Nathan Azrin

Nathan Azrin (1930-2013) was an American behavioral psychologist, born in Boston and trained at Harvard under B. F. Skinner. In 1958 he became director of treatment development at Anna State Hospital in Illinois, where most patients were withdrawn, many of them mute after years in institutions. With his colleague Teodoro Ayllon he built a system of tokens that patients earned for small changes in behavior, beginning with dressing themselves each day, and exchanged for privileges. The two described the method in The Token Economy (1968), a foundational text of behavioral psychology that carried the approach into special education, classroom management, treatment of autism and many other settings. He later co-wrote Toilet Training in Less Than a Day (1974) with Richard Foxx. He died in Pompano Beach, Florida, aged 82.