Constructing a behavior analytical helping process.

Abstract

The language of behavior analysis and radical behaviorism can provide a coherent framework for the helping processes we call counseling or psychotherapy. This can best be done when we use concepts consistent with this framework and avoid the use of mentalistic terminology that is part of psychiatric diagnostic systems and various schools of counseling/psychotherapy. Goldiamond's constructional model is an example of a thoroughly behavior-analytic approach that can readily be applied in the counseling setting. This model is also very compatible with and was likely an influence on current schools operating within a solution-focused orientation. ********** This piece is a digest of some of the major themes included in presentations and workshops that I have given for a number of years at the conventions of the Association for Behavior Analysis. I feel that scientists and practitioners who work within the perspective of behavior analysis and its philosophy of science, radical behaviorism, should maintain a vocabulary and practice that are consistent with this framework. I believe the following items are essential to operating within this perspective. First, the language and semantics of the field are of critical importance. I am not sure whether the field of behavior analysis should have a future. In saying this, I do not mean to assert that I think this work should stop, but that I have a problem with the term, behavior analysis. I realize, however, that it will be difficult to supplant it because of the strong tradition in psychology that is built around clinical psychology. I was trained as a clinical psychologist but I work in that somewhat distinctive environment called a counseling center and I call myself a counselor. I also avoid the use of any labels related to the so-called medical model - a model that I see as mentalistic when applied in the helping arena. I am somewhat of a purist and I try to avoid using any mentalistic terms such as mental health or mental illness, and I think other behavior analysts should do likewise. While I realize that many behavior analysts work within environments where they have to deal with these constructs, I can talk without difficulty to, for example, the people in our Health Services without using terms like diagnosis or treatment. I do not categorize my clientele in terms of the DSM-IV. A behavioral and developmental vocabulary provides for a comprehensive involvement and practice in the helping world that is also more optimistic than the DSM-IV. Further, in relation to a nonmentalistic view, I do not use the term, cognitive, and it makes me very uncomfortable to hear this word. Within the language of behavior analysis we can, as needed, adapt and indeed subsume the counseling techniques developed under the cognitive rubric. Skinner's analysis of verbal behavior (Skinner, 1957) and his concept of rule-governed behavior, which he was using by the early 1960's (Skinner, 1964), gives us this ability. I find that when I talk in terms of rules with my clients, they typically understand this more quickly and easily than they do the word cognition. Even when they have taken psychology courses, they do not find the latter word as useful. Cognition is a mentalistic term that is used because of its compatibility with everyday language but also in part because it functions to enable humans to maintain, through conceptual means, their position at the top of the animal hierarchy. Further, the use of a cognitive vocabulary seems related to the culture's discomfort with the view that humans may operate pretty well as other organisms do. Moving to a second important consideration with respect to the future of behavior analysts as helping professionals, I think that Goldiamond's (1974) article, Toward a Constructional Approach to Social Problems, (expanded upon in a book by Swartz and Goldiamond, 1975) is a landmark in relation to behavior analytic counseling. …