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Essay on John Watson
In 1956, Gustav Bergmann claimed that, second only to Sigmund Freud, John B. Watson was the most influential shaper of psychological thought in the first half of the 20th century. In 1957, the American Psychological Association cited Watson for spawning a revolution in modern psychology and providing new directions for fruitful research. Some psychologists agree that these accolades are not exaggerated. Watson's signal contributions to scientific psychology and to the movement of behaviorism are well known.
John Broadus Watson was born in the small village of Travelers Rest near Greenville, South Carolina, on January 9, 1878. His parents were Pickens Butler Watson and Emma Kesiah (Roe) Watson. Most of Watson's family members were devout believers in fundamental religion and his grandfather helped to establish one of the many Baptist churches in the area. In fact, Watson was named for John Albert Broadus, a Baptist minister in Greenville, who rose to national prominence as a theologian and educator. As a youngster, Watson was called Broadus and not John B.
In a short autobiographical sketch published in 1936, Watson wrote that his earliest academic memories concerned the district schools in the picturesque hamlets of Reedy River, White Horse, and Travelers Rest. From the age of 6, he trudged to one or another of these places to attend a rural school. He was using tools, half-soling shoes, and milking cows when he was 9, and was a pretty good carpenter at 12. This manual skill never lost its charm for him and years later he built a 10-room house from blueprints and then added a garage and a barn.
Watson was the fourth of six children in a dirt-poor family, but his mother had high hopes for her offspring. When he was 12, she moved the family from Travelers Rest to Greenville because the schools were much better than the small, rural schools....
