A new book has rekindled old rumours that renowned psychologist BF Skinner used his baby daughter in his experiments. end this nonsense approximately me and my dad,says Deborah Skinner BuzanBy the time I had finished reading the Observer this week, I was shaking. There was a review of Lauren Slater's new book approximately my father, or BF Skinner. According to Opening Skinner's Box: worthy Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century,my father, who was a psychologist based at Harvard from the 1950s to the 90s, and "used his infant daughter,Deborah, to prove his theories by putting her for a few hours a day in a laboratory box . . . in which all her needs were controlled and shaped". But it's not proper. My father did nothing of the sort. I have heard the lies before, and but seeing them in black and white in a respected Sunday newspaper felt as if somebody had punched me hard in the stomach. Admittedly,the facts of my unusual upbringing sound dodgy: esteemed psychologist BF Skinner, who puts rats and pigeons in experimental boxes to study their behaviour, and also puts his baby daughter in a box. This is superior fodder for any newspaper. There was a prominent Harvard psychologist whose daughter was psychotic and had to be institutionalised; but it wasn't my father. Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com