When William James Got Hungry by Martin E

Home , Being Boring, Mentalism (psychology)

In an excerpt from his new autobiography, Penn psychology professor Martin Seligman tells the little-known story of the American Psychological Association’s annual meeting in 1904, held at Penn. Its reverberations were profound—for Penn psychology professor Edwin Twitmyer and for American psychology. When William James Got Hungry By Martin E. P. Seligman

For much of his 50-plus-year career, Martin E. P. Seligman the room that housed my desk in graduate school, one of the great Gr’67, the Zellerbach Family Professor of Psychology and director fiascos of science had taken place of Penn’s Positive Psychology Center, has been one of the In 60 years before: Edwin Burket towering figures of psychology. His career took off early with Twitmyer Gr1902’s announcement of his momentous discovery to the psycho- his groundbreaking theory of Learned Helplessness, which logical world. It was not auspicious that grew directly out of his doctoral work at Penn. Along with his my desk sat exactly there. academic work—he is among the most cited psychologists in On the morning of December 29, 1904, the nation—he served as a transformational president of the the leading lights of American psychology assembled to listen to each other’s papers. American Psychological Association, and played a central role The occasion was the 13th annual meeting in founding the field of Positive Psychology. He has been at of the American Psychological Association times a controversial figure, befitting a man who decided early (APA), held appropriately enough on the West Philadelphia campus of the Univer- on that he had no interest in being boring. sity of Pennsylvania. Penn was home to the In The Hope Circuit: A Psychologist’s Journey from Helplessness very first department of psychology in to Optimism (published in April by PublicAffairs), Seligman America, established in 1887. Its founders had taken inspiration from tells the story of his life and career—including his youthful Leipzig’s Wilhelm Wundt and his brave days in Albany, his education at Princeton and Penn, and the band of breakaway German-speaking multifarious roles he has played in his field. scientists—brave because they sought The following excerpt turns on a deceptively quiet moment nothing less than a science of mental states, a science of psychology. College in the clash between mentalism and behaviorism. Put simply: Hall, a Victorian pile of green and brown If William James hadn’t been hungry that day, “Twitmyer’s Knee” stone, sat in the center of the few build- could have been as famous as “Pavlov’s Dog.” ings that constituted the University of Pennsylvania. To attend the paper reading, these professors, the men wearing

56 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE May|Jun 2018 ILLUSTRATION BY DAVID HOLLENBACH May|Jun 2018 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE 57 heavy dark suits, white shirts with round- learning objectively and get on its way ed collars, and colorless ties, trudged up to unraveling the mysteries of all knowl- the 12 concrete steps and through the edge. The scientist who discovered how heavy double doors. It is noteworthy that to do this would achieve immortality. the assemblage was not solely male since Twitmyer believed he had done it. When the next APA president, Mary Whiton the human kneecap is struck—just right— Calkins, was among them. They turned with a rubber hammer, a large kick en- right, strode the length of the wide cor- sues. This is called the patellar reflex. ridor with its 15-foot ceiling, and entered Reflexes are not learned; they are the the large classroom. nervous system’s inevitable and uncon- On the dais sat William James himself, scious reaction to a stimulus. Twitmyer, the newly inaugurated president of the ingeniously, rang a bell half a second be- APA, holding that post for the second fore each hammer blow. Sure enough time. James was a founder of American after 150 or more pairings, the bell itself psychology, having established the first was followed by the kick—even before the American “psychological laboratory” at hammer blow. This worked for every one Harvard in 1875, even while teaching William James, ca. 1903. of Twitmyer’s six subjects. physiology. His was an awe-inspiring This should all sound familiar, because presence. Erect and wiry, with striking in Saint Petersburg at just the same time blue eyes, his light beard now mostly At least one person in the audience and for similar reasons, Ivan Petrovich gray, James was an affable and witty con- was terrifically excited, barely able to Pavlov was doing essentially the same versationalist. Like his dour brother, contain himself. Thirty-one-year-old thing—independently. Pavlov paired the novelist Henry James, William was quite Edwin B. Twitmyer was about to report clicking of a metronome with food pow- fragile, having suffered at least two “ner- on his 1902 doctoral dissertation. He der injected into the mouths of dogs and vous breakdowns,” and he was a prolific suspected that he had captured the most found that the clicks alone came to elicit but much less fusty a writer than Henry. fundamental particle of learning. salivation. Pavlov added an important His acclaimed 1,200- page Principles of This was a grand venture with a vener- wrinkle: digestive surgeon that he was— Psychology was already the classic text- able provenance. David Hume (1711– not a psychologist—he extruded the sali- book, and his influential essay “Does 1776), the founder of “associationism,” vary gland of the dog, and so he could Consciousness Exist?” had just come out. claimed that we could never observe count precisely the number of drops of James called the morning session to cause directly; rather we could only ob- saliva elicited by the clicks, rather than order, and the reading of papers began. serve the contiguity in time between two just weighing some mushy food. Pavlov, You, my reader, and even I would have events. The red billiard ball strikes the already renowned for his work on diges- found the session dull—our knowledge white ball, and the white ball shoots off tion for which he got the Nobel Prize in of what was about to happen notwith- into the pocket. We infer that the motion 1904, trumpeted these results in Madrid standing—and we would have spent our of the red ball caused the white ball’s in 1903 in his Nobel acceptance speech. time gazing out the 12-foot windows onto motion, but we only ever see an associa- Pavlov achieved immortality for discover- the green fields. R. S. Woodworth report- tion in time. Such associations are the ing this, the “conditional reflex.” ed a high correlation between the strength fundamental building blocks of all learn- Twitmyer did not achieve immortality. of the right hand and the left. Margaret ing, since for the British empiricists, of For at the close of his paper, James said, Washburn discoursed on the difference whom Hume was the leading light, the “Just in time for lunch. I guess there between a “feeling” and a “sensation.” mind is but a blank slate that experience won’t be any discussion of this paper. Hugo Muensterberg somehow united the writes on. And what does experience Let’s go eat.” truth of arithmetic with the values of mo- write on the blank slate? Only these as- Why didn’t Twitmyer get any credit at rality and religion. Lightner Witmer sociations, and so all that we learn, all all for this important discovery? For one C1888, director of the psychological clin- that we know, is merely the combination thing Twitmyer’s 1902 dissertation was ic of the Penn department, reported on of countless pairings. privately printed and so inaccessible, the accuracy of guesses about the heavi- This became a program for scientific while Pavlov—already an international ness of very similar weights. A polite, low- psychology. If science could isolate and icon—was able to spread the word of his key discussion lasting about 10 minutes measure such associations in the labora- latest discovery in his Nobel acceptance followed each paper. tory, science would be able to measure speech. Twitmyer, in contrast, was a

58 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE May|Jun 2018 Photo courtesy Houghton Library, Harvard University Kneecapped, Twitmyer dropped newbie and seems to have shyly avoided anything that smacked of self-promo- his conditioning work and turned tion. For another, American psychologists at this time focused on consciousness, whereas a reflex was merely phys- his attention to speech defects ical and mechanical, hardly the key that would unlock the mind. But it is also a in children. sad fact that William James was bored and hungry. Kneecapped, Twitmyer dropped his conditioning work and turned his atten- in learning theory—trends Frank was tion to his wife’s specialty, speech defects deeply skeptical about. He did not be- in children. lieve in stimulus-response-reinforce- Sixty years later this wound to the col- ment theory, which held a monopoly in lective psyche of Penn’s proud depart- the field of learning. ment still festered, and I could sense it Frank came to maturity as this mo- as Professor Francis W. Irwin C’26 G’28 nopoly grew. To appreciate why behav- Gr’31 related the Twitmyer story to us. iorism came to exert over the world of Frank had been at the center of the only psychology a hold so strong that Frank psychology coup d’état of the last cen- spent his entire career fighting it, let’s tury. Since Twitmyer’s time Penn’s de- return to William James’s shooing ev- partment had gotten sleepier and sleep- eryone out to lunch. ier, and by 1955 it was snoring audibly. William James was likely bored by the As the longtime editor in chief of the reflexes of the knee and for good reason. prestigious Journal of Experimental The associationists were thoroughgoing Psychology, Frank was one of the only mentalists: an association was the pairing Edwin Burket Twitmyer, ca. 1925. faculty members who still had his finger of two mental states: the idea of wooden on the pulse of any living science. He false teeth evokes an image of the unsmil- persuaded Penn’s high administration eling yearlong, five-day-a-week course in ing George Washington. James believed that a rustling was in order, and the vic- which every single faculty member that mental states—ideas, images, knowl- tim of the raid was to be Harvard’s psy- taught, seriatim, his (pronoun accurate) edge, attention, and awareness—were the chology department. Two rival tyrants personal research in detail. Frank was the true subjects of psychology. You can bet then reigned over Harvard: B. F. (Fred) senior member of the faculty, and he ac- that James began to gaze out the window Skinner, the star of 1950s behaviorism, tually knew Twitmyer [who had served soon after the talk started, thinking that and S. S. (Smitty) Stevens, the world’s on Penn’s faculty as professor of psychol- this Twit-fellow was irrelevant: No sci- leading mathematical psychophysiolo- ogy and director of the Psychological ence of mind would ever come from low- gist. But chafing under their whip hands Laboratory and Clinic until his death in level reflexes. were a half dozen brilliant young psy- 1943]. Austerely dressed in a threadbare But James did not reckon on behavior- chologists. Penn contacted Robert Bush, gray suit and gray-blue tie, he looked con- ism, the up-and-coming movement that the political leader of these young Turks, siderably older than his 60 years—al- dispensed with mental life altogether on and in one fell swoop Penn offered all of though everyone over 50 looked ancient the grounds that only behavior can be them full professorships. All of them ac- to me at the time. He chain-smoked and reliably measured. cepted. Nothing like this had ever hap- at one point had three cigarettes smolder- The psychological world listened to pened before in psychology; nor has it ing—he was every bit as nervous as the Pavlov, if not to Twitmyer, with grow- since. So in 1958 a rejuvenated depart- 20 graduate students newly arrived at the ing—and then exploding—interest. ment under the chairmanship of Bob place to be. Through the first decade of the 20th Bush suddenly appeared at 121 College He had every right to be nervous since century, discontent was rife in the field. Hall. Penn became—overnight—the he was presenting the culmination of The mentalism that pervaded the 1904 place to be. his 40 years’ work on learning to a hy- meeting increasingly clashed with the Frank told us the Twitmyer story on the percritical audience. Young as we were, materialism of the harder sciences, very first day of the proseminar, the gru- we were up to date about the very latest spurred on by the remarkable success

Photo courtesy Penn Psychology Department May|Jun 2018 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE 59 Try as we might, of Einsteinian physics in the first 20 “Reinforcer,” the third element of the years of the 20th century. Not only were behaviorist triad, descended from Edward we cannot shake ideas, sensations, images, and aware- L. Thorndike’s work at Columbia Teacher’s ness “soul” stuff and science “body” College. He put cats in “puzzle boxes,” in off free will. stuff, but, even worse, these mental which pulling a string would open a door states were notoriously hard to mea- leading to food and freedom. The cats sure. If two introspecting subjects learned only gradually, not by sudden in- Seele, the soul, to describe the scope of might disagree about what they saw sight, and Thorndike proposed the “law his endeavor. Seele was then crudely mis- when light of a given wavelength was of effect”: associations followed by a “sat- translated as the “mind,” which is not at flashed—blue, dark blue, reddish pur- isfier” are strengthened; those followed by all what Freud meant. For Freudians, ple, or deep purple—what of their even an “annoyer” are weakened. This was solid mind is merely the froth on the cappuc- bigger disagreements when introspect- behavioral work, but Thorndike’s language cino, and Freud was not much inter- ing about images and ideas? needed purging by the language police. ested in the froth of the conscious mind. Behaviorism was elegant. It sought to So, stripped of Thorndike’s mentalism, Freud was after the espresso, the roiling rid psychology of the quicksand of men- a “reinforcer” was an event that, when deep of negative emotion that drives the tal stuff and to place measurable behav- made contingent on a response, in- meanderings of consciousness. ior as the concrete footing that real sci- creased the probability of that re- These militant denials of cognition led ence requires. A rat turning left or right sponse—no need to postulate mental to blind spots: that consciousness is not in a maze was more measurable and satisfaction or reward. Out of these causal, that imagination has no role, and more replicable than the sensation of simple elements, so the program went, that free will is an illusion. I could not slimy as composed of the sensation of the entire edifice of all learning would begin to articulate these blind spots when warm plus that of wet. John Broadus be constructed. When my parents asked I entered graduate school, but contrary Watson ignited the revolution in 1913 at me on one of my visits back to Albany, to the prevailing wisdom of 1964, today, Columbia University. what I was, I proudly responded, “I am 50 years later, we know the following: Psychology, he thought, should be “a a learning theorist.” ■ Conscious thoughts powerfully influ- purely objective experimental branch of Frank Irwin would also have said, “I ence emotions. Thoughts of helplessness natural science,” aiming not to under- am a learning theorist,” although he produce passivity. Thoughts of loss pro- stand the fluff of the mind but to predict would have termed this his “action” and duce sadness. and control behavior. Introspection was not his “response.” Frank told us on that ■ Thoughts of trespass produce anger. a muddle, and behavior was the right first day that stimulus, response, and Thoughts of a better future produce unit for scientific analysis. reinforce were bosh. Instrumental be- hope. A science of behavior without the Within two decades, behaviorism had havior is not governed by blind rein- mind is hopelessly insufficient. swept away introspection entirely, and its forcement but rather is intentional— ■ We continually imagine different fu- experimental psychologists ascended to even in rats. Rats (and certainly people) tures, we evaluate them, and we choose the top professorships of American psy- are cognitive and choose their most among them. Try as we might, we cannot chology. The science of mind had trans- highly preferred available outcome. shake off free will. A science that is only formed into the science of behavior, and Frank’s skepticism resonated with me; about the past (memory) and the present “learning theory” now sat on the throne. that animals might be cognitive was on (perception) without an account of future- Learning theory had three basic ele- my mind when I later undertook my mindedness is hopelessly insufficient. ments: stimulus, response, and rein- work on learned helplessness. ■ A science that is only about negative forcer. “Stimulus” and “response” were So, a central premise of psychology as emotions is hopelessly insufficient. the American derivation of Ivan Pavlov’s I first knew it was that the discipline Much of my own story over the next work, the leading exemplar of good be- could safely ignore thinking and con- fifty years would be about the struggle havioral science. Food was the “uncon- sciousness, could ignore all of “mind.” to carve out a scientific psychology conditioned stimulus” and salivation the For the behaviorists, impeccable mea- genial to these truths. “unconditioned response” elicited by the surement topped everything. Behavior food. The clicking of the metronome be- could be known with certainty, but mind Adapted from The Hope Circuit: A Psychologist’s came the “conditioned stimulus” when could not, so mind was outside science. Journey from Helplessness to Optimism, by paired with food, and the little bit of And it was not just the behaviorists who Martin E. P. Seligman. Copyright © 2018. salivation that occurred in response was eschewed mind. For the Freudians, it Available from PublicAffairs, an imprint of the “conditioned response.” was no accident that Freud used die Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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