BEHAVIOURISM AND CREATIVITY

© 2009 by The Johns Hopkins University Press
Phenomenology and
Behaviorism:
A Mutual Readjustment
Marino Pérez-Álvarez and
Louis A. Sass
Abstract: This article considers the relationship
between phenomenology and behaviorism in a new
perspective. First, we present the phenomenological
approach of the Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset
(1883–1953). Ortega’s perspective involves a transfor-
mation of classical phenomenology in a direction that
emphasizes ‘life as action’ and ‘historical reason’ as a
form of explanation. These aspects of Ortega’s approach
are of interest to contemporary phenomenology, and
enable phenomenology’s relationship with behavior-
ism to be reconsidered. Second, we present Skinner’s
radical behaviorism, the variant of behaviorism most
relevant to phenomenology. Of particular importance
here is radical behaviorism’s emphasis on final causal-
ity and its approach to ‘private events’ in terms of the
interpersonal functions served by these events. Third,
we propose a mutual correction, both of behaviorism by
phenomenology and of phenomenology by behaviorism,
in which behaviorism’s notion of the environment may
better be conceptualized through the phenomenological
notion of the ‘lived-world,’ and phenomenology could
adopt radical behaviorism’s dialectical and constructiv-
ist perspective. Finally, we discuss several implications
for understanding psychopathology.
Keywords: Behavioral hermeneutics, final causality,
historical reason, metaphor, operant behavior, private
events
T
his is by no means the first appraisal of
the relationship between phenomenology
and behaviorism (P&B), although it does
approach the issue from a new standpoint. A
previous study by W. Day (1969/1992) attempted
to reconcile P&B in the context of certain misun-
derstandings that had emerged in a symposium on
the issue (Wann 1964). Various other authors have
also drawn attention to the relationship between
existentialism and behaviorism (Fallon 1992;
Woolfolk and Sass 1988). Particularly pertinent
in this regard are Skinner’s affinities with Sartre
(Kvale and Grenness 1967; Morf 1998) and cer-
tain Heideggerian perspectives (Scharff 1999).
This article considers the P&B relationship in
a new perspective, specifically, that of the Spanish
philosopher José Ortega y Gasset (1883–1953).
Ortega’s perspective is especially relevant because
it involves a certain readjustment of classical
phenomenology and anticipates Heidegger (Or-
ringer 2001). Ortega was strongly influenced by
Aristotle (Ortega y Gasset 1931/2002) and also
by American pragmatism (Graham 1994), both
of which give him a certain affinity with behavior-
ism. Although Ortega himself never refers to the
latter affinity, it was pointed out by the Spanish
psychologist, Mariano Yela (1987), who consid-
ered Ortega’s celebrated formula ‘I am myself
and my circumstances’ as prefiguring Skinner’s
analysis of the articulation of behavior with en-
vironmental conditions. Furthermore, it is worth
mentioning that the Orteguian formula resembles
Heidegger’s notion of “being-in-the-world.” Along

200 ■ PPP / Vol. 15, No. 3 / September 2008
a similar line, Woolfolk and Sass (1988) speak of
‘conduct-in-the world’ as the “medium through
which humans define what they are” (p. 113).
Like Heidegger and Sartre, Ortega offers an all-
encompassing vision of human life and experience
that has implications on many levels, including the
ontological, epistemological, and ethical.
The article first presents relevant aspects of
Ortega’s approach to phenomenology and then
of Skinner’s behaviorism. Next we propose some
mutual readjustments of both P&B; finally, we con-
sider some implications for clinical psychology’s ap-
proach to psychopathology and psychotherapy.
Phenomenology According to
Ortega
Although Ortega did not identify himself as
a phenomenologist or existentialist, his philoso-
phy does respond to questions raised by these
movements. Indeed, Ortega can almost be con-
sidered an existential phenomenologist avant la
lettre (Silver 1978). Starting with his first work,
Meditations on Quixote in 1914 (Ortega y Gas-
set 1914/2000), Ortega was critical of aspects of
transcendental phenomenology, which he saw as
being entangled with the problems of traditional
idealist philosophy (Ortega y Gasset 1923/1961).
Ortega considered the “modern theme”—his la-
bel for the task of contemporary thought—to be
that of overcoming idealism without falling into
realism, which led him to postulate his principles
of Vital Reason and Historical Reason (Ortega y
Gasset 1941/1962). As we shall see, both these
principles give Ortega’s phenomenology a certain
affinity with behaviorism.
‘Life as Execution’
For Ortega, the fundamental reality that is
life can be considered above all as “execution,”
in the practical sense of living, of finding one-
self immersed in the world and of having to do
something with one’s own life (Ortega y Gasset
1931/2002). The implication of ‘life as execution’
for phenomenology is twofold. Reality basically
consists not of pure consciousness, but of action
or execution. The object is not conceived as exist-
ing as a kind of mental representation within the
subject. Subject and object are understood to be
mutually constitutive, and based on life (rather
than purely cognitive), acknowledging that being
world oriented or ‘aware of the world’ is more
fundamental than self-consciousness.
Ortega thereby revises the very concept of ex-
perience (Erleben) by eradicating all traces of an
intellectualist or ‘idealist’ approach. The human
being, for Ortega, is not res cogitans, but rather
res dramatica. He exists only insofar as he presents
himself in action and expression, and in a public,
or potentially public, space. Ortega’s famous
formula, ‘I am myself and my circumstances,’
as expressed in his 1914 book, Meditations on
Quixote, must be understood in this sense. This
formula clearly anticipates Heidegger’s notion of
‘being-in-the-world’ as set out in Being and Time
in 1927 (Heidegger 2003). Some years later, in fact,
Ortega became perhaps the first major Spanish-
language writer to acknowledge the importance of
Heidegger, whom he recognized as an intellectual
fellow traveler and described as the thinker who
“had most advanced the analysis of human life”
(Ortega y Gasset 1929/1964, 228). But Ortega was
also concerned about emphasizing both his own
independence and a certain intellectual priority.
In the Prologue to the third German edition of
Ortega’s book, The Modern Theme, published
in 1934, Ortega notes that, since early 1914, he
had already been criticizing Husserl’s idealism and
advocating a more grounded, existence-oriented
kind of phenomenology.
Historical Reason
Historical reason is the perfect complement to
vital reason. Whereas natural phenomena in the
sphere of natural sciences have causes, the hu-
man phenomena studied by human sciences have
reasons. Ortega applied this conceptualization,
introduced by Dilthey, to rectify what he saw as the
a-historicity of Husserlian phenomenology, with
its emphasis on essences and ‘things themselves’
rather than on genetic questions. (Ortega was
responding primarily to Husserl’s earlier work,
in which he had not yet emphasized ‘genetic phe-
nomenology.’)1
In this view, human sciences are open not only
to understanding, but also to forms of explana-

Pérez-Álvarez & Sass / Phenomenology and Behaviorism ■ 201
tion involving reasons or motives, what Ortega
referred to as historical reasoning or history as a
system (Ortega y Gasset 1941/1962). At the bio-
graphical level, historical reasoning is understood
as accounting for the perspective and personal
circumstances with which a person conducts and
makes sense of his or her life. Ortega’s prologue to
his book, ‘Goethe from within,’ is an exemplary
study of this (Ortega y Gasset 1932/1982). ‘From
within’ refers, of course, not to a world understood
as existing within oneself, but rather to oneself
as a perspective on the world. The biographer
or clinician, as the case may be, would attempt
to enter the perspective and circumstances of the
person being studied to reconstruct the orientation
and projects that give that life its meaning. Ortega
particularly emphasized moments of personal or
historical crisis in which the world or system of
convictions in a previous phase of life is shaken
and called into question, thereby creating dis-
orientation and anguish, but also opening new
possibilities.
‘Aesthetic Sense of Life’
What Ortega refers to as the aesthetic sense of
life is ‘the joyful acceptance of what is real,’ not
in the sense of accommodation or resignation
but as the affirmation of life in all its possibilities
(Ortega y Gasset 1995). It should be recalled here
that after the famous line, ‘I am myself and my
circumstances,’ Ortega continued by saying, ‘if I
do not save them, I do not save myself.’ Saving
one’s circumstances implies understanding them
and attempting to transform them within the limits
of what is possible (Lasaga 2005). Of relevance
here is the conception of life as a project. Man is
in some sense what he is yet to be. This implies
that his life necessarily contains a component
of both freedom and fiction—although the free-
dom in question is limited by contingencies and
circumstances that we have not chosen and that
restrict our sphere of possibilities (Ortega y Gasset
1929/1964). In this regard, Ortega distinguishes
two models of existence, what he calls the bour-
geois model, whose ideal is a minimal kind of
life, characterized by security; and the maximal
or “sporting” model, characterized by adventure
and receptiveness to opportunity.
All of the conditions in which both the real
and the possible, including life’s contradictions,
must be dealt with, lead Ortega to make what
may sound like a surprising statement, although
well articulated in his philosophy, concerning the
notion of man as a metaphorical being. He is re-
ferring to the power of the metaphor to describe
new features in the world, founding a new reality
in which we live. The emphasis Ortega placed on
metaphor as the essence of both art and life can
perhaps be understood in the context of a reality
highlighted by metaphor. As he himself noted,
metaphors are transformative. They reveal new
perspectives, which are not, however, created out
of nothing by a wholly autonomous subject or
through some kind of mystical communion with
the beyond. Rather, they derive from the union of
two familiar objects or viewpoints that are already
part, perhaps even a very familiar part, of the
person’s circumstances or cultural milieu.
In this regard, Ortega goes so far as to say that
the ultimate work of art is life itself—life as a work
of art (Pérez-Álvarez and García-Montes 2004),
which would be a work of art with a dramatic tex-
ture: The plot of the drama is a person’s struggle to
realize the imaginary character who, in some sense,
is his true self and represents his true vocation. It
is no coincidence that Ortega considers theater the
‘embodied metaphor’ of human existence.
Ortega’s notion of the aesthetic sense of life
implies a capacity for seeing oneself and the world
from a kind of ironic distance. For Ortega, the
authentic major theme of life need not be anguish
and awareness of mortality (being-toward-death).
Instead, he projects a sunnier sense of opportunity,
including the potential for both heroic action and
aesthetic delight. Furthermore, he does not see
technology primarily as representing the loss of
being that it does for Heidegger, but rather as of-
fering new possibilities for being. It is also worth
noting that Ortega always strove to express his
viewpoint in everyday vocabulary and speech,
with a complete absence of esoteric or technical
vocabulary or any hint of a mystical or mystifying
aura. Indeed, as Ortega used to say, ‘clarity is the
courtesy of the philosopher.’ A number of these
features of Ortega’s thought—his optimism, his
openness to technical innovation, and his bracing

clarity—make his approach especially useful in a
psychiatric or mental health context.
Behaviorism According to
Skinner
Of all the varieties of behaviorism, Skinner’s
radical behaviorism is, perhaps surprisingly, the
most pertinent for establishing affinities with
phenomenology. If for Ortega the modern theme
of philosophy was overcoming idealism without
falling into realism, for Skinner in psychology it
would be overcoming mentalism without falling
into physicalism. Skinner himself did not perceive
these similarities—his own interest lay in the de-
velopment of a science of behavior rather than in
seeking philosophical affinities. To approach the
question of philosophical affinities, we need to
consider at least two fundamental questions. In
radical behaviorism, the ‘things themselves’ that
psychology has to study are behaviors. But what
is “behavior”? And does behavior exhaust the
domain of what needs to be considered by a phi-
losophy of psychology worthy of the name? The
first question involves a consideration of operant
behavior, the second, of private events.
Operant Behavior in Terms of Final
Causality
Behavior is anything organisms do. Operant
behavior is behavior that can be modified by its
consequences. The technical term for a conse-
quence of behavior is “reinforcer.” It is important
to bear in mind that, for Skinner, both behavior
and reinforcer are defined generically as classes
of behavior and of reinforcers (Skinner 1935).
Discrete behavior, defined by its topography, is
not what is important to an analysis of behavior
but, rather, the class of behavior as defined by its
function. Nor is it necessary for the reinforcer to
appear after each occurrence of the behavior.
The behavior–reinforcer relationship is, in
fact, a relationship of mutual implication, akin,
for example, to heads and tails on a coin or an
uncle and nephew, or the subject and object when
these are understood in an appropriately dialectic
rather than substantialist manner. The key point is
that operant behavior involves not a mechanistic
causality linking distinct Ss with distinct Rs, but
rather final causality (Rachlin 1992). To see final
causation in Skinner’s psychology, the concepts
of reinforcement contingency and reinforcement
history must be introduced.
The first concept—reinforcement contingency—
refers to the relationship between operant behavior
and the consequences of that behavior (Skinner
1969). The main point that should be empha-
sized here is that this relationship of behavior-to-
consequence (reinforcer) is in turn correlated with
some prior stimulus (the discriminative stimulus)
that establishes the occasion and opportunity for
certain behavior (the operant) to trigger its effect.
The behavior of greeting a friend on the street, for
instance, occurs on the occasion of his presence
at a certain distance, in a certain position and at-
titude, and so on. However, what reinforces the
‘greeting behavior’ is the subsequent reply from
the other, which is yet to occur. But this ‘event yet
to happen’ (the reinforcer) correlates (by virtue of
history) with some present stimulus (the friend’s
presence) that discriminates the appropriate be-
havior. Note that a reinforcement contingency
involves the relationship between something pres-
ent (the discriminative stimulus) and something
that is yet to happen (the anticipated reinforcer).
In this sense, the reinforcement contingency can be
said to have a temporal structure that is essentially
oriented toward the future, akin in many ways
to Heidegger’s ‘temporalizing of everydayness’
(Scharff 1999).
The second concept—reinforcement history—
refers to the reinforcement contingencies to which
a person has been exposed throughout his or her
life, implying that, in a certain sense, past and
present are contemporaneous. All functions, both
reinforcing and discriminative, are in fact rooted in
the history of learning and are continually updated
by reinforcement contingencies. Each learning ex-
perience involves not merely ‘storing experience,’
but a change in the organism that reorganizes
later possibilities for interaction. This notion of
reinforcement history is close to Aristotle’s concept
of ‘soul,’ which stresses the notion of potentiality.
In Aristotelian terms, reinforcement history could
be said to change the potential as a condition of
possibility for new acts, according to an analysis

of change based on the theory of potentiality and
actuality (Lear 1988, ch. 1). Aristotle (1999) gives
the example of the act of playing the zither, point-
ing out that the act of playing the instrument modi-
fies one’s ability to play, which in turn influences
successive acts (Metaphysics IX, 8, 30–5).
The concepts of operant behavior, reinforce-
ment contingency, and reinforcement history
lead to the conception of final causation (Rachlin
1992). Considered in isolation, a reinforcer could
not be a final cause. But for Skinner, a particular
behavior is correlated with previous behaviors
and together they constitute a functional class. As
a result, the consequences of the entire class (its
“goal” or anticipation of future reinforcement) are
prefigured in individual behavior. This concept of
final causality (in Aristotelian terms) implies a kind
of teleological holism that embraces an organism’s
past and future as well as current behavior.
Skinner’s emphasis on final causality could
even be said to imply the existence of a subjective
dimension. It is, after all, primarily from the point
of view of the organism, embedded in its environ-
ment, that a set of behaviors that are heteroge-
neous in purely physical terms, can form a class
of actions that is defined by the particular purpose
these actions serve for the organism and from the
organism’s standpoint. The ‘point of view’ in ques-
tion is not, however, something private or occult,
nor should it be conceived in terms of inner ‘rep-
resentations’ of an outer world. The organism is,
after all, world directed. And the world itself, we
might say, constitutes its own best representation.
This brings us to the second point.
Private Events as Behavioral Reality
To understand the Skinnerian position on what
are called private events, his distinction between
methodological and radical behaviorism must be
understood. This distinction, which Skinner made
at a symposium organized by Edwin G. Boring in
1945 (Skinner 1945), is considered a landmark in
the history of behaviorism (Malone and Cruchon
2001; Moore 1995).
According to methodological behaviorism,
Skinner says, “the world is divided into public and
private events, and psychology, in order to meet
the requirements of a science, must confine itself
to the former.” Skinner continues, “This was never
good behaviorism, but it was an easy position to
expound and defend, and was often resorted to
by the behaviorists themselves” (Skinner 1945,
292). According to radical behaviorism, by con-
trast, private events do not constitute a separate
reality beyond observation, because they are in
fact observable, although only by one person.
The problem for Skinner is how society teaches
each person to have the subjective experience he
or she has. As Skinner says, “What is lacking is
the bold and exciting behavioristic hypothesis that
what one observes and talks about is always the
‘real’ or ‘physical’ world (or at least ‘one’ world),
and that ‘experience’ is a derived construct to be
understood only through an analysis of verbal
(not, of course, merely vocal) processes” (1945,
p. 293). “The only problem,” he goes on to say,
“which a science of behavior must solve in connec-
tion with subjectivism is in the verbal field. How
can we account for the behavior of talking about
mental events? The solution must be psychologi-
cal, rather than logical, and I have tried to suggest
one approach in my present paper” (1945, p. 294).
Skinner refers to at least four means by which the
verbal community teaches us to account for private
events (see below; also Skinner 1957).
Skinner’s words came as a surprise to those
attending that symposium organized by Boring.
Along with other behaviorists, he had been invited
to present his form of operationalizing ‘psycholog-
ical terms,’ on the assumption (according to Bor-
ing) that ‘Science does not consider private data.’
“It is an amusing bit of irony,” says Skinner, “that
while Boring must confine himself to an account of
my external behavior, I am still reasonably inter-
ested in what might be called Boring-from-within”
(1945, 294). Radical behaviorism can still surprise
us today, given the misunderstandings on the basis
of which it is usually dismissed (as something ob-
solete), and in particular, if it is not distinguished
from methodological behaviorism. This said, three
basic questions emerge. These concern ontological
issues, the nature of construction, and the role of
private events.
Concerning ontological issues, radical behav-
iorism grants to private phenomena the same
status of reality as it does to public phenomena

(Moore 2001). “We need not suppose,” Skinner
says, “that events which take place within an
organism’s skin have special properties for that
reason. A private event may be distinguished
by its limited accessibility but not, so far as we
know, by any special structure or nature” (1953,
257–8). When Skinner does speak of mental life as
a mere fiction (e.g., Skinner 1977), he is referring
to conceptualizations of the mind that would set
it apart from behavior. In this sense, for Skinner,
cognitive structures are simply explanatory fic-
tions that at best are unnecessary and at worst
highly misleading. In his conception, ‘mental life’
would consist of a continuous flow of behavior,
both overt and covert, in which one is always
doing something and that is best captured in the
form of a gerund—feeling, thinking, and so on.
The essence of ‘behavior’ should be understood
as performance of a process or action. This need
not involve physical movement (Skinner is not, in
this sense, a materialist). It may also be a matter
of thinking, feeling, or perceiving.
As far as the nature of construction is con-
cerned, recall the constructive–operant nature of
radical behaviorism, whereby ‘radical’ has pre-
cisely the sense of going to the root of things, in
this case, of private events. The ‘internal world,’
including experience and awareness, would not be
self-originated, but would involve the world itself,
as a condition of its possibility. In this respect,
Skinner points out several ways this so-called
“internal world” is formed (Skinner 1945). Basi-
cally, these involve processes of verbal labeling by
which society teaches individuals to discriminate
otherwise-undifferentiated private experiences—
as, for example, when a child learns to speak of
being “bored” or “sad” when she no longer par-
ticipates, or participates pleasurably, in activities
previously done with interest.
Private events, when viewed in Skinner’s
perspective, are considered in relation to the
contingency of three terms: occasion, behavior,
and consequences (corresponding to discrimina-
tive stimulus, operant behavior, and reinforcer).
In general, it could be argued that private events
are not the cause of behavior in the sense that
cognitive psychology assumes, but rather form
part of the context in which the behavior occurs,
and can therefore alter the relationships between
the three terms of the equation. Thinking, for
example, could help to improve the performance
of behavior, but would not be its cause, because
the supposed cause would have to be explained
in terms of prior contingencies. Thus, feelings
(anxiety, sadness, guilt, etc.) can certainly alter
one’s relationships with the world, but they would
not themselves be thought of as the cause of such
alteration; once more, they themselves would de-
pend on previous conditions (Moore 2001).
The propensity to focus on private events, par-
ticularly thoughts and feelings, is often supported
by the cultural context of understanding in which
we live, where “Cartesian” notions about the in-
nerness, privacy, and primacy of the mental tend
to be prevalent. This propensity can, however, be
psychologically problematic and may even give
rise to serious psychological disorders. This oc-
curs when people try to control certain private
events that might otherwise just spontaneously
attenuate or disappear (such as intrusive thoughts
or fears), but that, as a result of such attempts at
control, can sometimes come to be experienced as
even more prominent and dominating. This con-
stitutes the disorder of “experiential avoidance”
(García-Montes et al 2008; Hayes, Strosahl, and
Wilson 1999).
Mutual Readjustments of
Phenomenology and Behaviorism
The key affinities between P&B can best be
summarized in terms of two concepts: first, adual-
ism, and second, the centrality of practical life.
Both P&B clearly attempt to overcome the
mind–world dualism typical of Cartesianism.
In both cases, the mind is not understood as
something internal, opposed to the world, but in
relational terms, as intentionality in phenomenol-
ogy and as operant behavior in behaviorism. On
the other hand, the world is not understood as
something external, opposed to the mind, but as a
kind of medium: circumstances or the lived world
in phenomenology, contingencies or functional
contexts in behaviorism.
Similarly, phenomenology and behaviorism
take practical life as their central theme. This
point deserves emphasis, given philosophy’s

general tendency to emphasize abstraction over
the concrete realities of life, and psychology’s
propensity to stress nomothetic generalizations
(the average person) rather than the specific facts
of a single individual or life. With these basic af-
finities in mind, we consider some possible mutual
readjustments.
Readjustments of Behaviorism
by Phenomenology
World Rather Than Environment
To begin with, behaviorism’s notion of the
environment could be better conceptualized as
phenomenology’s notion of the world. As Ortega
argues, animals have environment, but man has
world. After all, the discriminative and reinforc-
ing stimuli that constitute the human environment
are made up of historically constructed configu-
rations of meaning. The same forest presents a
different configuration to the poet, the hunter, the
lumberjack, the forester, or the forest dweller. As
the Spanish philosopher Fuentes-Ortega (1993)
noted, the notion of ‘discriminative contingency’
refers to the configuration of a world experienced
in accordance with personal meanings. From this
viewpoint, reinforcers are not just things that fol-
low behavior, but also, and above all, values that
guide our life. Of relevance here is the express
consideration of values by Acceptance and Com-
mitment Therapy, an approach much indebted to
Skinner’s radical behaviorism (Hayes, Strosahl,
and Wilson 1999). In the context of these advances
(discriminative contingency and values), behavior-
ism might adopt an interpretation of the world in
terms of phenomenology.
The main idea that must be grasped is that
(what might be called) stimulus and response are
complementary on the most fundamental, onto-
logical level; indeed, they are mutually constitu-
tive. Dewey made this point many years ago in
a famous (but insufficiently influential) critique
called “The Reflex-Arc Concept in Psychology”
(Dewey 1896). Perhaps the point has been most
richly elaborated in the phenomenological concept
of the lived-body. As Merleau-Ponty points out,
at the most basic and immediate level, our experi-
ence of the world is imbued with affordances and
vectors of meaning that derive from our primal
experience of bodily abilities, limitations, and
needs. Distance and weight, for example, are not
experienced as neutral dimensions, but rather in
relation to one’s experience of reaching or lifting.
At the most fundamental level, the lived-body is
not an inert material substance in focal awareness,
but an implicit articulation of propensities and
abilities directed at the world.
To recognize this condition of mutual constitu-
tion is (as Dewey noted) to give up the positivist
dream of a world of clear-cut entities or atomic
facts that can be easily recognized by all observ-
ers. It suggests, instead, that the very recognition
of a stimulus or a response is already an act of
pattern recognition that can be highly complex.
This is especially true of the human domain, where
the symbolic functions of culture and language
multiply the possible interfaces of organism and
world, and where, in the words of Merleau-Ponty
(1962), “ambiguity is of the essence” (p. 169).
To see this point is to recognize a hermeneutic
aspect at the core of Skinner behaviorism. This
hermeneutic aspect of behaviorism is certainly less
widely recognized than is the scientific–technical
aspect. It has, however, been pointed out in recent
years by behaviorists themselves (e.g., Day 1988;
Dougher 1993; Miller 1994; Moxley 2001; Roche
and Barnes-Holmes 2003; Scharff 1999).
Under the label “behavioural hermeneutics,”2
Dougher (1993) and Roche and Barnes-Holmes
(2003) stress the methodological dimension of
hermeneutics (they refer to the distinction between
three dimensions of hermeneutics—methodolog-
ical, ontological, and critical—that is described
in Woolfolk, Sass, and Messer 1988). Behavioral
hermeneutics can, however, also be understood
as having ontological and critical aspects, for it
also implies a certain vision of the intrinsic nature
of both behavior and environment, and it can be
used to criticize, for example, cognitive psychology
(e.g., Skinner 1977).
In any case, behavioral hermeneutics is well
documented in Skinner’s own writings. In this
respect, according to Moxley (2001), “Skinner’s
shift to interpretation” must be recognized start-
ing in 1945 in precisely the paper cited above
(Skinner 1945). Skinner’s most important books

from this time on are, as Skinner himself says, in-
terpretations. Thus, referring to Verbal behavior,
he says (1979): “I was interpreting a complex
field, using principles that had been verified under
simple, controlled conditions” (p. 282). At this
time, while writing about behaviorism, Skinner
states, “I am concerned with interpretation rather
than prediction and control” (Skinner 1974, 21).
Finally, he says in another place, “My treatment
of human behavior was largely an interpretation,
not a report of experimental data. Interpretation
was a common scientific practice, but scientific
methodologists had paid little attention to it”
(Skinner 1983, 27). He continues, “I chose ex-
amples of behavioral processes from history and
literature” (1983, 27). Beyond Skinner, behavioral
hermeneutics has been applied in the behavioral
approach to the ego (Kohlenberg and Tsai 1995),
in behavioral memory analysis (Palmer 1991), and
in child development (Schlinger 1992), to give a
few references. Our intention here is to emphasize
the hermeneutic dimension of behaviorism, with-
out denying its better known scientific–technical
side.
The Question of ‘Private Events’
As noted, Skinner did not, in fact, reject the
relevance or potential interest of the subjective
or first-person dimension but, rather, wanted to
support this, as much as possible, with publicly
available data. But despite some forceful com-
ments (such as those quoted above in reference
to E. G. Boring), Skinner’s views on inner experi-
ence or private events remain somewhat obscure.
We believe that they can be illuminated through
a comparison with Ludwig Wittgenstein’s well-
known remarks on the myths of private language
and inner experience and with certain traditional
phenomenological arguments.
Wittgenstein was concerned about the shared
nature of language, the way linguistic concepts
are learned in social situations involving public
ostensive definition. As he noted, even the rec-
ognition of affective states such as anger, love,
or anxiety—whether in others or in oneself—is
bound up with the observation of certain ways
of behaving and modes of expression, as well
as characteristic contexts that (at least in typical
cases) can be publicly identified. The very nature of
a given emotion—its status as anger or love, shame
or pride, for instance—is inseparable both from
certain physiological states or ways of behaving,
and from certain contexts and attitudes toward
the world. Wittgenstein was not, however, a meth-
odological or an ontological behaviorist—he did
not deny the accessibility, relevance, or reality of
subjective life, but only the idea that it constitutes
an autonomous sphere of independent or inac-
cessible events. His position is, in fact, perfectly
congruent with that of most phenomenologists.
As Merleau-Ponty wrote:
We must reject the prejudice which makes ‘inner
realities’ out of love, hate or anger, leaving them
accessible to one single witness: the person who
feels them. Anger, shame, hate and love are not
psychic facts hidden at the bottom of another’s
consciousness: they are types of behavior or styles
of conduct which are visible from the outside.
They exist on this face or in those gestures, not
hidden behind them. (1962, 52–3)
Dilthey (2002, 213ff) made a similar point
when he described the interdependence of experi-
ence, expression, and comprehension. Expression,
he pointed out, is not the revelation of something
fully formed that was already present in some pri-
vate interior space, but rather something intrinsic
to the very act of experiencing a situation.
We see, then, that P&B are highly compat-
ible. Phenomenology, however, offers a far more
detailed and sophisticated account of the actual
nature of lived experience (Erlebnis), and thus
can offer an enriching perspective that is lacking
in behaviorism.
Readjustments of
Phenomenology by
Behaviorism
From Intentionality to behavior
Although the notion of intentionality involves
progress in overcoming dualism, it has sometimes
remained tied to a certain type of Cartesian men-
talism. When Husserl, in his Cartesian Medita-
tions, describes the objective world as ‘deriv[ing]
its whole sense and its existential status, which
it has for me, from me myself, from me as the

transcendental Ego’ (1969, 26), he seems to be
advocating the kind of subjectivism or subjective
idealism that Ortega criticized in transcendental
phenomenology, as pointed out.
Nevertheless, intentionality also has a kind of
operative relationship with things, and therefore,
must be reconsidered in the light of operant be-
havior (both Husserl and Merleau-Ponty [1962,
xviii] use the phrase “operant intentionality”).
And as mentioned, the notion of operant behavior,
if properly understood in terms of final causality,
incorporates intentionality. The traditional empha-
sis on intentionality probably involves a certain
intellectualist prejudice, as pointed out, whereby
the mind thinks and then acts. Emphasizing the
notion of behavior would be more in consonance
with the concept of being-in-the-world, and with
the notion that living is fundamentally a matter
of acting rather than of having mere intentions.
Understood in this way, intentionality is embodied
and embedded in behavior and its context.
The notion of behavior proposed here has much
in common with Bourdieu’s (1977) concept of ha-
bitus. As the reader will recall, habitus refers to the
patterns of behavior and experiencing, acquired
during upbringing, that structure the relationships
within any particular situation. The notion of
operant behavior has the advantage, however, of
stressing the active nature of living.
The Dialectic Constructive Point of
View
From a behavioristic standpoint, phenomenol-
ogy contains certain limitations that behaviorism
can help to overcome. We are referring to phenom-
enology’s emphasis on the primacy of perception,
sometimes to the exclusion of other forms of
being-in-the-world, and also to phenomenology’s
focus on subjective experience without question-
ing its origins.
The problem with phenomenology’s focus on
perception is that this can emphasize passive over
active processes, despite the fact that phenomenol-
ogy (at least in its Heideggerian form) claims to
view engaged activity as the most fundamental
mode of being in the world (Sass 1988). The
notion of operant behavior as activity directed
toward the world does, in any case, focus more
clearly on what people actually do (on “life as ex-
ecution,” as Ortega termed it). In the final analysis,
human beings act on the world—eating, walking,
doing things with their hands, talking—and in so
doing they change the world, including their own
perceptions and experience of their environment.
The behavior of a depressed person, for instance,
will modify the horizons of his life, altering the
person’s perceptions and thoughts as well as his
emotions and mood (Dimidjian et al. 2006).3
Concerning subjective experience, the problem
with phenomenology lies in its tendency to treat
subjectivity as something primary, foundational,
or autochthonous. Phenomenology should, in-
stead, give some attention to the ways in which
forms of experience are learned within particular
societal configurations. Here, the study of verbal
contexts within which private experiences are
labeled and grasped is of special significance.
In sum, we would argue that a dialectical–
constructivist perspective is highly relevant for
a phenomenology that aspires to offer not only
description, but also forms of explanation empha-
sizing cultural and historical contexts.
Clinical Implications
We conclude by listing some of the advantages
for clinical psychology of adopting Ortega’s phe-
nomenological/behavioral perspective, as outlined
above.
To begin with, Ortega’s existential phenomenol-
ogy offers a philosophy of life that is founded on
a positive and optimistic outlook, and which, for
this reason, is likely to be conducive to a more
vibrant or healthy way of life. Authentic life, in
Ortega’s account, is founded not on anguish, but
on a kind of ‘coincidence with oneself’ that he de-
fines as ‘being sure about what my sincere attitude
toward each thing is.’ The meaning of life is rooted
not (or not primarily) in being-toward-death, but
in life as a project, including the potential for a
heroic and aesthetic life of adventure. In practical
terms, this philosophy suggests that psychological
conflicts and even mental disorders would be open
to various solutions depending on the construc-
tion of new frames of meaning. Solutions would
consist more of promoting movement toward
valuable goals in life than in trying to eliminate

symptoms—a view that is consistent with the ten-
dency of current psychotherapies such as Behav-
ioral Activation and Acceptance and Commitment
Therapy, as mentioned.
Second, Ortega’s notion of crisis offers alterna-
tive ways of conceptualizing problems or propen-
sities that are too readily described in terms of a
deficit or dysfunction. The notion of crisis involves
a difficult situation owing to changes in life’s cir-
cumstances that disorder previous functioning and
re-order a new one. Thus, crisis is expression and
at the same time attempts to solve a problematic
situation. The disorder would be both a problem
and the effort to solve it. More than a deficit of
normality (anormality), the disorder would involve
a new normality. This conception of disorder as
crisis is congruent with Canguilhen’s (1966/1991)
position in The Normal and the Pathological—in
the sense that the pathological does not imply a
defective norm, but rather the development of
other norms owing to alterations in the environ-
ment. The notion of crisis may seem less relevant
to persons who suffer disorders that have become
chronic. But this chronic situation is, all the same,
a ‘liminal’ condition, so that the person in ques-
tion is always in a critical situation, or indeed, we
might say, in ‘permanent crisis.’
Third, understanding behavior in terms of final
causality has implications for our conception of
mental disorders. It is not merely a question of
recognizing that mental disorders are meaningful,
but that their key meanings would be, above all, fi-
nal, in an Aristotelian sense; that is, corresponding
more to the question “What for?” than “Why?” In
this regard, a classical author of reference would
be Alfred Adler, whose teleo-analysis is closer to
the existential psychoanalysis of Sartre than to the
psychoanalysis of Freud.4
As far as this work is
concerned, it could be said that phenomenology
combined with behaviorism helps to focus on the
operant intentionality of so-called disorders. Such
an approach emphasizes not only the extent to
which behavior (or symptom) has a purpose or
function, but also how the disorder as a whole can
become an entire life project in which the patient
may invest her whole self (even though it may be
neurotic or psychotic).
Fourth, as we have seen, behaviorism does not
view mental events, understood as private inner
phenomena, as the cause of either behavior in
general or mental disorders in particular. To fo-
cus on such events (i.e., on feelings and thoughts,
conceived in such terms) is likely, in fact, to have
deleterious effects involving a vicious or ‘neurotic
circle’ of vain efforts to remove them. A more
appropriate therapeutic approach is often to stop
fighting the symptoms (adopting active accep-
tance) and orient life toward worthwhile goals
(adopting the commitment to act in their direction
in spite of the symptoms). This, of course, is pre-
cisely what is proposed by Acceptance and Com-
mitment Therapy (Hayes, Strosahl, and Wilson
1999)—which, as mentioned, is a major example
of the ‘new wave’ of behavioral therapy (Hayes
2004). It is noteworthy that both Acceptance and
Commitment Therapy and Ortega’s ‘aesthetic
sense of life’ emphasize the relevance and power
of metaphor for transforming perspectives and
revealing new ones.
Finally, Ortega’s synthesis of phenomenology
with behaviorism can also be understood to have
implications for one’s attitude toward political
commitment and sociocultural transformation.
This philosophical significance is captured by Or-
tega’s formula, ‘I am myself and my circumstances,
and if I do not save them, I do not save myself.’
The salvation in question involves acceptance of
what one is and of responsibility for the direction
of one’s own life. But it also involves a commit-
ment to improving the general circumstances of
the world, a commitment that may be at odds with
contemporary trends toward viewing problems in
purely clinical and individualistic terms.
Acknowledgments
This work was financed with a research project
from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Tech-
nology (ref. SEJ2005-24699-E/PSIC) awarded to
the first author.
Notes
1. In 1913, Ortega published a series of short articles
on Ideas for a Pure Phenomenology by Husserl, which
are probably the first foreign comments on this work
(San Martín, 2005). These writings are more descrip-
tive than critical. Later, however (e.g., in 1934, in the
Prologue to the third German edition of The Modern
Theme), Ortega describes objections that he had then
already been feeling with regard to certain aspects of

phenomenology, including what he saw as an overem-
phasis on essence to the detriment of history and life
(see also Silver [1978, ch. 4]).
2. The expression “behavioral hermeneutics” was
also used by Glifford Geertz (1968, p. 379) to refer to
a variety of anthropological perspectives that study the
actions of subjects as actors submerged in a context of
reference (e.g., revitalistic rituals, curing ceremonies,
dramaturgical gestures).
3. Behavioral Activation is a new psychological
therapy for depression based on the functional analysis
of behavior and on behaviorism as philosophy (Dimi-
djian et al 2006). It also forms part of the new wave
or third generation of therapies mentioned in the note
above (Hayes, 2004).
4. Although Sartre said that existential psycho-
analysis had yet to find its Freud, Ellenberger (1970)
recognized this ‘existential’ Freud in Adler.
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in psychiatry. He can be contacted via e-mail at:
jli@lopez-ibor.com
María-Inés López-Ibor is Professor of Psychia-
try, Department of Psychiatry and Medical Psy-
chology, Complutense University, Madrid (Spain).
She can be contacted via e-mail at: mlopezibor@
med.ucm.es
Rogelio Luque is Senior Lecturer in the Depart-
ment of Psychiatry, University of Córdoba, Spain
and Consultant Psychiatrist in the Psychiatric
Hospitalization Unit, Hospital Reina Sofia. He
has a long-standing interest in psychopathology of
psychosis and philosophical and historical aspects
of psychiatry. He has published widely on these
topics. He can be contacted via e-mail at: rluque@
telefonica.net
Marino Pérez-Álvarez, clinical psychologist,
is Professor of Psychopathology and Interven-
tion and Treatment Techniques at the Psychology
Department of the University of Oviedo (Spain).
He participates in several doctoral programs at
different Spanish universities. He is co-editor of
the Guía de tratamientos psicológicos eficaces
(Guide to effective psychological treatments), in
3 volumes, and co-author of La invención de los
trastornos mentales ¿Escuchando al fármaco o
al paciente? (The invention of mental disorders:
Listening to the drug or to the patient?). He is As-
sociate Editor of the Spanish journal Psicothema.
His principal line of research at present focuses
on the development of a person-based contextual
therapy for psychoses. He can be contacted via
e-mail at: marino@uniovi.es
Louis A. Sass is Professor of Clinical Psychology
at Rutgers—the State University of New Jersey. He
is the author of Madness and Modernism and The
Paradoxes of Delusion, and of numerous articles
on schizophrenia, modernism/postmodernism,
phenomenology, and hermeneutics. He can be
contacted via e-mail at: lsass@rci.rutgers.edu
Roger Vilardaga is a doctoral student in clini-
cal psychology at the University of Nevada. He
can be contacted via e-mail at: roger.vilardaga@
gmail.com
José M. Villagrán is consultant psychiatrist,
Head of the Psychiatric Hospitalization Unit, Hos-
pital of Jerez, Cádiz, Spain. His research interests
include psychopathology, recovery from psychosis
and philosophy of psychiatry. He has published
widely on these topics and co-edited with Rogelio
Luque the book Psicopatología descriptiva: nuevas
tendencias (Madrid: Trotta; 2000). He can be
contacted via e-mail at: jmaria.villagran.sspa@
juntadeandalucia.es

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