Opening Skinners Box

Summary:
This book explored the psychiatric experiments of the last half century that had sparked the most controversy. 


The first chapter explored the namesake for the book: B.F. Skinner. Skinner was the father of operant theory. Skinner believed we did not have free will, but rather that we are conditioned to behave the way we do.  He was a humanist and a pacifist, but also had radical ideas of a world controlled not by governments but by behavioralists.  The author uses Skinner's ideas to break her daughter of night-crying, and Skinner's daughter shows her the house that Skinner raised his children. 


Next Stanley Milgram's experiments on obedience are explored.  Milgram had one person sit in an electric chair, and another person was to administer shocks if the other answered incorrectly.  The shocks were a fake, and Milgram just wanted to see who would go through with the shocks.  He found that 65% would administer the shocks. This was obviously highly controversial, and deeply affected those who participated in the experiment. 


David Rosenhan's trials of fooling psychiatrists was presented in the third chapter. In the 1970s, David Rosenhan persuaded 8 other friends to act as those they were insane to get admitted into a mental hospital. Rosenhan then published his findings in Science magazine, bashing psychiatry and claiming it is not a medicine. This obviously ticked off a large number of psychiatrists. The author then tries the experiment herself, and has virtually the same results, except a different diagnosis and they do not admit her.


In the next chapter, the author explores the experiments that Darley and Latane conducted experiments to try to explain why the witnesses of Kitty Genovese's murder didn't do anything. The results were people in larger groups tend to not act on a crisis rather than those in small groups or one-on-one.  


Following that, Leon Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance is dissected. This theory that says humans try to rationalize our mistakes or negative actions. The author explains a cult that displayed this behavior when their "prophecy" of the world ending did not come to fruition, and another more modern example where the mother of a disabled daughter believed her daughter had healing powers after her accident. 


Next, Harry Harlow's infamous experiments were delved into. This is perhaps the most atrocious chapter and the most controversial. Harlow took monkeys from their mothers and gave them two surrogate mothers, one made of cloth and one of wire that provided food. The monkeys preferred the cloth mother, which prompted Harlow to claim that he found the true nature of love. However, the monkeys grew up to be violently unsocial, thus more things were needed in the raising of children. Later in his life he explored depression by locking monkeys in the dark for months or even years. This was a truly sickening chapter, but also highly entertaining. 


Chapter 7 was about Bruce Alexander's "Rat Park." Bruce Alexander wanted to challenge the conventional thoughts on addiction, so he created a rat park with all the necessary items, as well as sugary water laced with drugs. The rats did not like the sugary drug water, and instead avoided it for regular water, even when they were already addicted. Besides a small following, Alexander's findings were rejected because the rats were living in a perfect environment with no stressors, among other things. 


The next chapter challenged the notion of repression. Elizabeth Loftus said memories can be implanted into people's minds, so some people were wrongly accused by people recalling traumas of long ago. Also there is evidence that people can be made to suggest that people can be made to believe they committed the trauma as well. Finally, most people who fall victim of a trauma never forget that experience. 


Next, the preconceived notions of memory are challenged in this chapter and the next, with some medical insight as to how memory actually works here. Kandel discovered CREB, which is what binds short term memory into long term memory. He and others are working on CREB enhancing drugs, which could greatly increase our memory capacity. Kandel also discovered CREB's antithesis, which could help people forget traumas.


Finally, the last chapter explores the history of the lobotomy, as invented by Moniz. Psychosurgery is at least as effective as psychopharmaceuticals, if not very more effective. Finally the author explains a recent lobotomy and it was a good success.
Discussion:
I really enjoyed this book. The other books have been just ok at best, but this one was very entertaining to me. I liked reading about the nature of humans and challenging commonly held principles. Also, I always appreciate a Boondock Saints reference, as with the Kitty Genovece chapter. This book also contained a lot of actual scientific data and analysis, which I found very interesting. I liked where she challenged how psychiatrists in our nation diagnose mental issues, because I've never been a fan of psychiatry. I feel like it's all guess work with nothing but one person's opinions and interpretations backing it up. I believe this is why I found the scientific portions of the book so entertaining, as well as the controversy associated with each experiment Slater explored. Overall, this is a great book and one I have recommended to others to read.