Thank you for your suggestion and links. They are stimulating and indeed clarifying to me. But as always they bring me to (new) questions.
In the second part of Powers’ 1960 article I read: “Thus the same subsystem can perceive and control a variable either consciously or unconsciously, depending on whether the N-system is actively connected to it.� (p. 318). This corroborates with the description in the 2005 edition of the 1973 book. There the N-system is called the ‘reorganization system’. This system perceives the perception in the control hierarchy. ‘Conscious’ means being monitored by the reorganization system.
Consciousness is in the book described as consisting of perception and awareness. Awareness means that the reorganization system receives duplicates of the signals in the control hierarchy. Besides, in the 1960 article the concept awareness does not appear.
All this seems quite clarifying on the role of consciousness in the perceptual control theory. But still I have some questions:
· Your suggestions also led me to read the chapter ‘A Systems Approach to Consciousness’, published by Powers in 1980 (in ‘The Psychobiology of consciousness’, edited by Davidson & Davidson). In 1980 the hypotheses of 1960 and 1973 are still more carefully presented as conjectures. Powers seems much less sure than before. “The upper regions of human organization are a mystery.� (p. 235). “If these explorations have led me anywhere, it has been to a vivid sense of my ignorance.� (p. 240). My question is: What are the most recent ideas about consciousness in the perceptual control theory?
· In most places the word consciousness is used in about the same vein as awareness and attention. In some other places Powers seems to use ‘consciousness’ in a more discursive way. For example in the article (p. 318) consciousness is associated with verbally describing an action in details. To me the difference seems important between consciousness in an experiential sense and consciousness in a discursive way (verbal knowing and understanding). I’m also puzzled by the role that Powers lends to consciousness in some places. For example in the book (p. 202) he asks a rhetoric question that shows that he cannot imagine willing an arbitrary act unconsciously. To me this seems contradictory with findings on unconscious acts and motives. On the same page he states “Learning seems to require consciousness (at least learning anything of much consequence). Therapy almost certainly does.â€? This seems to me contradicted by many findings around implicit learning and wisdom. Many people learn to live with or overcome their psychological problems without psychotherapy and without knowing why problems disappear growing older. My questions are: what is the role of verbal thinking and understanding in MOL? My hunch is that verbal consciousness is not important for its content, but for directing awareness. Do you agree? Do I understand well that the perceptual control theory sees reorganization mainly as a process of automatic, even random trying and selecting of changes? A process that is stimulated by awareness? Or for which awareness is necessary? But in which conscious understanding and deciding play minor roles?
· In the career domain conscious reflection and decision-making are often advocated. Implicit seems the model that there is a conscious homunculus that gathers information on himself and the world, composes his life story with a life theme on this, and deduces decisions for constructing his life. Do you agree that perceptual control theory contradicts such a model?
· Have any studies been conducted applying the perceptual control theory to life and/or career development in the long term?
Any comments welcome. Best regards, Tom
···
Van: Warren Mansell [mailto:wmansell@gmail.com]
Verzonden: donderdag 27 juli 2017 14:50
Aan: csgnet@lists.illinois.edu
Onderwerp: Re: connections PCT to career development and/or ACT?
Hi Tom, I think the best thing might be for you to read Powers (1973) (second edition 2005( because it is only through seeing the working model of control, conflict, and reorganisation that you get to see what might be the function of awareness within that model. In fact it is fairly well explained in the 1960 paper (http://pctweb.org/Powers1960%20part1.pdf & http://pctweb.org/Powers%20et%20al%201960%20part2.pdf). Would that be possible?
On Thu, Jul 27, 2017 at 1:39 PM, Tom Luken tluken@planet.nl wrote:
Hello Warren,
Thanks for your rapid and interesting response!
I am convinced that ACT offers valuable views and practices to the career profession. The question is more if they will be accepted by career professionals. Until now ACT is not yet well known by them. My aim is to contribute to the acceptance and integration of ACT in the career profession by offering additional arguments from PCT and additional practices from MOL. But perhaps it is true that for using MOL in career guidance ACT is not necessary. Or even unhelpful as you say?
I read several of your publications with much interest. With you, I am convinced that this common factor is essential in all effective psychotherapy – and coaching I would add. A researcher that could be addeed is Gendlin, who found that the willingness to pay attention to vague inner signals was the crucial factor in the effects of psychotherapy.
I cannot say that I studied RFT extensively. My impression is that essentially it is a substantiation of Korzybski’s “the map is not the territoryâ€?, which is at the roots of ACT as well as PCT.
I find your critical remarks on ACT very interesting. I rarely read or hear criticisms of ACT. You write about the lack of a specified mechanism through which broadened awareness might have its effects. At least one working mechanism of awareness/mindfulness in ACT seems rather clear to me (e.g. Fletcher & Hayes, 2006): it is a/the remedy for cognitive fusion, i.e. the dominance of ‘derived relations’ over other sources of behavioral regulation due to an inability to detect the ongoing process of thinking as distinct from the products of thinking (i.e., thoughts). Mindfulness helps the present moment to reappear from the cacophony of human thinking. By loosening the domination of verbal, limiting self-descriptions it empowers choice (not merely rational decisions). Mindfulness is a remedy for experiential avoidance. In this way it removes an obstacle for knowing what one really wants (as this knowing goes with pain and feelings of vulnerability that have to be accepted). Authors like Goleman (2013) speak of mindfulness permitting to contact the subtle inner signals which guide us through life.
On the other hand the mechanisms of awareness in PCT and MOL do not seem extremely clear to me either, even after rereading the chapter ‘Awareness and Imagination’ in your book ‘A Transdiagnostic Approach to CBT using Method of Levels Therapy’. E.g. what makes that this automatic problem seeking and reorganizing process needs help from a counselor? Still, I find awareness as a principle factor attractive and convincing and I sense it’s right and important to discern it from conscious reflection and choosing. In career guidance conscious reflection and decision making is too much emphasized, in my opinion. I suppose that the merit of reflection does not really lie in the content, but more in an awareness guiding function. I wonder how you see the relation between conscious thinking and discussing on the one hand and awareness as promoting reorganization on the other.
Yes, reading the discussion between Powers and Hayes I had the impression too, that the effort came much more from Powers and perhaps Hayes was not really interested in connecting the theories.
For now I leave you here, all best, Tom
Tom Luken
Geerdinkhof 75
1103 PR Amsterdam
+31650411476
Website: http://home.kpn.nl/tluken/llc.htm
LinkedIn: http://nl.linkedin.com/in/lukentom
Van: Warren Mansell
Verzonden: zaterdag 22 juli 2017 15:40
Aan: csgnet@lists.illinois.edu
Onderwerp: Re: connections PCT to career development and/or ACT?
Hi Tom, your overview sounds very fair, and I definitely agree that PCT and MOL could enhance ACT, if (a) you needed to use ACT as a basis and (b) the ACT people were receptive to it. I am less sure about these last preconditions. I see overlaps in all theories driving psychotherapy (see Mansell, 2005, 2009; Higginson, Mansell & Wood, 2011) and I am convinced that PCT has a greater overlap with the theories of Freud, Rogers and Beck than it does relational frame theory, the theory that supposedly informs ACT.
Some of my main issues are:
-
the claim that ACT is directly informed by relational frame theory
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the distancing of ACT from cognitive therapy even though it explicitly involves cognitive techniques
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the lack of crediting of Rogers and other humanists on the vital importance of values
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the unquestioning adherence to a Skinnerian form of behaviourism
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the lack of understanding of what control really is within operational terms, as you point out
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the omission of the key role of conflict
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the lack of a specified mechanism through which broadened awareness might have its effects
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the way that ACT appears when I have viewed it - with a therapist that comes up with their own metaphors, persuasive methods to access values, and the sheer amount the ACT therapist talks.
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despite informality and pleasantness, the relatively dismissive way that Steven Hayes managed that conversation with Bill despite Bill’s attempt to build bridges and mKe suggestions.
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the fact that the theory underlying ACT cannot be used to build working models of the individual, and therefore like most theories in psychology, cannot be robustly tested for its accuracy
Sorry you’ve met my defensive side here! As I say I am sure PCT and MOL could enhance ACT. They could also enhance person-centred counselling, CBT and psychoanalysis. In our workshops we encourage therapists new to MOL to try it this way. But this is surely a transition stage and not the goal? The goal is the find the most accurate theory of behaviour and use it directly.
Talk soon again I hope!
Warren
On 22 Jul 2017, at 07:19, Tom Luken tluken@planet.nl wrote:
[From Tom Luken (2017.07.22-8:20)]
TL:
Dear Warren,
Thank you very much for your mail and the attached pdf ‘Discussion between Steven Hayes and Bill Powers 2011’. Together with the sources that are mentioned in this discussion, this offers me a good impression of the history between PCT, ACT, and MOL. Indeed, this text sharpens my idea of the divide. But also of the communal!
With regard to the differences: perhaps the most important concern the ‘philosophical’ base. ACT has a functional-contextualist grounding and PCT has a ‘mechanical’ approach. In terms of Pepper: ACT departs from contextualism, PCT combines Pepper’s four base-metaphors in one model. Furthermore there are differences in the use of the word ‘model’, which seem clear and not very important. A more important, conspicuous difference concerns the ways the word ‘control’ is used. For ACT “control is the problem�. It is seen as maladaptive. Therefore psychotherapy often starts addressing the ‘control agenda’. In PCT control is a universal mechanism to get or hold a variable in a desired state.
In the mails between Powers and Hayes the communal strikes me more than the differences. To begin with ‘control’: of course Powers acknowledges that control can become a problem in the case of conflicting control systems and in the case of ‘arbitrary control’. So he writes in his 1973 book (p. 272) about “forcing yourself against your own wishes to behave in a particular way� and “a mistake because it pits one control system against the other to the detriment of both�. I think Hayes and Powers agree here.
Other important correspondences between PCT and ACT that I see appearing in the mails between Powers and Hayes concern:
· The beneficial role of ‘awareness’ (PCT and MOL) and ‘observing self’ (ACT)
· Both PCT and ACT are skeptical towards cognitive approaches like “There’s nothing to be afraid of so stop being anxious.â€?
· Korzybski’s ‘Science and Sanity’ (“the map is not the territoryâ€?) as a common conceptual root
· Resemblance between “reorganization follows awareness” and the “innate capacity for reorganizationâ€? (Powers about PCT) and “life itself as the teacher/the therapistâ€? (Hayes about ACT).
Hayes writes about experience that “has been blocked from its natural role as a guide to growth and development due to […] inflexibility processesâ€?. I suspect that thiis inflexibility may in PCT terms be described as petrified system concepts at the highest level of the control hierarchy which distort perception so that it can no longer function as valid input to the control process. A remedy lies in Acceptance and mindfulness. The Commitment side of ACT concerns the question how to arrive at unity in the several upper levels of the control hierarchy, while remaining flexible. The PCT model of control may be helpful for understanding the mechanisms for achieving this paradoxical challenge.
Perhaps more interesting than resemblances and differences is the question if and where PCT and ACT can reinforce each other. Powers writes in one of his mails: “PCT offers another layer to slip beneath it [the ACT model] that will provide a more secure foundation� [for ACT]. That is exactly the most important aim of the article that I intend to write with three co-authors. A few years ago ACT has been proposed as a career counselling strategy (Hoare, McIlveen, & Hamilton, 2012). We now believe that PCT offers strong, additional arguments for this. We intend to introduce PCT to career theorists (and practitioners).
Besides this conceptual/theoretical aspect we think that MOL can supplement the practical side of ACT, in particular as a method for finding overarching values.
Warren, you speak of “elements of ACT and mindfulness that are certainly not efficient, and at their worse, unhelpful�. I am curious about what you mean here.
Your mail and attachment were very helpful. If you or other member of csgnet have other documents or sources in mind that may clarify possible relationships between ACT and PCT/MOL, I will be glad to hear about this.
Best regards,
Tom Luken
Reference:
Hoare, P. N., McIlveen, P., & Hamilton, N. (2012). Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) as a career counselling strategy. International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance, 12(3), 171–187.
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On 17-7-2017 16:28 Warren Mansell wrote:
Hi Tom, great that you plan to use PCT in such a way! Our answer to your questions would be Method of Levels rather than ACT or mindfulness. Not because they don’t work because they do but because the mapping between theory and practice for both these interventions, I would argue, is very tenuous. For this reason there are elements of ACT and mindfulness that are certainly not efficient, and at their worse, unhelpful. Yo could have a read of this email chat between Bill Powers and Steven Hayes to get an idea of the divide…
http://www.pctweb.org/HayesPowers2011.pdf
All the best,
Warren
On 15 Jul 2017, at 13:34, Tom Luken tluken@planet.nl wrote:
Hello csgnet members,
A few days ago I joined your community. I am a psychologist, specialized in career development. With three co-authors I am working on an article. Our text will depart from the fact that career theory and practice are still very ‘cognitive’, ‘Cartesian’ or ‘consciouscentric’. As if individuals have to know themselves and the world and must draw conscious decisions and plans from this knowledge. This approach encounters many theoretical and practical problems.
Our aim is to show that a cybernetic systems approach - and the Perceptual Control Theory in particular - offers a promising alternative. In addition we aim to demonstrate that Acceptance and Commitment Training offers several promising principles and practices that corroborate nicely with Perceptual Control Theory. For example mindfulness helps to supply pure, undistorted perceptual input to the self-direction process. Finding and committing to values helps to resolve conflicts in the higher levels of the control hierarchy.
My question to you is: are you aware of other endeavors to connect Perceptual Control Theory to finding and realizing direction in life and career? Or to Acceptance and Commitment Therapy of Training?
Best regards,
Tom Luken
Geerdinkhof 75
1103 PR Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Tel: +31650411476
Websites: Luken Loopbaan Consult , act-in-lob
LinkedIn
–
Dr Warren Mansell
Reader in Clinical Psychology
School of Health Sciences
2nd Floor Zochonis Building
University of Manchester
Oxford Road
Manchester M13 9PL
Email: warren.mansell@manchester.ac.uk
Tel: +44 (0) 161 275 8589
Website: http://www.psych-sci.manchester.ac.uk/staff/131406
Advanced notice of a new transdiagnostic therapy manual, authored by Carey, Mansell & Tai - Principles-Based Counselling and Psychotherapy: A Method of Levels Approach
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Check www.pctweb.org for further information on Perceptual Control Theory