Swimming against the mainstream: the early years from chilly tributary to transformative mainstream

Abstract

This article traces the transformative paradigm shift in the theory and practice of personal change. Within a decade, new conceptual models, analytic methodologies and modes of treatment were created. Treatments were altered in the content, locus, and agents of change. This enterprising period also witnessed a sweeping shift in the public acceptance of behaviorally oriented treatments. The present article also analyzes the evolving theorizing and applications of social cognitive theory rooted in modeling, self-regulatory, and self-efficacy mechanisms of psychosocial change. This model of change is implemented from an agentic perspective to promote personal, institutional, and society-wide changes that address some of the most urgent global problems.

Introduction

Behaviorally oriented approaches evolved in an inhospitable climate. In the early 1950s, the field of personal change was dominated by the psychodynamic model of human behavior. There were several variants to this model but they shared three characteristics.

The psychodynamicists emphasized psychic determinism as their causal model with benign neglect of environmental influences. The causes resided in the individual. Behavior was said to be regulated by an inner psychic life of animated impulses and complexes operating below the level of consciousness and disguised by defensive mental operations. Experimental efforts to test psychodynamic theory were like tilting at windmills. By invoking repression, displacement, reaction formation, and projection the same inner dynamics could produce any type of behavior, including opposite styles of responsivity. The proponents dismissed experimental studies because their core determinants, such as the oedipal complex, were not amenable to systematic variation by psychosocial means.

In the proponents’ view, the theory could be tested only through clinical validation. In a letter to Freud, Rosensweing asked whether the interview content could be tainted by the therapists’ influences. Freud replied that the therapist is a blank screen that does not contaminate the interview content. Conditional analyses of transactions in therapeutic sessions revealed that therapists were, in fact, shaping the content through their suggestive interpretations and selective positive and negative reactions to clients’ behavior (Bandura, Lipsher and Miller, 1960, Murray, 1956).

The second feature of the psychodynamic approach was the adoption of a quasi-disease model of deviant behavior. Behavior that diverges from prevailing social norms was viewed as a symptom of an underlying pathology. But the disease was psychic or metaphorical. Problems of living and unconventional forms of behavior got labeled as symptoms of a psychic pathology.

The third distinguishing characteristic was the heavy reliance on the interpretive interview as the vehicle of change. Through interpretive analysis, clients gain insight into their inner dynamics and develop better ways of behaving through their interactions with the therapist. Self-insight would promote change. In the early 1950s, Hullian theorists translated the psychoanalytic doctrine into learning terms to render it empirically testable. Dollard and Miller’s (1950) publication, Personality and Psychotherapy, became the bible for the times. Most of us were imprinted on it.

The psychodynamic theories fared poorly when subjected to close empirical scrutiny. They lacked predictive power. Nor did they fare any better in therapeutic power. Outcome studies showed that it is difficult to change human behavior by talk alone. People gained all kinds of insights, but often exhibited little change in behavior. The various psychodynamic approaches had their own favored brand of insight. One could predict the types of insights and inner dynamics clients would find from knowledge of their therapists’ theoretical orientation. One could also predict whether the clients would find an unconscious mind and what is in it. These interpretive therapies were essentially promoting belief conversions in the guise of self-discovery.

Following the adage that one should light a candle rather than curse the conceptual darkness, Dick Walters and I provided an alternative view of human behavior in the book Social Learning and Personality Development (Bandura & Walters, 1963). It underscored the influential role of modeling, self-regulation, and consequential outcomes in the acquisition of psychosocial patterns of behavior. Acquired behavior was motivated and regulated by the complex interplay of contextual, incentive, and self-regulatory influences.

During this period, I was teaching the psychotherapy courses at Stanford. I became intrigued by cases in which direct modification of problem behavior not only produced lasting improvements in people’s lives, but fostered generalized benefits in nontreated areas of functioning. For example, once alcoholics were helped to gain sobriety, their lives changed dramatically for the better. I spent several months tracking down such treatments published in obscure journals housed in the musty catacombs of the Stanford library. I emerged bleary-eyed but inspired from the library catacombs to publish the article “Psychotherapy as a learning process” in the Psychological Bulletin (Bandura, 1961). It was organized around six basic principles of behavioral change.

The time was apparently ripe for a new direction in the conceptualization and treatment of behavior. I was flooded with reprint requests from home and abroad across specialties and disciplinary domains. Among the early pioneers in the movement who expressed interest in the article were Hans Eysenck, Joseph Wolpe, Stan Rachman, Albert Ellis, Cyril Franks, Victor Meyer, and Aubrey Yates; some were the early operant analysts, Israel Goldiamond and Ted Ayllon; others were leading psychopathologists, such as Thomas Szasz, Joseph Zubin, David Skakow, Michael Rutter, Richard Lazarus and Norman Garmezy; and still others held prominent positions at the National Institutes of Health, such as David Hamburg. Wolpe liked the article but took issue with one point. He writes:

I have read your paper in the current issue of the Psychological Bulletin with great interest and satisfaction. But there is one point on which I must take issue with you. You suggest that in psychotherapy based on learning theory there is, as with psychoanalysis, a tendency to form “schools”. As far as I am concerned, this is not true in any doctrinaire sense for although there is always a tendency for a following to congregate around an individual, I am prepared to adopt any procedure that can bring about unlearning of undesirable reactions—even if such procedure has its origin in a Skinnerian laboratory!

Eysenck wondered whether the icy clinical waters in the United States would ever thaw:

In England, the winds of change are decidedly blowing in this direction at a greatly increased interest in behaviour therapy. I wonder if there is any likelihood of a similar change in the United States? Clinical psychology, of a semi-analytic kind, seems to be such a vast industry there, with such widely ramified, vested interests that it would probably take a good deal more effort there than here. Anyway, more power to the elbow of those who have seen the light!

Based on this article, Eysenck invited me to contribute a chapter to a volume he was editing, which was the first published volume on behavior therapy. The chapter kept enlarging until it outgrew the assignment. Instead, it turned into the volume, Principles of Behavior Modification (Bandura, 1969). It addressed the influential role of cognitive, vicarious, and self-regulatory mechanisms in human adaptation and personal and social change.

While working on these projects, I was invited to join a panel at the National Institute of Mental Health that reviewed research grant proposals. Applications on behavior therapy were routinely rejected on the grounds that they were simply removing symptoms rather than treating the root causes. I negotiated an understanding with my colleagues on the panel that the quality of a research proposal should be judged by the theory on which it is founded not by the causal models favored by theoretical rivals. I became the primary reviewer for grant proposals addressing issues in behaviorally-oriented treatments. My first reviews and site visit reports were the programs of research conducted by Bijou and Baer at the University of Washington, and Ivar Lovaas’ autism project at UCLA. Both were approved and funded. Behaviorally oriented studies were now receiving a fair hearing based on the conceptual, methodological, and social merits of the proposals.

There were other paths of involvement in the growing network of proponents of behavioral approaches. Wolpe (1958) submitted his manuscript on Psychotherapy by Reciprocal Inhibition to the Stanford Press. The Press sent it to me for advisory evaluation. In my supportive review, I predicted that it will have modest sales at the outset but continue to garner significant sales in years to come in the evolving field of behavior therapy. I invited Arnold Lazarus to Stanford during my sabbatical leave. This greased his relocation from South Africa. When Stunkard became chair of the Stanford Psychiatry Department, I urged him to add a distinguished research-oriented psychiatrist to his staff. We lured Stewart Agras to Stanford.

The 1960’s ushered in remarkable transformative changes in the explanation and modification of human functioning and change. Causal analysis shifted from unconscious psychic dynamics to transactional psychosocial dynamics. Human functioning was construed as the product of the dynamic interplay between personal, behavioral, and environmental influences. Troublesome behavior was viewed as divergent rather than diseased behavior. Functional analysis of human behavior replaced diagnostic labeling that categorized people into psychopathologic types with stigmatizing consequences. Laboratory and controlled field studies of the determinants of human behavior and the mechanisms through which they operate replaced content analyses of interviews. Action oriented treatments replaced interpretive interviews. The modes of treatment were altered in the content, locus, and agents of change.

With regard to content, therapeutic efforts were directed at modifying the actual problems for which people sought help rather than conversing about the problems and their psychodynamic origins. Guided mastery experiences were used to equip people with the competencies, enabling beliefs, and social resources needed to improve the quality of their lives. Efforts were directed not only at enhancing personal capabilities, but also at changing social practices that contribute to behavior problems.

With regard to the locus of change, treatments were typically carried out in the natural settings in which the problems arise so as to enhance the development, generalization, and maintenance of new modes of behavior. Some of the treatments were conducted in homes, schools, workplaces, or in the larger community. Many human problems are social not just individual. The benefits of a natural locus of change figure even more importantly in the modification of adverse practices of social systems. A major issue for a science and practice of human change is whether we confine our efforts to treating the casualties of adverse social practices or also alter the practices producing the casualties.

With regard to the agents of change, behavioral approaches did not view professionals as the exclusive dispensers of treatments. By drawing on the vast resources of talented people to implement change programs under professional guidance, our impact was greatly expanded in scope. For example, training teachers how to promote students’ positive development and reduce problem behavior yielded a continuing, multiplicative impact on students’ sociocognitive development enrolled in future classes as well. Agoraphobics who have conquered their own phobia served as superb field therapists who implement structured treatments empathically and inspire and enable phobic clients through their modeled guidance and support (Bandura, Adams, Hardy, & Howells, 1980).

Treatments should be judged not only in terms of their power to effect change, but also by their social utility. Even if the psychodyamic approaches had proven highly effective, they would be of little social utility. To have to spend years in interpretive conversations would be but a tiny ripple in the vast sea of human problems requiring remedy.

The 1950 era was a time of extraordinarily, rapid change. Within a decade, the field was transformed by a major paradigm shift. New conceptual models, investigating designs, and analytic methodologies were created. New sets of periodicals were launched for the rising stream of interest. New organizations were formed for the advancement of behavioral approaches. New professional conventions and workshops spread the faith.

The transformative changes followed the predictable sequence of all fruitful innovations. Outright rejection was the first reaction. Behavior therapy was regarded not only as superficial symptom removal but dangerous. It would spawn harmful symptom substitution. Psychodynamicists floated apocryphal cases to kill it off. A behavior therapist allegedly got a husband to quit grinding his teeth while sleeping, only to murder his wife the next week! This turned out to be a conceptual homicide rather than a corporal one. My repeated inquiries never produced evidence of a spousal body.

Studies showed that beneficial behavior change often had positive generalized effects. The next social reaction was qualified acceptance. It is fine for superficial problems, like bedwetting but not for serious “ego-laden” human problems.

When we developed the powerful guided mastery treatment at Stanford (Bandura, Blanchard, & Ritter, 1969), I was invited to present our program of research at the Langley Porter Clinic in San Francisco, a stronghold of psychodynamic adherents. The session began with a disparaging introduction to the effect that this young upstart will tell us seasoned analysts how to cure phobias! I explained that my host’s “generous” introduction reminded me of a football contest between Iowa and Notre Dame in South Bend. Iowa scored a touchdown, which tied the score. As the player ran on the field to kick the extra point, coach Evashevski turned to his assistant coach and remarked, “Now there goes a brave soul, a Protestant attempting a conversion before 50,000 Catholics!”

As evidence accumulated that cognitive behavior therapy can successfully treat the full range of dysfunctional psychosocial patterns, the third phase was acceptance by conceptual reinterpretation in accord with one’s cherished theory. Thus, what began as bucking the mainstream in chilly waters, within a few decades, triumphed as the thermal mainstream.

Not all the behavioral folks worshipped at the same theoretical alter. Some went the operant route as providing the best glimpse of the promised land. Others took the sociocognitive route founded on an agentic perspective of human self-development, adaptation, and change. Conceptions of human nature have changed markedly over time. In the early theological conceptions, human nature was the manifestation of original divine design. Evolutionism shifted the conception to the shaping of human nature by selective environmental pressures acting on random mutations devoid of deliberate plans or purposes. The evolution of cognition supplanted aimless environmental selection with proactive agency. To be a sentient agent is to influence intentionally one’s functioning and environmental conditions.

Social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1999, 2001) identifies four core features of human agency: intentionality, forethought, self-reactiveness, and self-reflectiveness. People form intentions that include action plans and strategies for realizing them. The temporal extension of agency involves more than future directed plans. Through forethought people set themselves goals, and anticipate likely outcomes of prospective actions to guide and motivate their efforts. Agents are not only planners and forethinkers. They are self-regulators as well. They adopt personal standards and monitor and regulate their actions by self-reactive influence. They do things that give them satisfaction and a sense of self-worth, and refrain from actions that bring self-censure. People are not only agents of actions. They are self-examiners of their own functioning. They reflect on their efficacy, the soundness of their thoughts and actions, the meaning of their pursuits, and make adjustments if necessary. The agentic capacity enables people to take a hand, individually and collectively, in shaping the character of their lives and social systems.

Vigorous battles were fought over cognitive determinants and their scientific legitimacy. Scientific advances are promoted by two kinds of theories (Nagel, 1961). One form seeks relations between directly observable events but shies away from the mechanisms subserving the observable relations. The second form focuses on the mechanisms that explain the functional relations between observable events. The self-system is not merely a conduit for environmental influences. By exercising self-influence people operate generatively and proactively, not just reactively. Operant analysts took the view that the only legitimate scientific enterprise is one that directly links observable environmental events to observable behavioral events. They contended that cognitive factors can be bypassed because they make no independent contribution to behavior.

In commenting on the issue of observability in scientific inquiry, Nagel (1961) explains that some of the most powerful theories of the natural sciences are not about factors that are “observable”. Physicists, for example, have done remarkably well with atomic theory even though atoms are not given to public view.

The fight over cognitive determinants was not about the legitimacy of inner causes, but about the types of inner determinants that are favored (Bandura, 1995, Bandura, 1996). For example, operant analysts increasingly place the explanatory burden on determinants inside the organism, namely the implanted history of reinforcement. The implanted history is an inferred inner cause not a directly observable one. The dispute over internal determinants is not exclusively between behaviorists and cognitivists. There is a growing rift among operant analysts about the shift of emphasis within their own conceptual framework from models of environment-based control to organism-based control (Machado, 1993).

While behaviorally oriented approaches were gaining widespread acceptance professionally through their demonstrated effectiveness, socially they were stirring up a blustery storm. The popular media were deluging the public with repugnant imagery of brainwashing and frightful scenarios of 1984 and Brave New World dominated by social engineers wielding powerful methods of behavioral control. The hit movie, A Clockwork Orange, graphically portrayed the fiendish nature of behavior modifiers shocking people into submission. Skinner’s (1971) publication, Beyond Freedom and Dignity alarmed the public that the application of these new psychological methods will strip people of their dignity and deprive them of their freedom. The unibomber targeted Jim McConnell at the University of Michigan as his first victim with a tirade about the evils of behavior modification. Lyndon La Rouche, who became a perennial candidate for the US presidency, branded the practitioners of behavioral approaches as “Rockerfeller Nazis”, formally tried some of the leading figures through his tribunal for crimes against humanity, stormed classes at the University of New York at Stony Brook, and issued threats requiring police surveillance of the AABT convention in Chicago. As in any professional practice, there were some appalling applications of behavioral principles, especially in coercive institutional systems, that affirmed and fueled the public’s fears.

At the height of this media frenzy, I began my term as president of the American Psychological Association. A responsible social science must concern itself not only with the advancement of knowledge, but with the social effects of its applications. In keeping with this dual commitment, we formed an interdisciplinary task force to examine the way in which knowledge about how to influence human behavior was used both at the individual and institutional level. The members included leading figures in the field of behavior modification (Sidney Bijou, James Holland, Leondard Krasner, Terrence Wilson), a distinguished psychiatrist representing a nonbehavioral viewpoint (Jerome Frank), a philosopher who provided a broad perspective on the ethical issues involved in the application of behavior modification (Hugh Lacey), an attorney and director of the Mental Health Law Project in Washington to provide legal expertise (Paul Friedman), a law professor from the University of Arizona who wrote a major legal analysis on the use of token economies with psychiatric patients (David Wexler), and a psychologist from the National Institute of Mental Health (Stephanie Stolz) who was involved in various activities at the Institute related to the standards and ethics of psychological interventions.

Their wide-ranging analysis, which was published in the volume, Ethical Issues in Behavior Modification (Stolz, 1978), provided a thoughtful evaluation of existing applications and a set of standards for ethical practice that helped to dispel the frightful misconceptions propagated by the mass media. Growing applications of our knowledge for personal and social betterment not only won public acceptance, but cognitive behavior treatments were being cited as the method of choice for diverse aspects of the human condition. This fascinating Odessey involved dual transformative changes—a paradigm shift in theory and practice as well as a sweeping change in public acceptance.