Inside JABA #7: There's No Such Thing as a Bad Boy, with Pat Friman

In previous appearances on this podcast and elsewhere, Pat Friman has told the story of Father Flanagan, founder of BoysTown. According to Pat, Father Flanagan often made the following statement when describing his philosophy of helping troubled youths: "there is no such thing as a bad boy, only bad environments, bad modeling, and bad teaching."

For the Spring 2021 issue of the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, Dr. Linda LeBlanc invited Pat to expand on these remarks in the issue's lead paper. In this podcast, I'm joined by both Linda and Pat, as well as Inside JABA regular, Dr. Claire St. Peter, where we talk at length about the "circumstantial view" of behavior as it applies to both clinical practice in particular, and societal trends more generally.

Specifically, we discuss the following:

• How this paper fits into LeBlanc’s “big idea paper” concept.
• How “big idea” papers are often conceptual rather than data based.
• Why Pat stopped presenting papers with original data, and why he started giving more thematic talks.
• The difference, from Pat’s perspective between giving a talk and writing a journal article.
• A brief history of BoysTown.
• Just what is the Circumstantial View of problem behavior?
• Some examples from Pat’s life where he failed to take the Circumstantial View of behavior.
• Why the Circumstantial View has failed to flourish?
• How supervisors can incorporate these views with trainees and other team members?
• Why it is important to tell a real-life story as a vehicle for explain a behavioral principles.
• Why Pat’s view of Walden Two has changed.
• Movies that demonstrate both the Circumstantial and Characterological View of behavior.
• And much more!

During this conversation, we discussed many papers and other resources. I've done my best to capture all of them below:

• The paper that inspired this podcast, "There is no such thing as a bad boy: The circumstantial view of problem behavior."
• The JABA Homepage.
• Pat Friman's appearances on Behavioral Observations (Session 10, Session 16, Session 42, and Session 77).
• Goldiamond (2002). Toward a Constructional Approach to Social Problems: Ethical and Constitutional Issues Raised by Applied Behavior Analysis.
• Pat's TedTalk.
• The short film Pat referenced.
• The DailyBA clip we discussed (Pink Sweater/Didn't Know her Circumstances).
• This Way of Thinking (CE/Short film by Team OnLocation).
• Session 72: Compassionate Service Delivery.
• Quotable Quote: “When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.” – Alexander Den Heijer.
• Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman.
• A Clockwork Orange.
• Walden Two.

In keeping with previous Inside JABA Series podcasts, there will be no ads in this episode. However, this show happens to be eligible for BACB Continuing Education. So click here for more information. And, to help incentivize getting Pat's important message out there, I’m running a 50% 55% off sale from now, through the first week of May, 2021. Use offer code Boystown, to get more than half off any CEU in the Behavioral Observations catalog.

I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. If so, please consider sharing with friends and colleagues!