It is hard to believe that intelligent people could have long subscribed to such an idea, but since the end of World War I, American psychology had been ruled by the dogmas of behaviorism. The appeal of this notion, so implausible on its face, is basically ideological. Behaviorism takes an enormously optimistic view of the human organism, one that makes progress appealingly simple: All you have to do to change the person is to change the environment. People commit crimes because they are poor, and so if poverty is eliminated, crime will disappear. If you catch a thief, you can rehabilitate him
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