Sorry, Beth, I’m still not convinced! First let me say that I was not precise enough in my question (as I realised after I posted my message, but by then I’d already posted two messages, and I didn’t want to use up my third for the day correcting it!).
I asked: >Beth, you quote Slater’s writing, “This much we presume we >know:…[…]”, but I don’t see any specific disowning of the >account she presented (above) [in Beth’s quoted passages on 23 March]. By “the account she presented” I meant (but didn’t make clear) the account of *the supposed training of Deborah* that immediately followed “This much we presume to know”, namely, > Her name was Deborah. He wanted to train her, so he kept > her caged for two full years, placing with her cramped square > space bells and food trays and all manner of mean punishments > and bright rewards, and he tracked her progress on a grid. Beth writes: > Slater disowns the fabricated account several times throughout the > chapter. Early in the chapter she writes how she typed "B. F. Skinner" > into a search engine and got thousands of hits, much of it trash >(there's that hyperbole of mine again) but also including one about > Deborah Skinner, with a picture of her, and Deborah's words: > > "'My name is Deborah Skinner,' the caption read, 'and my suicide is a > myth. I am alive and well. The box is not what is seems. My father is > not what he seems. He was a brilliant psychologist, a compassionate > parent. I write to dispel the legends.' > "Legends. Stories. True tales. Tall tales. Perhaps the challenge of > understanding Skinner's experiments will be primarily discriminatory, > separating content from controversy, a sifting through. Writes > pychologist and historian John A. Mills, '[Skinner] was a mystery > wrapped in a riddle wrapped in an enigma.' > "I decided to wade in, slowly." > > Slater then interviews Bryan Porter, "an experimental psychologist" who > clarifies Deborah's "doing fine, really." > > Then she connects with Skinner's other daughter, Julie Vargas, a > professor of education at the University of West Virginia: > > "My sister is alive and well," she says. I have not, of course, even > asked her this, but it's clear many others have; it's clear the question > tires her; it's clear she knows that every query about her family begins > and ends > in the sordid spots, bypassing entirely the work itself. > "I saw her picture on the Web," I say. > "She's an artist," Julie says. "She lives in England." > "Was she close to your father?" I say. > "Oh, we both were," Julie says, and then she pauses, and I can > practically feel things pushing against the pause - memories, feelings, > her > father's hands on her head - "I miss him terribly...He had a way > with children," she says. "He loved them...He used to make us kites, box > kites > which we flew on Monhegan, and he took us to the circus every > year and our dog, Hunter, he was a beagle and Dad taught him to play > hide and seek. He could teach anything, so our dog played hide and seek > and we > also had a cat that played the piano, it was a world," she says, > "...those kites." > > Julie then goes on to tell Slater: > > "You know, if my father made one mistake, it was in the words he chose. > People hear the word 'control' and they think fascist...He was a > pacifist. He was a child advocate. He did not believe in ANY punishment > because > he saw firsthand with the animals how it didn't work. My father > is responsible > for the repeal of the corporal punishment ruling in > California, but no one remembers him for that." > > > I think that if Slater herself made one mistake, it was that she chose > the wrong words, inserted the suggestion of this silly myth, and in an > awkward way worded her description of how others think it. She even > suggested at first that there was a hint of something fishy in Porter's > > description. But then she meets with Julie Vargas, they go to the house > where > Skinner died, and Slater makes it clear she understands she's in > the presence of > brilliance and history. > > In the end, Slater denies that the story is true three different times: > in her > early Web search, after talking to Porter, and after talking to > Julie Skinner > Vargas. Beth, I don’t see in the words you’ve quoted here a specific denial of the following account: > Her name was Deborah. He wanted to > train her, so he kept her caged for two full years, placing with her > cramped square space bells and food trays and all manner of mean > punishments and bright rewards, and he tracked her progress on a grid. The nearest seems to be: > ...Early in the chapter she writes how she typed "B. F. Skinner" > into a search engine and got thousands of hits, much of it trash >(there's that hyperbole of mine again) but also including one about > Deborah Skinner, with a picture of her, and Deborah's words: > > "'My name is Deborah Skinner,' the caption read, 'and my suicide is a > myth. I am alive and well. The box is not what is seems. My father is > not what he seems. He was a brilliant psychologist, a compassionate > parent. I write to dispel the legends.' > "Legends. Stories. True tales. Tall tales. Perhaps the challenge of > understanding Skinner's experiments will be primarily discriminatory, > separating content from controversy, a sifting through. Deborah being quoted as saying, “The box is not what it seems. My father is not what he seems”, is not an explicit denial of the training scenario described above. (It comes across as more like, “It looks bad, but it wasn’t all that terrible”! Reminds me of the classic scene in a film, with someone saying “This is not what it seems”, with a bloody knife in his hand and a stabbed victim at his feet!) Slater writes: > "Legends. Stories. True tales. Tall tales. Perhaps the challenge of > understanding Skinner's experiments will be primarily discriminatory, > separating content from controversy, a sifting through. This is precisely the kind of language that I felt uneasy with when I heard it on BBC radio. What does all that really mean? It certainly doesn’t qualify as a rebuttal of the Deborah training story (and presumably is not meant to be that specific). Unless Beth can come up with a more specific quote, I remain unconvinced that Slater made clear that the “training” story was false and that Deborah has no cause for complaint. > So I hope this clears up Slater's name, at least on TIPS. There IS a > lot of literary self-insertion in the story, but that's the way Slater > writes. She brings her own history to her writing, and readers who are > familiar > with her writing expect this. She is not writing a > third-person biography of Skinner, but rather just describing what her > experience was when trying to find out the story of Skinner. There are still the denials from various folk that they said what she quoted them as saying. And, as I’ve already said, I disbelieved her quote of Spitzer as improbable in the extreme before I read his emphatic denial. And the question Deborah asks also remains on the table. Why didn’t Slater contact Deborah, who was at the very heart of the “training” story? It seems unlikely that Deborah’s sister in America wouldn’t have given Slater her address/phone number if she’d asked (and Slater doesn’t say she was denied access to Deborah). I should add that I went into a bookstore today and skimmed through the chapter on Skinner in Slater’s book. I couldn’t find any passage in which Slater stated that the Deborah “training” story was false. Of course perusing a book in a store is not the best way to do research, so I could be wrong. So over to you again, Beth! Allen Esterson Former lecturer, Science Department Southwark College, London [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.human-nature.com/esterson/index.html http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=10 --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
