What is the name of the latest PCT book
and a ISBN no# if possible?
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-----Original Message-----
From: Control Systems Group
Network (CSGnet) [mailto:CSGNET@LISTSERV.ILLINOIS.EDU] On Behalf Of davidmg
Sent: Sunday, 28 June
2009 10:27 p.m.
To: CSGNET@LISTSERV.ILLINOIS.EDU
Subject: Re: Questions and
Comments about PCT
[David Goldstein
(2009.06.28.06:00 EDT)]
[About Bill
Powers (2009.06.27.0427 MDT)]
BP: 4. Comment: The normal
methods of research are not revealing about people because people are negative
feedback systems.
Comment: In most cases, we don’t
know what a person is controlling unless we interview the person. For example,
if we see a driver weaving in traffic, we don’t know why unless we talk
to the person. This seems to say that clinical interview methods (MOL)
are needed to obtain the point of view of the person who is being studied.
Yes.
But the interview doesn’t have to be verbal. You can simply observe (or create)
disturbances to test guesses about nonverbal variables the person is
controlling, then indentify the paths by which the apparent controlled variable
is sensed and altered by behavior. Once you have done that, the random-seeming
components of behavior will all but disappear.
Clinical approaches simply mean interacting with the person instead of
observing from a distance without direct interaction. It’s a shame that
psychology created such an artificial difference between clinical and
experimental methods.
DG: The only Psychologist that I
know who used clinical interview methods in research was Jean Piaget. Clinical
Psychologists sometimes employ a ‘paradoxical technique’ in which the therapist
suggests the opposite of what he/she thinks the person wants, or suggests an
action that could obtain what the person wants, and then sees if the person
corrects it.
I am attaching an old, but
interesting pdf file about single case studies. This seems to be what PCT is
suggesting, namely that ‘specimen research’ should be a collection of
single case studies.
David