Category: Psychology

Passive-Aggression

Because contemporary psychologists are so skittish about aggression, you see a lot of passive-aggressive behavior in our field. Passive-aggression is disguised to look like something else, even to the aggressor, in order to escape punishing consequences of disapproval and self-disapproval.

In a scholarly argument, one psychologist asserts, “X is the case.” Another psychologist says, “That’s one way to look at it, but I think X is not the case. I think Y is the case, and it only looks as if X is the case.” The first psychologist then summarizes the discussion by saying, “X is the case.” (I’m not making this up.)

In supervision where every session is supposed to be taped and potentially played for the supervisor, a trainee repeatedly forgets to bring DVDs or claims that the recorder failed. His oral reports of his sessions are vague and uniformly positive.

People can be so skittish about aggression that they equate aggression with interpersonal violence (just as people who are skittish about sex equate sex with rape or sin), but aggression also produces ambition, assertiveness, accomplishment, and standing up for what’s right. When my son was a baby and needed a shot, the doctor made us wait for a nurse to hold him down. “I’ll hold him,” I said. The doctor said, “You won’t hold him hard enough.” This story exemplifies the necessity of aggression in clinical care (and in parenting, but clinical care often requires a level of aggression that an untrained parent won’t provide).

Passive-aggression is a way to garner the rewards of aggression without engaging in behavior that looks outwardly aggressive. The rewards of aggression include a feeling of triumph (unfortunately vilified outside of organized sports); feelings of genuine self-esteem (that is, the feeling you have when deploying a skill, not the feeling you have when being complimented); damage to rivals in the form of injury, chagrin, or defeat; and signs of enhanced status. Passive-aggression can operate directly in obtaining these rewards, as when a therapist hurts patients by showing up late or not ending sessions on time (the latter often diminishes patients by defining them as too fragile to leave on time, and it sets them up to feel rejected and hurt when other limits are ultimately observed). Passive-aggression can also operate indirectly as a projective identification of anger in a context where getting angry is viewed as a loss of face or otherwise causes the angry person injury. If two Buddhist monks, proud of mastering themselves, are competing for an emblem of holiness, you can bet that one tries to make the other angry; certainly psychoanalysts do.

Projective identification is a method of managing unwanted feelings by getting other people to feel them—by exporting them. There’s no magic to this. If you are uncomfortable about your own anger, you can drive slow in the left lane and enjoy the irritation it causes when you observe other drivers flashing their lights, honking their horns, and cutting you off. Their anger makes you seem less angry, downright benign by comparison, to other people and to yourself.

When a patient uses projective identification, the therapist becomes aware of an emotion not characteristic of her while she’s doing therapy. This gives her some choices on how to manage the situation (typically, metacommunication, interpretation, or “metabolization”). When you receive a projective identification of anger outside of therapy, you are usually spinning too many other plates to be reflective, and you are likely to respond aggressively. If you do so in a context that is skittish about aggression, you lose.

Passive-aggression is usually motivated by the person’s horror at being perceived as aggressive. I used to have a cottage industry as a college counselor reminding Catholic students that Jesus got angry in the temple (Matthew 21:12) and also withered a fig tree in a fit of pique (Matthew 21:18-22), trying to soften my clients’ self-punitive responses to their own aggression. Don’t get me started on Jesus’s promise to the disciples that if they have enough faith, they can go around destroying stuff too—whoever thought that Grand Theft Auto was Christian?

Because the primary motivation behind passive-aggression is to garner the rewards of aggression without the label, the best response is usually to call it what it is (outside of therapy; within therapy, as noted, there are more therapeutic responses available). “It would seem that you have obliterated my point of view. Are you angry with me?” “Your behavior seems to be damaging the supervision. Are you angry with me?” Unfortunately, I have not been able to come up with these kinds of statements when I am angry. Frankly, they seem passive-aggressive to me, attempts to win while appearing non-aggressive. So I lose most of the contests I get into over who is most like a lamb and least like a human. Oh, well.

Turn in the Direction of the Skid

This old driving advice is the tagline of my blog. What does it mean?

When the rear of the car slides to one side, your impulse might be to slam on the brakes and grab the steering wheel to brace yourself. This resistance worsens the skid, and soon you’ll be careening down the road sideways or even backward. Instead, the thing to do is to turn towards the skid, after which you can drive normally.

We mess ourselves up by fighting life’s skids or by merely resigning ourselves to them. Embrace your fate, said Nietzsche. If you don’t get the internship of your choice, the mate you are crushed out on, or the physical health you once had, you will only make things worse by imagining otherwise and refusing to move on. Grab your remaining abilities, your next mate who will return your love, the work you can actually get, and enjoy the wild ride. This is what is meant by the Buddhist idea that what really counts is the grace with which we let go of things not meant for us. Of course, I resist the “meant for,” but the idea is the same without the fatalism. It’s what Kipling meant by saying that the saddest words of all are “what might have been.”

Skids happen; if you embrace them, life will be an adventure instead of a tragedy. Turning towards the skid doesn’t mean passively drifting through life, any more than the Taoist ideal of wu-wei (avoid purposive action) is a call to complacency. Instead, the idea is that fighting reality (usually by imposing an idea onto it about how things ought to be) wears you down, interferes with your effectiveness, and irritates other people. Move deftly within the actual landscape, not the landscape you wish you were in. Consider Russia’s celebrated General Kutuzov, who defeated Napoleon by avoiding battles (except Borodino, which Kutuzov lost). How is it possible to defeat the greatest army on earth by avoiding battles? Read War and Peace to find out.

“Turn in the direction of the skid” can also be read to mean, “Head toward slick areas.” If your goal is to get there without incident (fine for driving, but this is a metaphor), then dry roads will suit you. But if your goal is to become an expert driver or to live fully, look for icy patches.

Overpowering a skid is Apollinian in Nietzsche’s sense, admirably orderly and even beautiful, but tragically doomed to fail; turning with it is Dionysian, unplanned and uncontending, but vital and resilient. Why not be both? Celebrate order and chaos. (Our present culture has such vast pathologies of order and caution that I don’t need a reminder to value structure.) When hurt, don’t say, “You can’t hurt me”; say, “Ouch.” The latter expresses hurt but also, by demonstrating that the hurt is expressible, in Nietzsche’s phrasing that whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger (metaphor alert: syphilis didn’t make him stronger). If you have to take a punch, take it drunk (metaphor alert). Once you get good at rolling with the punches, you will seek them out, like a martial artist looking for improvement or engrossment by sparring with experts.

Rather than stick with the prior plan for steering, let the terrain guide the driver, the patient’s reactions guide the therapist, the child’s reactions guide the parent, and the beef guide the butcher. If you want to change the world, or even yourself, think judo, not boxing. Of course, if you want to dominate something you can actually control—like a stubborn lid on a pickle jar—go ahead and kick its butt, but if it’s alive, don’t be surprised if some day it kicks yours.

After driving in Michigan and New England most of my life with rear-wheel drive, I became proficient in snow and ice. I also developed an appreciation of the landscape by attending to the grade of the roads I was on. Now I have a heavy, four-wheel-drive Wrangler, and I have forgotten how to navigate slick spots. If you have an anti-skid device (metaphor), throw it away; it’s making you stupid. Anti-skid devices include not talking in class and already knowing how the therapy is going to unfold.

So make messes and clean them up. Don’t avoid making messes by claiming to be on top of things you can’t possibly be on top of (like other humans … or yourself). If you never skid, you’re not driving fast enough (metaphor!).

And that’s a basic aspect of the therapeutic frame, an implicit rule to explore the icy patches and, within the boundaries of the rest of the relational rules, to approach rather than resist the sense of confusion. (In fact, the rest of therapy’s rules help make icy roads into roller coasters and bumper cars.) Many people come for therapy because of the stress they feel from trying to control themselves as a result of living in situations that demand hyper-control. “Turn in the direction of the skid” is my way of remembering that it is impossible to tightly control complex systems. Human beings are complex symptoms.

Defending Your Parents

People use psychological maps to navigate situations. Some maps are like diagrams of how things stand, some are like small movies about what is likely to happen (these are called memories), and some are verbal guides telling you what to do or how the world works. In many situations, maps just get in the way, like following a recipe for the amount of salt to put in a stew instead of tasting and adjusting. In many situations, the problem is that you’re using the wrong the map, a map of how things used to be, of how to relate to different people in outmoded situations.

If you are using a map of Denver to get around Washington, it doesn’t take you long to realize that the map is no good. That is because the information on the map is fairly clear and the feedback you get from the Washington landscape is fairly clear. The street signs aren’t right, the landmarks aren’t right, and the sun isn’t even setting in the right direction when you’re driving on 14th Street. Psychological maps are harder to invalidate. Everyone agrees with a statement like, Hey, the Lincoln Memorial isn’t supposed to be there, but not everyone agrees with a statement like, Your righteousness is supposed to make other people obedient but it just irritates them.

The other big problem with psychological maps is that you’re attached to them. It’s as if you were personally a member of the Rand family, the McNally family, or the AAA family. To discard the map as erroneous is to question your loyalty to the people who gave you the map. In this respect, psychological growth is to family loyalty as science is to religion. Every new bit of knowledge derived from science contradicts some folk wisdom about how things work; when that folk wisdom is associated with loyalty to God or your family, it’s hard to relinquish.

The upshot is that people defend their parents from accusations of imperfection and incompetence by trashing the feedback from reality and sticking to the map. Ironically, the more incompetent the parent, the more the child idealizes him, since only the most incompetent parent insists he is always right. Also, competent parents produce children who don’t think their well-being is hanging by a thread, a thread held by the parent. When you are totally dependent on something, you have to believe it’s perfect.

Perhaps the most insidious way we defend our parents is by becoming the person who justifies their conduct. If they were brutal, we are annoying, proving as it were that anyone would treat us poorly (or we are equally brutal when annoyed, to prove that brutality is normal). If they were hyper-emotional, we obsessive-compulsively drive people to emotionality (or we’re equally emotional, to prove that’s the only way one can be). If they were domineering, we are childish (or equally domineering). If they were neglectful, we act as if we don’t need much, and neglect our own needs and insist that dependency is a form of whining. If they responded warmly only when we were brilliant, then we act as if brilliance is the only thing that matters. If they told us we were especially wonderful, then we bark at anyone who says we’re merely ordinary. You get the idea.

The greatest value in science is falsifiability, the acceptance of only those propositions that might not be right, that can be tested against reality. All other propositions are either tautologies or religious convictions. It’s true that some laws of nature become convictions, such as the conservation of energy in a closed system and the fact that punishment only seems to work to the punisher. But in science, even these convictions could ultimately be falsified. I sum up this scientific attitude in one word: oops. “Oops” captures the recognition of a mistake with an attitude of fixing it rather than devastation. This conveys the best approach to take when you realize your map, regardless of its origins, has led you astray. But it’s an attitude that develops best under robust parents who don’t get angry or defensive if questioned.

In therapy, the cure for tendencies developed to defend parents is not to join with the therapist in attacking parents. Instead, the cure is to have a therapist you don’t have to defend, a therapist who owns up to mistakes, explores rather than dictates your reactions, and takes your changing psychological states in stride. With such a therapist, you can discover who you are independent of having to protect someone else’s investment in who you are.

Morality Does Not Come From God

I think it’s best to reserve the word “unethical” for behavior that violates the written standards of a profession, the word “unprofessional” for behavior that violates the unwritten standards of a profession, and the word “immoral” for behavior that violates the standards of God. Since there is worldwide dispute about what God demands of us, I typically suggest that we not use the word, “immoral.” Instead, if someone does something you disapprove of, you can say you don’t like it.

Still, I acknowledge that there is another sensibility, one that I agree with, that is often associated with the words “ethical” and “moral.” This might be described as not exploiting others, or adhering to something like the Golden Rule or the categorical imperative. General rules like these don’t work in practice, however, because one person’s idea of exploiting others is another’s idea of expecting them to pay their fair share or do their duty. As for the Golden Rule, there are many people who don’t wish to be treated as I do. And a rule that I would recommend for all occasions may be one that you’d just hate. I’ve resisted such declarations of morality because as soon as you agree that forcible rape is immoral, someone somewhere will tell you that masturbation is, too. And then you’re back to personal opinions.

For now, though, I am assuming that when people claim that a belief in God grounds their morality, they mean by morality their reluctance to abuse, exploit, or harm others. I readily agree that the sort of morality meant by a disinclination to masturbate is rooted in faith. But now I am disputing the idea that treating other people well—that morality—is based on a belief in God.

If a man refrains from raping women because it’s wrong to do so in the eyes of God, I don’t want that man anywhere near me. I like men who would not rape a woman whether it was wrong or not, simply because of the effect on the woman. If a woman refrains from beating a child because it is wrong, I don’t want that woman anywhere near my grandson. I don’t want him to have to cope with her rage or her experience of him as beating-worthy whether or not she acts on them. I don’t really think that people who believe that morality is based on religion construe themselves and others as rapacious, brutal sociopaths who needs strict rules to keep them in line. It’s a cute argument, but the truth is that people who believe that morality comes from God just haven’t thought it through. They associate good behavior with images of Jesus or passages in the Koran or the temple in which kindness was praised; they connect their good intentions with associated images.

Morality comes from empathy and identification, not faith. [Behavioral aside: People act morally in this sense as a result of reinforcement of prosocial behavior. The well-being of others becomes a conditioned reinforcer.] If you appreciate the harm done to others, and if you see them as members of your group (as objects of your concern), you won’t hurt them; you won’t want to hurt them. We learn empathy and identification by being empathized with and identified with, and we apply empathy and identification to others according to lessons we are taught about who is in our group and who is not. That’s why gang members can treat each other exceedingly well and outsiders exceedingly poorly—ditto for members of a religion. One way to understand the members of PETA is that they identify with animals almost as much as they identify with humans, so for them, it is immoral to mistreat a pig. I don’t know how I feel about that, because I definitely believe that we are pretty closely related to pigs, but eating them just doesn’t bother me. I know how I feel about other humans though. They are all in my group, objects of my concern.

If you pee in the pool and your dad reproaches you, you stop peeing in the pool when your dad’s watching you, but we don’t really consider that to be moral behavior. You’re worried about getting caught, not concerned with the well-being of the other swimmers. If someone who cannot possibly get caught goes to the trouble of getting out of the pool, drying off, getting to the bathroom, and returning to the pool, that’s what we mean by morality. It’s not moral if you act that way only when you’re being watched. If you believe in a God who watches everything you do, then far from being a basis for morality, the presence of God makes it impossible to be truly moral.

Milgram’s Subjects Were Right

In a famous experiment you probably studied in school, Stanley Milgram demonstrated the average person’s obedience to authority by inducing two-thirds of his subjects to administer what they believed were extremely painful shocks to other subjects in what they believed was a memory training exercise. None of the subjects checked on the welfare of the screaming and moaning “subject” in the next room; none demanded that the experiment end. Milgram wondered if the Nazi horrors were partly explained by widespread obedience to authority, in this case a scientist in a white lab coat, even when instructed to do something that conflicted with the person’s value system. Generally, the experiment stands for the proposition that either New Haven adults at the time are too obedient to authority or, for the less squeamish, for the proposition that we all are too obedient to authority. “Obedience to authority” might be translated as a belief that the authority knows better than the individual how to behave.

Here’s another interpretation of the results: When someone who is clearly a bona fide scientist assures you that no harm will come from a procedure, you can trust science over your own lying eyes. The great, often overlooked fact about Milgram’s experiment is that, indeed, no harm came to the apparently suffering person in the next room—the scientist could be trusted after all. In other words, the belief that scientists know better than the individual remains true after the experiment in which, as advertised, no one was hurt.

Science is always telling us things about the world that conflict with our own perceptions—the molecular composition of ordinary objects, the movement of the earth that feels stationary, the finite speed of light, the irrelevance of the previous outcomes in games of chance, for examples. In this respect (and in darn few others), science is like any other belief system; it asks members of its community to defer to community standards. Of course, in the culture of science, the community standards are supposed to be based on evidence and logic, whereas all other cultures hold some tenets (based on tradition, revelation, faith, and so on) more dear than those based on evidence and logic. The culture of science—not always all scientists, who are all-too-human, but science itself—is concerned only, in Skinner’s phrasing, with generating statements that lead to effective action. This limited purpose assures that, in science’s name, intentional harm to other people is rare (but it does happen, as in the Tuskegee experiments). When it does happen, it’s only in the name of science if the intent of the harm was to increase knowledge; otherwise, it’s in the name of power.

So I draw two inferences from the fact that Milgram’s subjects were right, after all, to trust the scientist. One, evidence and reason often produce truths that make us uncomfortable, but evidence and reason teach us to trust the process (think of all the good that has come from science including, probably, your very existence if medicine ever saved or agricultural science ever fed one of your ancestors). Two, if you are going to trust someone in authority, first inquire into the overt, stated, openly endorsed values the person espouses. You should subsequently find out about the authority’s covert values, but many, many authority figures can be disqualified on the overt ones, especially on the issue of how they suggest treating outsiders. If outsiders (people who don’t obey the same authorities you obey) are to be treated badly, now or in the hereafter, you know you are dealing with a tribal system, medieval at best, designed to empower one group of people over others. This is what Dostoyevsky meant by saying that you can tell how civilized a society is by looking at its prisons, criminals being people who are restricted for not obeying the state’s authority but who otherwise need not be treated badly.

Cultural Humility

A new study claims that cultural humility leads to better therapy outcomes. It’s defined “as having an interpersonal stance that is other-oriented rather than self-focused, characterized by respect and lack of superiority toward an individual’s cultural background and experience.” I’m all for other-oriented therapists, and I don’t know what the word “respect” means, so I have no quibble with it. [I think it usually means “obedience,” as in, “my boyfriend disrespected me,” but it also means “avoidance,” as in, “I respect your opinion.” But I don’t know what it means in the context of a background or experience as opposed to a belief or a right. I respect your rights by not infringing on them; I respect your belief by adopting it as my own or by citing evidence against it. But what does it mean to respect an experience? I suspect it means something like, if it’s important to you, then let’s talk about it, in which case I’m for it, but if it means something like, if it’s important to you then we shouldn’t change your orientation to it, then I’m against it, especially in therapy, which is supposed to change people’s narratives about their experiences.]

The heart of the matter is in the word “superiority.” Of course my cultural values are superior to those of other cultures! If they weren’t I would switch my cultural values.

Before going on, let’s dispense with the study. What these researchers measured was not cultural humility but the ability to disguise your cultural superiority from the client. Just as a physician doesn’t tell the Latina that her cultural belief in rubbing onions on a burn is stupid, and instead teaches her how to treat a burn without making her defend her culture, we do the same thing with all the distorted ideas that clients have that cause them pain or impede their happiness. My other criticism of the study is that the authors seem not to recognize that cultural humility is a cultural value, and it’s one that they think is superior to other cultural values.

Before getting all humble about other people’s cultures, I need to ask a few questions about that culture’s treatment of people with less power than the rule-makers. Parenthetically, there is no such thing as American or Irish or Muslim culture, because no rule of conduct is preferred in groups by all Americans, Irish people, or Muslims; so I’m talking about what are often called subcultures. (Subcultures are cultures that don’t have enough publicity to make it to the A-list.) Also because cultural values are implemented by humans, no culture lives up to its values, so I’m talking about whether repressive behavior is celebrated or questioned.

Back to my questions about a culture before adopting a stance of humility before it: How are women treated? Are pleasure centers cut off their bodies? Can they testify in court and own property? Can they pursue love and work and hobbies? Is rape condoned or criminalized? Can their families murder them with impunity if they are suspected of having sex? How are people treated who look different from the normative person, especially with respect to skin color? Are they derogated? Enslaved? Deprived? Scared? How are gay people treated? How are atheists, apostates, and infidels treated? If you can tell me your culture—your implicit and explicit rules of conduct—treats these people well, then I will express humility towards it (or adopt it as my own—and if it’s a culture that an outsider is not welcome to adopt, then my own culture remains superior, because in science, everyone’s welcome). Otherwise, I am merely hiding my contempt, which it is important to do sometimes, especially if you have to work with the person.

How is my cultural absolutism different from absolutist cultures that kill, enslave, condemn, or despise people like me under the banner of their absolute sense of superiority? The difference is that my culture (call it enlightenment values or science, with an emphasis on civil liberties, critical thinking, pleasure, humor, and social justice) condones force only in response to force or the threat of force, and otherwise promotes free speech in the marketplace of ideas for resolving differences between cultures. A culture advocates hurting me (now or in the hereafter) or controlling my wife, and I’m supposed to honor it?

Sing the Rage

One of my first cases in the child welfare system involved a Puerto Rican mother whose 6-year-old son was removed from her care after the son alleged sexual abuse by the mother. Well, that’s not what happened at all. What happened was that the son was undergoing a confusing and pointless lesson, imposed in those days by schools, on disclosing sexual abuse by encouraging young children to tell the authorities whether they had ever experienced “bad touch.” This, you may be startled to learn, was a vast improvement over the previous—and sometimes still employed—practice of simply asking children, “Has anyone touched you?” The questioner assumes that the child understands what is meant by “touched” or “bad touch.” This particular Puerto Rican boy told his teacher, “Yes.” She asked who had given him a bad touch and the boy said, “You and my mom.” The teacher knew she herself was innocent, so she decided that the boy just meant his mom.

When the case worker went out to the home, the other son was found to be naked as the day he was born and lying on top of the mother. This other son was only six weeks old at the time. The nudity seemed to the caseworker and a consulting psychologist to confirm the allegation of sexual abuse, so the six-year-old was removed, just to be safe.

This was my first week in the system, and when I attended a Friday meeting on where to go from here, I said that the child should be returned home and that the case should be closed with an apology. I added that if the boy was not back home by Monday, I would not be returning to DSS. “You can have him or me,” I said, “but not both.”

The administrator who had convened the meeting announced that the boy would be returned home right away. Afterwards, he took me aside and thanked me for my participation. “But,” he said, trying to be helpful, “you get too angry.”

Eleven thousand cases and three decades later, I am still angry. I am angry whenever people with power exploit others, whenever the hegemony without justification beyond maintenance of the hegemony marginalizes other parts of the system by refusing to question itself. If I weren’t angry, I would find something else to do besides advocating for abused children, silenced voices, and psychotherapy patients. (It’s true that if I found something else to do, I might not be so angry.) What I have learned in 30 years is not to be less angry; what I have learned is that to be effective, I have to strategize which battles to fight and how to fight them. There is no glory in defeat.

The means do not justify the ends. Calm, nicey-nice therapies do not justify bad outcomes and neither do noble, intrepid speaking styles that make other people stop listening.

When asked whether I am a gay ally (or any other sort of ally), I have to say, it depends. If it’s a situation where gays or women or blacks are being marginalized by a self-serving hegemony, then the answer is yes. But if it’s a situation where gays or women or blacks are marginalizing me or someone else because of race, sex, or sexual orientation, then the answer is no. Inclusion, not turnabout, is fair play.

Consciousness Explained

Whenever I read Darwinians and atheists, I find myself in agreement with their arguments. As Galileo said, the role of religion should be to determine how to go to heaven and not how the heavens go. Put differently (and in a way that doesn’t presume there is a heaven), only critical thinking will help us discern the nature of reality so that we can base our conduct on actuality rather than fantasy, but the question of values and how we should behave is separate from that.

What I cannot understand is the Darwinians’ and atheists’ confusion about consciousness, a problem that B. F. Skinner solved 75 years ago. What is especially perplexing is the fact that Skinner’s account of consciousness is a perfect analogy to the Darwinian account of life. I don’t know why E.O. Wilson calls Skinner (but not Darwin) a “greedy reductionist” for believing that all operant behavior evolves under contingencies of what works just as anatomy, physiology, and instinctive behavior evolve under contingencies of survival and reproduction.

Skinner called his behaviorism “radical,” (i.e., thorough or complete) because he rejected then-behaviorism’s lack of interest in private events. Just as Galileo insisted that the laws of physics would apply in the sky just as much as on the ground, Skinner insisted that the laws of psychology would apply just as much to the psychologist’s inner life as to the rat’s observable life.

Consciousness has nothing to do with the so-called and now-solved philosophical problem of mind-body duality, or in current terms, how the physical brain can give rise to immaterial thought. The answer to this pseudo-problem is that even though thought seems to be immaterial, it is not. Thought is no more immaterial than sound, light, or odor. Even educated people used to believe, a long time ago, that these things were immaterial, but now we know that sound requires a material medium to transmit waves, light is made up of photons, and odor consists of molecules. Thus, hearing, seeing, and smelling are not immaterial activities, and there is nothing in so-called consciousness besides hearing, seeing, and smelling (and tasting and feeling). Once you learn how to see and hear things that are there, you can also see and hear things that are not there, just as you can kick a ball that is not there once you have learned to kick a ball that is there. Engaging in the behavior of seeing and hearing things that are not there is called imagination. Its survival value is obvious, since it allows trial and error learning in the safe space of imagination. There is nothing in so-called consciousness that is not some version of the five senses operating on their own. Once you have learned to hear words spoken in a way that makes sense, you can have thoughts; thinking is hearing yourself make language; it is verbal behavior and nothing more.

What would really be startling and, in turn, would make me question my scientific worldview would be if the mind were capable of doing even one thing that the senses can’t. If we could, for example, smell things in our imagination even though our bodies were incapable of smelling, that would change everything. If there were a sixth sense that was not merely an example of the five senses, I’d believe in a mind that was different from “private behavior.” But there isn’t.

In my imagination, you are disappointed by the simplicity of Skinner’s explanation of consciousness. You intuit something beyond or beneath hearing, seeing, etc., in your own consciousness. Your intuition is wrong, but your disappointment is real. I think one of the main reasons people resent science is that people think about complicated things long and hard, sometimes for centuries or millennia, and then science’s explanation is ludicrously simple. How the stars go? The earth is spinning. When the thing explained is you or something you care about, a simple explanation can irritate.