B. F. Skinner's Radical Behaviorism: Historical Misconstructions and Grounds for Feminist Reconstructions

Feminist critiques of traditional psychological approaches have generated thorough feminist revisions most notably in psychoanalytic and developmental theory. Although behaviorism has attracted strong objections from feminist critics, claims of its antithetical positioning vis-a-vis feminist theory construction have practically remained unchallenged. A preliminary step in formulating 'grounds for a synthesis is to clarify the multiple meanings of behaviorism. Specifically, the fusion of Watson's methodological behaviorism and Skinner's radical behaviorism in the literature must be disentangled in order to address the latter's potential as a conceptual framework for constructing feminist theory. Key conceptual features of radical behaviorism that suggest its potential as a vehicle for building a feminist epistemology include: radical behaviorism's contextualistic world view, its interpretation of agency, its treatment of private experience and self knowledge, and its understanding of the pivotal functions of the verbal community. The growing impact of feminist scholarship across disciplines has forced psychology to address critiques that point to the limitations of traditional psychological approaches and call for feminist alternatives. Behaviorism, with its historical roots in logical positivism, is among those traditional models that have attracted some of the strongest objections by feminist critics (e.g. Kaschak; 1992, Unger, 1989). The spirit of these objections is concisely captured in Unger's (1988) reflection that "The juxtaposition of the words 'behaviorism' and 'the study of women' seems to some of us to be a contradiction in terms" (p. 125). But unlike other models that have also been targeted for feminist revisions, such as psychoanalysis (e.g. Chodorow, 1978; Flax, 1978; Keller, 1985) and developmental theory (e.g. Burman, 1992; Gilligan, 1982), the claims of behaviorism's antithetical positioning vis a vis feminist research and theory construction have, for all practical purposes, remained unchallenged. A notable exception has been the work by Lott (1990, 1991) and Lott and Maluso (1993), which presents a persuasive arguement for the compatibility of social learning theory and feminist psychology. The first step in formulating grounds for a synthesis between contemporary behaviorism and feminist scholarship is to recognize that behaviorism is not a monolithic psychological model, and begin to disentangle the multiple meanings that obscure the boundaries of individual behavioral models subsumed under the generic