Hi List,

  Attached are two recent American Psychologist articles that may be of interest. I think they provide excellent illustrations of what the UTUA framework is trying to do. Namely, it is trying to provide a meta-language game that organizes, assimilates and integrates key insights from psychology and psychotherapy to create a unified view of both.

  The extended TOK argument is that because psychology sits on the fault lines of knowledge (i.e., between the natural sciences, the social sciences and the humanities), achieving a consilient psychology paves the way to realize E. O Wilson's dream of consilience<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consilience_(book)>, which can not be achieved via the route he took. Rather one needs the ToK map of behavioral complexity.

For the curious list reader, the two articles are wonderful examples of the landscape UTUA spans. The science of psychology  (the Coelacanth article) and practice of psychotherapy (Goldfried). The coelacanth article argues that we have a unified framework for psychology in Skinner's conception of the "three tiers" of selection. This is an old and good idea. And, in fact, it was CENTRAL to my understanding Skinner. I was literally just writing out this point in my in progress book, The Problem of Psychology and Its Solution. Here is the paragraph I was working on yesterday (prior to seeing the article, which was today):

The single biggest shift in my understanding of Skinner occurred when I learned about his "three tier selection" model of human behavior. Skinner argued that human behavior was the function of three different selection processes. The first was natural selection, which was the contingencies of evolution across the generations (i.e., phylogenetic or evolutionary change). The second was operant selection, which were the contingencies reinforcement in the environment that shaped actions in ontogeny based on experience (i.e., learning). And the third was verbal or cultural selection, which were the contingencies of the human social-verbal environment that doled out rules of reinforcement and punishment (i.e., what is good/right and bad/wrong). In other words, the world of humans could be thought of as three different, nested dimensions of behavior that were caused by different processes of selection. What was striking to me was how these three tiers lined up directly with the dimensions of behavioral complexity on the ToK. Life lined up with natural selection, Mind with operant selection, and Culture with verbal selection. That correspondence meant that Skinner and I were looking at the same map of human behavior. We just had slightly different language games.

  The second article is on psychotherapy. Marv Goldfried was one of the pioneers in the field. It is on the things that hold psychotherapists back in terms of reaching consensus. He ends with a plea to articulate the key things upon which we agree.

  My point here is that if you want to internalize the landscape of the UTUA language game referenced against recent papers, a good place to start is with these two articles. One argues that psychology can be unified via a Skinnerian three tier selection view of human behavior. The UT can easily hold this perspective (and greatly clarify the metaphysical claims regarding mind and behavior, cause, and the difference between the behavior of objects, organisms, animals and persons-Skinner was confused about these things).

  The UA shows that, based on a consilient and unified approach to psychology, we could assimilate and integrate the major psychotherapy approaches and operate from a meta-theoretical perspective that enables us to approach consensus. The JMU training system is a crystal clear example that such a system is both feasible and effective. (And not to brag, but data demonstrate the point about effectiveness...the recent analysis of our graduates from 2008-2016 reveals a licensure rate of 100%--not an easy feat for any program to go 8 years and have every graduate become licensed).

Bottom line: In contrast to the current state of psychology/psychotherapy as chaotic and in contrast to those who say, given the landscape, IT MUST ALWAYS BE chaotic, the UTUA language game can organize, assimilate, and integrate both the science and the practice and lead to training systems like that at JMU.

Peace,
G



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