Behave

Starred review from January 18, 2016
Rosalie Rayner—wife of real-life behaviorist pioneer John Watson, assistant in his controversial 1920 Little Albert experiment, and coauthor of his now-
discredited parenting guide—is the confessional narrator of Romano-Lax’s scorching new novel. After graduating from Vassar in 1919, Rosalie attends Johns Hopkins, where she works in the psychology lab under Watson, a handsome, gregarious advocate of conditioning over introspection. In their best-known collaboration, they expose a baby to rats, loud noises, and other stimuli, eliciting fearful responses. The baby that Watson chooses for this experiment—a stolid, passive nine-month-old referred to as Albert—seems the perfect subject to prove almost all behavior is conditioned. Rosalie does not question Watson’s ideas or methods as they embark on a scandalous affair. Eventually Watson divorces his first wife, marries Rosalie, and becomes an advertising executive, while Rosalie becomes a stay-at-home mom disconnected from her husband’s ideas—in favor of schedules, against demonstrations of affection, as promoted in their book on child rearing. Sticking to historical fact, imagining only what history omits, Romano-Lax depicts Rosalie as a modern woman of the 1920s: bobbed hair, driving a Stutz Bearcat, career-focused until her devotion to a controlling behavior-control expert confines her to a traditional role. Scenes of little Albert whimpering are disturbing; scenes of Rosalie trying to raise her own children according to Watsonian doctrine are maddening. By detailing how the study of human behavior differs from understanding people, and how smart women can miss the obvious and make mistakes, Romano-Lax sheds a harsh yet deeply moving light on feminism and psychology, in theory and in practice.

December 15, 2015
Romano-Lax (The Detour, 2012, etc.) gives voice to the remarkable woman behind a controversial man in this fictional memoir of parenting psychologist Rosalie Rayner. In the 1920s, John Watson and his team at John Hopkins conducted extensive psychological experiments on babies to test Watson's theories about the importance of nurture over nature and the potential of behavioral conditioning. The ethics of their landmark set of early experiments on one anonymous child, called Little Albert, remain the subject of considerable criticism today. Rayner, then a recent college graduate, was Watson's right hand during the trials but soon became just as controversial as her mentor. They began a romantic relationship, which ended Watson's marriage and forced him to leave Hopkins. The couple went on to marry and write parenting books based on their research. Watson is still at the center of the story, which begins when Rayner meets him while still an undergraduate at Vassar. But Romano-Lax skillfully transitions between the early academic allure of Watson's work, the heady days of the pair's illicit relationship, and Rayner's later difficulty in bridging the life she thought she'd have and her own reality. The book spans decades quickly, at times dizzyingly, following Rayner through her gradual disillusionment. While the author paints a compelling portrait of Rayner's life, much is left unexplored. Rayner's response to her husband's continued infidelity and her withdrawal into the domestic sphere leave the reader with many questions, particularly after the deeply detailed earlier chapters. Romano-Lax trusts her readers to make connections across chapters with little to jog their memories, which can take the reader out of the story at crucial, dramatic moments. These hiccups aside, however, the book succeeds in bringing to life a complex, driven woman who has largely been lost to history. Rayner finally has the spotlight in this compelling fictional memoir, even if the occasional lack of explanation and detail glosses over key moments.

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January 1, 2016
Though much of her work and her controversial contributions to Psychological Care of Infant and Child have since been debunked, Rosalie Rayner was, during the 1920s, on the cutting edge of psychological research and behavioral analysis. In this gripping fictional biography, Romano-Lax (The Detour, 2012) provides a three-dimensional portrait of a brilliant, ambitious woman carving out a prominent niche in a field dominated by men. Upon her graduation from Vassar with a degree in psychology, she is hired as a research-lab assistant to the already-established John B. Watson of Johns Hopkins University. Together they conduct studies of hundreds of children, including the infamously cruel Baby Albert experiment, to prove their nurture-versus-nature theory of human behavior. When their passionate dedication to their work spills over into their personal lives, private and professional scandal ensues. After her marriage to Watson and the birth of two sons, Rosalie finds her views about marriage, motherhood, and love put to the ultimate test. Romano-Lax offers a fascinating novel about the psyche of a complex woman and the infancy of behavioral psychology.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

January 1, 2016

In this novel of the woman behind the man, Romano-Lax (The Spanish Bow) takes a look at the lives of Dr. John Watson and his wife, Rosalie (Rar). A proponent of the psychological theory of behaviorism, Watson was a well-known author and researcher who believed that too much affection and coddling ruined children. As his research assistant, Rar worked with Watson on hundreds of experiments exploring fear and conditioning in infants. As his wife, she raised their two boys upon these tenets, allowing the babies to cry for hours. Physical and verbal affection were avoided, and the children were trained to be self-sufficient from an early age. While fascinating, this may prove to be a challenging read for some. Romano-Lax writes compellingly about science and the Jazz Age, but Rar only truly comes to life at the novel's conclusion. Her unerring devotion to a husband who philanders and marginalizes her can be difficult to understand. Most difficult for many, though, will be the descriptions of the research, which involved deliberately creating phobias in infants in a multitude of ways. VERDICT Because of its subject matter, this is a novel that may work best for those interested in psychology and history. [See Prepub Alert, 8/31/15.]--Liz Kirchhoff, Barrington Area Lib., IL

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2015

Rosalie Rayner graduated from Vassar College in 1920 and promptly accepted a job at Johns Hopkins as assistant to John B. Watson, a leader in behaviorist psychology. A few shocking things transpired. To prove that nurture rather than nature rules, they conducted experiments on hundreds of babies, fear-conditioning one infant in the notorious "Little Albert" study. And they launched a scandalous love affair. Romano-Lax's previous novels include The Spanish Bow and The Detour, both memorable and well-reviewed works.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.