It is 1928
One professor writes a best-selling parenting guide...
THEN 3 of his own kids commit suicide
Meet John Watson: the father of Behaviorism
A story of scientific arrogance, the meaning of love, and one "expert" with blood on his hands👇🏻
1/ Dr. John Watson was a man of bold claims
He believed he could turn a random infant into “any type of specialist” from doctor to artist to a thief - “regardless of his talents, tendencies, abilities”
How?
With psychological conditioning and other behaviorist tools
2/ John Watson shared these tools with the world in a book co-written with his wife: Psychological Care Of Infant and Child
"Society" comes up 8 times
"Environment” comes up 10 times
"Soul" comes up 0 times
Among other things, the book says a mother’s love is "dangerous"
3/ The book’s central chapter: “Too Much Mother Love”
Which apparently inflicts a “never healing wound” upon kids
Makes adolescence a “nightmare”
And destroys the child’s future employability and “happiness”
Watson: “Never hug and kiss them, never let them sit on your lap.”
4/ Watson taught millions that showing love to kids without reason sets up bad INCENTIVES
The world doesn’t comfort a person for crying, so neither should a mother
Parents must be “objective, and free from sentiment”
Watson walked his talk
Let’s check in on his kids…
5/ Years after Watson’s death, his son gave a tell-all interview:
“We were NEVER shown any kind of emotional closeness. It was absolutely verboten in the family”
Getting close to parents was “taboo”
3/4 of Watson’s kids, from 2 different marriages, tried suicide
One succeeded
6/ Watson's wife doubted her famous husband's “wisdom”
She once revealed her “secret wish” - that “her sons have a tear in their eyes for the poetry and drama of life and a throb for romance”
But in practice all she did was toe her husband's line EVEN when he “wasn’t looking”
7/ Watson’s son:
“My reason for entering therapy was an attempted suicide. I strongly believe that strict adherence to the principles of behaviorism tends to erode the fundamental development of the child’s ego strength and to cause a great deal of difficulty in later life.”
8/ Watson’s kids were never allowed to switch on the “night lights” no matter the thunder storms outside
They weren’t allowed toys either
Their sex ed started at 7
They would later find out that their father always “slept with the light on because of his own dread of the dark”
9/ Watson’s blindspot is modernity's blindspot
Above all he cared about “independence” and “non involvement”
He believed kids shouldn’t “know their own parents” and could be better brought up in communal homes
The world suffers from precisely this atomized vision of humanity
10/ Parenting shouldn’t be an “instinctive art,” Watson said, but a “science”
Millions of years of evolutionary experience do not count
Only lab results count
He wanted the world to “stop having children for twenty years” until the “facts” were found with patient "lab methods”
11/ Strange bedfellows...
12/ For Watson, love was unearned validation that promoted mediocrity
But love is actually unearned faith, and faith is ALWAYS unearned
To be loved is to have someone presuppose value and latent greatness in you without proof - the foundation of self-esteem
As Chesterton said:
The terrible fate of John Watson's children show that genetic blank slatism isn't some harmless idea. It can, and has been, deadly. If genes don't matter, and if environment is all, then man can be twisted into any monstrosity that some arrogant expert or communist planner wants
Bottom line: Ideas have consequences
Terrible ideas have terrible consequences
An offensive truth is infinitely better than a polite lie, because no matter how kind, a lie is a divorce from reality itself, and that can never end well
Reading old books helps you see which modern ideas end in catastrophe
This is why I've collected 750+ insights from 75+ old books in "Hit Reverse"
Learn from people who understood human nature far better than John Watson: jashdholani.gumroad.com/l/hitreverse
Experts who lie about basic reality are very much with us today
Repost this thread to push back
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.