Relational frame theory as the foundational theory of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is based on an assumption of constraint. The assumption is that our verbal processes are constrained by certain species specific rules that govern how we respond to verbal events. For example, the rule called mutual entailment states that if A equals B then B equals A. Historically such a rule is not limited to RFT, but has also been described by other authors as one of the bedrock principles of western logic (e.g. as the “law of identity”). The idea that the world or our ideas about the world must be constrained by law like principles has been one of the common themes of western thought for at least 2500 years. Plato proposed that truth was constrained by memory; Leibniz, by logic; Chomsky, by grammar machines; Newton and Kant, by the structural features of time and space. But the notion constraint is itself a cultural habit that can be learned and unlearned. Why would we assume, a priori, that any given behavior is constrained, not learned? And therefore not re-learnable? It seems to me quite arbitrary to assume that the law of identity or any other law is fundamental to our verbal behaviors, and therefore not the result of a learning history that, by now, has become so habitual that we see it as “just the way we are as a species.” After all, poets have taught us to disbelieve logical principles, artists to disbelieve space and physicists time. Can’t we also unlearn the story of the separate self?
Posted on: Fri, 25 Jul 2014 17:17:40 +0000
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