Skinner has said that writing Walden Two was “a venture in self-therapy” in which he was trying to reconcile inconsistencies in his own behavior. On the one hand, Skinner was pursuing a rewarding, but traditional, academic and scientific career, but there was a part of him that leaned toward accepting a different approach to life, one that would involve turning his back on the university to try a new, communal-type lifestyle as pictured in Walden Two.