The foreword to this book suggests that the analysis of behaviour started out as something quite separate from psychology. It might be more accurate to say that half-a-century or so ago; American psychology was dominated by two diametrically opposed approaches which have only gradually and grudgingly come to accept each other's strengths. On the one hand there were those who, following Freud, studied the workings of the human mind without considering the fact that that there was a physical or organic basis for the mind's activities, and on the other, there were those following Pavlov and B.F. Skinner who studied the behaviour of organisms, ignoring, or in extreme cases, denying any role for the mind at all. The fact that this excellent handbook appears under the auspices of the American Psychological Association, and that most of the 100 plus contributors are professors in American university psychology departments, suggests that a cease-fire has finally been declared in this curious civil war.
The first volume of this set is devoted to methods and principles, and the second to practical applications. Although there is a distinction, the division cannot be a sharp one. Behaviour analysis is one of the most easily applied approaches in psychology – the gap between modifying an organism's behaviour to see what happens and modifying its behaviour in order to make something happen is very narrow, so the chapter on behavioural pharmacology in volume one (Methods and Principles), for example, could have easily slotted into volume two (Translating Principles Into Practice).
A large proportion of volume one is devoted to various aspects of single-case research design. This is an important topic and I am glad to see it here. Some psychologists have become so obsessed with Galton's dictum “if you can, count” that they completely forget what to do in situations where statistical analysis of large samples is not relevant. I would recommend these chapters to psychological researchers of all descriptions. The remainder of that volume consists of chapters on Pavlovian conditioning, operant behaviour, an all too brief section on behavioural neuroscience, the aforementioned chapter on behavioural pharmacology (again, rather brief. The neuroscience of behaviour and the effect of drugs on behaviour are neatly summarised here, but are important topics that the next generation of psychologists ought to be getting their teeth into, and need greater coverage), plus chapters on stimulus control, self-control, aversion, operant variability, etc.
The second volume is, in my opinion, the more interesting and important of the two. Although psychoanalysis was started by professional healers, psychoanalysts became much more interested in simply studying thoughts. Behaviour analysts, by contrast, consider thoughts to be dependent variables rather than independent variables, so they do not see the need to alter the occurrence or content of thoughts in order to achieve therapeutic outcomes. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) is undoubtedly the most well-known therapy to have emerged from behaviour analysis; a chapter on choice models leads neatly into an important discussion of behavioural economics, for example. Classical economics is fairly nonsensical as it takes no account of the realities of human behaviour. A consideration of this topic ought to be required reading for every economic policy maker. This section also contains a couple of important chapters on environmental behaviour, including a fascinating correlation of the decrease in airborne lead from car exhausts with the noted decline in violent crime rates. There is something dehumanising in the realisation that not breathing lead fumes at the age of five makes you statistically less likely to indulge in irrational violence at age 20, but the figures are clear. I missed any discussion of some of the less savoury aspects of the application of behaviour analysis – what used to be known as “brainwashing” when done by hostile governments.
The final section of the book consists of chapters on behavioural approaches to specific applied or clinical issues: intellectual & developmental disabilities; autism; verbal behaviour; severe problem behaviour; attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder; sleep (I am a bit dubious about this one: B.F. Skinner may have regarded sleep as “a special form of behaviour” but really there are too many other factors involved. Nevertheless there are behavioural treatments for sleep disorders which have been shown to be effective). Also in this section are two odd chapters on organizational behaviour and on the contribution of behaviour analysis to higher education. This last seems to have fallen out of favour in recent years: 50 years ago there was a strong interest in programmed learning and personalized systems of instruction. With the expansion of mass higher education and the extraordinary changes in the technology of delivering educational material in recent years, the time has perhaps come for a reinvestigation of this field. Finally there is a clear but very succinct chapter on behavioural gerontology. I am deeply interested in methods of helping old people live out their lives effectively, partly because I am an old person myself, and partly because I have recently had to examine two extremes: the counselling/caregiving approach to old people (Guha, 2012a), and the severely technological approach (Guha, 2012b). Treatments based on behaviour analysis fit very neatly between these two. Given that there are so many of us, it is rather annoying to be squeezed into one brief final chapter when so much space is expended on children and adolescents, but at least we are in there.
No reference book is perfect. There are what seems to me to be omissions and imbalances here. Nevertheless, I do not know of a better introductory text on what is an important strand in psychological thinking. The book hangs together well: some handbooks read like separate papers, but this one can be read through as a text. All the chapters are well-referenced, though suggestions for further reading might have been useful for student purposes. The index works. Academic libraries catering for courses in psychology or psychiatry should seriously consider this for acquisition. Libraries catering for subjects as diverse as economics or environmental science should be aware that behavioural analysis can be used as a tool to explain much of what happens in their fields.
