Rating: 
Summary: a tragic disappointment
Review: What could have been an extroardinarly clever, engaging text is an inch-thick preaching of the merits of behavioralism, bashing Freudian theory as worthless. As a student of psychology, I have studied many many different fields and theories and though I would not consider myself an exclusive behavioralist, it is apparent that many of the tactics of behavioralism are valid, effective conditioning techniques. This book presents such techniques with repetition and monotony, pointless characters, and no plot. It is an inane textbook, conditioning the reader to unconditionally accept behavioralism as an authority, treating the reader as if he were a child.
Rating: 
Summary: Brilliant Insight into the Causes of Behavior
Review: With the failure of cognitive-style psychology in rehabilitating criminals AFTER the fact, more and more psychologists are reexamining behavioral science, and its constant premise that to solve the problems of crime and general deviancy, you have to focus not on changing the criminal or the deviant after the fact, but must focus on what causes that criminal or deviancy to occur in the first place -- the environmental causes -- and change them to effect any sort of long-term change in negative behavior.With behaviorism in hand, Dr. Skinner tackles society's problems all around. And even though Walden Two is a fictional work, the scientific intrigue will leave you wondering why our society hasn't tried to apply any of the techniques or ideas written about in this book.
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