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Interbehavioral Perspectives: On Act Psychologies and the Psychological Nouns

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Abstract

In a recent paper, Lee contrasted “act psychologies” with cognitive psychology, alleging that the former are incomplete in their coverage of what most people consider really psychological. By including the contextual interactionist approach of J. R. Kantor with B. F. Skinner’s behaviorism under the “act psychology” umbrella, Lee has shown that she is unfamiliar with the fact that Kantor, during his 60-odd years of active writing, covered virtually every aspect of psychology. She is particularly concerned about the neglect of those psychological nouns that are meaningful abstractions without being aware that contextual interactionism (interbehavioral psychology) uses the very terms which she mentions as long as they are used in reference to interactions and not to faculties or other psychic entities.

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Mahan, H.C. Interbehavioral Perspectives: On Act Psychologies and the Psychological Nouns. Psychol Rec 37, 131–134 (1987). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03395879

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