In this classic work on behavioral modification, Professor Dunlap explores the inter-relationship between habit making and breaking and the learning process, asserting that maladjustments are acquired by the process of learning and removed only by this same process.

Professor Dunlap contends that one can render certain acts, like stuttering, nonhabitual by intentionally repeating them until the repulsion toward those acts is stronger than the original tendency to perform them.

Because it attacked several popularly-held views concerning habit-formation when first published in 1932, HABITS was initially quite controversial. Today it is considered a seminal work in the field of behavioral psychology.