The misbehaviorists

"The misbehaviorists" by Harvey Wickham is a work of cultural criticism written in the early 20th century. It challenges the vogue of behaviorism, Freudian psychoanalysis, and mechanistic materialism, arguing that these movements trade on the prestige of science while reducing mind, freedom, and morality to mere mechanism. With a polemical yet analytic style, it targets influential figures and ideas to defend consciousness, purpose, and religious tradition against reductive theories. The opening of this work contrasts the sensed death of the poetic-religious past with the assertive authority of modern science, asking whether science truly describes reality and whether its public interpreters are reliable. It then scrutinizes behaviorism: presenting John B. Watson’s rejection of consciousness, outlining receptors–neurons–effectors, reflex arcs, and conditioned reflexes (including the “Little Albert” experiment), and insisting that such accounts leave out mind, choice, and meaning. Wickham examines the synapse as the supposed mechanistic selector, criticizes appeals to habit and chance, and contests efforts to reduce emotions and language to mere motions or “sub-vocal speech,” highlighting ethical implications in proposals for laboratory-style child-rearing and the discouragement of parental affection. The section closes by turning to William McDougall’s instinct theory, showing how its “hormic” impulses also risk determinism even as it gestures toward a vitalist account of will.

The misbehaviorists, by Harvey Wickham. Republished by OpenStories from Project Gutenberg eBook #77481.