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*beg

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Yeah, it is absolutely amazing how long behaviorism reigned--particularly in the field of second language learning--despite the fundamental flaw that it basically ignored human consciousness on the grounds that it couldn't be empirically measured.

On the other hand, some of Frankl's logotherapy theory is a little out there too in my opinion.

^agreed, I don't see it as being particularly helpful to someone with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia or even some anxiety disorder. All of that said, I still like it, but then I'm a sucker for existentialism.

I think behaviorism has reigned so long because it gave psychology what it desperately wanted, recognition as a science. Unfortunately in trying to prove itself a science it forgot how important philosophy is to the field, and just about completely ignored half of what the human experience is.

I'm a neuro guy... that said, where was the science in this sift? Where were the experiments, the hypotheses, the clinical findings? ... he begins with the conclusion that humanity is "infinitely more than an animal", then starts talking about his ideas based on this assumption. Animals other than humans don't strive for or value "freedom" and "dignity"? And humans innately have an unlearned "conscious" that all other animals don't? These are substantial claims requiring substantial evidence, and the definitions of the philosophical words in quotations need to be very precisely defined before evidence can be culled...

In other words, I'd prefer Skinner over Frankl any day of the week. Frankl is so handwavy, and never seems to get anywhere substantial because he starts out with 'humans must not be animals' then runs around with how awesome people are because we don't always behave logically.

I think what Frankl is trying to address is that behaviorism as a whole completely ignores the conscious mind, thought is a dirty word as far as behaviorists are concerned, yet we seemingly do it all the time. People think every day, but behaviorism only concerned itself with actions since they were most readily measurable, which is fine, but they also decided that was all there was to it, actions and reactions. When behaviorism fails to explain something the excuse is invariably, well you've just not found the right stimuli.

Its not that I think behaviorism is 100% wrong, but it fails to branch out, it is one-dimensional in nature. Most of Frankl's ideas came through what some might call "case study". As a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps he was able to observe a lot of the extremes of human behavior or rather human behavior under extreme conditions. So while not a controlled experiment it was certainly based off observation. He wasn't just sitting around and spontaneously generated his ideas.