However, the behavioristic concept of the person implies that this relationship is also contractual. You simply present a longer and more complex shopping list and your mate retaliates with an equivalent list. I'll scratch your back if you'll scratch mine. This cynical view of human relationships is not some 1984ish vision of a dehumanized world but a necessary deduction from the behavioristic concept of the person. B. F. Skinner explicitly states this view in his book Verbal Behaviour [SKINNER]. There are two ways you can get things done - you can do it yourself (non-verbal behaviour) or you can ask someone else to do it for you (verbal behaviour). Verbal behaviour is defined as behaviour which gets things done through the mediation of other people. Other people are means to your ends.

      The humanistic concept of the person implies that relationships are intrinsically intimate rather than basically contractual. Instead of viewing your relationship to your mate as an extended contractual relationship, it views your relationship to your grocer as an unrealized intimate relationship. The latter is based not so much on an implicit contract to exchange food and money but on a tacit understanding not to realize the full potential intimacy. You each respect that fact that the other can handle only so much intimacy - even if only because the other has only so much time.