July 3, 2016

July 3, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This is my eighteenth response to “Epistemological Barriers to Radical Behaviorism” by Donohue et al. (1998). I had a beautiful dream of a large family of various generations that was with me as they were all learning about Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). We were slowly walking and talking through a park and when I spoke everyone stood still.

It was such an enjoyable event; small children were running around, grandparents were talking with their sons and daughters and bigger children were talking and laughing among themselves. Some parents pushed a baby carriage, held the hand of a toddler or carried their child on their shoulders. Each age group had their own conversations and as we walked and talked, the children were ahead and around us.

Before me walked teenagers and middle agers and behind me were the elders, who were going a bit more slowly. It didn’t matter that we were not covering much distance as there was time to meet and talk. During our walk the different generations got to meet and greet each other.

The dream stands in stark contrast with the cognitive psychologists, who still continue to think and teach that “people largely control their own destinies by believing in and acting on the values and beliefs that they hold” (Ellis & Grieger, 1977). Presumably, they “abstract information about their world, construct their experience of their world and synthesize this information into cognitive structures that direct behavior.”

In the area of psychopathology the dull cognitivists insist that “defective schemata” are “responsible for a variety of behavioral disorders, such as depression, mania, panic disorder and phobias” ( Beck & Weishaar, 1989; Craske & Barlow, 1993; Young, Beck & Weinberger, 1993). 

As a therapist, I have not met any mental health client who was helped by this cognitive view. To the contrary, I have consistently heard stories about how detrimental such treatment has been. Making the individual responsible for his or her own behavior is similar to blaming the victim.