John Watson was what he described: a response to a stimulus

Harold Ickes was correct in his assessment of Watson. Watson had no character, if by character we mean the ability to take rational control of passion on a consistent and dependable basis. Rather than admit his own failures, Watson decided to remake mankind in his own image. Man was now remade in the image of the superficial American, a man with no interior life, no morals, nothing but a seething mass of desires and fears that could be manipulated at will by those who knew how to control his passions. Man was an empty vessel, a tabula rasa upon which advertisers could write their texts. In the name of freedom, his passions could be manipulated into a bondage congenial to those who controlled the instruments of public opinion. Science was the mantra which Homo Americanus chanted to himself to assure himself that his bondage was really freedom. This should not be surprising, given Watson’s view of what psychology was and what man was. Ultimately, John Watson was what he described: a response to a stimulus. His sex life was the model for behaviorism. Homo Americanus gave up inner-directedness and rejoiced in becoming, like Watson, simple reaction to sexual stimuli. Once certain influential classes of Americans made this decision to jettison sexual morals, science was the only way of gaining control where morals had failed.

There was only one problem. For both Watson the behaviorist and Watson the man, there was no such thing as self-control. This meant that behaviorism could explain reaction, but it could never explain action. In this it laid bare the ultimate stupidity of American pragmatism, a philosophy which eschewed what it considered to be outdated “metaphysical” concepts like truth in exchange for results based on action, but then was unable to explain what action was because action, as opposed to reaction, was always based on reason and its ability to apprehend transcendental values like the true and the good.

E. Michael Jones