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Exploring the Environmental and Social Foundations of
Human Behaviour
Series Editor
Bernard Guerin
Professor of Psychology, University of South Australia

Can you imagine that everything people do, say and think is shaped directly by
engaging with our many environmental and social contexts? Humans would
then really be part of their environment.
For current psychology, however, people only engage with metaphorical ‘inter-
nal’ environments or brains events, and everything we do somehow originates
hidden in there. But what if all that we do and think originated out in our worlds,
and what we call ‘internal’ is merely language and conversations which were also
shaped by engaging in our external discursive, cultural and societal environments?
Exploring the Environmental and Social Foundations of Human Behaviour is an
exciting new book series about developing the next generation of ways to
understand what people do, say and think. Human behaviour is shaped through
directly engaging in our diverse contexts of resources, social relationships, eco-
nomics, culture, discourses, colonization, patriarchy, society, and the opportunities
afforded by our birth contexts. Even language and thinking arise from our
external social and discursive contexts, and so the ‘internal’ and brain metaphors
will disappear as psychology becomes merged with the social sciences.
The series is therefore a-disciplinary and presents analyses or contextually-
engaged research on topics which describe or demonstrate how human behaviour
arises from direct engagement with the worlds in which we are embedded.

In this series:

How to Rethink Psychology: New Metaphors for Understanding People and their
Behavior: Volume 1

How to Rethink Human Behavior: A Practical Guide to Social Contextual Analysis:

Volume 2

How to Rethink Mental Illness:The Human Contexts Behind the Labels: Volume 3

Turning Psychology into Social Contextual Analysis:Volume 4

Turning Psychology into a Social Science:Volume 5

Turning Mental Health into Social Action: Volume 6

Reimagining Therapy through Social Contextual Analyses: Finding New Ways to

Support People in Distress: Volume 7
Reimagining Therapy
through Social Contextual
Analyses
Finding New Ways to Support People
in Distress
Bernard Guerin
Cover image: Getty Images

First published 2023

by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 Bernard Guerin
The right of Bernard Guerin to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without
intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book

ISBN: 978-1-032-29243-4 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-032-29240-3 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-30057-1 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003300571

Typeset in Bembo
by Taylor & Francis Books
Contents

List of illustrations vii

Preface x
Acknowledgments xi

PART 1
Dissecting current therapies 1
1 Psychology, pop psychology, and common-sense psychology:
Whatever were they thinking for 150 years? 3
2 What are the contexts for therapies you need to be
aware of? 13
3 What do therapists say about what they do?: Theories and
marketing of therapy 29
4 What do therapists do, in general?: ‘Applying treatments’ as a
misleading metaphor 52
5 How do therapists respond?: Implicit and explicit social
relationships of therapies 78

PART 2
A new approach to stop pathologizing and exoticizing
‘mental health’ 91
6 What is different with social contextual analyses? 93
7 The pivotal role of language for life and therapy 101
vi Contents
PART 3
Rethinking ‘mental health’ as living in restrictive bad life
situations 117
8 Contextual models of ‘mental health’ behaviours: Behaviours
shaped by restrictive bad life situations 119
9 How changing context can change action, talking, and thinking:
Analysing collateral and legacy effects 142
10 Summarizing the changes needed for ‘therapy’ after including
social and societal contexts 166
11 Reimagining ‘treatments’ in their social and societal contexts:
What do we do instead? 172

Index 192
Illustrations

Figures
1.1 Words often used to construct the ‘foundations’ for human
behaviour but which constantly get switched or bounced around
uncritically 4
1.2 ‘Explanations’ and ‘therapy’ in psychology for 150 years 4
1.3 Contextual explanations 5
2.1 The basic contexts for therapy 19
2.2 The key contexts for the recipients of therapy are bad life
situations they are struggling with, but these are kept remote
from the office setting 20
2.3 The “therapy bubble” resulting from trying to remove contexts 21
2.4 The person’s real problems, their bad life situations, remain
outside of the therapy except for what the person is able to talk
about 22
2.5 Some societal contexts limiting the behaviours possible in a
therapy bubble 23
2.6 Differing life contexts between recipients and therapists 25
2.7 Differing discursive life contexts between recipients and
therapists 26
7.1 Contextualized ‘emotions’ in scary situations. At the top is
‘emotive talk’, when we just talk about the situations we are in
as our response, but this is really about our social relationships
and not dealing with the dilemma situation. 113
8.1 The behaviours and strategies which can be shaped as ways of
coping with, surviving, putting up with, or avoiding bad life
situations 124
8.2 Behaviours and strategies shaped by living in bad life situations 126
8.3 ‘Mental health’ behaviours and strategies shaped by living in bad
life situations 129
9.1 The effects of bad life situations and collateral and legacy effects 147
9.2 Real life pathway as reported by ‘Brad’ who had a ‘Generalized
Anxiety Disorder’ label. 161
viii List of illustrations
9.3 Real life pathway as reported by ‘Lucy’ who had a ‘Generalized
Anxiety Disorder’ label. 162
10.1 Three broad ways to help a person in distress 169
11.1 The ‘therapist’ engaging in and participating in the person’s life
world 174
11.2 Rough schematic of a possible future for contextual help and
support for people in distress 176
11.3 Rough guidelines for ‘therapy’ 177

Tables
3.1 The reported goals of therapy as reported for 19 types of
therapy. Therapies later in this list often include goals mentioned
earlier but these are not repeated. For example, Jungian analysis
includes many of the same goals as psychoanalysis. This
highlights the similarities between all these therapies. 36
3.2 My categorization of some terms used by therapists to describe
their goals of therapy. The labels are mine, but the words are
those used by therapists to state their goals. 38
3.3 One way of reframing the reported goals of therapies into three
functional groups 43
4.1 The activities reported to be occurring in therapies 58
4.2 One way of reframing the reported activities of therapies into
functional groups 63
4.3 One way of reframing the activities of social workers into
functional groups 70
5.1 Some of the possible component events of this new Watching the
stars therapy 83
7.1 For all the verbal responses we have been shaped to say in any
situation, not saying them out loud (thinking) can arise through
the following ways 110
7.2 With no listeners or consequences, the thinking afforded
in any context is likely to change in these ways from speaking
out loud. 111
9.1 Collateral effects of trying to live in various bad life situations
(not mutually exclusive) 148
9.2 Potential collateral and legacy effects of having lived in a bad life
situation 154
9.3 Some common ways that people behave when their language no
longer has effects 157

Boxes
1.1 Implications for therapy if you assume that human behaviour
originates ‘inside’ or is shaped by life contexts 7
 List of illustrations ix
2.1 Descriptions of therapy from various websites 14
3.1 The 19 psychotherapies reviewed plus others consulted 33
3.2 Functional or contextualized groups of contextualized therapy
goals 42
4.1 Gives Janet’s main headings of therapies and healing with a brief
indication of what was being done. 53
4.2 My categories of what methods or techniques are used in
therapies when their jargon is removed 63
5.1 Events occurring in most therapies, in addition to the named or
marketed methods and techniques, and which might be bringing
about any changes found. 80
5.2 How do therapists respond to help? 86
7.1 Tests to give you a clue that words are being used as shaped
strategies (behaviour which is shaped by audiences) rather than
simple descriptions of the (non-word) reality (behaviour shaped
by the consequences of what the world does to you). 106
7.2 Life situations which might show a lot of emotional responding. 114
8.1 Common forms of ‘bad life situations’ which can shape the
‘mental health’ behaviours 121
8.2 Alphabetical list of the main behaviours to be found in the DSM
diagnoses. 131
9.1 Basic social contextual conception of changing behaviours 143
9.2 Therapy is successful when the behaviours: 144
11.1 Questions for a person telling ‘delusional’ stories might be like
these but include both historical and current discourses: 182
Preface

This book is a detailed and critical look at ‘therapy’. For reasons given in
Chapter 1, it looks at both ‘therapy’ and ‘mental health’ in relation to the
person’s life contexts, rather than misattributing cause to something ‘inside’ or
‘internal’ to the person. This produces a very original and forward-looking
approach.
For this book I have read masses of academic and non-academic books of all
sorts of approaches said to be ‘therapeutic’. Mainstream and non-mainstream. I
watched a lot of videos of all such ‘therapies’ and participated in a number of
workshops of different kinds. I talked with many therapists. As will become
clear, I distrust the words of therapists about what they do but trust their
descriptions of what goes on.
My main conclusions from all this are many, outlined in the last two chap-
ters: language is the basis for most therapies; most therapies are somewhat
effective but not for the reasons they present in their theories and marketing;
the language of talking about therapy is a complete mishmash of abstract and
topsy-turvy discourses; such discourses also seem to help some people in some
ways despite being fanciful; the biggest fault of almost all current therapies is not
attempting to help the person with their actual life situations, which are shap-
ing all the problems encountered. This latter is made more difficult for thera-
pists because of restrictions enforced through professional and governmental
agencies.
Despite all this, I come away with great hope for a new version of therapy, in
which there is never a single therapist, and the person and the ‘therapists’ work
towards improving the person’s life situation as well as improving how they talk
about themselves and their life (what currently goes on in therapy) and improving
how the people around them respond to such talk (improving their discursive
communities in life). The new ‘experts’ are not experts of some disembodied mind
‘inside’ the person, but experts on how people adapt to bad life situations and how
to ‘fix the life situation’ rather than trying to ‘fix the person’ through talking. This
requires a serious reimagining of what therapy must become.
Acknowledgments

I will start by thanking Brandon Umphrey who wrote to me a long time ago
and wondered if I had ever collected everything about my contextual approa-
ches that might change the way we do therapy. I had not done this, but that
made me begin and this is the first result.
I want to thank Matt, Rory, and Berny for allowing me to see how they work
in alternative ways in therapy. I am suggesting things they might not agree with,
but much of it stems from my observations through them. I also thank Mel Beaton
for allowing me to use the figures from her Honours thesis in Chapter 9.
I thank all the students, both undergraduate and my wonderful graduate
students, who allowed me to rehearse and develop many of these thoughts in
discussions (Kate, Adan, Millie, Kris, Eden, Scarlett, Nikia, and others). Often I
was wildly extemporizing, in full flight over a beer; but this pushed me to
always take these ideas further and further. That they listened, helped me to
develop and critically extend the ideas contained in this book. There is more
to come, especially their case studies illustrating these ideas in practice.
As always, a big thanks to Eleanor and Alex for their faith in this book series, and
for seeing me through the whole production process so calmly and professionally.
Part 1
Dissecting current therapies