[From Rick Marken (930527.0830)]
Ed Ford (930526:1850)
Then he
became what has been my experience in most cases with those in
educational field. OPEN! He asked me to send him some material on my
parenting program along with stuff on PCT.
I have met MANY scientific psychologists who were OPEN enough to
have read BCP. As you can see from Locke's article, there are also
many people who cite Powers as a reference. It's not the willingness
to READ a book that I consider OPEN. It is the willingness to try to
UNDERSTAND what is being communicated that is obviously missing
from those of the Locke/Latham ilk.
He asked me the difference between
Glasser's and Powers' model. I said that as far as I was concerned,
Glasser's ideas on CT were nothing other than cognitive theory.
He said "your right."
So I presume he understood that "cognitive theory" is an output
generation model that ignores the potential effect of disturbances
to the the intended result of the output?
My point in all this is that when you meet
someone "out in the trenches, plowing the fields" where
they are honestly looking for ways to lighten their load, they tend to
be more honest and open.
But Glasser's out there in the trenches, isn't he? And the bazillions of
people who are writing pop-psych crap are from the trenches, no?
Seems like there's at least as much cant and ego in the trenches as
there is over in the ivory towers. The average person in the treches
may honestly want to lighten their load, but I doubt that they are
necessarily interested in doing that using techniques that violate their
fundemental assumptions about their role as a therapist, their beliefs
about what is "really" important when dealing with people,etc. I hate to be
put in the position of defending "academic" psychologists, but I've met
plenty of people from the trenches and my impression is that they are
just as "bad" as academic psychologists -- ie. they are control systems
actively defending against information (ideas that are inconsistent with
their existing beliefs).
So for those of you who who've become discouraged,
Speaking for myself (and apparently for Tom Bourbon,too) I would
say that I am NOT discouraged at all; amused and bemused, maybe, but
not discouraged. I don't think of teaching PCT as a crusade; PCT is just
a great (and, basically accurate) model of living systems. If people
aren't interested, fine. As Tom said "Leave them to theis bliss".
They might not be building
models or they might not understand all the math (as I don't), but the
models they're working with are far more precious. They're our
children.
That's great. I wish more of this type of PCTer would get on the net
and discuss their work. Then we could see whether they actually
are doing any better that Locke/Lathan et al in their non-math,
non-modelling understanding of PCT. Better yet, we could see if
they honestly do want to try to understand PCT or whether they just
want a PCT membership card, secret decoder ring and certificate from
the Wizard of PCT (Bill P.) saying "Mr. Scarecrow understands PCT".
Best
Rick