International Journal of Existential

Psychology & Psychotherapy

No Matter How Odd it is, it is

Not Odd at All
A Response to Exposition in existential
terms of a case of Negative
Schizophrenia approached
by means of Acceptance and
Commitment Therapy
Steven C. Hayes
University of Nevada
Correspondence may be addressed to Steven
C. Hayes, Department of Psychology /296,
University of Nevada, Reno, NV 89557-0062.
email: hayes@unr.edu
Abstract
Behavior analysis is a contextualistic approach, open to the analysis of all forms
of human experience and more allied
with existential psychology than is typically appreciated. What has hidden this
fact is the mistakes made by behavior analysts in the analysis of human language
and cognition. With that error corrected,
what would otherwise seem odd can be
seen to be normal.
The target article presents in some detail
how Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
(ACT: Hayes, Strosahl, & Wilson, 1999) can
be applied to a case of negative schizophrenia.
ACT has been shown in controlled trials to
be helpful in coping with the positive sympwww.ExistentialPsychology.org

Volume 3, Number 1
January, 2010

toms of schizophrenia (Bach & Hayes, 2002;

Guadiano & Herbert, in press). This is the
first description of its application to the negative signs and symptoms of psychosis.
For readers of this journal, what might be
surprising is that a treatment based on behavior analysis has such a significant overlap
with existential and experiential therapy.
The authors of the target article rightly cite
well-known radical behavioral authors who
long ago worked through these connections
(e.g., Day, 1969), but it is still not uncommon
to hear behavior analysis being framed as a
direct opponent of existential and experiential
therapy. The purpose of my comments thus
is to provide a context for the target article,
and to suggest that the target article is not an
aberration, but instead is a logical extension
of contemporary behavior analytic thinking.
Behavior Analytic Psychology
Outside of the area, behavior analysis is usually viewed as a mechanistic approach. According to the traditional narrative, behavior
analysts believe that complex actions are built
from the ground up by collections of discrete stimuli and discrete responses, bound
together by associations or by reinforcement
contingencies. Often the claim is made that
thoughts and feelings are not included in
behavioral accounts, particularly when these
accounts are radical behavioral (i.e., behavior analytic). Usually, such narratives include
the claim that this view is now dead, pass, or
falling from favor, and has been replaced by
something else. What the something else
may be depends on the persuasive task of the
authors of the particular narrative.
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From the point of view of behavior analysis

almost nothing in the traditional narrative
seems correct. Behavior analysis is a larger
field than it has ever been. Few behavior analysts would deny the importance of thoughts
and feelings. A robust experimental psychology of cognition is emerging within behavior
analysis right now. While it is true that there
are very mechanistic behavior analysts, many
if not most contemporary behavior analysts
are contextualists. And, and long last, clinical
behavior analytic procedures such as ACT are
emerging that should make all of this evident
even to the most skeptical outsider.
Lets begin with the importance of human
thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations and the
like in behavior analysis. Behavior analysis is
in part a rebellion against traditional behavioral restrictions against considering these
aspects of human experience. In the first place
Skinner used the term radical behaviorism
(Skinner, 1945) he argued that a behavioral
analysis of the behavior of scientists themselves was necessary. Such an analysis, he
argued, made it clear that scientific objectivity depended not on the target or location
of analyzed events but on the nature of the
personal history controlling observations of
them. Human knowledge was historically
and social situated, he argued, and it was
the details of that history that determined
whether observations were scientifically valid.
Scientifically unacceptable subjectivity could
occur in the analysis of publicly observed and
agreed upon events if social or personal contexts that interfered with effective commerce
with the world were shared among a group.
For example, a group of teenagers could all
agree that they had seen a rock star who was
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performing in town that evening pass by in a

car, not because the face seen truly looked like
the star, but because all of them were highly
motivated to see their favorite singer. Public
agreement in this case was hardly a guide to
accurate observations. Conversely, a single
person could notice a thought or feeling with
objectivity if their social history of observation and reporting had established reporting
under the control of events seen.
This argument constituted a fundamental
break with the Watsonian tradition, which up
until that time was the core of behaviorism.
Skinner openly rejected Watsons restrictions
(e.g., against introspection), but did so in a
very clever way. Properly understood, radical
behaviorism is an ironic label (not an extreme
one) because traditional behavioral prohibitions against looking within were exploded on
behavioral grounds (thus the term radical or
to the root), once the behavior of the scientist was included in the analysis.
Everyone would know that and there were
be no sense of surprise about an article such
as the target article were it not for this fact:
Skinners analysis of language and cognition
led him to conclude that while a scientifically
valid study of thoughts and feelings was possible, it was not needed to understand overt
behavior. In Skinners view (1957) thoughts
and feelings were simply a behavioral stream
like all others. For example, it was not that a
person ran because of fear, or felt fear because
of running. Both fear and running was established by the persons history and context.
The mistake here is large, but subtle. If Skinner was right and language and cognition
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was simply another action, he would be right

about their importance in the direct analysis
of over behavior. If a person plays both football and baseball well, no one would think to
explain football throwing by reference to
baseball throwing. Both skills are intertwined,
but neither causes the other. Instead, both are
the products of the persons history and context. But behavior analysis now knows that
language and cognition are not simply other
actions.
Basic ACT Theory: Relational Frame Theory
ACT is built on a robust program of basic research on language and cognition: Relational
Frame Theory (Hayes, Barnes-Holmes, &
Roche, 2001). RFT researchers have amassed
a large body of work suggesting that the core
of human language and cognition is the ability to learn to relate events under arbitrary
contextual control. All complex animals can
learn to relate events formally (e.g., to pick
the bigger of two objects). Human beings
seem to be especially able to abstract the features of such relational responding and bring
them under contextual control so that relational learning can be applied to any events
on the basis of arbitrary cues. For example, a
very young child will treat a nickel as bigger
than a dime a slightly older one will know
that a dime is bigger than a nickel. The difference is not just direct experience is it acquiring the ability to relate events on the basis
of social convention.
There are three main properties of this kind
of relational learning. First, such relations
show mutual entailment or bi-directionality.
For example, if a person is taught that cold is
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the same as freezing, that person will derive

that freezing is the same as cold. Second, such
relations show combinatorial entailment. For
example, if a nickel is smaller than a dime
and a dime is smaller than a quarter, then it
will be derived that a quarter is bigger than a
nickel and a nickel is smaller than a quarter.
Finally, such relations enable a transformation of stimulus functions among related
stimuli. If you need to buy candy and a dime
is known to be valuable, it will be derived that
a nickel will be less valuable and a quarter will
be more valuable, without necessarily directly
purchasing candy with nickels and quarters.
When all three features are established with
a given type of relational responding, we call
the performance a relational frame.
There are now over 70 empirical studies on
RFT covering a vast range of topics, from
metaphor to grammar; from the nature of a
word to the social-verbal establishment of
a sense of self (see Hayes et al., 2001). RFT
shows Skinners crucial mistake: because
events can acquire functions purely through
relational (i.e., cognitive) means it is necessary to analyze cognition in order to understand overt human behavior because cognition alters the behavioral stream. Language
alters how direct behavioral processes work.
ACT Philosophy: Functional Contextualism
ACT and behavior analysis itself is based on
a variety of pragmatism known as functional
contextualism (Biglan & Hayes, 1996; Hayes,
Hayes, & Reese, 1988; Hayes et al., 1993).
The core analytic unit of functional contextualism is the ongoing act in context. In
ACT, psychological events as a set of ongoing
interactions between whole organisms and
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historically and situationally defined contexts.

It is not possible to analyze behavior independently of context (e.g., merely analyzing
behavioral symptoms would be totally uninteresting).
Analysis is pragmatic: its truth is assessed by
its workability. In order to know what works,
however, one must know what one is working toward: there must be the clear a priori
statement of an analytic goal (Hayes, 1993).
Goals enable analysis they are not the result
of analysis, and for that reason goals can only
be stated, not justified. There are two major
types of contextualism, organized in terms
of their goals (Hayes, 1993): descriptive contextualism (e.g., hermeneutics, dramaturgy,
narrative psychology, feminist psychology,
social constructionism, and the like) which
seeks an appreciation of the participants in
a whole event, and functional contextualism
(e.g., behavior analysis) which seeks the prediction and influence of ongoing interactions
between whole organisms and historically and
situationally defined contexts.
Viewed contextualistically, behavior analysis is a far more interesting area than when
view mechanistically. For example, behavior
analysis emphasizes the role of the environment in the analysis of behavior. This often seems strange from the outside since it
seems to deny the role of agency, purpose,
and meaning. But it is not that these psychological events are denied. It is that analyses
that address only psychological actions (e.g.,
emotion, thought, overt action) can never be
fully adequate given the pragmatic purposes
of functional contextualism. Prediction and
influence requires successful manipulation of
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events. It requires independent (i.e., manipulable) variables (Hayes & Brownstein,

1986). Thus, the environmentalism of behavior analysis is not dogmatic, but pragmatic.
This approach is decidedly non-mechanistic.
Unlike mechanism, the whole is primary and
the parts are derived, truth is local and pragmatic, ontology is de-emphasized, the possibility of randomness is admitted, and values
and goals are fundamental to the assessment
of truth (for a detailed description of how
such features fit with the writing of important
behavior analysts such as Skinner see Hayes
et al., 1988).
Theory and Technology
Other than RFT, none of these above features
are new in behavior analysis. But RFT has allowed something else to happen that enables
these features now to be known outside of the
field in an unambiguous way. Behavior analysis has finally created forms of psychotherapy
that reveal its core assumptions. Stated another way, the implications of the contextualistic
features of behavior analysis are finally being
translated into practice for all to see, now that
the artificial barrier of Skinners mishandling
of language and cognition is being removed.
From an RFT perspective, the literal functions of language and cognition are not
automatic or mechanical: they are contextual. Because of derived stimulus relations
and transformation of stimulus functions,
thoughts often function as if they are what
they say they are. As a result humans avoid
painful thoughts and evaluations; they live
that is about (i.e., refers to) other things
rather than being fully in the moment. These
harmful effects of language (what ACT theo4

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rists call experiential avoidance and cognitive

fusion, see Hayes, Wilson, Gifford, Follette,
& Strosahl, 1996) are challenged in ACT
using methods RFT suggests: do not try to
change the content, rather change the context.
On those grounds ACT therapists compassionately accept no reasons and stories as
true if these stories are functionally useless
or harmful, regardless of their reasonableness
-- the issue is workability not reasonableness. ACT therapists make no attempt to
rescue clients from the difficulty and challenge of growth. It is both the therapists and
the clients job to open up to experiences and
to contact the present moment. Skepticism
about the value of truth is pervasive. ACT
therapists are cautioned not to argue or persuade. And so on.

www.ExistentialPsychology.org

It is not my point to try to explain ACT or its

link to RFT in detail. The target article conveys the spirit of ACT quite well and the link
to RFT is explicated elsewhere (Hayes et al.,
2001). It is my point that the odd result this
target article shows so nicely an experiential
therapy flowing directly from behavior analysis is in a deep sense not odd at all.
Discuss.

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