BEHAVIORAL CASE As reverend X, reports he had been touching and caressing girls between the ages of 10 and 16 for more than 20 years. At this time the number of girls is probably more than 50. According to Watson and the radical behaviorism the interpretation of psychopathology refers to ‘abnormal behavior which is maladaptive responding in a particular situation compared to other members of species’. (p. 709) Therefore, instead the sexual pleasure reverend X gets from his intimate relations, it is socially considered to be unethical. Despite that ‘ normal and abnormal behavior is learned, and necessary and sufficient conditions of learning are found in principles of conditioning’. (709) His behavior toward the young girls was conditioned passively and by the occasions were the girls accepted it. As it refers in the case most typically this interaction was restricted to hugging and caressing their breasts. He reported achieving partial erection during this type of contact but never ejaculated, so he consider the interaction as affectionate rather than erotic. Therefore, Reverend X , according to Farber (1963,p. 237) the things people say to themselves determine the rest of the things they do. Similar, Dollard and Miller (1950), suggest that ‘ If we avoid the word, the thought ceases to exist, if the thought ceases to exist, the anxiety associated with the concept carried in the words is reduced’. According to the case Reverend X way o repressing his thoughts is by the ‘prevention of verbal labeling of a drive’. For example, When he is sexually aroused he doesn’t label his erotic feelings ‘sexual’ because he has learned to be anxious about sex from prior painful experience. Instead, he mislabels his sexual feeling ‘affection’. Sexual feelings arouse anxiety, ‘affection’ does not. It is obvious, in behaviorism, that Reverent X ‘s behavior runs according the classical conditioning. The unconditioned stimulus , for him, is the growing breasts, which cause him with sexual desire, which is his automatic response. Reverend X not only had interactions with girls just happened to come to church but also he took particular interest in activities involving young adolescent girls, such as the local Girl Scout troop. In addition, he subscribed to a series of pedophilic pornographic magazines. According to Clark Hull and his ‘theory of learning and the nature of habits are simply associations between a stimulus and a response’. Reverend X made response that leaded to a goal that alleviates a drive. ‘These responses in themselves become stimuli for further responses and intervene between the stimulus which is his pedophilia and response which is the caressing and touching girl’s breasts’ (p.201). So, Reverend X , learned to find a variety of ways to satisfy, and reduce his drive for pedophilia. In addition, he found a way not feel any remorse of his actions. As Bandura states, that self-control is a process that the person is free to activate or deactivate. A given action won’t be uniformly rewarded or punished because the circumstances may change sufficiently or alter self-appraisal. This flexibility is described as a selective activation and disengagement of internal control’ (p.706). The most applied mechanism that Reverend X uses for his actions is called ‘disregard or distortion of consequences’. It means that he can avoid facing the harm he does to the girls, so that the action and the consequences are disconnected. In this way he can disregard consequences. For example, Reverend X believes that all he does is not erotic ( maladaptive) , and that all pedophilics simply want to show their affection to little girls. Or ejaculating during the interaction and having real sex with girls this is the only way for him to be considered unethical and maladaptive. The only way for his behavior to disengage himself from all will be to face the consequences of the harm he can make to the girls after, as the consequences of his actions. Ofcourse, it is obvious that he has always been reinforced by the girls who, as he says, they responded positively. The fact that he has been moved away and still in his new position he still insisted to be involved in this kind of actions is maybe because the ‘punishment’ he received was very mild. Even his family has accepted him, and his children still didn’t believe that the whole situations did really happened. All those facts as Bandura calls it, encouraged Reverend X to develop ‘enactive attainments, which are the most powerful regulators of self-efficacy’. (p.760). This means that if his own efforts either succeed or failed, the outcome was instructive in planning future efforts. We can also tell by the way he presents for psychotherapy, he doesn't really consider it to be something that could be of any use of help. His only punishment and what he wants to avoid is not to be ‘found out’ form the parents and to be sent away as happened before.