ABSTRACT
Samuel Beckett began his much-acclaimed novel, Murphy (1938/1970), with: “The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.” The compulsion so starkly and eloquently portrayed by Beckett with regard to the physical cosmos, is deeply rooted in psychological explanations starting, at least, with two very in uential theoretical orientations in the rst part of the 20th century-psychoanalytic and behaviorist theories. Both theoretical approaches presumed that there is an absence of choice on the part of human beings. The compulsion in Freud’s conception of human functioning was due to rather complicated dynamics of con icts and the unknown in the depths of the psyche involving equally complicated biological and learned dispositions. Although an element of choice was ultimately and painstakingly attainable in Freud’s vision, it is irrelevant in behaviorist conceptions of the mechanisms of learning and the control over behavior by environmental conditions. Most notably in his Beyond Freedom and Dignity, B. F. Skinner (1971) maintained that many of our notions pertaining to freedom, choice, and autonomy are illusory so far as psychological functioning is concerned. According to Skinner, we refer to autonomy (which he sees as akin to saying individuals are miraculous) only because we do not know how to adequately explain behavior. The freedom attributed to individuals by the concept of autonomy needs to be replaced by analyses of the control of behavior.
