Notebooks: Selections from the Private Notebooks of America's Greatest Living Psychologist

Skinner characterizes the entries not as thoughts but as verbal behavior—covert speech, descriptions of behavior, and rehearsals of action. This distinction is crucial because radical behaviorism disallows mental operations as explanatory entities. By treating his own notebook writing as behavior subject to the same contingencies as overt conduct, Skinner demonstrates that a consistent behaviorist can engage in self-observation without invoking a mental realm. The notebooks thus serve as a methodological demonstration: the private journal, often taken as evidence of an inner life, can be described as a repertoire of verbal responses maintained by reinforcement. Kirkus Reviews described the entries as “ad hoc thoughts,” adding the caveat that this is “given the behaviorist disallowance of mental operations” .

Robert Epstein, who would later become a prominent critic of the behaviorist establishment, edited and introduced the volume. His role was selection and arrangement rather than annotation or critical apparatus. The result is a curated collection rather than a complete transcription of Skinner's notebooks, and readers should treat the published volume as an edited construction. Epstein's introduction frames the notebooks as a window into Skinner's intellectual development. This editorial mediation is significant: it means the “Skinner” who emerges from these pages is partly a product of Epstein's choices about what to include and how to sequence it. The WorldCat record and library catalogs consistently list Epstein as editor and introducer .

The entries are brief, crisp, and outspoken observations of Skinner's own and others' behavior. Recurring themes include verbal slips catalogued in terms of chains of association rather than Freudian overtones, reinforcement contingencies observed in ordinary social situations, and translations of Freudian, hypnotic, or literary statements into behavioral terms. Kirkus Reviews noted a specific example: Skinner observed parents offering candy to children on a train when they began to get disruptive, thereby reinforcing the disruptive behavior . The notebooks also reveal Skinner's reading habits (Montaigne, Stendhal, Joyce) and musical preferences (Wagner). The cumulative effect is a portrait of a mind consistently applying its own framework to the raw material of daily life.

The notebooks function as a laboratory for ideas that later appeared in polished form in his published works. One Goodreads reviewer noted that “most of his notes were on verbal behavior” and that Skinner “referred to his book Verbal Behavior numerous times” . The notebooks show Skinner rehearsing and revising the behavioral analysis of language before and alongside its formal publication. Similarly, entries on cultural practices and social contingencies anticipate the arguments of Beyond Freedom and Dignity. Skinner himself acknowledged that he could not throw out a page of typescript until the 1950s, reasoning that his prior writings were “shaping behavior” toward the final product—a description that frames writing itself as an operant process .

Skinner's comment that he could not throw out a page of typescript until the Fifties is more than an anecdote; it is an application of his own theory to his writing practice. He describes his earlier inability to discard as a behavior maintained by the aversive consequences of loss, and his later ability as the result of shaping—successive approximations toward a final product that made intermediate versions disposable. The admission reveals that Skinner treated his own compositional habits as subject to the same contingency analysis he applied to rats and pigeons. It also indicates the notebooks' historical value: they preserve the raw material of a writing process that Skinner himself understood as behavioral, not merely expressive.

Assessments vary by audience. A Goodreads reviewer with behavioral psychology training called it a “master piece” and found it inspirational, writing that it helped them understand “the making of his philosophy” . Kirkus Reviews treated it as a “surprisingly sharp and well-rounded portrait of one of the pivotal figures of our time” . The caveat from that same Goodreads review is significant: readers who have not studied behavioral psychology in depth “will be flabbergasted by his explanations” . The volume is thus most valuable for those already familiar with operant theory who want to see it applied to the mundane, the verbal, and the personal. It is not an introduction to Skinner's system and offers no systematic exposition.