Well-worn with frayed pages and bent covers, an old friend nicknamed “The ’99 Book” reminds me of how I began my journey into the world of ACT and RFT. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: An Experiential Approach to Behavioral Change, is the name by which I first knew it. My initial introduction to the text came six years ago in my school’s library, after a fellow undergraduate had told me about, “This new therapy that treats thoughts like behavior, and seems kind of dumb.” In my ears, the first part of his sentence overwhelmed the second, and set me off on a great adventure.
After attending several ACBS conferences, I know I am not alone. Many members whom I have met also share a special history with “The ’99 Book,” -- having found its theoretical account of human suffering and therapeutic change to strike important emotional and intellectual chords.
It was with a mix of nostalgia and excitement then that I picked up the newly published second edition, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: The Process and Practice of Mindful Change by Hayes, Strosahl, and Wilson.
To mark the occasion, I sat down with one of the authors, Steve Hayes, and asked a few questions. We covered the origin of the hexaflex, the relation between CBS and evolutionary science, and a little ACBS history, amongst other things. See the interview below.
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DOUG: Suppose I have thoroughly read the 1999 edition of this book. What would I gain from this new rendition?
STEVE: A lot is different. We think we've simultaneously created a book that is easier to read, and that is more intellectually mature. It is useful for beginners, and useful for more experienced people. It will help the practitioner but it will also help the researcher and student.
That magic is done in part by improving our writing, but it comes also from how the book is now organized. It is much more focused on processes and the hexaflex. The work on case conceptualization and the relationship is more central. The development strategy (contextual behavioral science) is newly emphasized, but at the end of the book. So we've taken some heavy lifting out of the beginning and found a new, simpler way to talk about very complex issues.
I'm not 100% sure we've pulled it off, but we think we have. It took three years to do and through the process that was the goal. We will soon see if we succeeded in the eyes of a broad readership.
DOUG: In the dedication, you thank Barry and Trudy for helping ACBS. Who are they? What’s the story?
STEVE: Barry and Trudy Silverstein are people in the public with an interest in acceptance and mindfulness methods. As ACBS was just established, our web operations had deteriorated to the point they were almost impossible to fix.
We could not even update the operating system core of our website because Drupal was several generations ahead of where we were and the route forward was too technically complex for us. They sent in a crew of experts to get it done. It took several weeks, but it was successful.
They also funded a camera crew to shoot the London conference, giving members a lot of reasons to go to the site. We gave Barry an award on behalf of ACBS -- the only one we've given. I silently thank them every time I look at the list of ACBS members and see not 1000 people, but 4500. They were there when we needed them.
Barry also encouraged me to think big about the potential of ACT for the world at large. Those conversations gave Jacque and I a multi-part plan (we called it the ACT on the World initiative) and we've been roughly following it for years, with great success, so a lot of what I do was touched by Barry's vision for our work. He believed it in and put resources behind it and that made a big difference.
DOUG: You say something provocative in the preface: “An open, values-based community embracing a common mission can be far more productive than scores of professors in an ivory tower.” Here there seems to be some underlying discontent with how academia operates. Care to elaborate?
STEVE: Empirical clinical psychology has made many errors in how it operates. People develop an intervention method, name it, and test it. Then they immediately started training. Often they start certifying therapists. They make it clear that they control the methods. Often little is know about the processes by which the method works.
But that means the developers are forever in charge, and the method is the focus (not the processes and procedures others might openly use and modify). In essence, evidence based treatments become small cottage industries. The control exerted by founders chases away the best minds and the technological focus slows down the field.
ACBS has a much longer term and broader vision. We want to change psychology from top to bottom. Doing that requires a large community working together, with each person free to take the work in the direction he or she chooses, but with social accountability to the values of the group (e.g., keeping the focus on those we serve and not proprietary interests).
In essence we've extended the ACT model to the group level. We are creating a community. The community is not about ACT, or even ACT and RFT. It is about an intellectual and practical tradition. If we succeed, psychology will not be the same.
DOUG: You mention that the term “hexaflex” seems to have stuck, “for better or worse,” and that it makes you smile despite its serious purpose. What’s the story? How did this term come about?
STEVE: I came up with the organization about 6 or 7 years ago. Originally it was a pentagon (I hate to think what people who call ACT a cult would have thought if it stayed there!). But within a week or so it was as we know it now. I posted it to the ACT list serve and I think in that dialogue the silly name "hexaflex" showed up. I haven't gone back to see if I said it or someone else did -- I'm not sure I want to know! It always sounds to me like a label for a vegetable slicer or something you'd see in a late night TV infomercial ("Popeil's Pocket Hexaflex! It slices! It dices!"). But here we are. It does make me giggle but it fits the irreverence of ACBS so perhaps all is well.
DOUG: Several times, you use a colorful metaphor for describing a motivation that the CBS community explicitly avoids – the use of science to build a monument to immortality. What would be a good metaphor for the more humble path that is valued in the book? Planting seeds, maybe?
STEVE: I like it. How about planting acorns? In workshop I ask the audience to name the birth names of all 8 of their great grand fathers and mothers. Less than 1% can do it but every person in the room owes 1/8th of their body to each of these people.
This means your children's, children's children will not even know your name. When we create things in our field it is not about ego, and fame, and living on forever. It is about putting something in the world that will be there for other people in other places at other times who will benefit and will know nothing of our contribution but whose lives will be better because of what we do now.
If we do a good job, when it is a psychologically hot day they will sit under the psychological oak trees we plant now. That is worth our time and effort to plant wisely and to tend to the growth of healthy seedlings. If we put down our ego and our grasping we can work together far more effectively, and that is exactly what seems to be happening inside the ACT / RFT / CBS community.
DOUG: There’s a new thread in this book connected to evolutionary science. How did this come about?
STEVE: Contextual behavioral science has a long tradition -- it goes back to William James who was profoundly influenced by Darwin. The link between CBS and evolution science has always been there -- it has just not been exploited. The reason is because evolution science took a turn toward an excessive focus on genetic evolution only. But that is now changing and a door is opening. It is time for the grand alliance to be realized.
As a result of progress, especially in molecular biology and especially after the human genome was mapped, we now know that most human problems are not just genetic. A vast number of genes are turned off at any moment. Behavior and symbolic cultural streams have their own inheritance systems -- they evolve -- and they impact gene expression. There is good reason to believe that the "plasticity of phenotypes" itself drives genetic evolution, and it does so far more than mutations.
As this becomes better understood, I think the entire field is going to see an exciting possibility open up. Our wing of psychology and behavioral science has a legitimate seat at the table with the most successful approach to biology on the planet. Those of us interested in learning and language from a contextual point of view are evolutionists -- within these key streams.
Frankly, evolution science has been incomplete without us. By nesting CBS under evolution science not only will we gain greater coherence, we will also do better in understanding human beings. It simplifies our task -- think reader of this new edition will see that. We have just begun but even since we've put the book to bed major pieces on this topic have been written.
So really this is a return to the beginning. Pragmatism was an intellectual outgrowth of Darwin. Contextual behavioral science has matured enough that it is ready to give back to the tradition that created it.
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Interview by Douglas M. Long
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Interview by Douglas M. Long
University of Nevada, Reno
ACBS Staff Writer
