Ron McCrea

Madison, Wis. — Dr. Victor Wayland is a cheerful man, the kind of children’s dentist who makes you wish you could repeal your dental history and start over with a new set of baby teeth. The fact that he’s sold on behavior modification as a tool of his profession might seem odd, if you imagine behavior modification to be the robot-producing brand of medical terrorism portrayed in popular literature. But Dr. Wayland believes that a big part of successful dentistry involves overcoming the fear and trauma that make people avoid dentists and neglect dental care far into their adulthood. And he is now persuaded that the use of scientific behavior management principles is the most effective way to help children cope with those fears and learn about their bodies. “It’s civilization,” he says, “it’s not punishment. It’s helping children to use their rational powers rationally, and it’s beautiful.” Dr. Victor Wayland in his office. He dresses informally to reduce novelty and “look like a daddy.” Dr. Wayland is risking something in making statements like these

(Note: The final speech at the National Conference on Behavioral Issues in Closed Institutions, held June 13-15 at Reston, Va., was delivered by Dr. Peter Steinfels, an associate for the humanities at the Institute of Society, Ethics, and the Life Sciences, Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y. Steinfels, a young and vital scholar who works with the institute’s Behavior Control Research Group) won sustained applause with his brilliant development of the ethical issues presented by modern technologies of behavior change. Since the conference voted not to publish any of the speeches presented there, what follows is an attempt to excerpt and summarize his address. Of necessity, many subtleties of his argument are omitted. But even the bare bones of his analysis should be of great help to the layman who seeks guidance through this new and often very strange terrain). “There is a tendency to criticize people doing ethical analyses for being absolutists, and then to demand from them hard and fast answers, sure-fire formulations, which can be mechanically applied in every situation,” says Dr. Peter Steinfels. “on the

Reston, Va. — A delicately assembled and highly unusual summit conference adjourned recently at this woodland conference center outside Washington. It was a conference made up of adversaries whose detente was so fragile and whose trust was so slight that their last common act was to vote to suppress any official version of what went on during the three days they met together. The twin forces which drew this unconventional convention together were the rapidly expanding use of behavior control technologies in prisons and mental institutions, and the equally rapidly expanding interest of government and private groups in putting these technologies under restraints. The participants, numbering nearly 100, represented interested parties — lawyers, policymakers, behavioral scientists, institution administrators and staff, and “consumers,” ex-prisoners and mental patients. Their viewpoints and interests diverged so widely that it often seemed that there were two conventions meeting in the same place — one to discuss the reform of institutions and another to discuss their abolition. But they had agreed, under protocols worked out over a year, to talk, and

Madison, Wis.–Put yourself in the situation: You are having lunch with a friend when suddenly she asks you if you would lend her $30 until she gets paid next week. You have the money but you were planning to spend it for something else. She says, “Please lend me the money. I’ll pay you back next week.” What do you say? Now try this one: You are meeting with your co-workers to discuss a topic you feel strongly about. The majority of your peers disagrees with your position. The director of the meeting comments that time is running out and calls for a vote before you have spoken about your views. What do you do? If you handed over the money with a smile and let the vote go through without a word, you lack assertive skills and could profit from behavior modification training, in the view of professionals at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Behavior therapists do not prescribe tranquilizers or chat with you about your childhood experiences with authority. In their view your problem