To heal psychic ailments, that we have contracted through misfortunes or faults of our own, the understanding avails nothing, reasoning little, time much, but resolute action everything. Goethe in Whilhelm Meister
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and all of its educational and child serving capacity, in lock step with other Federal and State Educational approaches, have demonstrated no skill in educating children whose behavior is the problem. Repeated legal actions have enjoined the state to address this issue without success. Neither education nor mental health services have demonstrated the ability to impact substantively on the problems of atypical behavior and the outcomes of pharmaceutical approaches have created a drug culture of immense proportions. All Systems Failure is both the title of an account of these problems across the country.
An underlying problem generates symptoms that demand attention. But the underlying problem is difficult for people to address, either because it is obscure or costly to confront. So people ‘shift the burden’ of their problem to other solutions – well intentioned, easy fixes which seem extremely efficient. Unfortunately, the easier ‘solutions’ only ameliorate the symptoms; they leave the underlying problems unaltered. [Senge – 1990]
Problem: atypical behaviors which lead to violence, defiance, and/or withdrawal and ‘escape’ into substance abuse or even suicide.
What is the underlying problem that generates the symptoms that define the problem statement? Answers such as mental ‘illness’, bad schools, bad home environments, etc., are not the answer. Attempts to resolve the problem by covering the symptoms with pharmaceuticals or ‘blaming’ parents, teacher, human services workers or the children themselves are simply acts of ‘shifting the burden’. Society has changed dramatically over the past fifty years, but since not all children and families are negatively affected, the change itself is not a cause, although it may be a catalyst.
The models we use and the methodologies and technologies generated by them are ineffective, and perhaps even detrimental. We have failed to achieve any degree of successful outcome through these models, yet continue to use them. The models of typical/atypical behavior in major use today are the biomedical and psychodynamic. Both have failed and should be abandoned. The existential/humanistic model generates substantial positive feelings, but does not appear to have sufficient methodology/technology to respond effectively to the issues at hand.
Behavior methodology/technology, in the Watson/Skinner model has failed as well, proving to be mechanistic and not applicable to children whose behavior is the problem. These models ignore the ‘black box’ of mental activity assuming that it either does not exist or, if it exists, has no importance. However, H. J. Eysenck suggests that “the conditioning theories underlying behavior therapy implicitly and explicitly contain cognitive elements (as indeed did Pavlov’s original work). The old fashioned and largely irrelevant theories of Watson and Skinner tried to exclude cognition, but modern learning theory has refused to adopt such nonsensical restrictions, and cognitive factors play a very prominent part in recent (and not so recent) theories in the field of conditioning and learning. Cognitive models are an outgrowth and extension of classical behavior and social learning theory and have a scientific base that is demonstrable. While many ‘techniques’ have been exploited, the model, as a major impetus for change has never been tested either by education or other child services. Yet this is our greatest hope.
Models
…existing entities have two levels of being – actuality and potentiality. What we observe at any given time is only one aspect of what a system is. There is also what it might become.
Who’s afraid of Schrödinger’s Cat – Marshall & Zohar
We look at the world from a context. The quote above raises the issue that elementary particles have two levels. We would posit that this is true also for human beings. Far from only being the person who manifests behaviors, each of us has a potentiality to become. It is this potentiality that the school must relate to and we seek a model that helps the educational faculty focus on this potential being.
A model is only a more-or-less-sophisticated metaphor for understanding some part of the world and for seeking order. “Any individual or society uses only a selection from an infinite set of possible types of order, the most fundamental, all-embracing selection describes a society’s paradigm, the set of categories in terms of what all experience is interpreted [Marshall & Zohar].” For a scientist, the useful paradigm essentially provides the context for the operational model, since the paradigm is at a higher logical level. Within the paradigmatic construct, several models can be tried. When physicists describe the behavior of an electron as a ‘particle’, it leads naturally to some kinds of understanding and predictions, and tends to exclude others. When physicists describe an electron as a ‘wave’, they discover understandings that are not available to them when thinking of an electron as a particle.¬
Freud’s thinking about feelings and emotions was based on a hydraulic or ‘plumbing’ metaphor.¬ His thought of feelings as being fluids that were stored, and if they were pushed down in one area of life they would squirt out somewhere else.¬ This paradigmatic construct spawned a plethora of psychodynamic models.
The cognitive metaphor is of an entirely different order. Its analogy is one of an information system that stores information as memories in one or more representative systems.¬ It is only when these memories are activated as thought that feelings result from them when they are meaningful.¬ If the thought is never activated no feelings are stimulated.¬ The fundamental assumption of the model is that we are the sum total of our thoughts. This injunctive language directs us to change thoughts.
Descriptive and Injunctive Language
Some models are purely descriptive, and do not tell you what to do.¬ Transactional analysis (TA) is an elaborate description that basically recast Freud’s id, ego, and superego into contemporary English:¬ child, adult, and parent; but this description does not provide any methodology or technology for making use of the description.¬ In practice, TA borrowed methods and techniques from other forms of intervention and adapted them to their framework. Nonetheless, the model was very useful in generating new understandings about the way people function.
In contrast to purely descriptive language, injunctive language tells you what to do to make use of the description. ¬A cookbook is injunctive, because each recipe tells you exactly what to do to get a particular result.¬ A recipe is an algorithm. An algorithm is a fail-safe procedure guaranteed to achieve a specific goal. If you follow the recipe explicitly, you will achieve a cake. An algorithm is a procedure, process or rules for calculation; a ‘problem solving device’. Cognitive scientists define an algorithm as any rule-following process that can be carried out by a computational system such as a computer. For this reason, the model of artificial intelligence is that of a computer. This, of course, fails to take into account other human mental processes that are more heuristic than algorithmic. Following such heuristic rules may get expected results, but may not.
Technology
A cookbook is essentially a list of techniques, and someone can follow the instructions and get the result without any understanding of the processes involved. All of us are surrounded by technology that we use, but do not understand, and no human being lives long enough to understand even a small fraction of it even if s/he spends a lifetime studying it. When most of us use a microwave, an automatic transmission, or a hair dryer, we don’t have the slightest idea of the physics or psychology involved, or how to fix it if it doesn’t work.
The use of algorithms for intervention is increasingly apparent in cognitive methodologies in manual form. One with very little knowledge of the human experience can be called on to help a person deal with anxiety or depression simply by following the rules. This is, of course, an anathema to the trained psychodynamic counselor who insists that such interventions require highly trained skills. The threat of the success of such interventions causes job uncertainty.
Methodology
Technology is a specific application of a methodology (whether the methodology is known or understood or not).¬ A methodology is a more general understanding of how things work, in contrast to a specific recipe or product.¬ The theoretical underpinnings of the manual technology includes, but is not limited to constructivist theory, social learning theory, affect, theory, attribution theory, expectancy theory, neural network theory, and so on.
Knowledge of methodology allows the user of technology to adopt it to unique situations in which knowledge of the technique alone would fail.¬ Methodology also makes possible new applications and discoveries, and new ways of accomplishing outcomes that we already have techniques for. Thus, the expertise of the trained counselor remains valid, but through the use of appropriate technology can be exponentially expanded.
For example, an engineer who understands the methodology of materials and structures can build a specified building out of a wide variety of materials, and utilizing a range of structural elements – and predict with mathematical models exactly what size to make everything to achieve a certain strength to resist hazards such as snow load, flood, earthquakes, etc.¬ In contrast, if the same engineer only knew about how to build brick walls, he would only be able to design a narrow range of buildings for a few environments.
Cognitive approaches have expanded to include guided imagery, reframing, anchoring and a multitude of other methodologies as an expansion of the original notions of personal constructs and automatic thoughts.
Methodology and Technology
Typically a field develops by a kind of ‘leap-frog’ alternation of technology and methodology.¬ Usually some primitive technology, discovered by accident or intuition, starts the process.¬ George Kelly’s theory of personal constructs and his resulting Repertory Grid Technique May have been the catalyst for ensuing cognitive methodologies, followed by Beck and Ellis with automatic thoughts. Then someone looks at several techniques and begins to generalize about them, describing some elements of similarity.¬ If this generalization is a useful one, typically it indicates other technologies that could be developed using different processes, materials, or outcomes.¬ These new techniques, and the knowledge that is learned as they are applied, in turn suggest other methodologies – other ways of thinking about the technology.¬ Methodology is at a higher, more general (logical) level of generalization than technology.
Typically an evolving methodology/technology has very useful pieces that do not yet appear to fit together.¬ It was a long time before physicists realized how light (and optics) was a part of the electromagnetic radiation spectrum, and they are still seeking an understanding of how gravity and electromagnetic are related. In the same manner, the separation of thought, feeling and behavior as a social learning experience came only after a denial that any thought existed.
Epistemology
Every model (at both the level of technology and methodology) also has an implicit epistemology. Epistemology is the study of how we know things.¬ Webster’s unabridged dictionary defines epistemology as “The theory or science that investigates the origin, nature, methods and limits of knowledge”.
Some epistemologies are very simple; they rely on some authority – a person, book or other original source – from which the model originates. Psychodynamic models in all of its varieties are almost entirely based on the authority of Freud and his followers. Most such epistemologies do not have an independent way to test the validity of the model, and typically such methodologies do not develop or change significantly over long periods of time. ¬In fact, the psychodynamic model is, in the words of Eysenck quite chaotic. The ‘theories’ are “vague notions, stated imprecisely, derived from ill-defined, obscure and nebulous observations, difficult or even impossible to test, and resting ultimately on their ability, seldom properly tested, to suggest methods of treatment hopefully giving better results than placebo treatment, or other methods equally vague, deriving from other ‘theories’ equally ill defined”. He goes on to suggest that any empirical evidence speaks negatively about the model.
The scientific method, in contrast, includes a rigorous way of testing and revising methodology, and an explicit recognition of the inherent uncertainty in all knowledge, and the testing of this knowledge.¬ As Hans Vaihinger said in The Philosophy of ‘As If’, “Truth is only the most expedient error”.¬ This was echoed by Richard Bandler who said, “Everything we tell you is lies; but they are very useful lies”.¬ One aspect of the epistemology of science essentially says “I don’t care if it’s ‘true;’ I only care if it’s true enough to yield predictions about the world that can be used.¬
The model of cognitive behavior management is based on scientific expediency and will progress over time. Again, citing Eysenck, “in contrast to the theories underlying the various psychotherapies, such behaviorist theories are 1) developed clearly enough to lead to testable consequences and 2) are derived from the large corpus of facts and theories which constitute modern learning theory, which provides an academically acceptable basis”. “It (is) already apparent …that (cognitive) behavior (management approaches) appears significantly higher in effect size than psychotherapy or placebo treatment.” Biomedical approaches are falling into disgrace as the American Psychiatric Association members find increasing disfavor in a methodology that is based on no sufficient evidence, has highly toxic effects both on the individual and society, and avowedly is not a ‘cure’, so simply shifts the burden.
One critical factor in extracting the maximum effect from cognitive behavior management is to implement the model across substantial portions of the atypical population and determine its impact. Our society is in a position to make substantive changes in the way it approaches atypical behavior though all of it’s child services systems. Perhaps it is time for resolute action.