Rick,
In your China talk you say “PCT shows that the IV-DV approach to studying behavior no longer make sense when behavior is a closed loop process. This was a startling conclusion of a paper by William T. Powers that appeared in psychological review in 1978, the paper that changed my life”
Richard J. Robertson makes comparable statements in *Introduction to Modern Psychology. *
He says in the preface "it is certainly true that on one particular Thursday afternoon in 1957 I had an experience which as far as I am concerned really did change the course of my life.
Both of these statements appear to be saying that the environment changed behavior. Now I know that PCT says behavior is a function of the environment and the organism so perhaps I’m being too picky here, but I’m wondering if it might not be more accurate from a PCT perspective to talk more in terms of what you were able to do using PCT that you were not able to do using IV-DV.
You also say in your talk “take away the open loop assumption and you take away scientific psychology as we know it”. In conjunction with talking about how you were able to use PCT to improve your life it might be wise to talk about how PCT gives something to scientific psychology in addition to, or perhaps rather than, a taking of something away.
The above prompts another question. When I first read BCP it helped me to experience a sense of potentially more control, more autonomy, more importance, perhaps even more intimacy with myself. In reading about the theory I got the impression that it was saying all behavior is control of perception, that’s it, no ifs ands or buts about it. It was not a question of choice. Behavior is a control perception whether we like it or not.
Now, here’s my problem. If the theory of behavior affects behavior how can it be said to be a theory of all behavior. That which is said to describe all behavior is now seen to move behavior in a certain direction, the direction which it described as a behavior, which effectively says that it wasn’t always PC Why should a pure description of behavior influence behavior? How does the fact that a theory of behavior which when applied effects behavior effect the theory? How do we model behavior being affected by the model, and if we do we not say that it was not always that way?
In answering one of my posts you indicated that a counselor friend of yours revealed that many of his clients come to him expressing a desire to have more control over their lives. This would seem to indicate that control itself is a measurable variable. In which case more control would mean more behavior, and or more perception, more life, so we are back again to the question of what purports to be a description of all behavior appears to be a behavior modifier approaching a faith, a philosophy, a discipline. Now I have no problem with it being both but at this point in time I’m not familiar with people in CSG who openly admit to that.
It begins to look like PCT is a method for behavior modification as well as a description of behavior.
Best
Jim D