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The Journal of Sex Research
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The Journal of Sex l:lesearch Vol. 17, No. 4, pp. 368-378 November, 1981
Abstract
This article reviews the steps in John B Watson's career from his initial
experiments in rat learning through studies of reflexes in newborn and infant
children, to his exploration of adult human sexual behavior. The latter began
with questionnaire studies of World War I fillms on sex hygiene. Watson was
next reported to have engaged in laboratory studies of hllman sexual behavior
at The Johns Hopkins University. Subsequently, "a set of small instruments
for measuring the female sex response," stated to have been Watson?s, came
to light A photograph and descriptions of these instruments are presented.
Other indications of Watson's interests in human sexual behavior and the
early hazards of undertaking such research in academia, are briefly surveyed.
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JOHN B. WATSON 369
With the advent of World War I, Watson joined the military and spent
most of his service time developing methods for selecting pilots for air
combat. While in the service, he had seen anti-VD fillms in which young
American soldiers, "shipped to sinful Europe," had succumbed to the
temptation of prostitutes, with substantial footage then depicting lesions
of the genital organs caused by venereal disease. As the war ended,
Watson proposed to show these Ellms to civilian audiences and, after
extended negotiations, they were presented to some 5,000 persons. Wat-
son, with the help of young Karl Lashley, observed the audiences,
distributed questionnaires to all attending, and analyzed the responses
returned, with follow-up interviews of selected samples.
As Watson's biographer, David Cohen, has recently written:
It was at this point that indications have since come to light that
identified Watson as "one of the first Americans to investigate the
physiological aspects of adult human sexual responses." The initial pub-
lished account appeared in James V. McConnell's lively book, Under-
standing Human Behavior (1974):
Since the medical sciences had studiously ignored the subject, Watson set
out to investigate the matter himself ... by connecting his own body and
that of his female partner to various scientific instruments while they made
love. He fathered what were probably the very first reliable data on human
sexual responses and . . . acquired several boxes of carefully annotated rec-
ords. Unfortunately . . . his wife . . . eventually discovered why her husband
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370 H. W. MAGOUN
was spending so much time . . . in his laboratory, (and) not only sued him for
divorce, (but) also confiscated the scientific records!
Watson's academic career was ruined . . . He had to resign his professorship
at Johns Hopkins University and most of his friends and colleagues deserted
him. The Baltimore newspapers reported the divorce in lurid detail, and the
judge ... gave Watson a tongue-lashing calling him ... an expert in mis-
behavior. After the divorce, Watson married his assistant.... In desperation,
he took a position with a large advertising agency, and stayed with them the
rest of his professional life. (p. 345)
In 1958, when Deke retired, I spent many delightful hours listening to him
reminisce about John B. Watson.... Needless to say, he spent a fair amount
of time on Watson's troubles at Hopkins. He had met Mary Ickes while still
a graduate student at the University of Chicago, and they were married in
1904. But Watson was an experimentalist in the broadest sense of the word.
Prior to the divorce proceedings his wife instituted in 1919, he had become
enamored of a young lady graduate student. That much is public record.
However, according to Coleman, the precise details of the love affair
involved 'records' of a different kind. Coleman explained things to me thusly:
First of all, Mary Ickes Watson had intercepted some rather poetic love
letters Watson had sent, that were eventually quoted in the newspapers. The
unspoken secret of the divorce, however, had to do with experimental
psychology. Deke insisted that Watson had become interested in the physi-
ology of the sexual response, and that he actually 'took readings' and 'made
records' of sexual arousal in his laboratory at Johns Hopkins. Supposedly,
Mary Ickes discovered these records and introduced them in court which
would explain the judge's reaction and the intensity of the scandal but then
destroyed the data after she destroyed Watson's reputation.
In 1974, after I had used this story in my textbook, Cedric Larsen one of
our foremost Watson scholars had written asking for evidence. I told him
what Coleman had told me and, although doubtful about the matter, Larsen
set out to look for more evidence. Both the New York Times and the
Baltimore Sun had given the divorce extensive coverage but, aside from
veiled hints, their accounts had little to offer. Furthermore, the court records
themselves were missing. Mary Ickes' brother was a noted politician. Larsen
speculated that through some political sleight-of hand, the written record of
the case was made to vanish. (Note 1)
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JOHN B. WATSON 371
As for the instruments, the speculum raises no problem. The bent tube
with a cage-like end certainly was a tambour instrument to insert into the
vagina. But these other two gadgets are something else. At first sight they
appear to be electrical apparatus of some sort but, if they go back to 1920,
that is unlikely. And they are not insulated. Technologies at that time used
tambours for many types of studies, the signal being written on smoked-
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372
H. W. MAGOUN
---
- --Z--
- - -
cr i
- -
l --i
h-h-|-
- -
- -
- -
FIG. 1. Instruments designed by John B. Watson for studies of human sexual resp
paper drums. I would guess that a small balloon was placed between the w
limbs and the narrow limbs held some contractile tissue in a forceps-ty
hold the signal being relayed to the balloon via the leverage system and
from the balloon to the writing arm, by narrow tubing and a tambour wi
scribing straw cemented to it.... Going back to the photo, the knobs wh
look like electrical connections may well have held rubber bands, constrain
the small balloon. The pincer-like gadget could pick up contractions whi
occur during orgasm in the small labia or from the clitoris itself (Campb
Note 4).
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JOHN B. WATSON 373
The filrst question which concerns us is how organic processes have become
integrated into two such well-marked, solid groups known as 'pleasantness'
and 'unpleasantness.' . . . Since my Elrst study of the (Freudian) movement
I have been surprised that no one has connected pleasantness with the
activity of receptors stimulated by tumescence and unpleasantness with
those stimulated by shrinkage of the sex organs.... You will tell me that
expressive methods have already failed to show any constant physiological
processes occurring in conjunction with 'pleasant' and 'unpleasant'
objects.... My present feeling is that we haue taken our plethysmograms
from the wrong organs. Whether there are too many technical difElculties in
the way of the objective registration of the many delicate changes in the sex
organs (circulation, secretion, etc.), remains for the future to decide (Italics
added). (pp. 426-427)
A few years ago a fund was collected for the study of sex. I was asked to
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374 H. W. MAGOUN
help plan a research program. It was quite a sizeable sum. I went to work
eagerly. When the committee met, I asked, more as a pleasantry than
anything else, "Is this to be a real study in sex, or are we going to study rats,
rabbits, and guinea pigs again?" Very solemnly I was assured that it was rats,
rabbits, and guinea pigs, or nothing. I tucked my plan into my pocket and
went back to the office lamenting the fact that, while we were in the 20th
century in science, we were still in the 14th century in folkways.
I might have known it was rabbits and guinea pigs. About 1900, Stanley
Hall began a very valuable study of adolescence. From the appearance of his
first article . . . a whispering campaign began in university circles: "Have you
read what Stanley Hall is putting out? . . . Hall must be a bit queer."
Psychoanalysis had come to this country which it did in 1909 in the
person of Freud and his colleagues and, incidentally, they gave their lectures
at Hall's own college, Clark University before Hall's psychological col-
leagues woke up to the fact that a man may study sex and still be a scientist.
The conventional public has not yet waked up to this fact. The *tudy of tsex
is still fraught with danger. It can be openly studied only by individual.s
who are not connected with universities (Italics added). What a confession
to make! It is admittedly the most important subject in life. It is admittedly
the thing that causes the most shipwrecks in the happiness of men and
women. And yet our scientific information is so meager. Even the few facts
that we have must be looked upon as more or less bootlegged stuff. Those of
us who try to salvage some of the shipwrecks need to have a thousand
questions answered before we can guide other human beings intelligently.
And we want them answered not by our mothers and grandmothers, not by
priests and clergymen in the interest of middle-aged mores, nor by general
practitioners, not even by Freudians; we do want them answered by scientif-
ically-trained students of sex who can approach their problems with human
beings as objectively as they would approach the problem of reproduction in
the amoeba. (pp. xiii-xiv)
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JOHN B. WATSON 375
ology class entitled "The Family," taught by Dr. H. O. DeGraf, one of the
most popular teachers at Missouri. (As part of the course, his students formed
small "research" committees to study various topics.) Mowrer's committee
was to study the topic of "The Economic Aspects of Women" (and) con-
structed a questionnaire (distributed to 600 students) in which three of the
eleven questions had to do with attitudes toward extramarital sexual rela-
tions. Meyer's connection with the questionnaire was this: He suggested some
changes in wording and, to save the students' expense, he gave Mowrer
several hundred return envelopes left over from an earlier project. A local
paper (The Daily Tribune of Columbia) discovered the questionnaire and
published an inflamatory two-column, headline story. Townspeople of Co-
lumbia signed a petition demanding dismissal of those responsible.... News-
papers of the state joined in, as did also some members of the state legislature.
The university president . . . recommended to the board that they (the two
professors) be summarily dismissed. This action was actually taken . . . but
. . . was modified: . . . Meyer was suspended for one year without pay but the
. . . dismissal of DeGraf was confirmed. (pp. 115-116)
In his more extended account, Dr. Kinsey and the Institute for Sex
Research, Pomeroy (1972) wrote:
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376 H. W. MAGOUN
and one not easy to carry out.... He was acutely aware of the seriQus danger
implicit in such work and proceeded cautiously, knowing that he could expect
little understanding of what he was doing if it were ever disclosed. Those
who already believed the project was immoral would be outraged, and not
even many scientists could be expected to condone it.... There was always
in the back of his mind the clear and present danger that the Institute might
be deprived of its support, from the University as well as the (Rockefeller)
Foundation if it were subject to the kind of public attack the revelation of
such activity would certainly provoke
In this conflict between his scientific zeal and the strictures of societyS
Kinsey decided in favor of science Considering that the life of the project
itself might be at stake, the decision took considerable courage. (pp. 172-173)
In the InstituteSs 1948 report for example, it was stated quite bluntly:
"Erotic arousal is a material phenomenon which involves an extended series
of physical, physiologic and psychologic changes. Many of these could be
subjected to precise instrumental measurement if objectivity among scientists
arld public respect for scientific research allowed such laboratory investiga-
tion.'
This was a theme that recurred continually in our staff conferences7 and
Dr. Kinsey was always alert to opportunities to make observations both of
homo- and heterosexual behavior that were made available to us. Also many
thousands of feet of motion picture Ellm, showing a great range of human
sexual activity, came into our possession. In addition to taking advantage of
such ready-made material, Dr. Kinsey began to plan a program of laboratory
observation similar to the one Dr. Masters and Mrs Johnson subsequently
established. Space for a physiological laboratory was set aside in the Kinsey
Institute quarters and when the Institute moved to Jordan Hall in the early
1950's, blueprints were drawn up for a laboratory in which sexual responses
could be observed. During this period Dr. Kinsey began interviewing phys-
iologists who might supervise this work, but the right man was never found.
In spite of our lack of an operating physiological laboratory, we did manage
to accumulate a substantial body of data . . . some of which form the basis for
the chapters on the 'Anatomy of Sexual Response and Orgasm' and 'Physi-
ology of Sexual Response and Orgasm' in the Femule volume (the 1953
report-Sexual Behae7ior in the Human Female). This was the small foun-
dation upon which Masters and Johnson later erected their remarkahle
structure of scientific fact.... In explaining the source of this information,
we simply stated in footnotes that, "We have had access to a considerable
body of data on the continuous nature of the male response and the discon-
tinuous nature of the female response?' or "We have had aecess to a consid-
erable body of observed data on the involvement of the entiIe body in the
spasms leading up to and following orgasm.7 (pp 117-118)
Kinsey and Masters were alike . . in their compelling drive to accomplish
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JOHN B. WATSON 377
the task at hand.... The two never met, but I am sure l)r. Kinsey would
have been delighted to know that at Washington University, (St. Louis), only
220 miles away (from Bloomington, Indiana), Masters was just then beginning
the laboratory observations that Kinsey himself had hoped to make but was
never able to launch (Pomeroy, 1972, p. 183)
Reference Notes
References
CAMPBELL, B., HARTMAN, W. E., FITHIAN, M., & CAMPBELL, I. A polygraphic survey o
human sexual response. The Physiologist, 1975, 18, 159.
COHEN, D. J. B. Watson. The Founder of Behauzorism, London: Routledge & Kega
1979, 122-1261 140-142.
ESPER, E. A. Max Meyer in America, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sc
1967, 3 115-116.
KINSEY, A. C., POMEROY, W. B., MARTIN, C. E., & GEBHERD, P. H. Sexaal Behauior in the
Human Female. Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders, 1953, 637, 631.
HAMILTON, G. V. A research in marriage. New York: A & C. BoniS 1929.
MASTERS, W. H., & JOHNSON, V. E. The physiology of the vaginal reproductive function.
Western Journal of Surgery, Obstetrics and Gynecology, 1961. 69, 105-120.
MASTERS, W. H., & JOHNSON, V. E. Human Sexual Response. Boston: Little, Brown, 1966.
MCCONNELL, J. V. Understanding Human Behavior. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston,
1974, 344-345.
POMEROY, W. B. The Masters-Johnson report and the Kinsey tradition. In R. & E. Breeher
(Eds.), An analysis of hllman sexual response. Boston: Little, Browr 1966.
POMEROY, W. B. Dr. Kinsey and the Institute for Sex Research, New York: Harper & Rows
1972.
WATSON, J. B. Psychology as the behaviorist views it. Psychological Review, 1913, 20, 158-
178. (a)
WATSON, J. B. Image and affection in behavior. Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and
Scientific Methods, 1913, 10, 421-428. (b)
WATSON, J. B. The place of the conditioned reflex in psychology. Psychological Reuiea,
1916, 23, 89-117.
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130 Elmwood Avenue
378 H. W. MAGOUN
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