1978 was marked by the publication of two major reports on gambling, the Royal Commissioners Report (1978) and the Home Office Research Report by Cornish (1978). These are in many senses complementary publications. The Royal Commission presents a wealth of factual data on the various forms of gambling in the UK, and devotes only two pages to the psychology of gambling, in which reference is made to Cornish's report and endorsement given to the conclusion. Cornish offers an extensive and systematic review of psychological and sociological approaches to gambling with an interesting synthesis and suggestions for future research. The present paper is in no way attempting to parallel Cornish's exhaustive treatment of the subject, but rather to argue for and examine a specific approach to the problem of gambling.

Since obesity is a persuasive health problem in our society one would expect that treatment outcome evaluation of weight control methods has received a great deal of attention. Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth. Weight control fads reach heights of widespread popularity despite the absence of extensive clinical evaluation. Follow-up evaluations that have been reported tend to be extremely brief. For example, the vast majority of behavior modification studies of obesity have reported follow-up data for only 6 to 8 weeks (Brownell, in press). In fact, in a recent report, Gotestam (1979) found only three behavior modification studies of obesity with a follow-up of one year or longer. This is a particularly crucial problem due to the high proportion of relapse observed during the first year after obesity treatment.

The story of the creation of the cognitive trend in behaviour modification, cognitive behaviour modification (CBM), might well, if ever written, begin as follows:

In the beginning Skinner created behaviourism. Behaviourism, in its radical form, was pure, elementary, objective, and visible to all. So, when Skinner observed everything he had created, he said: “Let behaviourism bring forth operant man to study and manipulate S and R in mice, pigeons, rats, and men”. It was in the forties and it was the fifties; the first period. Now, when Skinner saw operant man, surrounded by light, sound, and food, throwing pellets to the pigeons and studying the behaviours of mice, rats, and men, Skinner said: “Thou, operant man, are permitted to touch every branch of the radical trees in my paradise of freedom and dignity, but … the tree of knowledge and cognition thou shalt not touch lest thou be seduced”. Operant man, however, was cunning and sly, and said to himself: ‘On the day I will touch the tree of knowledge and cognition, I shall surely unravel the secret behind S & R; then I shall be like Skinner, master of prediction and explanation”. So operant man acted upon his internal dialogue and not only touched but actually ate from the forbidden fruit. When Skinner saw that operant man had transgressed his comandment, his anger was kindled. He then said to operant man: “Since thou hast tasted from the forbidden fruit, thou must leave this pure garden. I hereby condemn you to descend into the valley of mentalism, where thou shalt wander and wonder for ever and ever, since the causal path knows no end. Further, from now on thy name is not operant man anymore, but coverant man”. Now this is the history of coverant man …