|
I’ve spent my professional life answering 3 questions:
- Why do we act as we do?
- Why can’t we just be different when we just want to be different and tell ourselves that we will be different?
- Knowing the answers to 1 and 2 above, how can we develop a reliable therapy of becoming different?
It took me over 20 years of research to answer question 2: Why can’t we just be different when we just want to be different.
It was worth the effort because to a researcher/clinician question 2 is the most important of the 3 questions. The answer teaches:
- Why personal growth takes so long and why, even with our best efforts at change, it’s two steps up and one step back.
- It’s why we keep falling in love with the same person, often with the same disastrous results, and
- Why we keep doing the same things over and over in the face of their not working…. with the belief that “it will work the next time”…even after years of experience that should tell us to try something different.
The answer to question 2 also teaches we don’t keep repeating behaviors that don’t work for us because “that’s all we know”, or because “we are comfortable in our misery.” The answer to question 2 is locked in our deep memory structures and in how our brain keeps us alive.
So, I’ve spent much of my adult life and all of my professional life working to answer these questions, then developing a model of human behavior and a therapy based on the answers, getting these ideas peer reviewed, then developing a peer reviewed paper and pencil test of the model and therapy. All this took from 1974 to 2001 and assessing over 25,000 normal working adults using a full Psychological test battery and a multiple hour personal interview of each person.
In my day job, I’m a Police Psychologist. This means I select who is psychologically, and sometimes, morally capable of having Peace Officer powers; carrying a weapon and having the ability to arrest people, or fight fires, or dispatch 911 calls.
Every assessment I do professionally requires a forensic report. I’ve completed over 25,000 forensic reports, predicting working adults’ future behavior. All these reports are legally binding and can be used to defend the hiring organization in a suit against the organization for ‘negligent hiring’ or ‘vicarious liability’ if I OK a person who dysfunctions on the job and someone is injured due to the hire’s behavior.
Over a thousand judges, attorneys, Police Chiefs, City Managers, Fire Chiefs, and other executives have read my reports and based their hiring decisions or legal options on my reports.
In my job, I really need to know how people work, why people act as they do and be able to explain to lay people why people act as they do, who needs or doesn’t need therapy, and who will be helped by therapy and who will not be helped, and why.
I also treat Officers, Firefighters and dispatchers for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and a wide variety of behavioral, psychological and pain complaints. In the treatment I’m responsible for, people either get better and go back to work quickly, or they continue having problems and their life is seriously altered.
For the Peace Officer population, therapy (based on the answers to the 3 Questions and the information in Pursuing) cannot take more than several weeks. There is little re-acceptance of a Police Officer by their peers when the officer is off work for months for a psychological or pain problem.
Through no conscious doing of my own, I have a penchant for taking on big problems and trying to solve them. These problems include:
- How can we accurately measure someone’s self concept and self self esteem.
- Why do some parents physically abuse their children and what can be done to help these parents fix what causes the abuse?
- Why do some people have intractable chronic pain and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and what can be done to make them feel better and have a better life?
- What causes and what can be done to contain upward spiriling Workers Compensation costs?
- What is the most effective, and cost effective way to select Police Officers and Fire Fighters?
- Why is life so difficult for so many of us? Why do we act the way we do? Why can’t we just be different when we really want to be different? What do we need to do to be different when we know the answers to the two previous questions?
- Can I develop a valid and reliable computer scored test that assesses people as well as I do in person, and that describes their behavior to them as well as I would in person, and that gives them the same psycho-educational information I would in person? Can I get the test peer reviewed to establish it?
In the mid 1970s I was already fascinated by our perception of ourself and how, how we feel about ourself effects our behavior. I believed that the most used test of self concept was often unconsciously manipulated by individuals with defensively bloated self esteem scores, hurting the relationship between self esteem scores and predictable behaviors. My Master’s Thesis examined Defensive Answering In The Tennessee Self Concept Test. This flaw turned out, 15 years later, to create the universal finding that self esteem, as we measure it is not a useful research concept. This early recognition of the flaw in our understanding of self esteem led to my next 30 years of work in trying to figure out a way to measure something that would replace ‘self esteem’ as a way to predict our behavior. This led to the 3 questions, which led to the book. (My wife says I’m stubborn...I prefer to think I persevere.)
In the late 1970‘s, as my Doctoral Dissertation, I conducted research on child abuse and developed an explanatory model of why adults physically abuse their children. I found in my dissertation that, physically abusive, but not sexually abusive parents, are ‘high subjective stressors’. They are overwhelmed by the stress that other parents manage, and then they lash out. As part of the dissertation I developed a cognitively based therapy for Child Protective Services (CPS) and trained CPS workers. At that time, the “therapy” the CPS workers were using was primarily guilt tripping. The approach I developed, taught physically abusing parents to better manage their stressors. This was a step forward. It is now an accepted way of understanding the problem.
In the mid 1980’s, after Viet Nam, I worked for the VA in Dayton, Ohio as an Assistant Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at one of the largest teaching VA hospital/domiciliaries with over 5000 beds. There was not much understanding of chronic pain behavior or PTSD at that time. I started and developed the second VA program in the US treating Chronic Pain behavior and PTSD in a multi-disciplinary model integrating Medicine, Nursing, Psychology, and Physical therapy. We developed models of each disease process and a therapy based on the etiological models. I was invited to address the National Symposium on Pain concerning my research. Thirty years later, I still work for the VA, as a consultant, selecting Police Officers and treating PTSD (now from tours in IRAQ) in Police Officers for the San Francisco and Sacramento area VA hospitals.
In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, Workman’s Compensation costs were out of control in California. The Personnel and Risk Managers Association of California (PARMA) asked me to help develop an approach to help solve the problem. (PARMA includes all California University Systems, all hospitals, all City and County organizations and many very large organizations in the private sector.) My task was to conduct a survey of all PARMA member agencies, develop a model of what was causing the upward spiraling costs, and develop an ameliorative process, an organizational ‘therapy’ that the organizations in PARMA could use to control their costs.
After developing the explanatory model based on the research findings, my organization was hired to develop and run a model program in a large County Jail and Sherri’s Department. After 3 years of running the program we had lowered costs considerably. In 1990 and 1992, I was invited to present the model and outcome findings to the Combined International Conventions of the American Psychological Association, the World Health Organization, and the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health. I was invited to write book chapters on the model in 1990 and 1992. I wrote the 1990 chapter, but was too busy with a large new project in 1993 when the chapter was due.
The project that so interested me was to use the answer to the 3 Questions, specifically Question 2, to develop a video based assessment of work place behaviors used in interpersonal and task problem solving by Peace Officer and Fire Fighter applicants. The test was to be used in place of paper and pencil tests that were often biased against minority applicants, due to reading/vocabulary issues. I worked on and developed the scoring system and process that has become an international standard for measuring the interpersonal and task behaviors of Police Officers, Fire Fighters and managers in those professions. (I’m most proud that the test is used to select North West Mounted Police in Canada. You likely come from a different era than I do, so I don’t know what the Mounties mean for you. When I was growing up, the North West Mounted Police were the subject of many radio shows and movies…They were very dashing, a world away, and big deal to a little boy growing up in very hot New Orleans.)
By the late 1990’s I felt comfortable with the answers to the 3 questions and had used the answers repeatedly in the above projects and others to build my reputation and organization. I was comfortable that the answers were both theoretically correct and practically useful. Most importantly, the answers helped people live better lives, solve psychological and physical problems, feel more comfortable with them selves, and be more successful at home and work.
I haven’t been working alone. For the past 60 plus years over 2500 other research Psychologists and brain scan specialists have been working on Question 1. Psycho-analytically based research clinicians have been working on questions 1 and 3, and not focusing on question 2. Cognitive Psychologists have been working on a partial answer to question 3 as they do not work from an integrated model of human behavior. No other research program, other than mine, to the best of my knowledge, has been focused on question 2 as well as questions 1 and 3.
I can’t tell you why others have not focused on question 2. I called the Chief Scientific Advisor of the American Psychological Association last year and asked. He could not tell me any other program working on question 2. I asked why and he said that there is no experiment that could prove the answer; that such an answer could only come from a theoretical meta analysis of thousands of studies, not a single set of studies used in the purely scientific approach.
I can tell you that Psychology is fighting for its life as a Real Science and is focusing on laboratory experiments, rather than Big Theory. Currently, there is not accepted branch of ‘theoretical psychology ‘ seeking ‘big theories’ as there is in theoretical physics. So, academic physicists do write theoretical books about big theories, academic psychologists don’t. Since I do not work for a big university fighting for grants to find out more and more about less and less, I’ve been free to follow my passion, do the meta-analysis, work on studies that confirm the meta-analysis and write the manuscript.
I can tell why you I focused on question 2. I experienced, and experience in my personal growth, the two steps up and one step back process, and see the same thing in every client I’ve ever worked with and in friends trying to change their lives. This led me to believe the repetitive and enduring nature of psychological problems can not be successfully addressed unless question 2 is answered.
Once the model developed by answering the 3 questions was clear to me based on research and personal experience, I decided to develop a test and explanatory system based on the test, that would help others understand their attachment strategy and personal working model and also teach them how to make their attachment strategy more secure and to rebuild their personal working model.
To this end, over the last decade, I was able to develop and statistically validate a paper and pencil test of the model of human behavior based on the answers to 1, 2 and 3. My goal was to develop, validate and get peer reviewed a relatively brief test (less than 200 questions) that could be taken on a computer and scored by the computer. The test would determine the individual’s attachment strategy, describe the basic patterns of their personal working model, and develop a training program for the test taker and print out the patterns of behavior and an individualized training program. (The test assesses over 64,000,000,000 different patterns. People are not categorized by the report. Every test print out is potentially as individual as the person taking the test.)
In 2001 I developed a website that has allowed the test to be taken by people from over 75 countries.
In 2008, I was invited to speak at the International Convention of the American Psychological Association to discuss the test and the understanding of human behavior that the test has afforded.
|
