Deborah Skinner Buzan on B. F. Skinner

“I have heard the lies before, but seeing them in black and white in a respected Sunday newspaper felt as if somebody had punched me hard in the stomach. Admittedly, the facts of my unusual upbringing sound dodgy: esteemed psychologist BF Skinner, who puts rats and pigeons in experimental boxes to study their behaviour, also puts his baby daughter in a box. This is good fodder for any newspaper. ... The early rumours were simple, unembellished: I had gone crazy, sued my father, committed suicide. My father would come home from lecture tours to report that three people had asked him how his poor daughter was getting on. I remember family friends returning from Europe to relate that somebody they had met there had told them I had died the year before. The tale, I later learned, did the rounds of psychology classes across America. One shy schoolmate told me years later that she had shocked her college psychology professor, who was retelling the rumour about me, by banging her fist on her desk, standing up and shouting, "She's not crazy!" Slater's sensationalist book rehashes some of the old stuff, but offers some rumours that are entirely new to me. ... My early childhood, it's true, was certainly unusual — but I was far from unloved. I was a much cuddled baby. Call it what you will, the "aircrib" ,"baby box", "heir conditioner" (not my father's term) was a wonderful alternative to the cage-like cot. My father's intentions were simple, and based on removing what he and my mother saw as the worst aspects of a baby's typical sleeping arrangements: clothes, sheets and blankets. These not only have to be washed, but they restrict arm and leg movement and are a highly imperfect method of keeping a baby comfortable.”

“I loved my father dearly. He was fantastically devoted and affectionate. But perhaps the stories about me would never have started if he had done a better job with his public image. He believed that, although our genes determine who we are, it is mostly our environment that shapes our personality. A Time magazine cover story ran the headline "BF Skinner says we can't afford freedom". All he had said was that controls are an everyday reality — traffic lights and a police force, for instance — and that we need to organise our social structures in ways that create more positive controls and fewer aversive ones. As is clear from his utopian novel, Walden Two, the furthest thing from his mind was a totalitarian or fascist state. His careless descriptions of the aircrib might have contributed to the public's common misconception as well. He was too much the scientist and too little the self-publicist — especially hazardous when you are already a controversial figure.”