ABSTRACT
The goal of psychology is to understand behavior, and the science has developed with primary emphasis on overt behavior. Psychologists have been impressive in their development of a psychology of overt behavior with the paradigm of relationships between overt response patterns and external environmental events. The important point is that the task of psychology is to understand behavior all behavior. The microscope and the telescope are obvious examples and serve to emphasize that covert processes are in no sense mystical simply because they must be amplified for study. The frequent reference in the psychological literature to “covert behavior” attests to the historical and contemporary importance of concepts of covert events.
