#29 in Negative Reinforcement (2/27/2018)
I have written about five career-planning decisions in my life, all related to the escape principle. My writing about these career decisions is not so you will do the same thing. The purpose is to have you consider how you might look for related environmental events in your life to help in your career planning.
(1) DECIDING TO GO TO COLLEGE: Since you are already in a college course, the benefit to you of this decision in my own history may be a motivating factor to continue your work on your career plan, or perhaps find an alternate career plan.
How did the escape principle play a role in my decision to go to college? Out of high school I got a job in a factory, a tannery. My first job was cleaning hides. One day I calculated the number of hides I would clean by the time I retired.
(2) DECIDING ON MAJOR FOR IN COLLEGE AND A JOB PLAN FOR LIFE: Certainly, I am not proposing my exact example of escape that led to my going into psychology. Perhaps one of the following might work for you.
- An experience in your life that raises a question
- Reading about some work that you might be interested in
- A conversation in or out of class
- Something talked about in class
- Some events that offer a challenge
Can you find one of the above or other environmental events to help your career planning? There are certainly other events that can serve this same purpose.
This second example is my selecting a major in college, and a choice of my life work. The lack of knowledge about LSD (what went on) was very aversive. Reading even the skimpy literature of the time about LSD reduced this aversive condition – escaped this aversive stimulus.
(3) A BEHAVIORAL ANALYSIS – SCIENCE ORIENTATION IN PSYCHOLOGY: How did the scientific behavioral approach to psychology become my major area of focus?
- My learning the area of a science repertoire escaped the aversiveness of chaos and hodgepodge type of study of the cognitive approach to human behavior. This escaped the view that psychology was not a science but just a bunch of opinions, as many cognitive-oriented said.
- Find in one’s life where an objective look at behavior helped
(4) CRITICAL ANALYSIS: Looking critically at your own personal life, inquire into “dupes” you have witnessed or “scams” perpetrated against you and consider how this relates to your own total, personal perspective. By this you could become more objective.
What was the aversive condition motivating the study of psychics?
Early in teaching at SCSU, students would raise questions about how I would explain psychic things. Not having an answer to the students’ questions was aversive. The means to remove the aversive condition was to learn how psychics do their stunts.
(5) MOVE FROM CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY TO COLLEGE TEACHING: I moved from a career in clinical psychology, working in the state hospital system in Minnesota, to a faculty position teaching psychology at St. Cloud State College – yes, a state college still at that time. I wanted to develop a different kind of token economy using a whole mental hospital (Willmar State Hospital) and change one behavior at a time. For example, we would start with patients washing hands to eat in the dining hall. Some patients came off their work assignment and did not wash hands before eating. As patients came in to the dining area, they would be helped to have clean hands to eat if needed. From there we would proceed to other commonly accepted behaviors agreed upon by hospital staff.
David Vail, the head of the mental hospitals in Minnesota at that time, said no, even though I knew the head of the federal grant awarding agency in D.C. liked the project and said we would be funded. When Vail said no, I figured education was an important need for better treatment of patients in Minnesota at this point in time. Then I went to teach at St. Cloud State. Teaching escaped the aversive of not using effective treatment.