Dorothy E. Johnson formulated her Behavioral Systems Model, an analytical theory or approach to the practice of nursing during the 1960s. Deploying a rigorous scientific analysis towards human behavior (as embodied in the psychological approach of B.F. Skinner towards human behavior and psychology) was increasingly popular in Post-World War II American academic research and medical practice. Julia George writes in her textbook Nursing Theories (1994) that Dorothy E. Johnson created her Behavioral System Model to render the patient's behaviors the nurse's primary area of analysis. In other words, what can be observed is what is important when acting as a nurse, rather than the patient's presumed internal state. Treat the patient, not the illness, and see the patient from the perspective of an observer, not an involved emotional participant.
             In Johnson's view, every human person was a kind of ecosystem, or constellation of behaviors existing in a state of sufficiency or insufficiency in terms of their needs and balance or imbalance in terms of their homeostatic processes. The behavioral system of the human body and mind has seven subsystems in Johnson's approach. All of these diverse subsystems are interrelated, although they can be analyzed as separate compartments if this facilitates or enhances the nurses' ability to initially diagnose the patient's complaint. These components are as follows: the attachment or affiliative system, the system of dependency, the ingestive system, the eliminative system, the sexual system, the aggressive system, and the achievement system. As well as biological needs, these systems are defined by goals or drives, such as the need to eat that drives the impulses and behavior of the ingestive system and the need for the social esteem of others that drives the actions of the achievement system. (George, 1994)
             The behaviors associated with each subsystem arise from bas...