Roles revisited

Mon Feb 9 16:01:37 CST 2009

cleaning up old emails... responses interspersed.
REGINA SEWELL (rs) writes to peterhowie at macquariehouse.com.au  January 11, 2009 
      Your lay out of roles makes a lot of sense.  I think that's how I have interpreted Sheldon Stryker's role theory which provides a micro-macro link between social structure and behavior and identity.
         AB: Hi Regina, are there some references to Stryker, should I google him? 

  2. RS  I do a lot of this w/ my clients and expand the notion of choice points - leaving an unsatisfying role (ie changing jobs, getting divorced) or leaving an unsatisfying unit of social structure (aka you like what you do for a living but hate the company/your co-workers/your boss) or changing how you frame and play your role (keeping your job at the same company but changing your framework - maybe when they throw squish balls at you, they are trying to say - "I kind of like you" rather than "Yo Kim, we think you suck" and maybe look at your work load as a request rather than a demand... " We'd like you to get X done" rather than, "The World will end as we know it if you don't get everything done yesterday" 
        You do raise the research question - is behavior really a true measure of internal processes? 
AB: I have major questions about the possibility of accurate research in the human sciences!  
              I think so much involves a host of interacting and changing variables and that precision is impossible. But practical work does not require precise knowledge---that illusion that precision can deliver and approximation can't is I think weak.

   RS and how do you measure it accurately?  AB see above

   RS   I only see my clients once a week or so for a short period of time.  So do you use their self- reported behavior - for example, how they interact with their partner, their parent?  But what are they leaving out?  Call me cynical...  but I simply assume that all clients lie - sometimes directly, more likely by ommission, or because they are lying to themselves because they aren't yet ready to face the issue or are ashamed or don't even see it.  
         AB:  not cynical, and word lie is misleading, implying intentional. On the other hand, wary, dubious, is appropriate because self-deception is prevalent at many levels and I daresay if we cut it fine enough, ubiquitous even among the most "analyzed"

    RS  And then there is the question of internal vs external processes that Patti raised, how do we really know what's going on inside.  Does external behavior really mean what we think it means?  Or are there intervening variables.  For example, I once had a client who was struggling with depression, was smoking a lot of pot and drinking a heck of a lot.  We did some intense action work around being rejected for being gay as a young kid, around being molested...  he made the decision to start working out... which led to the decision to quit smoking pot and to drink less, which eventually led to the decision to go to a sleep disorder clinic where he found out he had sleep apnea, got the gear to deal with that and was able to sleep... and ....   In the meantime, he did a lot of work around his mother -- looking at her various roles, the roles that were expected of him and how he played them was able to let go of his anger, reframe some aspects of their relationship.  She had an unexpected heart attack and he managed to have intense honest conversations with her just before she died and in the wake of that was, for the first time in years, able to enter into a sexual relationship with someone that was meaningful and was, for the first time ever, able to talk honestly and openly about his boundaries, feelings, etc.  How much, if any, of this relates to work we did? 

AB I view such work as intersubjective and partaking of the many variables alluded to above, and therefore impossible to control or quantify exactly. This is the work of "idiographic" research, case study work. 
      The question involves what might the therapist learn, so that she can
             -- avoid certain maneuvers when a patient presents a given situation
            -- apply certain maneuvers because in a similar situation they seemed to help
                     -- telll the difference
            and know that this process must be reiterated many times because experience, as Hippocrates, the "father of medicine" said, is fallacious... meaning that our biases and lack of controls can lead us into erroneous hypotheses... 
        but still that's what we must do, and then be open to revision... 

  RS  Is it possible that just by coming to see a counselor and hearing himself talk he would have made the changes and that our work was more of a placebo?  Was it the action methods we used or was it the unconditional positive regard, genuineness, and acceptance I offered?  Was the change in the relationship due to a change in his role or hers or both?  Or was it simply more of a narrative reframe?
      aB: No! you were doing a score of discernable operations (see Yalom's list of elements of group psychotherapy, or my chapter in Foundations of Psychodrama)... and in their aggregate, may have helped an indeterminate amount.

   RS And, per the layout of role you set forth (or maybe it's the riff I'm taking in response to yours), that we have different roles that relate to different positions of social structure or different people that in my office, my clients act differently than they do in the outside world.  Not really a problem in terms of counseling - much of what I/(we?) do is role training - and that the skills learned are transferable --  but what does that mean in terms of measurement?
         AB:  I deplore the assumption that measurement is valid! 

RS And how do we create a valid, consistent, reliable instrument to measure this so that our results are generalizable?  Oh, and when do we do this if we are not on the publish or perish tenuretrack highway?
         AB we do idiographic case studies, and do it quite well. Rarely is it done quite well, though: See my paper on my website on the art of case formulation. 

   Peace, regina sewell, Ph.D.   and ab: to you, too, pal. Thanks for your participating in this forum. Warmly, Adam

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