Behavioral Psychology

So, I have been pondering this idea of Behavioral psychology for quite some time now.  I agree absolutely that it is important, but I feel that cognition is just as important.  Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, I am one of those Special Education majors who cannot decide and will not decide between behavioral psychology and cognitive psychology.

I believe that both behavioral and cognitive psychology are integral to each other.  Because for behavioral, it even says it in Chapter 1 of John W. Maag's textbook called Behavioral Management that sometimes behaviors are covert.  And sometimes the antecedent (what happened before the behavior) is not obvious.  I believe that sometimes the antecedent can be caused by something in the cognitive or neural mind of the student.  For instance, say a student (I apologize if this offends or makes someone upset) has PTSD from being molested and they now have an eating disorder.  You can look at the molestation as the antecedent, and the eating disorder as the behavior, but why?  I, personally, feel that I need to know why there is a connection in their brain between the molestation and the eating disorder.  And you may find that the swallowing of food for them acts as a PTSD trigger (something that brings back the memory).

Now, if you just accepted behavioral psychology, then you would not be looking at the connection and would not find out why there is a connection.  Plus, if the molestation happened a few years ago, how can you know that that is why a student has an eating disorder?

Behavioral psychology, I repeat again, is important, but I believe that it is integral to combine and recognize that the other parts of psychology are just as important.  It seems to me that Behavioral psychology puts itself above all other forms of psychology by saying "only measure by observable actions."  But Piaget, for cognitive psychology, emphasized that environment affects cognition and the cognition, therefore, affects behavior.  Freud said that failure to pass through the psycho-sexual stages affects behavior.  Passage through Erik Erikson's psycho-social stages affect behavior.  All of these theories and stages affect behavior and all of them accept it, but behavioral psychology says that the brain is nothing more than a barren land that needs to become fruitful using behavioral management techniques.