Changing Minds

CHAPTER 2

The Forms of the Mind

A MEETING THAT CHANGED MY MIND

When I was a graduate student in psychology at Harvard in the late 1960s, behaviorism was still prevalent (Professor B. F. Skinner’s office in William James Hall was a few floors below mine—somewhat more spacious, to be sure), but the cognitive approach was on the rise. As a “Young Turk,” I found myself sympathetic to the newly minted cognitive approach, favored by one of my mentors, Professor Jerome Bruner. Yet, one property characterized both of these warring camps: a lack of interest in the brain and the nervous system. Neither camp actually denied the importance of the brain; that would have been downright foolish. But the behaviorists were interested in modifying behavior; they ...