Childhood history for Skinner is a series of learning opportunities, which may or may not facilitate healthy adult functioning. Focus of counseling and therapy

Getting to the root of childhood traumas is at the heart of Freudian therapy. This is often done by free association, or tapping into associations that the individual might not be immediately aware of, but inhibit mature social relationships. There is also a focus on understanding how a crisis at a stage during the child's psychosexual development has lead to a regression or a fixation in one of these states, and resulted in a malformed personality, such as an antisocial personality. Therapy for Skinner is focused on reconditioning the individual to no longer perform negative behaviors, and conditioning them to perform positive behaviors.

These inhibitions can be productive, and are necessary for society to function, but can also result in complexes the foster antisocial behavior. For Skinner, rather than stress development as a series of unique stages, learning can take place at any part of human development. Learning is at the heart of Skinner's theory, but in terms of a schema of rewards and punishments. Although it may seem that our society has clear standards of right and wrong according to law, within an individual's social environment or subculture, behaviors we think of as maladaptive may actually be perversely rewarded for negative social behaviors.