🚀 go-pugleaf

[From Rick Marken (950228.0945)]

Bill Leach (950226.20:22 EST) --

>Where the 'rubber meets the road' is where the scientific rigor is not
>possible -- where there are too many unknowns and results may be both
>vague and delayed (years instead of hours).

If we persist in making a distinction between scientific and 'rubber meets
the road' applications of PCT we will end up with a schism between scientific
and clinical practitioners of PCT that mirrors the one that now exists
between scientific and clinical practitioners of conventional psychology.

There is no question that clinicians and counselors deal with people in
situations where "there are too many unknowns and results may be both vague
and delayed". But the scientists have tested a MODEL of human nature under
controlled conditions; the MODEL should continue to apply in uncontrolled,
'rubber meets the road' situations as it did in the controlled conditions of
the lab. The HPCT model says that people are hierarchical perceptual control
systems, whether they are docile undergraduates doing tracking tasks or
hostile gang members blowing away innocent bystanders in graffiti laden
neighborhoods. I am well aware of the fact that it is a lot easier to deal
with a hierarchical control system that is doing a tracking task than it is
to deal with one that is prepared to blow anyone away who gets in its way.
But the principles of behavior are the same in both cases -- where the mouse
meets the mouse pad and where the rubber meets the road; the principles of
hierarchical control.

What should unite scientific and counseling practitioners of PCT is an
understanding of the hierarchical PCT model. Counselors should understand the
model as well as the scientists do; that doesn't mean that the counselors are
expected to get precise results like those obtained in the lab. But it does
mean that the scientists and counselors should be talking the same language -
- and they can do this ONLY if they are both talking about (and
understanding) the same model.

In PCT, there is no reason why the scientists shouldn't be expected to
understand clinical problems just as well as the clinicians; and there is no
reason why the clinicians shouldn't be expected to understand the PCT model
as well as the scientists. The scientists would not be expected to DO the
clinical work as well the clinicians just as the clinicians would not be
expected to DO the lab work as well as the scientists; this is where the
difference is -- and there should be no rivalry (as there is none -- or very
little-- between engineers and scientists). PCT clinicians and scientists
should be playing from the same sheet of music -- the HPCT model. But we
can't do this unless we all learn to read music (understand the operation of
the HPCT model) . Unfortunately, that takes some work -- but we won't all be
talking the same langauge if some of us know how to read music and others are
just looking at the marks on the page. The rewards of learning to read the
PCT sheet music are great becuase the modelis the same, whether it's played
in the quiet chapel of tracking experimnets or the mean streets
of Scottsdale, Az;-)

Best

Rick