'HIHQGLQJD3KHQRPHQRORJLFDO%HKDYLRUDO3HUVSHFWLYH

&XOWXUH%HKDYLRUDQG([SHULHQFH
Marino Prez-lvarez, Jos M. Garca-Montes, Adolfo J. Cangas, Louis A. Sass

Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology, Volume 15, Number 3, September

2008, pp. 281-285 (Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: 10.1353/ppp.0.0185

For additional information about this article

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/ppp/summary/v015/15.3.perez-alvarez.html

Access provided by UFSC-Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (27 May 2014 14:08 GMT)
 Defending a
Phenomenological
Behavioral
Perspective:
Culture, Behavior, and
Experience
Keywords: Behavior, contextual phenomenology,
culture, experience
W
e should like to express our sincere
thanks to all the authors for their com-
mentaries on our articles. Given the
restrictions of space (a limitation they too had
to contend with), we can only respond to a few
aspects of their interesting remarks. We shall reply
of course on the basis of our own approachan
approach that sets out to integrate culture, be-
havior, and experience, and that might be termed
contextual phenomenology, phenomenological be-
haviorism, or perhaps most accurately (albeit more
awkwardly), the phenomenologicalbehavioral
perspective.
In her commentary, Ibez-Guerra (2008), re-
ferring to the target articles Phenomenology and
behaviorism (Prez-lvarez, Sass, and Cangas formula: Possibly no charge, he wrote,
2008) and The role of superstition in psychopa-
thology (Garca-Montes et al. 2008), wonders
whether our maintaining of the spirit of Skinner,
as well as our recourse to phenomenology, might
2009 by The Johns Hopkins University Press
Marino Prez-lvarez, Jos
M. Garca-Montes, Adolfo J.
Cangas, and Louis A. Sass
not themselves represent forms of superstitious be-
havior. She points out that it is not always a good
idea to put new wine in old barrels. For her, the
new wine and new barrels would be represented
by social constructivism, of which she is reminded
by some aspects of our work. But in making her
own case, Ibez-Guerra (2008) reveals certain
common prejudices concerning behaviorism,
prejudices that have apparently persisted even after
reading our article. Thus, for example, she does
not see operant behavior as incorporating inten-
tionality (what, in the target article, is presented in
terms of final causality), because she assumes that
intentionality would necessarily imply a mentalist
and dualist notion involving a supposed internal
mental entity that causes behavior. Skinner (1974)
himself noted and rejected this very assumption
in a passage that clearly distinguishes his own ap-
proach from what he calls a stimulus-response
is more often leveled against behaviorism or a science
of behavior than that it cannot deal with purpose or
intention. A stimulus-response formula has no answer,
but operant behavior is the very field of purpose and
282 PPP / Vol. 15, No. 3 / September 2008
intention. By its nature it is directed toward the future:
a person acts in order that something will happen, and
the order is temporal. (pp. 556)
The place Skinner gives to intentionality and pur-
pose is elaborated in our target article.
Furthermore, Ibez-Guerra (2008) assumes
that, on methodological grounds, Skinner rejects
all that is not observable, or at least that cannot be
operationalized. This, however, is simply incorrect,
at least as regards Skinners radical behaviorism.
As the reader may recall, radical (as opposed to
methodological) behaviorism is neither operation-
alist nor does it reject private or subjective events
because of their unobservability. Indeed, Skinner
specifically acknowledges that such events are
in fact observableat least for one person: the
subject him- or herself. The question for Skinner
is to understand how the part of the world that
is only observable and experiential for oneself is
constructed or formed. In the end, it turns out
that radical behaviorism is more radical, in the
Aristotelian ontological sense (see Prez-Alvarez,
Sass, and Garca-Montes 2008), than post-modern
constructionism. Indeed, as we remarked, radical
behaviorism can still surprise us today. Similarly,
phenomenology is starting to be missed in the
clinical context (Andreasen 2007). We believe
that radical behaviorism and phenomenology,
mutually readjusted, are in fact excellent wines
for the times we live inif only we knew how to
appreciate them.
In their commentary on Phenomenology and
behaviorism: A mutual readjustment, Fletcher
and Hayes (2008) argue that the philosophy and
theory of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
(ACT)/Relational Frame Theory (RFT) already
contain the salutary aspects of phenomenology
that we highlight in our target article. Their in-
sistence on reducing the affinities we find between
phenomenology and behaviorism to ACT/RFT
consists, in our view, in a scientifictechnical
argument that is more scientistic than strictly
philosophical in nature. Their insistence on the
scientifictechnical argument itself implies an
unclarified philosophical assumption. On what
grounds do experimental data constitute the last
word? Has science discovered the condition of its
own necessity? In our view modern behavioral psy-
chology would not only not lose anything through
a possible reconciliation with phenomenology; it
would in fact have a lot to gainboth in terms
of potential scientific progress and in conceptual
openness and sophistication.
The problem Fletcher and Hayes see in our tem-
poral conception of three-term contingency can be
resolved, in our view, by considering the structure
of the temporal process described by phenomenol-
ogy. In our article, we referred to Scharff (1999);
here we turn to Gallagher and Zahavi (2008).
According to the latter authors,
a perception cannot merely be a perception of what is
now; rather, any perception of the present slice of an
object includes a retention of the just-past slice and a
protention of what is about to occur. . . . Perceptual
presence is therefore not punctual; it is a field in which
now, not-now, and not-yet-now are given in a horizontal
gestalt. (p. 78)
Present experience and action cannot be under-
stood without taking protention into account.
This is not to say, of course, that the literal future
determines what came before it; but, rather, that
anticipation plays a crucial role. Three-term
contingency without further specification is use-
ful in many practical situations, but without the
consideration of the retentional and protentional
structure of perceptual presence, such contingency
cannot account for the dynamic structure of the
experience of time that is involved, for example,
in music and speech. On the other hand, phenom-
enology could contribute to scientific progress by
providing relational frameworks that are more
closely linked to natural social contexts than those
usually studied by RFT, notwithstanding the great
importance of the latter theoretical approach.
Many studies derived from RFT do have a some-
what artificial and elementalistic quality, and
lack the holistic and pragmatic configurations of
the lived world.
Lpez-Ibors comment (2008) on More Aristo-
tle, less DSM: The ontology of mental disorders in
constructionist perspective reflects considerable
agreement with fundamental aspects of the target
paper he addresses; it also includes some important
clarifications. He begins by acknowledging the
need for an ontological perspective inspired by an-
thropology, and ends by identifying some clinical
 Prez-lvarez et al. / Phenomenological-Behavioral Perspective 283
implications, involving a search for meanings. In
this regard he appreciates our reference to Victor
Turners four phases of social dramas, namely,
breach, crisis, redressive action, and integration,
to which he adds reconciliation, where applicable,
as in the case of disasters.
We are grateful for Lpez-Ibors clarifications
(2008a). As they point out, many criticisms of
the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders (DSM)-III/IV, and by extension of pres-
ent-day psychiatry, derive primarily from abuses
committed in its name. That is certainly true.
Lpez-Ibor (2008a) notes that, in itself, the DSM
is indeed just a diagnostic and statistical manual,
and as such can be understood as merely a tool
for facilitating communication about abnormal
or disordered mental life. In our view, however,
the DSM-III the and DSM IV were practically
doomed to misuse, given their admitted inten-
tion to establish diagnoses based on a series of
symptoms from a list, without recognizing the
need for richer and more holistic conceptions
that attempt to grasp the truly essential nature
of an illness. With regard to the doctrine of the
four causes, Lpez-Ibor (2008a) makes a series of
pertinent etymological clarifications that bring out
some of the deeper significance of these notions.
Regarding the Charcot effect, Lpez-Ibor (2008a)
points out that the case of Blanche Wittmann (the
patient in the famous painting by Andr Brouillet
of Charcots lecture in La Salptrire hospital in
Paris) is not the prototypical mental patient. That
may well be so. We would note, however, that the
dramatic nature of the painting in question does
nicely illustrate an important aspect of mental
disordersnamely, their status as social, even
theatrical, dramas that always involve the patient
and someone else (including the clinician) cast in
the role of audience.
The commentary by Villagrn and Luque
(2008) on More Aristotle, less DSM: The ontol-
ogy of mental disorders in constructionist perspec-
tive reflects, first of all, the problems involved
in exploring the nature of mental disorders. They
themselves (Villagrn 2007; Villagrn and Luque
2000) are the authors of a comprehensive meta-
theoretical consideration of the nature of such
disorders. The issues in question are not merely
clinical-theoretical but, rather, meta-theoretical
and even ontological. We certainly prefer Aristotle
to the modern versions of the four causes (Hobbes,
Bacon, Kant) and their vicissitudes in the history
of psychiatry. Analysis through the four causes in
their original, Aristotelian sense represents, in our
view, a more radical, root-and-branch explora-
tion of the nature of mental disorders, predating
and going deeper than current approaches. The
approach we defend is not merely cultural, in the
sense implied in the phrase cultural anthropol-
ogy, nor is it post-modern constructivist. Rather,
it is an anthropologicalphilosophical approach
that sees culture and forms of being-in-the-world
(modes, models, or forms) as constitutive of the
human condition, including disordered conditions.
These assertions also explain why our approach
gives priority to ontology over epistemology. As
we see it, one must first know what to study, and
only then consider how to study it. Otherwise we
could end up like the man who set sail for the East
Pole without considering what a pole was.
The commentary by Vilardaga and Hayes
(2008) on The role of superstition in psychology
states that the purpose of our work was to explore
the application of the concept of superstition,
examined from a Sartrian perspective, to psycho-
pathology. Actually, that was not, in fact, our
purpose; nor do we fully accept a Sartrian per-
spective. Indeed, Sartres conception of emotions
as magical operations is criticized in our work, as
are the conceptions of ThoughtAction Fusion and
Experiential Avoidance (EA). It is true that we do
see some advantages in the Sartrian approach to
the phenomenon of superstition as compared to
the notion of EA, which is more characteristic of
post-Skinnerian behavior analysis. As Vilardaga
and Hayes (2008) have appreciated, our interest
in Sartres analysis of the emotions as magical
operations resides fundamentally in the fact that
Sartres phenomenological analyses are based on
everyday situations (e.g., the novice boxer who
closes his eyes; the terrified man who flees danger
by turning his back on it); whereas the work of
post-Skinnerian authors is largely based on labora-
tory experiments, and generally loses sight of the
social practices given in a certain culture. The body
of post-Skinnerian research is vast; yet to refute
284 PPP / Vol. 15, No. 3 / September 2008
our claim about the failure to consider cultural
factors or issues, Vilardaga and Hayes (2008)
cite only one very recent work and another still in
press. This essentially vindicates our point about
the slighting of the sociocultural dimension.
Quite another question is whether, in develop-
ing what Vilardaga and Hayes (2008) call in-
creasingly organized statements of relationships
among events that allow actions embedded in their
historical and situational context to be predicted
and influenced (a goal we share), it is preferable
to start out from the world as it presents itself to
people, or whether we should rather give prior-
ity to a scientific understanding that reconfigures
lived reality on the basis of practices and concepts
developed in non-everyday contexts. Scientific
experimentation has its advantages, of course,
notably the ability to control variables and stan-
dardize procedures. There will, however, always be
considerable ambiguity (and a concomitant call for
complex and fallible forms of judgment) whenever
such procedures come to be applied to the com-
plex and holistic reality of actual life. In our view,
and following what we have argued elsewhere
(Prez-lvarez and Sass 2008), the true context
of human life is fundamentally pragmatic and
personal, social, and historical. A truly scientific
psychology (in the broadest sense of scientific)
should therefore give considerable attention to
studies of real-world contexts.
Luque and Villagrn.s comments (2008) on
From the visions of Saint Teresa of Jesus to the
voices of schizophrenia coincide with our idea
that the current conception of hallucinations is
a modern one, deriving particularly from nine-
teenth-century conceptualizations. This does not,
however, mean there are no previous precursors
and influences that are of relevance, such as the
visions of the mystics, regardless of whether or not
these are considered hallucinations in the strict
sense. Nor can it be assumed that the emergence
of the medical model has totally wiped out the
influence of other and earlier traditions.
To illustrate these points, one might consider a
similar phenomenon: namely, hypnotism. To ana-
lyze hypnosis, one would have to go back to the
scientific origin of such procedures (specifically,
to the theory of animal magnetism in the eighteenth
century), but one would also need to explore the
previous context related to exorcism in the Middle
Ages. It is precisely there that many of the present
components of hypnosis originate, including the
presumed unwittingness or lack of awareness of
the person hypnotized, split personality, amnesia,
and so on (Sarbin and Coe 1972). It is the same
with hallucinations. There is a nineteenth-century
scientific current whose influence cannot be over-
looked, but we must also consider the previous
social context which, in this case, we have related
to emerging qualities of individualism, subjectiv-
ity, and personal self-consciousness. Saint Teresa
would thus be an example of this tradition. This
context is very different from those of other eras,
such as that of Ancient Greece, or other cultural
traditions in which experiences of visions or hal-
lucinations also occurwhere the same or similar
experiences would have rather different meanings,
consequences, and origins (Castillo 2003). Our
approach emphasizes the socio-cultural context
as a determinant of subjective experience.
Lpez-Ibors commentary (2008b) on From
the visions of Saint Teresa of Jesus to the voices
of schizophrenia contributes some reflections
that complement our work, focusing on some of
its essential arguments. Sor Juana Ins de la Cruz,
of seventeenth-century Mexico, is indeed a very
relevant example, for she experienced difficulties
similar to those of St. Teresa, also due to her fe-
male role. It is also important to emphasize that
extraordinary experiences can be analyzed from
the same perspective as normal phenomena
(without, of course, denying the literary and social
value of St. Teresas works).
References
Andreasen, N. 2007. DSM and the death of phenom-
enology in America: An example of unintended
consequences. Schizophrenia Bulletin 33:10812.
Castillo, R. J. 2003. Trance, functional psychosis, and
culture. Psychiatry 66:921.
Fletcher, L. B., and S. C. Hayes. 2008. Phenomenology
and behaviorism: A mutual readjustment. Philoso-
phy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 15, no. 3:255258.
Gallagher, S., and D. Zahavi. 2008. The phenomeno-
logical mind. An introduction to philosophy of mind
and cognitive science. London: Routledge.
Garca-Montes, J. M., M. Prez-lvarez, L. A. Sass, and
A. J. Cangas. 2008 The role of superstition in psy-
 Prez-lvarez et al. / Phenomenological-Behavioral Perspective 285
chopathology. Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology
15, no. 3:227237.
Ibez-Guerra, E. 2008. The phenomenology of super-
stition or a phenomenological superstition? Philoso-
phy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 15, no. 3:251254.
Lpez-Ibor, J. J., Jr., and M. I. Lpez-Ibor. 2008a.
Anthropological perspectives in psychiatric nosol-
ogy. Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 15, no.
3:259263.
Lpez-Ibor, J. J., Jr., and M. I. Lpez-Ibor. 2008b. Cre-
ativity belongs to the person, not to disease. Philoso-
phy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 15, no. 3:277279.
Luque, R., and J. M. Villagrn. 2008. Teresian vi-
sions. Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 15,
no. 3:273276.
Prez-lvarez, M., and L. A. Sass. 2008. Phenom-
enology and behaviorism: A natural readjustment.
Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 15, no.
3:199210.
Prez-lvarez, M., L. A. Sass, and J. M. Garca-Montes.
2008. More Aristotle, less DSM: The ontology
of mental disorders in constructivist perspective.
Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 15, no.
3:211225.
Sarbin, T. R., and W. C. Coe. 1972. Hypnosis: A social
psychological analysis of influence communication.
New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Scharff, J. L. 1999. Skinners reinforcement theory: A
Heideggerian assessment of its empirical success
and philosophical failure. Behavior and Philosophy
27:117.
Skinner, B. F. 1974. About behaviorism. New York:
Knopf.
Vilardaga, R., and S. C. Hayes. 2008. Experiential
avoidance and superstition: Considering concepts
in context. Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology
15, no. 3:269271.
Villagrn, J. M. 2007. Las bases epistemolgicas de
la psiquiatra y psicopatologa: una aproximacin
metapsiquitrica. Informaciones Psiquitricas
189:42749.
Villagrn, J. M., and R. Luque. 2000. Aspectos concep-
tuales y filosficos del diagnstico y la clasificacin
en psiquiatra. In Psicopatologa descriptiva: nuevas
tendencias, eds. R. Luque, J. M. Villagrn, 51538.
Madrid: Trotta
. 2008. Aristotle rules, OK? Philosophy, Psychia-
try, & Psychology 15, no. 3:265268.