such as Wundt,
Fechner, Weber, and Stevens had led the way in building a behavioral science based on
precise presentation of stimuli and equally precise measurement of human responses to
those stimuli. Early on, it was referred to, often with a little hint of derogation, as “brass
instrument psychology” because of the elaborate apparatus frequently required for work
in the area.
Psychophysicists were carefully studying the relation between changes in stimuli and
corresponding changes in behavior. The changes in behavior were taken to indicate changes
in perception. The problem, however, was that the same stimuli appeared to be perceived dif-
ferently as a function not only of a change in the stimulus but also of the way observers were
asked to respond. One method of having an observer indicate whether or not a stimulus was
seen frequently produced a different threshold from another method for exactly the same
stimuli. A threshold was defined as a stimulus value, light intensity for example, at which
50% of the time an observer would say it was there and 50% of the time that it was not there.
Often, unanticipated responses, considered errors by investigators, would occur. These errors
required mathematical correction, specific to the procedure used, in order to get compar-
able results. For detailed reviews see Goldiamond (1958, 1962, 1964b) and Goldiamond and
Thomas (1967/​2004).
Further, two different response modalities, such as saying “yes” or “no” versus touching
or not touching something, to indicate the presence or absence of a stimulus could produce
differing results for the same stimulus presentations. At times, an observer would not report,
or even emphatically deny, seeing a stimulus, but other behavior in some way indicated that
the stimulus had been perceived. When this happened, unconscious, or what was called sub-
liminal, perception was defined. That is, there was a difference between the spoken indicator
response and some other, typically nonverbal, indicator response.
60 APPENDIX A

Investigators were also interested in the role of emotion, state of mind, or motivation in
determining perception. Was an internal perceptual world changed that then determined
how one responded to the external world? Many studies seemed to indicate that this may
be the case. A range of variables, such as drives, needs, or even training, could influence this
internal world. A hungry person might be able to smell food-​related odors at lower thresholds
than another who had just eaten; a sex offender might be able to detect sexually suggestive
words more rapidly than typical individuals; a person who was trained on nonsense syllables
might see them at lower thresholds than words that had not been so well learned. Research
into hypnosis was suggesting that somehow the instructions of the hypnotist could radically
alter the perceptual world of the observer. Instructed that red would always now be yellow,
observers would say yellow when presented with red objects. Apparently, their color per-
ception had changed. Psychophysical methods began to be applied to a range of behaviors,
including the private world of the observer. For example, anxiety indexes based on psycho-
physical scaling methods were constructed; these methods showed promise and rapidly
expanded into a separate field of mental and emotional testing.
What Goldiamond immediately realized from his reading of Keller and Schoenfeld (1950/​
1995) was that the responses used to indicate perception were, of course, operant behavior
(i.e., behavior whose rate and form were functions of its consequences). As such, these indi-
cator responses were subject to consequential control whether or not the investigator expli-
citly manipulated the consequences. Goldiamond reasoned that perhaps the difference in
outcomes obtained when different indicator responses were used was a function of differences
in personal consequential histories, both inside and outside the experimental context. In a
series of innovative experiments, he and his colleagues were able to show that many of the
differences in outcome occurred because the consequences of responding were simply being
overlooked.
Over a period of years in the mid-​1950s to the early 1960s, Goldiamond and his colleagues
experimentally investigated many classes of perceptual behavior. They demonstrated that
training did not alter the ability to perceive stimuli, but simply increased the frequency of
those responses in comparison to other responses, thus resulting in more matches to the
experimenter’s score sheet (Goldiamond & Hawkins, 1958). For example, in the study that
opened this article, greater training on certain nonsense words resulted in a greater ten-
dency for the experimental subjects to say those words, thus making score-​sheet matches
more likely (the analysis applies equally well to the effects of food deprivation on smelling
food-​related odors, or the effects of sexual arousal on detecting sexually suggestive words;
see Goldiamond, 1964b). They showed that hypnosis did not alter perception, but simply
brought the indicator behavior under the control of the hypnotist’s instructions (Goldiamond
& Malpass, 1961). This was convincingly shown when experimental observers responded to
the true afterimage of the real color presented and not to the afterimage of the instructed
color. It was also demonstrated that implicit consequences could alter self-​reports of internal
states: College students who had never been in the military scored nearly identically to Korean
War fighter pilots on surveys of emotional responses to combat when told to respond as a
commanding officer might expect one to respond (Azrin, Holz, & Goldiamond, 1961). They
also pointed out procedural difficulties that may occur in attempts to reinforce or punish
conversational content (Azrin, Holz, Ulrich, & Goldiamond, 1961).
If the perception (i.e., indicator responses) of explicitly presented external stimuli could
be shown to be a function of its consequences and related variables and not entirely of what
was reported to be perceived, what about responses to one’s own behavior? In a series of
clever experiments, subjects attributed newly acquired stuttering to anxiety produced in a
test situation, when in fact it was a function of a shock-​avoidance schedule of which the
subjects were entirely unaware (Flanagan, Goldiamond, & Azrin, 1959). What they were
APPENDIX A 61

aware of were explanations of stuttering as caused by anxiety. Unaware of the consequences

of their behavior, the reasons given by the subjects corresponded to the reasons that tended
to be accepted by the audience, just as had the college students’ responses to the survey, and
who knows, perhaps even the pilots’ (for a more comprehensive discussion of how these
early studies may contribute to an understanding of causation and behavioral complexity,
see Layng, 1995).
Another approach to perception was gaining popularity at about the same time. This
approach, which Goldiamond helped to pioneer, became known as signal-​detection theory
(SDT). SDT provided methods for disentangling those variables that influence responding not
related to the stimulus (response bias) from those that were a direct function of the stimulus
(discriminability). In other words, SDT was able to separate the effects of the consequences
of behavior from the ability of an observer to see (hear, smell, etc.) a stimulus. Here was an
approach to perception that explicitly considered the effects of consequences on behavior
and shared many of its procedures with those of operant psychology (see Goldiamond,
1964b; Goldiamond & Thompson, 1967/​2004).
In one of the early experiments in this area, Goldiamond (1964b) was able to show that
unconscious perception, that is, perception without awareness, was a function of differential
consequences attached to two different indicator responses. Observers were seated in front
of two lighted plastic panels; a faint triangle was presented on one of the two panels. After
the triangle had been presented, the observers were instructed to press the panel with the tri-
angle and say, “yes” if the triangle was there or “no” if it was not. The observers touched the
panel on which the triangle was projected more often than they said “yes.” Lower thresholds
were obtained for panel presses than for “yes.” The difference in thresholds obtained for the
two different responses indicated the degree of unconscious perception that existed. Because
the observers were more accurate when pressing than they were when saying “yes,” their data
indicated a subconscious perception of the triangle. That is, their spoken responses indicated
that they did not see it, but their pressing responses indicated that they did. Goldiamond
demonstrated that pressing a panel when a triangle was not there and saying “yes” when a
triangle was not there may have different consequential histories, and that when procedures
were put in place that reduced the effect of past consequences obtained outside the experi-
ment for saying rather than doing, the thresholds converged. There was no subliminal per-
ception (see also Goldiamond, 1958, 1959).
SDT also provided a basis for understanding the differences obtained using different psy-
chophysical methods. It became evident that the probability of saying “yes” in the presence
of the stimulus (a hit) was a function of the probability of saying “yes” in its absence (a false
alarm). From the analysis of a 2 × 2 matrix, which has a minimum of two responses (yes
and no) and a minimum of two states of the world (stimulus either absent or present), the
effects of consequences and stimuli could be analyzed. By explicitly arranging consequences
or payoffs, the likelihood of saying “yes” when the target stimulus was present and “no”
when it was absent could be systematically controlled. When the payoff for saying “yes” with
the target stimulus absent was manipulated, the frequency of saying “yes” with the target
stimulus present would also change. This was observed even though the consequences for
saying “yes” with the target stimulus present remained unchanged. Even as the false-​alarm
rate varies and the hit rate correspondingly covaries, the underlying discriminability of the
stimulus remains unchanged. When one sees a low false-​alarm rate, one also sees a low hit
rate; a high false-​alarm rate results in a high hit rate. That is, the ratio of false alarms to hits
remains mostly unchanged as the consequences are changed for a given range of stimulus
presentations.
SDT allowed the separate evaluation of two key aspects of perception, discriminability
and response bias. Discriminability was defined by how discrepant the target stimulus
62 APPENDIX A

was from other stimuli. Response bias was defined as a preference for saying “yes” or “no.”
Discriminability combined with response bias to determine the overall likelihood of saying
“yes.” Here was the answer to why there were differences in results given the different psycho-
physical procedures used for nearly a century. Each procedure engendered a slightly different
response bias. SDT now allowed the separate evaluation of the contribution of each to an
observer’s overall score. False positives and false negatives were not errors, but instead were
the logical and sensible outcome of their consequences (Goldiamond, 1964b; Goldiamond &
Thompson, 1967/​2004).
Experiments showed that the more ambiguous the situation, the more an observer’s
behavior was a function of its consequences (reflected as response bias) and less a function of
the presence or absence of the stimulus. The important discovery that the probability of saying
“yes” in the presence of a target stimulus was a function not only of its consequences but also
of the consequences for saying “yes” in its absence was not overlooked by Goldiamond. He
clearly saw that to fully understand complex behavior, one had to consider entire sets, or
matrices, of contingencies, rather than focus on just one.
If reports of public events were so governed, then reports of private or inner events had
to be similarly governed. And because, by their nature, private events were necessarily
ambiguous, publicly speaking about those events was even more likely to be governed by
their consequences. Goldiamond found that what people said about themselves, and the
world around them, was not merely a function of past consequences for similar responses in
those situations but was also a function of past consequences for saying something different
on similar occasions.
It became clear that much of verbal behavior, particularly in ambiguous situations, was
largely a function of its consequences and other related variables, and that the pure dis-
crimination was indeed rare. Further, it was not enough to look at or arrange consequences
for a target response; attention had to be paid to alternative responses as well. Speech con-
tent as well as other behaviors were more likely to be guided by these alternative relations
than not (Goldiamond, 1958, 1962, 1964b). This early work helped to provide the founda-
tion for the search for a comprehensive behavior analysis that would continue the rest of
Goldiamond’s life.

EMERGING CLINICAL INSIGHTS

While a graduate student at Chicago, Goldiamond had taken a course from the famous
clinical psychologist Carl Rogers. Although he was not inspired by Rogers’ approach, he
became interested in how a consequential analysis could inform therapeutic practice. After
graduation, Goldiamond began a two-​pronged career, one that continued his pursuit of an
experimental analysis of behavior, both human and animal, and also one that focused on
behavior of clinical importance. The two interests often intersected and were treated with
equal rigor.
Over the next few years, from the late 1950s to the late 1960s, while Goldiamond was at
Southern Illinois University, Arizona State University, the Institute for Behavioral Research,
and Johns Hopkins University, procedures were developed to analyze, understand, and inter-
vene in behavior, often verbal, of clinical interest. Speech was reinstated in mute psychotics
(Issacs, Thomas, & Goldiamond, 1960), stuttering was analyzed and treatment procedures
were designed (Flanagan, Goldiamond, & Azrin, 1958, 1959; Goldiamond, 1965b;
Goldiamond, Atkinson, & Bilger, 1962; Goldiamond & Flanagan, 1959; continuous research
and development would yield a systematic program that eventually taught over 200 stutterers
to speak fluently), methods of self-​control were developed (Goldiamond, 1965a), psych-
otic hallucinations were analyzed in the context of psychophysical research (Goldiamond,
APPENDIX A 63

1964b), a behavioral approach to moral behavior was described (Goldiamond, 1968), and a
functional analysis of the content of speech in therapeutic sessions was undertaken, as well as
how behavioral interactions within a therapeutic session could result in changes outside the
session (Goldiamond & Dyrud, 1968; Goldiamond, Dyrud, & Miller, 1965).
Together with colleagues such as Nate Azrin, behavioral psychoanalyst Jarl Dyrud, and
many others, Goldiamond began to develop insights as to what constitutes an effective func-
tional analytic approach to psychotherapy. Goldiamond and Azrin had a profound influence
on one another. In giving his eulogy at Goldiamond’s memorial service, Azrin described
Goldiamond’s influence on everything from the token economy to his own approach to
marital therapy. Goldiamond would likely have had similar things to say about Azrin. Other
work in the operant laboratory helped to elucidate variables that would be of considerable
importance for clinical analysis and treatment.
Goldiamond often drew on these insights for his work with patients. Two in particular
drew his attention. In 1960, Murray Sidman had published some of his observations about
some possible normal sources of pathological behavior in an article published in Science (see
also Sidman, 1958). Given certain arrangements, monkeys would apparently work to receive
shocks. In a series of brilliantly designed experiments, Sidman demonstrated the important
role of behavioral history and the interaction of concurrent consequential contingencies
in understanding and making sense of seemingly paradoxical behavior. Estes and Skinner
(1941) had shown that the presentation of a clicker paired with shock could suppress lever
pressing on some interval schedules, but if a monkey had a history of pressing a lever to avoid
shocks, the opposite happened; the pressing was instead facilitated. Further, shock could be
made contingent on lever pressing after the avoidance schedule had been terminated, and
lever pressing would actually increase, producing more shocks. All the animal had to do was
stop pressing and no shocks would be delivered. It was, in essence, trapped by its history of
available alternatives. This was not psychopathology, but a sensible outcome of actions taken
in the past to reduce shock frequency.
Sidman (1960) also showed how patterns maintained by two different consequences, in
this case pressing a lever to avoid shock and pulling a chain to produce food, could become
intertwined. He reasoned that if the two operants were indeed a function of their separate
histories, discontinuing the shock-​avoidance schedule and introducing unavoidable shocks
should result in an increase in lever pressing and a decrease in chain pulling, in accord with
his and Estes and Skinner’s (1941) results. It did not turn out that way. Both responses’ fre-
quencies increased. One conventional interpretation was that the increases were a function
of the underlying emotional response to the shock, a common pathological perspective.
Sidman instead showed that the result was a function of an adventitious arrangement of the
consequential contingencies and a sensible outcome of that arrangement. When schedules
were changed such that the effects of lever pressing were clearly separated from the effects
of chain pulling, the results were as predicted earlier. The important lesson inherent in these
studies was that the consequential history of the behavior under investigation was critical
to understanding current patterns, and that seemingly pathological behavior could occur
as a function of quite sensible responding to quite prosaic behavioral processes. Further,
simply considering the apparently pathological pattern, without reference to its alternatives
and their consequential histories, would yield an incomplete picture at best, and result in a
completely wrong analysis at worst.
Another set of experiments that further supported Goldiamond’s emerging approach was
a series of studies performed by Holz and Azrin (1961) showing that punishment could be a
discriminative stimulus for reinforcement. From time to time, pecks to a disk mounted on a
wall provided food to a hungry pigeon, but did so only if an electric shock followed each
peck. Unshocked pecks to the disk did not result in food. The pigeons quickly learned that
64 APPENDIX A

no shock meant no food, and that shock meant food. If they pecked and there was no shock,
they would stop pecking, but if a shock were provided they would peck. The presence of elec-
tric shock occasioned the very behavior that produced it. If one were to only observe those
pecks that produced shock and overlooked those that resulted in food, one might consider
the pecking to be an indicator of psychopathology.
But why peck at all? The answer from the pigeons’ point of view was unambiguous: peck,
get shocked, eventually get fed; do something else, don’t get shocked, starve. When one
considered the alternatives available to the pigeon, the pecking for shock made absolute
sense. Further, Goldiamond reasoned, one could arrange conditions in which pigeons would
work to turn on the shock if it were absent. The pain of one’s actions may be necessary to
achieve an ultimate payoff. And, when available alternatives are considered, that pain, and
the pursuit of those conditions or life contexts that result in such pain, may not be maladap-
tive at all. In fact, it may be considered quite adaptive and sensible. The therapeutic approach
suggested here was to find or construct an alternative that could provide the same payoff, but
without the pain.

THE EXTENSION OF A FUNCTIONAL BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS

TO CLINICAL TREATMENT
The promise of the rapidly growing operant literature, together with his own previous
work, made Goldiamond’s collaboration with the physician and psychoanalyst Jarl Dyrud
an exciting opportunity to test the power of a functional analysis of behavior in the clinic.
They began their collaboration in the mid-​1960s while Goldiamond was executive director of
the Institute for Behavioral Research. Goldiamond would sit in on Dyrud’s therapy sessions
taking notes, providing a contingency analysis of what transpired, and making suggestions.
The two would remain lifelong friends.
Dyrud quickly came to see the power of the analysis Goldiamond provided. Some years
later, Dyrud (1971) suggested that psychoanalysts should embrace behavioral functional
analysis as the tool that they had been seeking all of these years in their effort to understand
the unconscious. He wrote, “Our assumption is that seemingly erratic behavior is in fact con-
sequential, often at a level below awareness, and that the elucidation of its consequences is
our major vehicle for treatment (making the unconscious conscious)” (p. 302). In 1968, their
collaboration resulted in a paper titled, “Some Applications and Implications of Behavioral
Analysis for Psychotherapy.” It, along with an earlier article (Goldiamond et al., 1965), were
perhaps the first papers on the use of a consequential functional analysis for adult psycho-
therapy. This was not systematic desensitization, or token economies, or the direct reinforce-
ment of verbal content, or the use of rewards and punishment to get someone to behave in
ways the patient or therapist thought was good for them. Instead, it was the direct use of an
explicit functional analysis to help individuals change their context for living, that is, their
contingencies.
The Goldiamond and Dyrud collaboration also produced some very interesting clinical
experiments; one in particular deserves elaboration. They placed a psychiatrist in one room
and a patient in another. A type of one-​way mirror separated the rooms such that the patient
could see the psychiatrist as long as a light was directly shining on the therapist. They then
linked the brightness of the light to speech rate. If the patient maintained a specified rate
of speaking, the therapist remained visible; if the rate dropped off, the room would darken,
making the therapist difficult to see. This relation was never described to the patient. By
manipulating speech rate, they could change both affect and conversation content. High rate
requirements produced statements of anger, frustration, and anxiety that the patient would
attribute to his life situation; even higher rates could produce psychotic-​like responding, with
APPENDIX A 65

near delusional behavior, “word salad”-​like responses, and often agitated roaming around the
room. Access to the psychotherapist was a powerful reinforcer. It is doubtful that this experi-
ment could be conducted today.1
It became clear to Goldiamond that clinically relevant behavior, including verbal content
and affect, were all adaptively a function of consequential selection. It was also clear that
consequences came in packages that contained both costs and benefits. Keeping the psych-
iatrist visible was a potent explicit reinforcer; however, it came at a cost of finding things of
clinical relevance to say, an implicit requirement of continued therapy. Extrapolating from his
experience with SDT and work performed in the operant laboratory, Goldiamond surmised
that these consequence packages had to be considered not only for the “symptom” but also
for available alternative patterns. Goldiamond saw that once one examined both the relative
costs and benefits for what he would later call the disturbing pattern and those for alternative
patterns available to the patient, the function of the behavior was revealed; more than that,
why the individual behaved as he or she did became clear.

STIMULUS CLASSES AND ABSTRACTIONAL, INSTRUCTIONAL,

AND DIMENSIONAL CONTROL IN THE CLINIC
Goldiamond continued to publish on perception and how various stimuli interacted with
behavior as a function of certain consequences. In 1962, he described how both stimulus
and response classes could be formed and how these classes may be extended to include
other stimuli or responses, and how, “once a class is established, contingencies applied to one
member of a class tend to affect other members of the class” (p. 303).
In 1966 Goldiamond elaborated on the important distinction between dimensional and
abstractional or instructional control, and how each could be transferred separately or
together. To somewhat over simplify, dimensional control was what one responded to and
abstractional control was how one responded to it. For instance, one may respond to an air-
plane by stating its color, its weight, the number of passengers carried, or a variety of other
features. Responding to the plane (vs. something else) indicates dimensional control, and
responding along any of a multitude of features represents abstractional control. One can
transfer abstractional or relational responding across different stimuli that vary greatly in
appearance. For example, color naming can be transferred from naming the color of an air-
plane to naming the color of a house. One can establish abstractional control by comparison
(e.g., larger than); it can also be established through a common response (e.g., stopping at
a railroad crossing, a stoplight, etc.) or by various forms of stimulus pairing. Both dimen-
sional control and abstractional control can be transferred independently or together, as
Goldiamond (1964a, 1966) demonstrated with a program that precisely sequenced a series
of letters and words. As a result of the sequencing, observers who begin the sequence classi-
fying letter groups or words by the presence of the letter B are led instead to classify by the
presence of words that reflect male gender (and reject those words containing B if they do
not reflect male gender), without hearing a verbal description of either relation. (During this
period, Goldiamond & Thompson [1967/​2004] produced one half of a planned wide-​ranging
book on behavior analysis that included the most systematic treatment of stimulus control
ever written.)
Goldiamond and Dyrud (1968) went on to postulate that some forms of the psycho-
analytic concept of transference might have a basis in such relations. Talking about how
interacting with one’s wife is similar to how one interacted with one’s mother may be an
example of such control. But there was a twist. Such comparisons did not necessarily reveal
that the relationship with the mother, or what happened in that relationship, was necessarily
causally linked, but that, of all the thousands of interactions that had occurred, the patient
66 APPENDIX A

had chosen this one to describe. A similar analysis could be made of remembered dreams.
Both past interactions and recent dreams may speak to current contingencies. Each may help
to elucidate current abstractional control and the consequences that maintain it.
Often, encouraging a change in abstractional control in a therapeutic session, that is,
establishing a different way of responding to an event, could be transferred to events outside
the session. They noted that the effectiveness of such transfer frequently depended on how
patients responded to therapist-​supplied stimuli and, in turn, how the therapist responds to
the apparent abstractional control as it occurs. The therapist responds to the theme and not
necessarily the precise words chosen by the patient. Accordingly, the role of metaphor in
facilitating not only analysis but also transfer was described in the 1968 article and expanded
on in later work in the 1970s. (See, e.g., Goldiamond, 1974a, 1975a. Two of Goldiamond’s
students, Layng & Andronis, 1984, later published an article that extensively discussed the
use of metaphor interpretation in the treatment of delusions and hallucinations.)
Goldiamond and Dyrud (1968) considered potentiating variables, or what are now often
called motivative or establishing operations, as critical to successful outcomes. They argued
that understanding the sources of consequence potentiation is critical to successful therapy,
and further, that yet other elements of the psychoanalytic concept of transference may
be analyzed, in part, through a consideration of potentiation. Equally important was the
potentiation of reinforcers that could maintain patient behavior within a session: “What may
be a critical reinforcer in psychotherapy is change in referent behaviors outside. Events in
the session that are related to such change may thereby become linked to them as reinforcers
themselves” (p. 74).
As further work would continue to show (Goldiamond, 1969), the key to extension, and
to meaningful change outside the therapeutic session, is how events in the session affect the
consequential relations that maintain the disturbing patterns outside the session. Although
it may be the case that “once a class is established, contingencies applied to one member of
a class tend to affect other members of the class,” as noted earlier such change is maintained
only if it is supported by a change in the referent consequential contingencies.

THE RETURN TO CHICAGO: THE CONSTRUCTIONAL APPROACH

AND NONLINEAR VERSUS LINEAR ANALYSIS
In 1968, Goldiamond accepted a position as professor in the Departments of Behavioral
Sciences (Biopsychology), Psychiatry, Medicine and in the College (the undergraduate school)
at the University of Chicago; Dyrud accepted an appointment in the Department of Psychiatry
and ultimately became chair for a time while at Chicago. Years of clinical research, including
a rigorous research program conducted at the Behavior Analysis Research Laboratory of the
Department of Psychiatry ultimately led to the publication of what Goldiamond (1974b)
called a “constructional approach.” This was groundbreaking work, a functional analysis that
considered the consequences and related variables not only of disturbing patterns but of their
alternatives as well. Rather than simply considering a linear occasion behavior-​consequence
sequence, this was a nonlinear approach in which the behavior being investigated was under-
stood to be a function of multiple intersecting contingencies.2
When investigators considered only the consequences for the disturbing behavior, it often
seemed as though the disturbing pattern made no sense and must be a function of some type
of internal emotional or cognitive state. However, an examination of the available alternative
consequential contingencies, reminiscent of the payoff matrix of SDT, quickly dispelled this
notion.3 Further, Goldiamond and his students found that changes in reported emotions and
cognitions tracked changes in the contingency matrix. Emotions and cognitions lost their
causal status once the entire matrix was described. They did, however, remain an important
APPENDIX A 67

source of information in helping to identify those relations of which the emotions themselves
were also a function.
Goldiamond quickly came to understand that the goal of therapy was not to directly
control, change, or suppress emotions or cognition, but instead to sensitize the patient to
them, use them as indicators of the relevant consequential contingencies, and to build on
their current repertoires so as to arrange new contingencies. Patients were taught that their
disturbing patterns were quite sensible and often nearly heroic responses to the contingency
matrix in which they found themselves, and that their behavior was neither maladaptive nor
pathological. The approach is illustrated by an example provided by Goldiamond (1975b)
about a woman with a debilitating phobia that often left her confined to her bed:

She was immobilized thereby and her husband swept and cleaned the house every morning (to
clear it of vermin), brought her breakfast in bed, and washed the dishes (to deter vermin) before
leaving for work. Whenever she recovered somewhat, his attentiveness waned. The phobia
was costly: she could not resume the professional work she had enjoyed, nor could they go
out together at night; further her in-​laws were suggesting divorce. The benefits to recovery are
obvious, as is the matrix. There is a metaphor involved. Labeling the disturbing behavior as a
psychiatric problem is essential to the matrix. The patient would not get the accruing benefits
if she simply told her husband: “Look, you’ve been putting work ahead of me and everything
else since we’ve been married. I’ve worked to keep this marriage together. How about you?”
Indeed, earlier efforts in this direction had been extinguished. Numerous psychiatric problems
have this legitimate labeling function. Labeling theorists who denounce such terms might reflect
further on this metaphorical use for the patient, rather than upon the psychiatrist’s benefits and
the crippling effects of the label upon the patient. It is the contingency matrix that produces
the disturbing effects and governs the behavior and the experienced emotions or thought
patterns. (p. 43)

THE ROLE OF EMOTION IN CLINICAL BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS

Emotion theorists had for some time argued about the role of emotions. Some argued that
emotions could cause behavior. One is afraid, therefore, one flees; the fleeing may reduce
the fear and thus reward running. Others argued that, no, one runs away from something
and feels fear as a result of running, the behavior of running away causes the feeling of fear.
Goldiamond saw from what was now years of work in the clinic and laboratory that nei-
ther explanation was adequate. Instead, he found that both fleeing and feeling fear were
a function of the consequential contingencies; one did not cause the other. This was an
important discovery. One does not run from the bear because one is afraid, and one is not
afraid because one is running from the bear—​one is both running and afraid because there is
a bear close on one’s heels. Fear describes a specific functional relation between behavior and
its consequences. It describes the situation in which one’s behavior is reinforced by putting
distance between oneself and some other thing or event. Anger, which so often goes hand
in hand with fear, describes those conditions in which one’s behavior is reinforced by cre-
ating distance between oneself and an event by removing or driving off the event. Emotions,
therefore, may be considered as describing or amplifying specific contingency relations, and
specific contingencies can be described by specific emotions (Goldiamond, 1974b, 1975b,
1979b; Layng, 2006).4
The implications were stunning. It was becoming evident that our emotions evolved to
aid us in navigating complex contingencies that are a part of a complex social world. We are
oblivious to most of the contingencies that govern our day-​to-​day behavior. Nonetheless, it
is important that we come in contact with them and act accordingly; we do this through our
68 APPENDIX A

emotions. Clinically, emotions could be used to uncover those contingencies, to make the
unconscious conscious, by making the implicit consequential contingencies explicit.

THE PATIENT AS COINVESTIGATOR IN ANALYZING NONLINEAR

RELATIONS AND PLANNING TOPICAL AND SYSTEMIC TREATMENT
But how was this discovered? As part of the research protocol, patients were asked to keep
records. These records, some of which were published in the appendix of Goldiamond (1974b),
were filled out by the patient on a daily basis between visits. Understanding that record
keeping and what was recorded are operant behaviors, it was important to make sure these
records formed the basis of patient–​therapist interactions. A great deal of time was devoted to
examining and analyzing the daily logs in each session (see Goldiamond & Schwartz, 1975).
If a log was brought to a session not filled out, session time was used to retroactively fill in the
missing times. This joint evaluation led to many discoveries that might not otherwise have
been made. For example, it was noticed that events on one day could potentiate reinforcers
for different behaviors on another day. For instance, on some days phobic behavior may
have no discernible consequence; however, at other times, the consequences, which ranged
from control over the behavior of a spouse to avoiding an unpleasant task, were easily iden-
tified. It became apparent that if the phobic response occurred only on the occasions in
which it obviously paid off, it would cease to work on those occasions. To potentiate the
social consequences for the phobic response on one occasion, the behavior had to occur on
other occasions in which there were no discernible social consequences or even when a cost
might be observed. Just as shock had become discriminative for food in the Holz and Azrin
(1961) experiments, the cost of the phobia may have to be evident if others are to provide
the consequences that maintain phobic or other disturbing behavior. Chance (1994) fittingly
called this Goldiamond’s paradox (see also Layng & Andronis, 1984).
Records were not, however, simply indicators of disturbing patterns, but were used to
find when things went right and why. Emphasis was placed on what was going on when
the patient felt good, and how this was achieved. Each week there were goals to be achieved
based on the previous week’s successes. Setbacks were treated as expected outcomes of any
worthwhile effort, and were occasions for further contingency analysis.
When the social consequences were no longer potent or when the best interests of the
patient were served by giving up the symptom, it was easily understood why the patient was
now seeking therapy. Patients’ logs frequently showed that the disturbing pattern involved
costs for others as well as for the patient. Those close to the patient might not easily accept
an immediate dropping of the symptom. Also, it might be necessary to build certain skills
for situations avoided in the past. When a phobia was involved, a simple intervention might
involve understanding that the phobic feelings were likely to have occurred in situations in
which there was no direct payoff, and to use those feelings as indicators to stop and examine
the situation and see what one could do that, step by step, would lead to coming into contact
with new experiences and new consequences. The phobic feelings were to be treated as a nat-
ural outcome of the individual’s personal history. For many, this was all that was required.
If, say, spousal involvement was the critical consequence, and available alternative patterns
in the patient’s repertoire had not been successful in obtaining such involvement, “topical”
interventions, directed exclusively at the presenting complaint (e.g., fear of cockroaches)
are likely to be only minimally successful. These include working on the fear responses dir-
ectly or on the avoidance of fearful emotions. Intervention has to be directed elsewhere.
The relationship with the spouse must be the focus. As the relationship changes, and the
consequences that maintain the phobia (spousal involvement) are either obtained elsewhere
or are no longer potent, the phobic symptoms may simply drop out of the repertoire, or the
APPENDIX A 69

change may allow a topical intervention to replace the phobia with other less troublesome
patterns.
A range of specialty logs was developed, including social interaction logs, emotional
responding logs, and others as required for a particular life situation. One’s thoughts and
personal observations were regularly included. Often, the records indicated incidents of
application, or self-​control, of what had been learned from the logs. From Goldiamond
(1976a):

I shall cite the report of an out-​patient upon his return from vacation. He had had a history
of hospitalization for schizophrenia and his brother was recently hospitalized for the same
problem. During his vacation his wife walked out on him, leaving him alone in the motel. “I
found myself sitting in bed the whole morning, and staring at my rigid finger,” he said. “So
I asked myself: ‘Now what would Dr. Goldiamond say was the reason I was doing this?’ He’d ask
what consequences would ensue. And I’d say: ‘Hospitalization.’ And he’d say: ‘That’s right! Just
keep it up and they’ll take you away.’ And then he’d say: ‘But what would you be getting there
that you’re not getting now?’ And I’d say: ‘I’ll be taken care of.’ And he’d say: ‘You’re on target.
But is there some way you can get this consequence without going to the hospital and having
another hospitalization on your record?’ And then I’d think a while and say: ‘Hey! My sister.
She’s a motherly type, and she lives a hundred miles away.” ’ He reported that he dragged himself
together, packed, and hitch-​hiked to his sister who took him in with open arms. The education
occurred in the process of the analysis of several months of written records. (p. 33)

Increasingly, effective treatment required that for many symptoms, patterns other than
the presenting complaint (the original symptoms) needed to be considered. Once these
other patterns and their consequences were addressed, the symptom often dropped out
with no need to attend directly to the disturbing pattern. This type of intervention would
come to be called systemic, as distinguished from topical. Topical interventions directly
address the presenting complaint. Both types of intervention may employ a nonlinear
functional analysis and are not necessarily mutually exclusive (Goldiamond, 1979b,1984;
Layng & Andronis, 1984). For example, patients who engage in certain forms of obses-
sive compulsive behavior benefited from combining certain topical interventions similar
to those found in habit reversal procedures (Azrin & Nunn, 1973) with a systemic inter-
vention targeted toward building repertoires, the absence of which was the obsessive com-
pulsive disorder.

THE IMPORTANCE OF VERBAL BEHAVIOR

Goldiamond’s work with, and understanding of, verbal behavior was also important to
the success of the approach. An interview strategy was developed that, with amazing
regularity, often indicated the important nonlinear consequence relations that were
maintaining the disturbing pattern. By focusing on outcomes to be achieved, rather
than on deficits to be eliminated, contingencies were uncovered and new ones built that
resulted in patients coming to control their own lives and plans for the future. Analysis
and planning continue well after the initial interview. A poignant example was provided
by Goldiamond (1974b):

Can one deliver reinforcement to behaviors such as hallucinations that are almost universally
regarded as pathological? Indeed, they enter into the diagnosis of schizophrenia. The parents
of a woman of 22, so classified, reported that she was hallucinating a husband and children at
the dinner table and engaging them in extended conversation. If they ignored her (extinction),
70 APPENDIX A

they knew she would escalate (e.g., hallucinate pregnancy, etc.) until they were forced to reply. If
they were punitive, she might start screaming or might stay away from the table and undo their
intense efforts to get her there. If they agreed or inquired after the “family” (reinforcement) this,
too, might escalate the pattern. The tactics recommended were based on the following rationale.
A child’s report card has A’s, C’s and F’s. The parents can complain about the failing grades, cite
the A’s to indicate she can do better, or simply praise heavily for the A’s. The hallucinatory patterns
were to be regarded in the same way: what is there about them that can be reinforced? Most 22-​
year-​old women are married, and neighboring daughters were no exception. Her mother said,
next time: “Sally, you don’t know how delighted I am to hear you considering marriage just
like —​and —​. Believe me, nothing would make father and me happier than,” etc., “and that’s
why we’re doing —​and —​, to make that day come sooner.” The parents had to be as ingenious
as their daughter in changing the words as they retained the theme to keep up with her chan-
ging presentations of the same theme (she had had considerably more experience). By the third
week, hallucinations were replaced by conversations with the existent family. What the parents
said was true, and she was treated with responses that respected her dignity and also moved the
program along. (pp. 51–​52; see also Layng & Andronis, 1984, for additional examples)

Informed by years of research on instructional and abstractional control, Goldiamond

wrote extensively on the topic of rules and their role in understanding behavior. He was
quick to point out that any consequentially governed behavior could be described as
meeting contingency rules for reinforcement. That is, once criteria required for reinforce-
ment were identified, one could describe the rule for reinforcement availability. This rule
could then be provided to others, and the behavior that ensued would be maintained as long
as the behavior continued to provide potent consequences within its contingency context
(Goldiamond, 1966; Goldiamond & Thompson, 1967/​2004). Skinner (1966) alluded to this
when he wrote of the “inspection of reinforcement contingencies.” Goldiamond, however,
cautioned that patterns, which may be overlooked by either patients or therapists, other than
the ones established by the rule might provide more benefits with fewer costs. Regardless,
Goldiamond (1978/​1983) maintained that rule statement was irrelevant to contingency con-
trol, and that the statement of a rule by the patient or therapist was no guarantee that the con-
tingencies were accurately being described. Rules do not cause behavior, nor does behavior
cause rules or insight into them:

In situations outside the laboratory, people often follow rules of conduct relatable to histories of
Oc-​(BR⟶S) relations; they may then (or may not) explicitly state the induced rules to others
and to themselves. … Thus, as used here, awareness, insight, and explicit induction of rules
are not the epiphenomena to which operationism often assigns them. They do not linearly
cause behavior (OcR⟶Awareness [etc.] R⟶ Behavior), nor do behaviors cause awareness, etc.
(OcR⟶BehaviorR⟶Awareness). Both awareness (insight, explicit induction) and behavior are
governed by the contingencies and their histories. The fact that one can occasionally precede
the other indicates causality no more than it does in emotion and behavior. And, as in different
classes of behavior with different histories, they should not be expected to have identical con-
tingency relations. … If presence of insight, or awareness of contingencies, is irrelevant to con-
trol by contingencies, instructions on the nature of the present contingencies or of those to
be instituted may facilitate occurrence of the required patterns, or may not, depending on the
conditions. Among the critical conditions is whether or not consequences follow upon behavior
in accord with instructions about the rule. (p. 14)

He noticed that patients might state rules for their patterns, or therapists might describe
patient patterns in terms of rules or “misrules.” It became obvious, however, that the rule
stating and the patterns observed are both governed by alternative sets of consequential
APPENDIX A 71

arrangements. That is, each may have its own consequences and alternatives. He noted a fur-
ther caution: Rules may be abstracted from adventitious relations, where from time to time
consequences may occur but may not be functionally related to the behavior. He admonished
both patients and therapists to be cautious when stating rules that describe apparent conse-
quential relations (Goldiamond, 1978/​1983):

Presentation of statements of contingencies may be used to induce rules which may then
function instructionally. In any case of instruction-​governed behavior, if the contingency rule
applied is incongruent with the actual Oc-​(BR⟶S) arrangements, instructional control may be
transient. However, precaution is necessary here. Adventitiously reinforced behavior is likely to
be reinforced only intermittently. Related abstractions and instructions induced from these are,
because of the adventitious reinforcement attached to behavior under their control, likely to be
spurious. Because of the intermittency of the reinforcement, the spurious instructions are likely
to be long-​lived (cf. Skinner, 1977), despite the simultaneous availability of less spurious instruc-
tional and abstractional systems. (p. 15)

For the patient, this means that the putative controlling consequences observed may not be
maintaining the disturbing patterns or may be maintaining them only adventitiously. As a
result, alternatives may be available that either had been overlooked by the patient, or in the
past have been unavailable, or might become available with a relatively small change in rep-
ertoire. A therapist might be tempted to suggest a patient may be following a defective rule or
is insensitive to his or her consequential contingencies. As noted earlier, another approach is
to consider the behavior to be the sensible outcome of a consequential history not unlike that
described by Sidman (1960). It is a combination of that history and current consequences
within the contingency matrix that accounts for the pattern. Often, the alternative contin-
gencies as experienced by the patient, and what Goldiamond called “developmental costs”
(i.e., the effort involved in learning or transferring repertoires), may keep patients boxed in
to their particular contingency matrix.
Other relations were noted as well. Disturbing patterns that apparently produced no
consequences other than aversive ones were often found to be the lesser of two or more evils
when available alternative relations were considered. The patterns appeared irrational or mal-
adaptive only in a linear “lone contingency” framework. Overlooking the fact that a pattern
can produce more than one consequence and thereby considering only the costs and ignoring
the benefits, especially in terms of the available alternatives, was another outcome of a linear
analysis. In addition, there was the recognition of “vestigial” patterns. These are patterns
that at one time paid off but do so no longer, or are now maintained by sporadic adventi-
tious consequences. These patterns are largely maintained by the cost of giving them up, as
noted above.
No single rule, approach, procedure, or diagnostically based intervention is possible.
Matching treatment to diagnostic topography may have limited success, except perhaps when
the presenting complaint is a vestigial pattern, or when there has been a change in the contin-
gency matrix prior to seeking therapy. Each individual’s multiple contingency context, and
the histories of those contingency relations, need to be examined. This is why Goldiamond
(1974b) required his students to begin their case presentations like this:

A. Introduction
1. Identifying information
Brief description of patient and a few qualifying statements which are relevant to what
follows.
2. Background for the program
72 APPENDIX A

Use A3 as the resolution toward which this presentation is directed. Weave in various items
from questionnaire and other sources to present a coherent picture of a person functioning
highly competently, given his circumstances and implicit or explicit goals. Present the his-
tory of the person as an example of such competence, giving evidence wherever available.
3. Symptom as costly operant
Infer how, as a result of A2, the patterns shaped and reinforced up to now are now
too costly or otherwise jeopardizing the patient. Infer what reinforcers are presently
maintaining patterns, sources, and type of jeopardy and its source. This should be brief and
simply stated as what led up to this. (p. 80; for the rest of the case presentation guide, see
Goldiamond, 1974b)

The therapeutic process always began by asking patients what it would be like for them
6 months after liberation day from their problems. Within the first few sessions, observable
goals were described that both therapist and patient agreed to work to achieve. Sometimes
these goals would change, but if so, they would be clearly stated in terms of observable
outcomes. If a person came into therapy because of panic attacks, it would be ascertained
what the individual would be doing if the attacks were gone. The goal would not be to elim-
inate the attacks, but to produce the outcomes achievable only if the attacks were gone. This
was contrasted with the individual’s current situation. Patient strengths and past successes
were also investigated. This was the starting point for the program. An initial contingency
analysis of the disturbing pattern and its alternatives was made from data obtained from
the original interview and patient logs (and, at times, speaking with others). This analysis
was presented to the patient; no records, notes, or other write-​ups were kept from the indi-
vidual seeking help. Every week subgoals based on the past week’s successes and related to
the program goals were identified and methods suggested, derived from the ongoing contin-
gency analysis, for reaching them. As described above, patient records in the form of the logs
documented the application of the procedures, provided occasions for analysis, and showed
what was successful and what was not. Success was defined by whether or not the patient
achieved the stated observable outcomes (for a more detailed discussion of the processes,
see Goldiamond, 1974b, 1975b, 1979b, 1984; Goldiamond& Schwartz, 1975; Layng, 2006;
Merley & Layng, 1976).5

EXTENSION AND APPLICATION: TOPICAL AND

SYSTEMIC INTERVENTIONS
As the decade of the 1970s came to a close, research efforts were increasingly directed toward
understanding the topical versus systemic intervention differences. Travis (1982) investigated
what would happen if patients whose initial analysis indicated a topical intervention was suf-
ficient were placed in a systemic intervention, and those whose initial analysis indicated a
systemic intervention was necessary were placed in a topical only intervention. The data
were informative: As predicted, progress in therapy appeared to be contingent on the proper
intervention.
The logs also pointed to another key distinction. This time it was the difference between
emotions as contingency descriptors and emotional behavior. For instance, acting angrily
or depressively might not always reflect contingencies that describe anger or feeling
depressed. If a contingency that produced an emotion also produced related behavior,
it could be selected by its consequences just like any other operant. If feeling angry and
having the physiological indicators often associated with reports of such feeling were
required to meet the consequential requirements, then they would occur. It became clear
that physiological or organic responses could enter into the definition of the operant. This
APPENDIX A 73

was highlighted when a case of stigmata (bleeding from the palms) was shown to be an
operant and was successfully treated systemically by addressing marital relations, and
when intense and uncontrollable blushing was successfully treated with a topical func-
tional analysis (Goldiamond, 1974b). In the systemic case, marital issues needed attention;
the stigmata themselves were not directly addressed. In the topical case, the patient was
taught not to try to fight or control her blushing, but instead to heed it and use the early
sensations as an indicator that she needed to intervene in a social situation that might lead
to intense blushing. Special procedures were developed that helped to distinguish between
emotions as contingency descriptors or amplifiers and emotional behavior as operants or,
as in the case of blushing just cited, some of each (for a more recent and extensive discus-
sion, see Layng, 2006).
Goldiamond (1975a) published a paper that formally described his nonlinear or alterna-
tive sets approach and its implications for behavioral formulations in general. Later (1976b)
he gave an inside look at his personal use of this approach by describing its application to
his own injury that left him in a wheelchair (see also Goldiamond, 1974a). He extended
his nonlinear analysis to problems of social significance (1974b), and continued to do so
through a series of publications that directly addressed those issues (Goldiamond, 1975c,
1976b, 1977). In 1978, Goldiamond’s Midwestern Association of Behavior Analysis (which
later became the Association for Behavior Analysis) presidential address formally provided
a “Programming Contingency Analysis of Mental Health” (Goldiamond, 1978/​1983). It was
brilliant, and detailed a comprehensive behavior-​analytic approach to understanding clinic-
ally relevant behavior, including the relations among behavior, genetics, and other physio-
logical variables. He later submitted a revised and expanded version as a book chapter that
was to be a part of a larger compilation, only later to withdraw it when the editors asked that
it be shortened. Copies do exist of this work, and may yet be published. Goldiamond (1979a)
first publicly described in print his discovery of the distinction between topical and systemic
interventions.
Over the next several years, Goldiamond and his students would continue to refine
and extend the nonlinear analysis, both in the clinic and in the laboratory. Schedules of
reinforcement were shown to influence gastrointestinal behavior when schedule-​induced
defecation was discovered (Gimenez, Andronis, & Goldiamond, 1987; Rayfield, Segal,
& Goldiamond, 1982). The implications for the treatment of irritable bowel syndrome
and similar conditions were investigated in conjunction with physicians from the depart-
ment of medicine. Changes in reinforcement schedules for key pecking were shown to
result in the recurrence of extinguished head banging in pigeons, which replicated similar
observations made in the clinic and suggested that relapse was a normal rather than
pathological behavioral process (Layng, Andronis, & Goldiamond, 1999). Pigeon research
showed how component repertoires that were a function of one set of consequences
could combine and be selected by other consequences to serve an entirely different social
function. Further, concepts such as empathy, projection, symbolic aggression, and taking
another’s perspective could all be traced to the combination and selection of repertoires
by social contingencies that could be demonstrated in the pigeon (Andronis, 1987;
Andronis, Layng, & Goldiamond, 1997). This brought new insights to understanding
issues of symptom choice and the origination of disturbing patterns from nondisturbing
components, including diathesis stress models (see, Zubin & Spring, 1977). Clinical
practice informed laboratory investigation, and laboratory research, in turn, helped to
improve clinical practice.
In 1984, Goldiamond published his last clinical paper that, in greater detail and with more
refinement, described his nonlinear analysis and systemic approach. Other papers were
published, including one by his students that described their work combining Goldiamond’s
74 APPENDIX A

Israel Goldiamond wearing his “Frank Zappa” fishing cap given to him
by Paul Andronis.

nonlinear analysis with Skinner’s (1957) approach to verbal behavior in the treatment of
delusions and hallucinations (Layng & Andronis, 1984). Goldiamond retired in the late
1980s, but did not stop working and refining his approach.
Although there were no longer marathon lab meetings in which both experimental and
clinical work were excitedly described, dissected, and analyzed, Goldiamond continued to
collaborate with his students until his death in 1995. Unfortunately, after his death, countless
files, case analyses, intervention details, and data sheets from carefully controlled research
were destroyed, in accord with the privacy policy of the University of Chicago. Nevertheless,
the results of Goldiamond’s journey can provide the clinical behavior analyst with extraor-
dinary research and treatment opportunities that may greatly broaden our knowledge of
how selection by consequences can explain complex behavior, emotions, and thought. To
this end, his students have continued to refine and extend both his nonlinear analysis and
his analysis of emotions and emotional behavior. This work is the subject of a larger work
in preparation.

CONCLUSION
Sigrid Glenn (2002) in a retrospective commentary on Goldiamond’s constructional approach
eloquently observed,

In reading again Israel Goldiamond’s “Toward a Constructional Approach to Social Problems,”

I am reminded anew of the scope and power of the work of this great behavior analyst. … But
most interesting, certainly to the clinician, is the reader’s sense of being in the “presence” of a
truly great clinician. The subtlety and sensitivity, the humor and the understanding, are omni-
present in the details of treatment that Goldiamond describes. It is interesting that we are able
to detect that he fully understood and cared about the clients with whom he worked, while he
consistently described his observations and tactics in scientific terms (with a few apologies for
everyday language use). (p. 202)
APPENDIX A 75

Over many years, Goldiamond and his students helped hundreds of patients. A wide range of
conditions were treated including stuttering, obsessive compulsive disorders, panic disorders,
eating disorders, phobias, schizophrenia and related diagnoses, borderline syndrome, depres-
sion, anxiety, catatonia, drug addiction, posttraumatic stress disorder, brain injury, marital
and family problems, and many others. In each case, the disturbing patterns were shown to
be sensible outcomes of their nonlinear consequential contingencies, as was the rich and very
productive thinking of Israel Goldiamond.

NOTES
It has been over 10 years since the death of Israel Goldiamond. Unfortunately, references to his work are rare. This
would not be such a concern if his work was not of such importance to behavior analysis as a field and clinical
behavior analysis as a profession. Part of the reason for this lies in the non-​behavior-​analytic publications in which
much of the work appeared, and part lies in the complexity of the work itself. Goldiamond was one of the earliest
advocates of a functional analytic approach to behavior. Indeed, his 1967 textbook, which was recently published
in slightly edited and revised form (2004, Andronis, Ed.) by the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies was
titled The Functional Analysis of Behavior. He later extended that work to a very sophisticated nonlinear func-
tional analysis that provides a unique perspective on understanding complex behavior, and particularly behavior
of clinical significance. Equipped with this analysis, behavior analysts can understand, treat, and make sense of
the seemingly irrational or maladaptive patterns observed in the clinic without resort to hypothetical mediating
variables such as emotional avoidance, governance by self-​generating misrules, or defective cognitions. This paper
is an attempt to provide the foundation of the approach through the personal journey of Israel Goldiamond. It is
necessarily circumspect, leaving out much of his work and interests in favor of emphasizing that which is most
relevant to the current topic. (For a broader treatment of Goldiamond’s impact on behavior analysis, see Gimenez,
Layng, & Andronis, 2003.)
  This is the scientific journey that led one of behavior analysis’ greatest thinkers to his many discoveries, and to
his scientifically derived and compassionate constructional approach to human problems based on a nonlinear
contingency analysis. This nonlinear analysis provides the basis for sophisticated topical and systemic interper-
sonal, social, and societal interventions.
  I thank Paul Andronis, Lincoln Gimenes, Russell Layng, Zachary Layng, Marta Leon, Charles Merbitz, Edward
Morris, Joanne Robbins, Jesús Rosales-​Ruiz, Melinda Sota, and Janet Twyman for their encouragement and very
helpful comments.
  Address correspondence to the author at 4705 S. Dakota St., Seattle, Washington 98118 (e-​mail: joe@headsprout.
com).
1 A graduate student somehow lost the data for all but one of the subjects run by Goldiamond and Dyrud, so the
results of these experiments would never be published. Still, they had had their effect on Goldiamond, which is
why the description is included here. Goldiamond was fond of describing the precise details of these experiments,
and there were some attempts to replicate them in nonpsychatric settings, but they were never completed.
2 Several papers from this period describe applications of this emerging nonlinear approach; see for example,
Goldiamond (1970, 1974a), Layng, Merley, Cohen, Andronis, and Layng (1976), and Merley and Layng (1976).
Goldiamond encouraged his students to investigate other related behavior-​analytic work from the period that
could be considered to fall into a subcategory of his nonlinear formulation such as research into the matching law
(Herrnstein, 1961) and its derivations (Baum, 1974). Goldiamond also encouraged his students to read work from
other disciplines that analyzed complex nonlinear relations; these included sociology’s exchange theory (Homans,
1958), anthropology’s transactionalism (Barth, 1969), economics’ game theory (von Neuman & Morgenstern,
1944), and psychology’s decision theory (Lee, 1973).
3 Just as nondiscriminative avoidance may seem difficult to understand in the laboratory without postulating
escape from increasing anxiety or fear, there is a similar appeal to employing escape from some internal feeling
or thought as an explanation for some behaviors observed in the clinic. Both are predictable outcomes of a linear
contingency analysis. But if one takes a nonlinear or alternative sets approach and asks, “What happens to the rat
if the bar is not pressed?,” one soon realizes that all behaviors other than bar pressing are candidates for shock,
a form of differential punishment of other behavior (DPO), the converse of differential reinforcement of other
behavior (DRO). In DRO, all behaviors other than the target behavior are candidates for reinforcement, and the
target behavior decreases. A two-​factor account of DRO might suggest that elation may build as the timer times
down to consequence delivery, the occurrence of the target behavior interrupts the elation, thereby punishing the
target behavior. To bring it into correspondence with more recent approaches, perhaps the target behavior comes
to signal a period of no reinforcement, and that signal becomes the punisher. None of these explanations may be
required when the pattern is considered to be a function of the joint effect of the consequential arrangement on
76 APPENDIX A

all classes of behavior. A nonlinear contingency analysis leaves us with sensible rats: bar pressing yields no shock;
doing something else receives shock (DPO); bar pressing yields no food, doing something else receives food
(DRO). (For a more technical description of these relations and their relation to other laboratory observations,
see Goldiamond, 1975a.)
4 This formulation overlaps with one described by Skinner (1953), which considers emotions as by-​products of
behaving under certain circumstances, but it differs in its specificity in regard to how changes in emotions pre-
cisely describe changes in contingencies, and in the distinction between emotion and emotional behavior.
5 No surveys, emotional indexes, or other mental tests were used. Years of psychophysical research have shown
these indicators to be highly unreliable. The reader will recall the correspondence in the survey responses of
college students to the survey responses of what pilots felt in combat. Patient verbal behavior can change such that
words indicating satisfaction may increase in frequency and come to more closely correspond to survey entries
indicating improvement (the score sheet). One form of therapy may be judged more successful than another if it
produces more matches to a specified “measurement instrument” than another therapy. Change the score sheet,
and the result might reverse. As Goldiamond was fond of saying, “insight is achieved when the patient describes
his or her behavior as the therapist would.”

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 Index

Note: Page numbers in italics indicate figures and in bold indicate tables on the corresponding pages.

abstractional control 10–​12, 12, 65–​66 contingency history 10, 23, 24

affect 9 cross-​directional movement 52–​53
alternative programs 35, 35, 38–​39 cultural inheritance 33–​36; culturally available alternatives
Andronis, P. T. vii, 65 35, 35; novel programing for standard outcomes 35–​36;
attachment theory 37 parental persistence with standard programs 34–​35
awareness and contingencies 9–​12, 10
Azrin, N. 38–​39, 62, 63, 64, 67, 68, 75 Darwin, C. 15–​16, 37
Delgado, J. M. R. 32, 33
behavior analysis 3 delusions 65, 73
behavior patterns: cultural inheritance of 33–​36; deprivation 6–​7, 7, 24, 28, 60
importance of verbal 69–​72; programing disturbing dimensional control 65–​66
and undisturbing contingencies of 36–​48; sources of disturbing behaviors 38–​40; blackmail contingencies
current repertoires of 31–​33 42–​43; choice of symptoms 44–​45; garbage patterns
biological evolution as cognate system 15–​18 43; individual matrices 41, 45; matrices involving
blackmail contingencies 42–​44 metaphors 41, 46; mutual disturbance 42; outbreak
Bower, G. H. 18–​19, 37 matrices 43–​44; preempted deficit 41–​42; social
breeding and natural selection 17–​18 matrices 40–​41, 45; verbal behavior and 69–​72
Dyrud, J. 53, 62, 64, 65–​66
Chance, P. 68
cognate consequential systems 13–​15, 14; biological emotions, behavior, and contingencies 8–​9, 67
evolution as 15–​18 Estes, W. K. 63
Collier, G. F. 22 exchange theory 13
consequences, maintaining 21
consequential (operant) paradigm 24–​26 Fairweather, G. W. 22–​23, 40
consequential relations 3, 5; biological evolution as functional behavior analysis 64
cognate system 15–​18; cognate consequential systems
in social science 13–​15, 14; other systems 12–​18 gambling 7, 51
constructional approach 20, 39, 40, 47, 48, 50, 51, 53, garbage patterns 43, 45
54, 66–​67 genetic induction of behavior patterns 32, 34
consulting room contingencies 50, 52 Gilbert, R. M. 16, 33
contingencies: awareness and 9–​10, 10; behavior patterns Glenn, S. 74
relations to 33; consulting room 50; disturbing behavior Goldiamond, I. 42–​43, 52–​53, 58, 59, 74; on
38–​45; emotions, behavior, and 8–​9, 67; labeling constructional approach and nonlinear versus linear
51–​52; l’envoi 53–​54; of pathological ideology and analysis 66–​67; emerging clinical insights of 62–​63;
alternatives 50–​54; patient support 50–​51; programing extension of functional behavior analysis to clinical
disturbing and undisturbing 36–​48; programing of 19; treatment by 64; graduate work at University of
relations of program history to 23–​24, 24; supporting Chicago 59–​62; on importance of verbal behavior
cross-​directional movement 52–​53 69–​72; patient as coinvestigator in analyzing nonlinear
80 INDEX

relations and planning topical and systemic treatment physiologically induced sources of behavior patterns 32
67–​69; on role of emotion in clinical behavior p.i. 19, 20, 29, 31, 36, 40, 45, 47, 48, 49
analysis 67; signal-​detection theory (SDT) and 60–​62; potentiation 7, 29, 66
stimulus classes and abstractional, instructional, and potentiating variables 24–​25
dimensional control in the clinic 65–​66; on topical and preempted deficit 41–​42
systemic interventions 72–​74 Principles of Psychology 59
private events 8, 20, 24, 54, 61
hallucinations 43, 62, 65, 69, 70, 73 programing disturbing and undisturbing contingencies
Harford, R. 9 36–​48; contingencies of disturbing behavior 38–​45;
Hawkins, W. 58, 60 problems to understanding 37–​38; programs for mental
Hefferline, R. F. 9 health/​illness 45–​48
Hilgard, E. R. 18–​19, 37 programs/​programing: behaviors 34; histories of
Holz, W. 28, 60, 63, 68 behavior patterns 31; for mental health/​illness 45–​48;
and paradigms in radical behaviorism 18–​26, 24;
individual matrices of disturbing behavior 41, 45 procedures 34
individual psychotherapy 22–​23 purposiveness and teleology 16–​17
instructions, instructional control, and abstraction 10–​12,
12, 25, 28, 65–​66, 70, 71 radical behaviorism 1–​2; as application of evolutionary
model to behavior 16; comparative treatments of
Keehn, J. D. 22, 33, 41, 51 motivation and 6–​7, 7; distinguished from traditional
Keenan, B. 9 behaviorism 3, 6–​7; implications for mental health
Keller, F. S. 10, 59 20–​23; implications for paradigm 23–​26, 24; natural
selection and breeding and 17–​18; operationism and
labeling contingencies 51–​52 inner events in 8–​12; other consequential systems
language programing 36 12–​18; p.i. as educational extension of 49; programing
Layng. T. V. J. vii, 58, 65 and paradigms in 18–​26, 24; purposiveness and
l’envoi 53–​54 teleology and 16–​17; reactive and consequential
relations in 3–​5
matrices: individual 41, 45; of metaphors 41, 46; rationality 13–​14, 14, 46
outcome 43–​44; social 40–​41, 45 reactive formulation 3–​5; antecedent stimuli in 5; linear
mental illness/​health: behavior contingency analysis causality of 4
of 37; defined 1, 3; problems to understanding 37; reflexive sources of behavior patterns 31–​32
programs for 45–​48; radical behaviorism and 1–​2, repertoires, current usable 21; sources of 31–​33
20–​23; as social and individual problem 38 Rogers, C. 62
metaphors 41, 46, 65, 67 rules 11, 12, 14, 54, 70, 75
Moss, N. A. 37
motivation of behavior 6–​7, 7 schedule-​induced behavior 32–​33
mutual disturbance 42, 46 schizophrenia 18, 21, 23, 36, 42–​43, 68–​70, 74
Schoenfeld, W. N. 10, 59
natural selection and breeding 17–​18 sequence of change procedures 21
Nazi Germany 1 Sidman, M. 19, 20, 37, 62–​63, 71
nonlinear versus linear analysis 66–​67; patient as Sidman, R. 20
coinvestigator in 67–​69 signal-​detection theory (SDT) 28, 60–​62, 64, 66
novel programing for standard outcomes 35–​36 Skinner, B. F. 1, 3, 5–​6, 8, 9, 11, 13, 15–​16, 19, 20,
26–​27, 37, 49, 63, 70–​71, 73, 75
Obsessions 21–​22, 41, 45, 47 social ideology 49–​50
operationism and inner events 8–​12; awareness and social matrices of disturbing behavior 40–​41, 45
contingencies 9–​10, 10; emotions, behavior, and social movements 49–​50
contingencies 8–​9; instructions, instructional control, societal contingencies of the pathology model:
and abstraction 10–​12, 12 contingencies of pathological ideology and alternatives
outbreak matrices 43–​44 50–​54; individual social selection parallel and 49–​50
outcomes or targets 20–​21; novel programing for Somfay, S. A. 22
standard 35–​36 species (behavior) problem 15–​16
standard programs, parental persistence with 34–​35
parental persistence with standard programs 34–​35 symptoms, choice of disturbing behavior 44–​45
pathological ideology, contingency of 50–​54
patient as coinvestigator 67–​69 Thomas, J. 59, 62
patient support contingencies 50–​51 traditional behaviorism: comparative treatments of
phobias 21, 41, 66–​67, 68 motivation and 6–​7, 7; distinguished from radical
INDEX 81

behaviorism 3, 6–​7; operationism and inner unilinear contingency analysis 38–​39

events in 8–​12; other consequential
systems 12–​18 Valenstein, E. 32, 38
transactional analysis 28 verbal behavior 11, 27, 43, 45, 62, 64, 69–​72, 73, 75–​76
transactional theory 13
Travis, M. 72 Weiner, H. 10, 23