Abstract

Behaviorism died very slowly in American psychology. Willing to admit only stimuli and responses, narrowly defined, as the contents of its science, it was too limited to be useful in understanding higher organisms. But it seemed for decades to be the only way to eliminate subjectivism and to make psychology scientific. Cracks in behaviorist orthodoxy began to appear 40 years ago, though physiological psychologists never felt themselves bound by its restrictions. By the 1960s psychologists were openly espousing a new 'cognitive' psychology, admitting to internal states and a mental life beyond overt behavior. It was a step forward, but the block diagrams of the cognitive psychologists still had a stimulus on one end and a response on the other, just like those of the old-fashioned behaviorists. Consciousness, the great problem that got psychology started, was still viewed with alarm as the purview of charlatans and worse.