Opening Skinner’s Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century

Lauren Slater is an American psychotherapist and author. As a primary character in Opening Skinner’s Box, she uses many personal anecdotes to illustrate the book’s themes and conducts firsthand research. Slater discusses how her background as a psychologist helps inform her research; in the Introduction of the book, she explains how her own history—an early interest in behavioralism due to a pet racoon she had as a 14-year-old growing up in Maine—led to an interest in psychology. This is the first instance of a larger motif throughout the book, in which Slater uses biographical stories to flesh out the inspiration of the psychologists she profiles.

Written from the first-person perspective, Slater’s infuses her subjective voice throughout the narrative. For example, in Chapter 1, Slater describes B.F. Skinner’s daughter as follows: “Julie is old, much older than I expected, her skin translucent and delicate, her eyes green” (28). The reader is privy to Slater’s personal opinions and thoughts, as we travel along with Slater in real-time as she conducts her research. This technique supports the larger idea that psychology, though a science, deals with philosophical questions about what it means to be human—therefore, a subjective perspective is beneficial in thinking about psychology.