Survey
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
This Week’s Citation Classic I L \ !.‘ ~ Breger L & McGaughJ L. Critique and reformulation of “learning-theory” approaches to psychotherapy and neurosis. Psycho!. Bull. 63:338-58, 1965. (Univ. Oregon, Eugene, OR and Univ. Calilornia, Irvine. CA] learning theory’ esplanations of neuroses “What we found in the literature was and treatment techniques based on condi- worse than we anticipated What was called tioning models were critically reviewed. The ‘modern learning theory’ consisted of an theories of learning used by behavior thera- amalgam of outmoded classical.~conditioning models Learning was equated with pists were shown to be invalid and out of date. Their claims for the success of treat- peripheral response acquisition and all the ment were vitiated by a variety of uncon- laboratory work that demonstrated the trolled and biasing factors. (The Science necessity of central mediators (schemas, 5 plans, cognitive maps) was ignored The Citation Index! (SC! 5I and the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCIi) indicate behavior therapists were using a model of that this paper has been cited over 185 times learning to explain complex human behavsince 1965.) ior that could not explain the behavior of rats in mazes We presented all thi nd argued strongly for a cognitive or sch a theory. Louis Breger “In addition to the theoretical inadeDivision of Humanities and Social Sciences quacies, the behavior therapy movement California Institute of Technologs was characterized by a curious contrast between claims to scientific status, on the one Pasadena. CA 91125 hand, and grossly unscientific procedures (loose and shifting use of concepts, poorly October 14, 1981 controlled studies), on the other We pointed out that simply using words like ‘oh“In the early-1960s. my colleague lames iectve,’ ‘experimental,’ and ‘controlled’ did McCaugh and were both teaching in the not make one’s work scientific and we psychology department of the University of called on those in the field to live up to their Oregon Jim was trained in the Tolman tradi- own standards. tion at the University of California. “As one might expect, our article aroused Berkeley; he was an experimental psycholo- a good deal of controversy There were gist with a deep appreciation ot the com- rebuttals and counterrebuttals, the hardplexities of human learning and memory I liners ignored it (or didn’t understand the was a psychoanalytically oriented clinical argument), and those already suspicious of psychologist, interested in psychological behavior therapy welcomed it. And there disturbance and psychotherapy At that were a number of people working within the time, several of our colleagues began to behaviorist movement who were strongly inespouse the virtues of the ‘new behavior fluenced by our arguments Theory has clearly moved toward a cognitive model therapy. both that stemming from Wolpe, Eysenck, and their ilk, and the Skinnerian and claims for success are more temperate operant conditioning approach. At first we “My own subsequent work has continued found their enthusiasm hard to compre- along two of the lines laid down in the artihend; they seemed to have rediscovered lust cle. I have used a cognitive or schema those aspects of John B Watson’s be- model-—for instance in my paper on dream 1 haviorism that had long been proven in- tunction in information processing terms — a model which then expanded into a wider adequate (by Karl Lashley in the 1930s for instance). Our discussions failed to per- concern with symbolism, meaning, and the interpretation of human experience And I suade them and behavior therapy seemed to continue to analyze theory from an outside be growing, so we decided to do a thorough or critical perspective, most recently in my review of the area and detail our findings in book on Freud “2 an article. 1. Bieger L. Function of dreams. I. Abnormal Psychol. 72:1-28, 1967. -..-Freud’s unfinished journey: conventional and c-mica! perspectives in psychoanalytic theory. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981. 145 p. 2. 20 S&BS CURRENT CONTENTS i982bviSi