When I am reflecting on the field of mental health, I often arrive at a point in my reflection where I ask the question, “How did we arrive at this point in time-related to mental health”? My intention behind this question is to continue to better understand why at times trauma is viewed the way it is by society. Like many psychological constructs, trauma has unique properties. These properties have a unique way of being experienced by a human being. Informing another person that someone suffers from trauma is distinct from a person describing their trauma story, from their experience. One of the major challenges that trauma researchers and therapists have faced throughout time comes from the Behaviorism tradition. I want to talk about how the psychological science of behaviorism impacts the field of trauma. My hope is to show readers some major reasons why trauma can often be “dismissed.”
A key figure who helped create behaviorism is B.F. Skinner. Skinner, American Psychologist and Social Philosopher who studied Psychology at Harvard University wanted to create a theory about Psychology where a person’s mind could be explained completely by physical events and occurrences. Skinner did not believe that a person possessed mental events like “being sad”, “being angry”, etc. He wanted to find a way to study behavior that was objective and measurable. A person’s experience is challenging to measure, according to Skinner.[1] Skinner was heavily influenced by John B. Watson, the founding father of behaviorism. Although studying Watson is recommended, Skinner seems to generate more influence when referring to behaviorism. I chose to connect behaviorism to Skinner for this reason-please, read Watson’s work related to behaviorism too! Moving on, we can already begin to see that psychological trauma would be perceived differently through the lens of Skinner. This Harvard professor had a significant influence on psychology for many decades to come.
Behaviorism traces its roots to the philosophical movement known as Logical Positivism (LP). [2] LP says that all words and sentences used in science must be understood in terms of observation that verify the truth. Behavior can be explained without making any reference to a mental event. How a behavior evolves, and changes related to environmental factors, nothing internal; a person’s mental concepts are altered into behavioral terms. “I arrived at the dentist appointment” is not a belief because beliefs cannot be explained in behavioral terms. I cannot identify the belief about my arrival at the dentist’s office without referring to my actual attendance in the building in the dentist’s office. You are not able to look “inside” my mind and locate the belief that I plan to attend an appointment with my dentist. So, I will not treat a belief as to the cause of arrival to the dentist. Trauma can be described by a behavioralist but a behavioralist will find a way to “reduce” mental thoughts about trauma down to ideas explained by a person’s behavior. A person’s experience of trauma may be dismissed as a result, sadly. I change the behavior and the trauma “goes away.”
To explain the origins of behavior, any discussion about a person’s experience is replaced by a reference to physical events in the environment. In the same vein, all references to thoughts and to thoughts or ideas are eliminated and replaced in favor of references to responses or over behavior.[3] Of course, discussing whether someone believes she is sad is important only when conducting psychological experiments. The data that is collected on why a person becomes sad is only explained in behavioral terms. If I want little Susie to read her afternoon book, I simply need to give her a piece of chocolate before and after she reads her afternoon book. The concern of whether she intends to get anything out of the reading is not observed or can be explained in behavioral terms, so it is not important. Susie is not learning how to read a book; she is identifying a relationship that exists between reading a book and receiving a piece of chocolate. What Susie processes in her mind is not important. What is important is how to predict and control Susie’s behavior continually.
Behavioralists translate all events by what can be observed. One more way to think about this claim is I observe a child fall off a bike and begin to cry. From a behavioralist view, I observe a child in distress by evidence of seeing a child crying. The crying itself does not lead me to make the conclusion that the child is in distress. My hypothesis is the child cries and is distressed because other children who are in similar situations display similar behavior. Distress, then, is determined by a comparison of other children in a similar situation who display similar behaviors. The behavioralist will not entertain what is “going on inside” the mind of that same child. Behavior and studying the mind lead to unscientific conclusions. Any psychological hypothesis must be supported by behavioral evidence.[4] Trauma is a psychological disorder that creates a dilemma for behaviorism.
Psychology must not concern itself with mental states or events or with creating internal information processing accounts of behavior, according to behavioralists. Sticking with my story of the child falling from the bike, the behavioralist would not ask this child to describe why the child is crying. Sure, a behavioralist is still human; she would make sure the child is safe and doing okay, checking for major injuries. However, the intention of her questions does not stem from studying the child’s personal experience related to her injury. The behavioralist’s main goal is to discover how this child normally acts in comparative situations; this helps determine how to explain the behavior this child shows on the ground after falling off the bike. Referencing the child’s mental state of why the child cries add nothing to what psychology can and should not understand about the sources of behavior.[5] Behavioralists will find a way to explain human and animal behavior in terms of physical effects. What type of data do you collect, then, when addressing psychological trauma?
Fast forward to 2022, behaviorism is alive and kicking. One of my clinical supervisors was trained within the behaviorist tradition. One of the main questions he enjoyed asking in supervision to all the interns was, “What is the function of that behavior?”. A question, like this one, frames his theory appropriately. He intends to point us in the direction of explaining our patient’s behavior only in behavioral terms. Trauma, as I have written elsewhere, strongly refutes this theory in mental health. Prioritizing the internal experience and creating a safe psychological space for a patient to return to trauma memories is a vital piece in allowing a patient to feel safe again in their own body. Healing someone’s mind cannot be explained in behavioral terms; often, for patients who first experience a trauma memory are unbearable enough. To invalidate this type of experience brings about shame and forms of guilt, sending the message to a person that your trauma is not real. Behaviorism may be beneficial in certain contexts to help support someone’s mental health research suggests. In my view, the pros do not outweigh the cons.
[1] Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia (2021). B.F. Skinner. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/B-F-Skinner
[2] Smith, L., 1986. Behaviorism and Logical Positivism: A Reassessment of Their Alliance, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
[3] Graham, George, “Behaviorism”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2019/entries/behaviorism/.
[4] Ibid
[5] Ibid
Clinical Complex Trauma Specialist (CCTS-1),
Certified Dialectical Behavioral Therapist (C-DBT),
Certified Alcohol & Drug Abuse Counseling (CADC)
Skinner actually did believe in mental events, what he called private events. He simply stated that they were not subject to scientific observation, were not causes of behavior but were coincidental to behavior, were caused by the same environmental-behavioral contingencies as behavior, and were not necessary to explain human behavior. Furthermore, he suggested that emotions were related to chemical changes in the body, the same thing Watson actually suggested in the so-called “behaviorist manifesto.” Private events are an important part of Radical Behaviorism in that they do guide the theoretical underpinnings of the school, but under the consideration that they are not observable. This is a common misconception of behaviorism, even more so Radical Behaviorism, and sadly hampers discussion and understanding of a very important school of thought.