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International
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International
The Foundation has begun an international outreach program coordinated by Dr. Ernest A. Vargas. Liaisons send news from their countries and help with locating professionals to assess the accuracy of existing or proposed translations of Skinner's works. The countries with whom the Foundation already has liaisons are listed below. If you would like to be a liaison in a country not yet represented, or would like to help in a country listed, please email Dr. Ernest A. Vargas.
Brazil
Updated: 8/26/06 - Teresa has helped locate Skinner books available in Portuguese, and with her colleagues is giving an assessment of how well the translations represent the original English version.
Iceland
Liaison,Ragnar S. Ragnarsson. (irores@centrum.is).
Updated: 8/26/06 - Icelanders are a nation of 290.000 people. On August 15th 2004, 35 of them founded the Icelandic Association for Behavior Analysis (ICEABA). ICEABA«s purpose is to increase the influence of behavior analysis in Iceland and it is open to everyone willing to work towards its goals. Among the goals of ICEABA is to increase the number of students who get graduate degrees in behavior analysis; offer workshops and lectures; increase research; design a website about ICEABA and behavior analysis and create and maintain an Icelandic lexicon of behavior analytic terms. This last goal is important because it is public policy in Iceland to invent and use constructs in Icelandic instead of using terms from other languages with little or no modifications.Today, 13 Icelanders have a graduate degree in behavior analysis and 6 are currently studying in the field, abroad. The influence of behavior analysis is increasing because most of these graduates return to Iceland and start using behavior analysis at their workplace. Icelandic behavior analysts work in the private and public sectors; mainly in educational services and for people with disabilites. This group shares information on a listserve they founded in 1999. So far this list has generated 2100 letters. Today, three universities have offered courses with behavior analytic content. In 1974, undergraduates in psychology at the University of Iceland (UI) were for the first time required to take an introductory course in behavior analysis. Since 1985, an elective course in the research methods of behavior analysis has also been offered there. Some other undergraduate and graduate courses at the UI have heavy behavior analytic content. Last March, psychology students at the UI commemorated the 100th anniversary of B.F. Skinner's birth with a one day symposium on behavior analysis. The symposium lectures will be published in a book. A SABA awarded website for Icelanders seeking information about graduate programs in behavior analysis was designed and is maintained by the only UI faculty member with a PhD in behavior analysis. The Icelandic University of Education (IUE) offered a summer course in programmed instruction in 1975. This course was preceded with several instances of behavior analysis being introduced to students at that school and later with courses in behavior principles. Today, the influence of behavior analysis at the IUE is negligible. The University of Reykjav’k (UR) is showing signs of exposing its students more to behavior analysis. Currently, organizational behavior management is a topic in some courses there. Two faculty members and the UR dean have PhD«s in behavior analysis. Icelandic behavior analysts have given talks, workshops, seminars and website consultation on various topics like child rearing methods; performance management; teaching methods and classroom management. Several articles on diverse behavior analytic topics have been published by Icelanders in domestic and foreign periodicals and journals like JEAB and JABA and in Icelandic newspapers. Since 1987, many prominent scientists of behavior analysis have given talks, lectures and workshops in Iceland. Further information about behavior analysis in Iceland can be obtained from Ragnar S. Ragnarsson at irores@centrum.is.
Italy
Liaison,Paolo Taras
Updated: 12/01/06 - December, 2006
The following are highlights from a quick overview of the state of skinnerian science in Italy:
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1) Clinical: An important member of A.I.A.M.C. (Associazione Italiana di Analisi e Modificazione del Comportamento—in English, Italian Association of Behavior Analysis and Modification) was very surprised to hear of Skinner. He said that this author is now only of historical interest and is considered out of date—“superato” in the clinical practice. It seems that he and his colleagues had increasing difficulties in the years that went from the late ’70s to the first half of the ‘80s, and that now they feel comfortable with the cognitive approach of A. T. Beck and A. Bandura. He told me what I had already found out, i.e., that all psychologists of behavioristic origin are now identified with the cognitive-behavioral orientation. 2) Translations: A bit more interesting has been the contact with the publisher of some of the translations of Skinner’s books. The person in charge is a teacher of pedagogy in one of the Roman universities. She has made herself available for a personal meeting to be held in the future. On the phone she talked as if she wanted me to understand that she knows Skinner and that she is aware the translations are not up to the due standard. Nevertheless in the course of the conversation I realized she did not follow me when I spoke of a paradigm shift and other matters concerning the Skinnerian framework. We can reasonably, however, say that there is a publisher who might be interested in publishing a new and better translation of some of the Skinner books. There could be others as well. Some of the important books by BFS have been translated. I have bought all that are available, while others are out of print and are only available in some university library. My first overview has confirmed my opinion that the way Skinner has been translated makes things more difficult than they are in the original English. In particular: a) Translators, probably not being able to understand what matters were about, have opted for a literal version which sounds grammatically funny and stylistically unacceptable. b) Most technical terms, such as “reinforcing”, are not explained in their specific usage and often change from point to point and page to page, with disturbing results. c) The Italian language is typically humanistic in character and vague in substance since it departed so radically from its Latin origins. d) Paradoxically enough BFS style is quite similar to Latin, is very precise, and lacks most of the preliminary rhetorical forms which Italians are accustomed to and which help the reader towards the proper interpretation. e) I have made some comparisons between the two versions, Italian and English, and it seems that my observation makes sense. I have had indirect evidence of this idea in a translation of one of Skinner’s books by W. Correl, a German author whom I didn’t know. Well, this book, translated in 1974 from German—the title is Denken und Lernen—is generally easier than others coming straight from English. 3) University: I give now a perspective of the university scenario I’ve been able to examine. When I speak of faculty I also include a course of studies that leads to a first level of graduation diploma. (It follows the post graduate doctorate diploma, and then the role of researcher in case one continues the university career). Departments give courses to students who come from other bordering faculties. As my numbers might not be perfectly exact I would suggest a cautious form such as “almost”, “near”, etc. in interpreting these numbers. Faculties of Psychology with related courses 19 Departments of Psychology 42 These figures are relevant not for the knowledge of Skinner but for the potential market for psychology as the population of psychologists and psychology students is impressively large and still growing. This explosion is due to many reasons which would be too long to consider in detail but that I can summarize this way: during the fascist period psychology was ostracized because the dominant ideology was neo-Hegelian. Psychology was rejected as a scientific discipline and was commonly associated with psychoanalysis. After the war there were only two departments of psychology and concerned mainly with perception studies. The first two university faculties were set up in 1973/4 in Rome and Padua. Since then the growth has been exponential. At the beginning. the faculties with a clinical orientation (starting with Rome) were mainly psychoanalytical in theoretical orientation. The ones with scientific orientation (starting with Padua) were initially dominated by the Gestalt theory of German origin. Behaviorism, with few exceptions, was totally neglected and considered reductive, incapable of giving answers to the great questions—from perception to thinking—and in many cases also dangerous for the possible Orwellian applications of conditioning. It is my impression that anti-behaviorism went along with the anti-Americanism of those days. (It is also ironic that now that psychology is totally dominated by American theories and literature, the great majority of the psychologist population is anti-American and definitely aligned with the Left). With the advent of Cognitivism and Information Theory, most of the other approaches and theories were abandoned to leave room to this “new scientific” deus ex machina. Roaming through the web in search of some significant counterexample, I could not find any. (As Skinner says, brain has taken the place of mind and everybody relaxes in now being scientifically secure.) 4) Schools: Confronted with this incredible demand of psychology, the government of the early 1980s has made obligatory a four year postgraduate course in psychotherapy for those who want to practice in the clinical field and the health institutions. Part of these course offerings is given inside the universities, but the majority is issued by private institutions. Plenty of new-born schools got the permit to teach psychotherapy in their various frameworks, from Music to Transactional Analysis, from phenomenology to all other kinds of theories including system theory, gestalt, imaginative, body work, etc. Here too the sources, books, articles, etc. are all American. Among these schools four, perhaps five, started as “behavioral” and are now cognitive-behavioral in name and character. All together the schools in psychotherapy are almost 100. (I counted 97 but I am not exactly sure of the number since for many I went simply by their titles.) At what level in the clinical field is the knowledge of Skinner? I have made a brief survey amongst my acquaintances and other psychologists and I can say that all of them have heard of Skinner. They know he had been quite important. Some of them think that his ideas were odd if not dangerous, and that the refusal of mental phenomenology makes his theory useless. The relevant fact for the Foundation and for skinnerians is that we are facing a population of practitioners, huge in size, and totally distorted in information. 5) Behaviorists: The behaviorist community seems to be easily identifiable, as it is relatively small and gravitates around a few university departments or few private institutions. The association I mentioned (A.I.A.M.C.) gathers most of the people who generally refer to behavioral science for their teaching or practice. The association has links with the American A.B.A. As I said above, AIAMC and neighbor associations appear to have departed from the original theoretical framework of the early years to receive more and more cognitive contributions. If you read the theoretical statement of the AIAMC and that of the schools of behavioral orientation you shall find that they claim they have had to include the S-O-R and the cognitive paradigm in order to solve problems related to practice and therapy dealing with emotion, motivation and thinking in general. We could say that they are referring to an old conception of behaviorism and either they have not read Skinner or they have not understood his point of view. ================== There are many things still to do. The general situation convinces me more and more that there is a problem of lack of knowledge, difficulty in understanding, and prejudices of all sorts. We’ll work on these matters, but a worthwhile immediate initiative would be that of a guided reading.
Russia
Liaison,Aleksandr Fedorov (arguer@mail.ru).
Updated: 9/29/06 -
The B. F. Skinner Foundation Address
The B. F. Skinner Foundation
12 Arrow Street
Suite 303
Cambridge, MA 02138
Phone: 617 661-9209
FAX: 617-499-0012
info@bfskinner.org
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