1940's Medicine and Health | Skinner, B. F. 1904-1990

AMERICA'S PREEMINENT BEHAVIORAL
PSYCHOLOGIST

Literature's Loss Is Psychology's Gain.

B. F. Skinner, the foremost behavioral psychologist in the United States, first imagined a career for himself as an author of fiction and poetry. In his senior year at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, he sent some short stories to the poet Robert Frost. Frost's response, "I ought to say you have the touch of art," encouraged the young Skinner to spend the year following his graduation writing short stories at his parents' home in Scranton, Pennsylvania. His discovery of "the unhappy fact that I had nothing to say" led him to go on to graduate school in psychology, "hoping to remedy that shortcoming." During his undergraduate days at Hamilton, Skinner had read an English translation of Ivan Pavlov's Conditioned Reflexes and the philosopher Bertrand Russell's articles on behaviorism. Also inspired by John B. Watson's work...