Mechanical Man

John B. Watson and the Beginnings of Behaviorism

Kerry W. Buckley

Hardcover

January 27, 1989

ISBN 9780898627442

Price: $45.00

233 Pages

Size: 6" x 9"

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This book is the definitive biography of the most influential American psychologist of his generation. As the founder of behaviorism, John Broadus Watson exerted a powerful influence on the development of American experimental psychology. By the age of 36, he was president of the American Psychological Association and head of the psychology department at Johns Hopkins University. But his dramatic dismissal from academic life in 1920 propelled him into the very center of the Jazz Age - Madison Avenue. As an advertising executive, Watson brought his psychological expertise to bear on the marketplace. As a popularizer of psychology, he made behaviorism a household word. Through books, magazine articles, newspaper stories, and radio broadcasts, he established himself as an expert on subjects ranging from child rearing to economics.

“A biography of John B. Watson worth reading as scholarship.....No other treatment interweaves so well the complexities of people and the environment, of science and society, of times and culture. The book exemplifies the best of the 'new' history of psychology....Uniformly excellent.”

—Philosophical Psychology

About the Author

Kerry W. Buckley , recieved his Ph.D. in American Social and Intellectual History from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst where he now heads the office of Humanities Programs in the Division of Continuing Education . He has taught the history of psychology at Wellsey College and has published articles on Watson and behaviorism in the Journal of History of the Behavioral Sciences and The Social Science Encylopedia { London }.

Audience

Students of the history of psychology and those interested in the history of science and technology.

Course Use

Students of the history of psychology.