Behaviorism

The great behaviorism debate, BTW, is still around for anyone who wants to look it up. No one cares anymore but once upon a time it exercised people's imaginations wonderfully.

The people who attacked behaviorism did so because they did not like the implications about human beings that would follow if it were true. (Not unlike Barbara Ehrenreich's attack on Seligman, she knows little and cares less about the evidence, she attacks Seligman because she doesn't want him to be right because if he is it upsets her whole moral understanding.)

The people who defended behaviorism often dressed themselves up in the mantle of disinterestedness but it was plain that some of them at least welcomed the "demystification" of the human animal that would follow if behaviorism were true.

In the end, behaviorism didn't work. The great debate was irrelevant, the only thing that mattered was that it just could not be made to work. Much the same is true of, for example, evolutionary psychology. People get excited about it one way or another but so far it doesn't work. Yeah, maybe it can be made to work but really just shut up and go away and make it work and then talk to us but please spare us all the speculation for now. (Seligman at least can point to measurable results.)