The Journal of Mind and Behavior

Volume 14, Number 4, Autumn

Diagnostic Reasoning and Reliability: A Review of the Literature and a Model of Decision-making
Jonathan Rabinowitz, Bar Ilan University
The Journal of Mind and Behavior , Autumn 1993, Volume 14, Number 4, Pages 297-316, ISSN 0271-0137
A review of mental health practitioners’ decision-making biases is presented that integrates the diverse literature in the area. Previous reviews have considered only the effects of single biases and have not looked at multiple biases in mental health practitioner decision-making. The biases are reviewed relative to a four stage schema of clinical judgment (a) input, (b) processing, (c) output-action, and (d) feedback. Each stage is influenced by background variables that are also reviewed, including the effects of client biases, oversights, clinician mood, theoretical orientation, values and setting on diagnosis and clinical judgment. This review points to the immediate need for changing practice and for additional research.

Requests for reprints should be sent to Jonathan Rabinowitz, DSW, School of Social Work, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel.

The Importance of Being Conscious
Thomas Natsoulas, University of California, Davis
The Journal of Mind and Behavior , Autumn 1993, Volume 14, Number 4, Pages 317-340, ISSN 0271-0137
I argue that each function that is the topic of a main section of the present article cannot proceed without inner (second-order) consciousness. (a) The overt social action of your reporting to someone else that you now have a toothache is one such function, which cannot occur, I argue, unless you have inner (second-order) consciousness of your having the toothache; your simply having a toothache does not suffice, notwithstanding its including first-order, pain-qualitative consciousness of your tooth or part of your mouth. (b) And I argue that both your report of seeing X and your report, due to your seeing X, of X’s presence in the environment must be based on your inner (second-order) consciousness of seeing X; that is, in making such reports, you need to choose which sentence to utter depending on what you have inner (second-order) consciousness of seeing; again, simply (nonconsciously) seeing X, though it includes a first-order, visual consciousness of X, does not suffice. (c) Also, your controlling your active locomotor behavior on a visual basis necessarily involves your having inner (second-order) consciousness of how, as you move, a part of the environment is transforming or changing in how you are visually experiencing it, that is, in how that part of the environment is visual-qualitatively appearing to you; simply seeing the environment and where you are in it, simply the first-order, visual consciousness involved in your seeing X, cannot suffice.

Requests for reprints should be sent to Thomas Natsoulas, Ph.D., Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis, California 95616-8686.

The History and Current Status of the Concept “Behavior”: An Introduction
Tracy B. Henley, Mississippi State University
The Journal of Mind and Behavior , Autumn 1993, Volume 14, Number 4, Pages 341-344, ISSN 0271-0137
Bring together five or six psychologists to talk about something as seemingly straightforward as behavior and you never know what will happen. What did happen, at least in the case presented here, went well beyond my expectations.

Requests for reprints should be sent to Tracy B. Henley, Ph.D., Department of Psychology, Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, Mississippi 39762.

A History of Behavior
Thomas H. Leahey, Virginia Commonwealth University
The Journal of Mind and Behavior , Autumn 1993, Volume 14, Number 4, Pages 345-354, ISSN 0271-0137
The paper traces the development of the term behavior from its first appearance in the English language to the nineteenth century, showing that its primary meaning was always morally tinged. In late nineteenth century America, however, conceptions of morality shifted from being defined by transcendental rules to being defined by deviations from statistical norms. At the same time, the focus of psychology shifted from the study of consciousness to what organisms do, and psychologists redefined their field as the study of behavior, the term having been drained of all moral significance, ready for use by value-neutral science.

Requests for reprints should be sent to Thomas H. Leahey, Ph.D., Department of Psychology, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia 23284-2018.

What Counts as “Behavior”?
James J. Jenkins, University of South Florida
The Journal of Mind and Behavior , Autumn 1993, Volume 14, Number 4, Pages 355-364, ISSN 0271-0137
This paper considers the changes in the meaning of “behavior” in the hands of the cognitive psychologists as well as in the definition of the academic field itself. American psychology at mid-century constrained the “acceptable” subject matter in many ways, particularly through the editors of important journals. Gradually it became possible to write about “mental processes.” This served as an important sign that what counted as “behavior” was changing, or that psychology was no longer defined as the science of behavior. Evidence that the field was changing was also signaled by definitions of the discipline appearing in introductory texts. In this case psychology as “the study of behavior” gave way to psychology as “the study of behavior and _________.” (Fill in your favorite term, ranging from “experience” to “mental life.”) Additional current evidence is that investigators whom we honor and recognize as leaders in the field are studying and writing about topics that would have been rejected out of hand by most psychologists at mid-century.

Requests for reprints should be sent to James J. Jenkins, Ph.D., Department of Psychology, BEH 339, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida 33620-8200.

Behavior as Telosponsivity Rather Than Responsivity
Joseph F. Rychlak, Loyola University of Chicago
The Journal of Mind and Behavior , Autumn 1993, Volume 14, Number 4, Pages 365-372, ISSN 0271-0137
After demonstrating that Freud could not adapt his basically teleological image of humanity to the mechanistic accounts of his day, a change in terminology is proposed to allow for telic formulations to be made in the future. Psychology’s total reliance on efficient causation is the reason why there are only machine models available today. Drawing on final causation, the concept of telosponsivity is introduced and then elaborated in terms of its reliance on predication, tautology, and oppositionality. In pursuing his “logical learning theory,” the author has provided empirical research support for the concept of telosponsivity.

Requests for reprints should be sent to Joseph F. Rychlak, Ph.D., Department of Psychology, Loyola University of Chicago, 6525 N. Sheridan Road, Chicago, Illinois 60626.

Behavior, Adaptation, and Intentionality: Comments on Rychlak, Leahey, and Jenkins
Stephen Hibbard, University of Tennessee
The Journal of Mind and Behavior , Autumn 1993, Volume 14, Number 4, Pages 373-384, ISSN 0271-0137
Target articles are evaluated in light of the consideration of intentionality. It is argued that behaviorism lost its hegemony in psychology, not precisely because it eschewed investigation of mental phenomena, but rather because it failed to give an adequate account of adaptation. Behaviorism, along with other orientations, views the explanation of adaptation as a central concern of psychology, but a full account of adaptation cannot be given without appeal to a construct which behaviorism could not assimilate. This is the construct of intentionality. Intentionality is necessary to give an adequate account of adaptation.

Requests for reprints should be sent to Stephen Hibbard, Ph.D., Riverview Building, 900 Wall Street, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-0722.

Intentionality and Epistemological Commitment: A Comment on Hibbard
James J. Jenkins, University of South Florida
The Journal of Mind and Behavior , Autumn 1993, Volume 14, Number 4, Pages 385-388, ISSN 0271-0137
Hibbard (1993) is surely correct in pointing to the central role of intentionality in current psychology. However, in this commentary I wish to emphasize the independent role of the common epistemological commitment of psychologists and its importance in changing the nature of our field. As experimental scientists psychologists are bound, prior to all other commitments, to respect data, especially data secured in their own laboratories. Thus, one of the most powerful instruments for changing the nature and domain of psychological theories is an experiment that can be reliably repeated in any experimentalist’s laboratory.

Requests for reprints should be sent to James J. Jenkins, Ph.D., Department of Psychology, BEH 339, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida 33620-8200.

Intention in Mechanisms and the Baconian Criticism: Is the Modern Cognitivist Reviving Aristotelian Excesses?
Joseph F. Rychlak, Loyola University of Chicago
The Journal of Mind and Behavior , Autumn 1993, Volume 14, Number 4, Pages 389-398, ISSN 0271-0137
The Baconian Criticism holds that it is unnecessary to use final-cause conceptions when an explanation in terms of the other Aristotelian causes is sufficient to the task at hand. It is argued that modern efforts by cognitive psychologists to explain intentionality in machine terminology falls prey to the Baconian Criticism. Cognitive theory is framed extraspectively and relies basically and thoroughly on material/efficient-causation. Introducing final-cause description to such machine processing is superfluous because it adds nothing to our basic understanding of what is taking place. Telosponsivity, on the other hand, is exclusively introspective in formulation and is not open to the Baconian Criticism because of its basic reliance on oppositionality in cognition. The telosponding person is always “taking a position” within a sea of opposite possibilities, which allows for the fact that behavior could have unfolded differently all circumstances remaining the same. This permits a truly teleological understanding of human behavior, one that is not reducible to machine processing.

Requests for reprints should be sent to Joseph F. Rychlak, Ph.D., Department of Psychology, Loyola University of Chicago, 6525 N. Sheridan Road, Chicago, Illinois 60626.

Book Reviews

Chaos and Order in the World of the Psyche
Book Author: Joanne Wieland-Burston. London and New York: Routledge, 1992
Reviewed by William E. Roweton, Chadron State College
The Journal of Mind and Behavior , Autumn 1993, Volume 14, Number 4 , Pages 399-400, ISSN 0271-0137
[Note: First paragraph, no abstract available.] Chaos and Order in the World of the Psyche is a conceptually intriguing treatment of chaos theory, a topic now making its literary rounds in fashionable scientific circles. Joanne Wieland-Burston is a Jungian analyst and psychotherapist, and she applies her view of chaos theory to her clinical practice and to her anguished clients.

Requests for reprints should be sent to William E. Roweton, Ph.D., Department of Psychology, Chadron State College, Chadron, Nebraska 69337.

The Veil of Signs: Joyce, Lacan, and Perception
Book Author: Sheldon Brivic. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1991
Reviewed by Michael Walsh, University of Hartford
The Journal of Mind and Behavior , Autumn 1993, Volume 14, Number 4, Pages 401-404, ISSN 0271-0137
[Note: First paragraph, no abstract available.] Sheldon Brivic has an immediately idealist and ultimately religious view of language and literature; he is devoted to Berkeley and Hegel, turns phenomenology into what he wittily calls “phonemonology” (p. 24), and is much preoccupied with the individuality, personality, and god-like authority of the author. For Brivic, history is mainly important insofar as it passes through the mind of the author (p. 32), and political criticism is readily construed as “narrowly political” (p. 60), particularly if it seems insufficiently respectful of a favored character. With the partial exception of phenonemology, these are not habits of thought with which I instinctively sympathize, though I do respect them and would certainly expect to learn something from them, especially when it comes to the practical criticism of Joyce, which is what I found most rewarding in the book; Brivic has a sensitive chapter on the consciousness of Stephen in the “Proteus” episode of Ulysses, as well as some noteworthy ideas on the echoing interactions between Stephen and Bloom and the more contentious relationship between Shem and Shaun inFinnegans Wake. Though he doesn’t use the term, the homosocial bond would seem to be his long suit; since he does on page 160 use the phrase “between men,” I think he could profitably have consulted Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s l985 book of the same name.

Requests for reprints should be sent to Michael Walsh, Ph.D., Department of English, University of Hartford, West Hartford, Connecticut 06117.

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