The term neurodiversity refers to variation in the human brain regarding sociability, learning, attention, mood and other mental functions.
It was coined in 1998 by sociologist Judy Singer, who helped popularise the concept along with journalist Harvey Blume. It emerged as a challenge to prevailing views that certain neurodevelopmental disorders are inherently pathological and instead adopts the social model of disability, in which societal barriers are the main contributing factor that disables people. This view is especially popular within the autism rights movement. The subsequent neurodiversity paradigm has been controversial among disability advocates, with opponents saying that its conceptualisation does not reflect the realities of individuals who have high support needs.
Brief History
The word neurodiversity is attributed to Judy Singer, a social scientist who has described herself as “likely somewhere on the autistic spectrum” and used the term in her sociology honours thesis published in 1999. The term represented a move away from previous “mother-blaming” theories about the cause of autism. Singer had been in correspondence with Blume as a result of their mutual interest in autism, and though he did not credit Singer, the word first appeared in print in an article by Blume in The Atlantic on 30 September 1998.
Some authors also credit the earlier work of autistic advocate Jim Sinclair in advancing the concept of neurodiversity. Sinclair was a principal early organiser of the international online autism community. Sinclair’s 1993 speech, “Don’t Mourn For Us”, emphasized autism as a way of being: “It is not possible to separate the person from the autism.” In a New York Times piece written by American journalist and writer Harvey Blume on 30 June 1997, Blume described the foundation of neurodiversity using the term “neurological pluralism”. Blume was an early advocate who predicted the role the Internet would play in fostering the international neurodiversity movement.
The term “neurodiversity” has since been applied to other conditions and has taken on a more general meaning; for example, the Developmental Adult Neurodiversity Association (DANDA) in the UK encompasses developmental coordination disorder, ADHD, Asperger’s syndrome, and related conditions.
Within Disability Rights Movements
The neurodiversity paradigm was taken up first by individuals on the autism spectrum. Subsequently, it was applied to other neurodevelopmental conditions such as ADHD, developmental speech disorders, dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia, dysnomia, intellectual disability and Tourette syndrome, as well as schizophrenia, and some mental health conditions such as bipolarity, schizoaffective disorder, antisocial personality disorder, dissociative disorders, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Neurodiversity advocates denounce the framing of autism, ADHD, dyslexia, and other neurodevelopmental disorders as requiring medical intervention to “cure” or “fix” them, and instead promote support systems such as inclusion-focused services, accommodations, communication and assistive technologies, occupational training, and independent living support. The intention is for individuals to receive support that honours authentic forms of human diversity, self-expression, and being, rather than treatment which coerces or forces them to adopt normative ideas of normality, or to conform to a clinical ideal.
Proponents of neurodiversity strive to reconceptualize autism and related conditions in society by the following measures: acknowledging that neurodiversity does not require a cure; changing the language from the current “condition, disease, disorder, or illness”-based nomenclature and “broaden[ing] the understanding of healthy or independent living”; acknowledging new types of autonomy; and giving non-neurotypical individuals more control over their treatment, including the type, timing, and whether there should be treatment at all.
A 2009 study separated 27 students (with autism, dyslexia, developmental coordination disorder, ADHD, and stroke), into two categories of self-view: “a ‘difference’ view—where neurodiversity was seen as a difference incorporating a set of strengths and weaknesses, or a ‘medical/deficit’ view—where neurodiversity was seen as a disadvantageous medical condition.” They found that, although all of the students reported uniformly difficult schooling careers involving exclusion, abuse, and bullying, those who viewed themselves from a difference view (41% of the study cohort) “indicated higher academic self-esteem and confidence in their abilities and many (73%) expressed considerable career ambitions with positive and clear goals.” Many of these students reported gaining this view of themselves through contact with neurodiversity advocates in online support groups.
A 2013 online survey, which aimed to assess conceptions of autism and neurodiversity, found that “a deficit-as-difference conception of autism suggests the importance of harnessing autistic traits in developmentally beneficial ways, transcending a false dichotomy between celebrating differences and ameliorating deficit.”
Neurodiversity advocates point out that neurodiverse people often have exceptional abilities such as hyperfocus alongside their deficits. In particular, autistic people may have exceptional memory or even savant skills. In the autistic population, even those without savant skills are more likely than those in the general population to have exceptional knowledge or abilities in narrow domains.
Controversy
The neurodiversity paradigm is controversial in autism advocacy. The dominant paradigm is one which pathologizes human brains that diverge from those considered typical. From this perspective, these brains have medical conditions which should be treated.
A common criticism is that the neurodiversity paradigm is too widely encompassing and that its conception should exclude those whose functioning is more severely impaired. Autistic advocate and interdisciplinary educator Nick Walker offers the distinction that neurodivergencies refer specifically to “pervasive neurocognitive differences” that are “intimately related to the formation and constitution of the self,” in contrast to medical conditions such as epilepsy.
Neurodiversity advocate John Elder Robison agrees that neurological difference may sometimes produce disability, but at the same time he argues that the disability caused by neurological difference may be inseparable from the strengths it provides. “99 neurologically identical people fail to solve a problem, it’s often the 1% fellow who’s different who holds the key. Yet that person may be disabled or disadvantaged most or all of the time. To neurodiversity proponents, people are disabled because they are at the edges of the bell curve; not because they are sick or broken.” He therefore argues for the accommodation of neurological difference, while also recognising that it can produce disability.
The practitioner-scholar model is an advanced educational and operational model that is focused on practical application of scholarly knowledge.
It was initially developed to train clinical psychologists but has since been adapted by other specialty programmes such as business, public health, and law.
In 1973, a new clinical psychology training model was proposed at the historic Vail Conference on Professional Training in Psychology in Vail, Colorado – the practitioner-scholar model – providing yet another path of training for those primarily interested in clinical practice.
Prior to this, in 1949, a ground breaking conference was held in Boulder, Colorado, endorsing a model of study for clinicians that to this day has dominated clinical programs at most University based institutions: the scientist-practitioner model, designed to provide a rigorous grounding in research methods and a breadth of exposure to clinical psychology.
Before this, research scientists had dominated the field of psychological work, and this second, new model, known as the ‘Vail’ model, called for more practitioner-oriented course work.
Features
Several features differentiate the practitioner-scholar model from the other two:
Training in this model is more strongly focused on clinical practice than either of the other two.
Many (but not all) of these training programs grant a Psy.D. degree rather than a Ph.D. or Ed.D.
Admissions criteria may place more of an emphasis on personal qualities of the applicants or clinically related work experience.
Accepts a much larger number of students than the typical Ph.D. degree.
These programs are typically housed in a greater variety of institutional settings than are research scientist or scientist-practitioner programmes.
Like scientist-practitioner training, practitioner-scholar training is characterised by core courses in both basic and applied psychology, supervision during extensive clinical experience, and research consumption. Both require predoctoral internships that are usually full-time appointments in universities, medical centres, community mental health centres, or hospitals.
Recovery coaching is a form of strengths-based support for people with addictions or in recovery from alcohol, other drugs, co-dependency, or other addictive behaviours. They work with people who have active addictions, as well as those already in recovery. Recovery coaches are helpful for making decisions about what to do with one’s life and the part addiction or recovery plays in it. They help clients find ways to stop addiction (abstinence), or reduce harm associated with addictive behaviours. These coaches can help a client find resources for harm reduction, detox, treatment, family support and education, local or online support groups; or help a client create a change plan to recover on their own.
Recovery coaches do not offer primary treatment for addiction, do not diagnose, and are not associated with any particular method or means of recovery. They support any positive change, helping persons coming home from treatment to avoid relapse, build community support for recovery, or work on life goals not related to addiction such as relationships, work, or education. Recovery coaching is action-oriented with an emphasis on improving present life and reaching future goals.
Recovery coaching is unlike most therapy because coaches do not address the past, do not work to heal trauma, and put little emphasis on feelings. Recovery coaches are unlike licensed addiction counsellors in that they are non-clinical and do not diagnose or treat addiction or any mental health issues.
Similar to life and business coaching, recovery coaching uses a partnership model wherein the client is considered to be the expert on his or her life, the one who decides what is worth doing, and the coach provides expertise in supporting successful change. Recovery coaching focuses on achieving goals important to the client, not just recovery-related goals. The coach asks questions and offers reflections to help the client reach clarity and decide what steps to take. Recovery coaching emphasizes honouring values and making principle-based decisions, creating a clear plan of action, and using current strengths to reach future goals. The coach provides accountability to help the client stay on track.
Other Similar Terms
The moniker “recovery coach” is used for a variety of specific addiction support roles. The main distinction is between the professional or highly compensated recovery coach and the volunteer or agency-employed peer recovery support specialist. Recovery support roles include the following:
Sober Escort
A sober escort, or travel escort, is a paid sober travel companion or travel escort that accompanies a client to an event, to treatment, or to court, to ensure the client maintains sobriety. Transportation can be a significant challenge to a newly abstinent person. Whether the client is interested in maintaining an ongoing recovery or just needs to stay abstinent for a period of time, getting from point A to point B can be difficult. This version of a recovery coach may be required to transport a person in recovery across town, across the state, or across the county.
Sober Companion
A sober companion or sober coach works full-time with the client: full work days, nights, weekends or extended periods where the coach is by the client’s side 24 hours a day. This long-term option can begin with treatment discharge and may develop into a coaching relationship that continues for several weeks, months or longer.
When returning home from treatment, the client trades a secure, drug-free environment for a situation where they know there are problems. The sober companion may provide the symbolic and functional safety of the treatment centre. This coach will introduce the client to 12-step meetings, guide them past former triggers for their addiction, and support them in developing a recovery plan. The sober companion helps the client make lifestyle changes in order to experience a better quality of life in the first crucial days after discharge from a treatment centre. Sometimes a recovery coach is necessary to keep a client sober in order to regain custody of a child.
Recovery Support Specialist
A recovery support specialist (RSS) or a peer recovery support specialist (PRSS) is a non-clinical person who meets with clients in a recovery community organisation or goes off-site to visit a client. They may volunteer for these coaching services, or be employed by a recovery community organisation for a low wage. The recovery support specialist ensures there is a contract for engagement, called a personal recovery plan. This is a key component of the recovery management model, which all RSSs follow. These specialists are sometimes also called “recovery coaches”. William L. White, researcher and original author of the recovery management model, uses the term “recovery support specialist”. This is referenced in the paper titled “Recovery Oriented System of Care (ROSC) Substance Use Disorder (SUD) Glossary of Terms”, compiled by the Bureau of Substance Abuse and Addiction Services (BSAAS). Another term for a peer recovery support specialist is “peer mentor“.
Family Recovery Coach
The family plays an important role for a person in recovery but is often neglected by traditional models of recovery. Specially trained family recovery coaches strive to create a calm, objective, non-judgmental environment for the family of a recovering addict. They are knowledgeable in specific models that help the family cope with the changes that they have gone through living with an active addict or living with a recovering addict. Regardless of an addict’s choices, working with a family recovery coach may help a spouse, partner, or loved ones avoid the mental obsession that plagues many families affected by addiction and learn to lead sane and productive lives.
Phone or Virtual Recovery Coach
A phone or virtual recovery coaching relationship may be established to continue beyond the face-to-face meeting of a client and a recovery coach. Today, many treatment centres are embracing virtual recovery coaching, and linking phone or virtual recovery coaches with clients prior to leaving treatment, as a way to continue the connection to the treatment centre, as well as meeting the guidelines of an aftercare programme. Online virtual coaching programmes also exist, either fee-based or for free, that will help anyone apply the methods of recovery (e.g. developing a recovery plan and building recovery capital), whether the client has completed a stay at a treatment centre or has relapsed many months after treatment.
Legal Support Specialist
Lawyers dealing with criminal drug cases or drug courts sometimes request a type of recovery coaching to ensure a client (perhaps under house arrest, enrolled in a drug court outpatient programme or pending trial) stays sober as per the law’s mandate. Recovery coaches with the required certification and legal knowledge are contracted for this purpose. Certified Peer Recovery Support Specialists, Licensed clinical social workers or certified alcohol and drug counsellors with training in assessments can perform these tasks. The court will request them to perform a client assessment and work with the client on a continuing basis and re-assess after a period of time. The coach will then draft a letter to the court and offer suggested placement in a residential alcohol/drug treatment centre, an outpatient treatment programme, or a sober living facility. A legal support specialist can also appear in court with the client and provide transportation to or from the courthouse.
In the Emergency Departments of Hospitals
The AnchorED programme, developed in 2014 with a group of Rhode Island hospitals and the Anchor Community Recovery Centre in Providence RI, was launched in an attempt to reduce the instance of accidental opioid overdose by connecting overdose patients with Certified Recovery Coaches in the emergency departments of regional hospitals. The AnchorED programme is now a benchmark in this field and is used nationwide. This programme is meant to connect people experiencing an overdose, or revived from an overdose in the ED in the hospital emergency departments with peer-to-peer recovery support. Specially trained ED Peer Recovery Specialists are on call to all Emergency Departments 24/7 and called in when individuals are transported to a hospital emergency department having survived an opiate overdose. The hours immediately after an overdose are medically risky, but they also present a unique opportunity. The AnchorED trained recovery coaches will make sure that patients and their families know that substance use disorder is a medical condition and that recovery is possible. Recovery Coaches engage with those who have survived an opiate overdose, listen and be present to answer questions patients may have about recovery supports or treatment options. These coaches also provide recovery and treatment information to family members. These same coaches offer post-discharge recovery contact and support to the revived patients for a period of weeks.
Brief History
Alida Schuyler, a coach credentialed by the International Coach Federation (ICF), who was in recovery from addiction, wrote the first recovery coach certification training programme specifically aimed at training students to coach people with addictions. She also created the first special interest group for recovery coaches, and she co-founded the non-profit Recovery Coaches International with Andrew Susskind.
William L. White used the term “recovery coach” in his 2006 paper “Sponsor, Recovery Coach, Addiction Counselor”, but later adopted the term “peer recovery support specialist” to emphasize a community-based peer model of addiction support.
White’s Recovery Management model, adapted from the Minnesota Model, includes recovery coaching (peer recovery support specialist) and was developed in 2006. Many recovery coaches use different recovery approaches adapted from the Minnesota Model. Schuyler developed a professional model of life coaching for addiction recovery by blending the Minnesota Model and Harm Reduction model with the core competencies of the ICF.
Through the research of White, David Loveland, Ernest Kurtz, and Mark Saunders, and the efforts funded through Faces and Voices of Recovery, the Fayette Companies, Great Lakes Addiction Technology Transfer Centre, the Chestnut Health Systems and many other universities, research on recovery coaching is progressing rapidly. The theory has been developed that recovery coaching reduces relapse by providing ongoing support developing healthy problem-solving skills and self efficacy (reaching worthwhile goals), as well as connecting with the local recovery community for additional support. In other words, recovery coaching helps the client develop the cognitive skills necessary for considering options and consequences, making clear choices, planning, and taking actions toward a healthier life and recovery goals.
Recovery coaching is currently offered by some notable 12-step treatment centres as well as several private “academies” and “institutes” with certifications that are usually country and/or state specific. Be sure to check local laws for compliance.
Addiction Recovery Support Groups
Recovery coaches encourage (but most do not require) participation in groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Al-Anon, or non 12-step groups such as LifeRing Secular Recovery, SMART Recovery, Moderation Management, and Women for Sobriety. They also work with individuals who dislike groups to help them find their own path to recovery.
Niches within Recovery Coaching
Recovery coaches may work with any type of addict. There are also niches within recovery coaching such as those who work exclusively with families of recovering individuals, or a financial coach who works on rebuilding an overspender’s credit rating. Many peer recovery support specialists work with individuals who have left the prison system and are attempting to rebuild their lives. Some recovery coaches specialise in emotional and financial recovery after divorce.
A few recovery coaches specialise in merging the characteristics of recovery coaching within a life coaching framework. This concept takes into account the often overlooked reality that those in early recovery tend to have unique difficulties in applying the realities of day-to-day living within their new sober lifestyle. Such unique coaching styles are able to span far beyond the recovery component and properly introduce outside influencers, such as family relationships, employment, schooling, and relationships.
For those requiring a higher level of care, such as medical detoxification for heroin or opiate withdrawal, or 24/7 sober companion and oversight services, there exist recovery coaching firms which specialise in providing what could often be described as an alternative to inpatient or outpatient treatment. Companies like The Addictions Coach and others which have nationwide credentials are able to essentially bring the addiction treatment component to the client, no matter where he or she may be located.
What Recovery Coaches Do
Recovery coaches support the client in achieving and maintaining a solid foundation in recovery, and building upon recovery to achieve other life goals that make recovery worthwhile. David Loveland and Michael Boyle wrote a lengthy manual on recovery coaching and how to guide an individual through creating their recovery plan. William White, preeminent scholar on addictions, worked closely with the Philadelphia community-based recovery centre PRO-ACT to prepare a document outlining the “Ethical Guidelines for the Delivery of Peer-Based Recovery Support Services”. These documents provide a discussion of what a recovery coach does. Also included in these guidelines are the definition of coaching roles as they relate to others in the realm of personal conduct and conduct in service relationships with the community service provider or treatment team. White’s document presents a simple statement of core competencies.
The scientist-practitioner model, also called the Boulder Model, is a training model for graduate programmes that provide applied psychologists with a foundation in research and scientific practice. It was initially developed to guide clinical psychology graduate programmes accredited by the American Psychological Association (APA).
David Shakow created the first version of the model and introduced it to the academic community. From the years of 1941 until 1949, Shakow presented the model to a series of committees where the core tenets developed further. The model changed minimally from its original version because it was received extremely well at all of the conferences. At the Boulder Conference of 1949, this model of training for clinical graduate programmes was purposed. Here, it received accreditation by the psychological community and the American Psychological Association.
The goal of the scientist-practitioner model is to increase scientific growth within clinical psychology in the United States. It calls for graduate programmes to engage and develop psychologists’ background in psychological theory, field work, and research methodology. The scientist-practitioner model urges clinicians to allow empirical research to influence their applied practice; while simultaneously, allowing their experiences during applied practice to shape their future research questions. Therefore, continuously advancing, refining and perfecting the scientific paradigms of the field.
After World War I, returning veterans reported decreased life satisfaction after serving. This was primarily due to the lack of clinical psychologists available to treat victims of “shell-shock” (now known as post traumatic stress disorder). At this time, psychology was primarily an academic discipline, with just a few thousand practicing clinicians. The Second World War also influenced the development of the Boulder Model by fuelling the growth of clinical psychology. Psychiatrists in the US military requested help from psychologists in efforts to treat “psychological and psychiatric casualties the war was producing”.
In order to increase life satisfaction for World War II veterans the federal government increased funding to clinical psychology graduate programmes and created the GI Bill. As a result, after the war Psychology graduate programmes flourished with applicants and resources. The field’s increasing popularity called for action, by the academic community, to establish universal standards for educating graduate psychologists. Although the model has not been as prominent in industrial/organisational (I/O) psychology, Campbell acknowledged that the model later influenced I/O psychology.
Development
David Shakow is largely responsible for the ideas and developments of the Boulder Model. On 03 May 1941, while he was chief psychologist at Worcester State Hospital, Shakow drafted his first training plan to educate clinical psychology graduate students during a Conference at The New York Psychiatric Institute, now referred to as Shakow’s 1941 American Association for Applied Psychology Report. In the report, Shakow outlined a 4-year education track:
Year 1: establish a strong foundation in psychology and other applied sciences.
Year 2: learn therapeutic principles and practices needed to treat patients.
Year 3: internship, gain supervised field experience.
Year 4: complete research dissertation.
Overall, the report aimed to help clinical graduate students perfect their abilities to complete diagnoses, therapy, and scientific research. The report was endorsed and recommended its review to the American Association for Applied Psychology (AAAP). Later in the year, the AAAP accepted the recommendation and planned a conference to address training guidelines for graduate programmes. The following year the Penn State Conference was held with 3 subcommittees containing representatives from educational institutions, health establishments, and business/industry. These measures were taken to ensure that the final model was not biased towards Shakow’s profession, although only minute changes were made to his original model.
In 1944, a conference was held at the Vineland training school to reexamine Shakow’s report. The American Association for Applied Psychology integrated into the American Psychological Association. Meanwhile, increased demand for professional psychologists prompted the United States Public Health Service (USPHS) and the Veteran Administrative (VA) to increase funding for clinical psychology graduate programs. With more resources at hand, APA president, Carl Rogers asked David Shakow to chair The Committee on Training in Clinical Psychology (CTCP). This committee’s primarily responsibility was to decide upon an effective model for education at the graduate level.
Shakow’s revised report was published in the Journal of Consulting Psychology in 1945 titled Graduate Internship Training in Psychology. Shakow presented his published report to the CTCP and received minimal critique. So, the committee submitted his report to the APA for approval. The APA endorsed Shakow’s training model and published it in the American Psychologist declared as the set agenda for an upcoming conference discussing training methods in clinical graduate programs. By December, the report was known as “The Shakow Report”.
The CTCP members made site visits and evaluations of universities who had clinical graduate programmes. At a joint meeting of the USPHS and the CTCP, a six-week conference was suggested to discuss reported inconsistencies in current clinical training programmes. The conference would be sponsored by the APA and would be granted $40,000 in financial backing by the USPHS.
In January 1949, a planning meeting for the upcoming conference was held in Chicago by members of the CTCP and representatives from the APA board of directors. Here, details including the conference’s name, attendants, and location were decided upon. The planning committee of 1949, agreed to name the conference, The Boulder Conference on Graduate Education in Clinical Psychology, and invited participants from a variety of disciplines. The conference would be held at the University of Colorado at Boulder, thereby allowing participants to attend the proceeding annual meeting of the APA scheduled in Denver.
Boulder Conference
The Boulder Conference met from 20 August to 03 September 1949. A total of 73 committee members attended the conference representing fields of academic and applied psychology, medicine, and educational disciplines. This conference’s goal was to agree upon a standard training plan for clinical psychologists. The Shakow Report was on the agenda, and was received with unanimous support. Due to this consensus, the Shakow report is now referred to as the Boulder Model.
This model aims to teach clinical graduate students to adhere to the scientific method when executing their applied practices. The model states that in order to master these techniques, graduate students need to attend seminars and lectures that strengthen their background in psychology, complete monitored field work, and receive research training. Ultimately, most psychologists specialise in either research academia or applied practice, but this model argues that having sufficient knowledge in the entire field will enhance a psychologist’s ability to perform their specialty.
Criticisms
Despite the Boulder Model’s widespread adoption by graduate psychology programmes, it was met with mounting criticism after its instalment in 1949. The debate over the Boulder Model’s value centres around an array of criticisms:
That the Boulder Model lacks validity, meaning that the Boulder Model does not actually help graduate students become better scientists and practitioners.
That the Boulder Model monopolises the energies of students, demanding that they spend a large portion of their graduate careers studying research methods that they will not use in professional practice, and depriving them of intensive and extensive formal training and apprenticeship in the art and craft of psychotherapy.
That the Boulder Model promotes a view of humans and their suffering that has been simplified to the point at which it does not yield significantly clinically useful guidance to determine practice. Further, the tendency to focus on symptoms and discrete patient characteristics promotes an instrumentalising view of people in distress that filters into the clinical work of students.
That diversity of clinical approaches is restricted as programs emphasize those methods that can be easily measured.
That the version of the scientific method taught in Boulder Model programmes stresses data gathering techniques over critical thinking skills and theory-building, setting it apart from the so-called hard sciences in its uncritical approach to empiricism.
That publication history tends to eclipse clinical sensitivity and depth in the evaluation and promotion of students.
That the Boulder Model promotes short-cycle research over longitudinal and more intricate studies that cannot be completed within the timeframe of a training cycle. Thus, that minority of students who do follow a more research-oriented career path are not trained in, or trained to respect, qualitative, longer-term or more complex studies of human psychology.
In short, that the skills needed for practice in clinical psychology versus those needed for research are not compatible.
Criticisms continued to accumulate until 1965 at the Chicago Conference. Here, it was recommended that clinical graduate programmes restructured their training methods for students who wanted to focus their careers on applied practices. This idea was reinforced by the Clark Committee of 1967. The committee developed the practitioner-oriented model for clinical graduate programmes, and presented it at the Vail Conference in 1973. This model was accepted readily to coexist with the Boulder Model, which is still used by many psychology graduate programmes today.
Core Tenets
Core tenets of the today’s model included in the current Boulder Model:
Giving psychological assessment, testing, and intervention in accordance with scientifically based protocols.
Accessing and integrating scientific findings to make informed healthcare decisions for patients.
Questioning and testing hypotheses that are relevant to current healthcare.
Building and maintaining effective cross-disciplinary relationships with professionals in other fields.
Research-based training and support to other health professions in the process of providing psychological care.
Contribute to practice-based research and development to improve the quality of health care.
1935 – Frances Cress Welsing, American psychiatrist and author (d. 2016).
People (Deaths)
1980 – Erich Fromm, German psychologist and philosopher (b. 1900).
Frances Cress Welsing
Frances Luella Welsing (née Cress; 18 March 1935 to 02 January 2016) was an American psychiatrist. She has been described by critics as a black supremacist. Her 1970 essay, The Cress Theory of Colour-Confrontation and Racism (White Supremacy), offered her interpretation of what she described as the origins of white supremacy culture.
She was the author of The Isis Papers: The Keys to the Colours (1991).
Erich Fromm
Erich Seligmann Fromm (23 March 1900 to 18 March 1980) was a German social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher, and democratic socialist. He was a German Jew who fled the Nazi regime and settled in the US. He was one of the founders of The William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Psychology in New York City and was associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory.
1877 – Otto Gross, Austrian-German psychoanalyst and philosopher (d. 1920).
1922 – Patrick Suppes, American psychologist and philosopher (d. 2014).
Otto Gross
Otto Hans Adolf Gross (17 March 1877 to 13 February 1920) was an Austrian psychoanalyst. A maverick early disciple of Sigmund Freud, he later became an anarchist and joined the utopian Ascona community.
His father Hans Gross was a judge turned pioneering criminologist. Otto initially collaborated with him, and then turned against his determinist ideas on character.
A champion of an early form of anti-psychiatry and sexual liberation, he also developed an anarchist form of depth psychology (which rejected the civilising necessity of psychological repression proposed by Freud). He adopted a modified form of the proto-feminist and neo-pagan theories of Johann Jakob Bachofen, with which he attempted to return civilisation to a ‘golden age’ of non-hierarchy. Gross was ostracised from the larger psychoanalytic movement, and was not included in histories of the psychoanalytic and psychiatric establishments. He died in poverty.
Greatly influenced by the philosophy of Max Stirner and Friedrich Nietzsche and the political theories of Peter Kropotkin, he in turn influenced D.H. Lawrence (through Gross’s affair with Frieda von Richthofen), Franz Kafka and other artists, including Franz Jung and other founders of Berlin Dada. His influence on psychology was more limited. Carl Jung claimed his entire worldview changed when he attempted to analyse Gross and partially had the tables turned on him.
He became addicted to drugs in South America where he served as a naval doctor. He was hospitalised several times for drug addiction, sometimes losing his guardianship of himself to his father in the process. As a Bohemian drug user from youth, as well as an advocate of free love, he is sometimes credited as a founding grandfather of 20th-century counterculture.
Patrick Suppes
Patrick Colonel Suppes (17 March 1922 to 17 November 2014) was an American philosopher who made significant contributions to philosophy of science, the theory of measurement, the foundations of quantum mechanics, decision theory, psychology and educational technology. He was the Lucie Stern Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Stanford University and until January 2010 was the Director of the Education Program for Gifted Youth also at Stanford.
Early Life and Career
Suppes was born on 17 March 1922, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He grew up as an only child, later with a half brother George who was born in 1943 after Patrick had entered the army. His grandfather, C.E. Suppes, had moved to Oklahoma from Ohio. Suppes’ father and grandfather were independent oil men. His mother died when he was a young boy. He was raised by his stepmother, who married his father before he was six years old. His parents did not have much formal education.
Suppes began college at the University of Oklahoma in 1939, but transferred to the University of Chicago in his second year, citing boredom with intellectual life in Oklahoma as his primary motivation. In his third year, at the insistence of his family, Suppes attended the University of Tulsa, majoring in physics, before entering the Army Reserves in 1942. In 1943 he returned to the University of Chicago and graduated with a B.S. in meteorology, and was stationed shortly thereafter at the Solomon Islands to serve during World War II.
Suppes was discharged from the US Army Air Force in 1946. In January 1947 he entered Columbia University as a graduate student in philosophy as a student of Ernest Nagel and received a PhD in 1950. In 1952 he went to Stanford University, and from 1959 to 1992 he was the director of the Institute for Mathematical Studies in the Social Sciences (IMSSS). He would subsequently become the Lucie Stern Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, at Stanford.
Computer-Aided Learning
In the 1960s Suppes and Richard C. Atkinson (the future president of the University of California) conducted experiments in using computers to teach math and reading to school children in the Palo Alto area. Stanford’s Education Programme for Gifted Youth and Computer Curriculum Corporation (CCC, now named Pearson Education Technologies) are indirect descendants of those early experiments. At Stanford, Suppes was instrumental in encouraging the development of high-technology companies that were springing up in the field of educational software up into the 1990s, (such as Bien Logic).
One computer used in Suppes and Atkinson’s Computer-assisted Instruction (CAI) experiments was the specialized IBM 1500 Instructional System. Seeded by a research grant in 1964 from the US Department of Education to the Institute for Mathematical Studies in the Social Sciences at Stanford University, the IBM 1500 CAI system was initially prototyped at the Brentwood Elementary School (Ravenswood City School District) in East Palo Alto, California by Suppes. The students first used the system in 1966.
Suppes’ Dial-a-Drill programme was a touchtone phone interface for CAI. Ten schools around Manhattan were involved in the programme which delivered three lessons per week by telephone. Dial-a-Drill adjusted the routine for students who answered two questions incorrectly. The system went online in March 1969. Touchtone telephones were installed in the homes of children participating in the programme. Field workers educated parents on the benefits of the programme and collected feedback.
Decision Theory
During the 1950s and 1960s Suppes collaborated with Donald Davidson on decision theory, at Stanford. Their initial work followed lines of thinking which had been anticipated in 1926 by Frank P. Ramsey, and involved experimental testing of their theories, culminating in the 1957 monograph Decision Making: An Experimental Approach. Such commentators as Kirk Ludwig trace the origins of Davidson’s theory of radical interpretation to his formative work with Suppes.
The theory of recapitulation, also called the biogenetic law or embryological parallelism – often expressed using Ernst Haeckel’s phrase “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” – is a historical hypothesis that the development of the embryo of an animal, from fertilization to gestation or hatching (ontogeny), goes through stages resembling or representing successive adult stages in the evolution of the animal’s remote ancestors (phylogeny). It was formulated in the 1820s by Étienne Serres based on the work of Johann Friedrich Meckel, after whom it is also known as Meckel-Serres law.
Since embryos also evolve in different ways, the shortcomings of the theory had been recognised by the early 20th century, and it had been relegated to “biological mythology” by the mid-20th century.
Analogies to recapitulation theory have been formulated in other fields, including cognitive development and music criticism.
Embryology
Meckel, Serres, and Geoffroy
The idea of recapitulation was first formulated in biology from the 1790s onwards by the German natural philosophers Johann Friedrich Meckel and Carl Friedrich Kielmeyer, and by Étienne Serres after which, Marcel Danesi states, it soon gained the status of a supposed biogenetic law.
The embryological theory was formalised by Serres in 1824-1826, based on Meckel’s work, in what became known as the “Meckel-Serres Law”. This attempted to link comparative embryology with a “pattern of unification” in the organic world. It was supported by Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, and became a prominent part of his ideas. It suggested that past transformations of life could have been through environmental causes working on the embryo, rather than on the adult as in Lamarckism. These naturalistic ideas led to disagreements with Georges Cuvier. The theory was widely supported in the Edinburgh and London schools of higher anatomy around 1830, notably by Robert Edmond Grant, but was opposed by Karl Ernst von Baer’s ideas of divergence, and attacked by Richard Owen in the 1830s.
Haeckel
Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) attempted to synthesize the ideas of Lamarckism and Goethe’s Naturphilosophie with Charles Darwin’s concepts. While often seen as rejecting Darwin’s theory of branching evolution for a more linear Lamarckian view of progressive evolution, this is not accurate: Haeckel used the Lamarckian picture to describe the ontogenetic and phylogenetic history of individual species, but agreed with Darwin about the branching of all species from one, or a few, original ancestors. Since early in the twentieth century, Haeckel’s “biogenetic law” has been refuted on many fronts.
Haeckel formulated his theory as “Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny”. The notion later became simply known as the recapitulation theory. Ontogeny is the growth (size change) and development (structure change) of an individual organism; phylogeny is the evolutionary history of a species. Haeckel claimed that the development of advanced species passes through stages represented by adult organisms of more primitive species. Otherwise put, each successive stage in the development of an individual represents one of the adult forms that appeared in its evolutionary history.
For example, Haeckel proposed that the pharyngeal grooves between the pharyngeal arches in the neck of the human embryo not only roughly resembled gill slits of fish, but directly represented an adult “fishlike” developmental stage, signifying a fishlike ancestor. Embryonic pharyngeal slits, which form in many animals when the thin branchial plates separating pharyngeal pouches and pharyngeal grooves perforate, open the pharynx to the outside. Pharyngeal arches appear in all tetrapod embryos: in mammals, the first pharyngeal arch develops into the lower jaw (Meckel’s cartilage), the malleus and the stapes.
Haeckel produced several embryo drawings that often overemphasized similarities between embryos of related species. Modern biology rejects the literal and universal form of Haeckel’s theory, such as its possible application to behavioural ontogeny, i.e. the psychomotor development of young animals and human children.
Contemporary Criticism
Haeckel’s drawings misrepresented observed human embryonic development to such an extent that he attracted the opposition of several members of the scientific community, including the anatomist Wilhelm His, who had developed a rival “causal-mechanical theory” of human embryonic development. His’s work specifically criticised Haeckel’s methodology, arguing that the shapes of embryos were caused most immediately by mechanical pressures resulting from local differences in growth. These differences were, in turn, caused by “heredity”. His compared the shapes of embryonic structures to those of rubber tubes that could be slit and bent, illustrating these comparisons with accurate drawings. Stephen Jay Gould noted in his 1977 book Ontogeny and Phylogeny that His’s attack on Haeckel’s recapitulation theory was far more fundamental than that of any empirical critic, as it effectively stated that Haeckel’s “biogenetic law” was irrelevant.
Darwin proposed that embryos resembled each other since they shared a common ancestor, which presumably had a similar embryo, but that development did not necessarily recapitulate phylogeny: he saw no reason to suppose that an embryo at any stage resembled an adult of any ancestor. Darwin supposed further that embryos were subject to less intense selection pressure than adults, and had therefore changed less.
Modern Status
Modern evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo) follows von Baer, rather than Darwin, in pointing to active evolution of embryonic development as a significant means of changing the morphology of adult bodies. Two of the key principles of evo-devo, namely that changes in the timing (heterochrony) and positioning (heterotopy) within the body of aspects of embryonic development would change the shape of a descendant’s body compared to an ancestor’s, were however first formulated by Haeckel in the 1870s. These elements of his thinking about development have thus survived, whereas his theory of recapitulation has not.
The Haeckelian form of recapitulation theory is considered defunct. Embryos do undergo a period or phylotypic stage where their morphology is strongly shaped by their phylogenetic position, rather than selective pressures, but that means only that they resemble other embryos at that stage, not ancestral adults as Haeckel had claimed. The modern view is summarised by the University of California Museum of Palaeontology:
Embryos do reflect the course of evolution, but that course is far more intricate and quirky than Haeckel claimed. Different parts of the same embryo can even evolve in different directions. As a result, the Biogenetic Law was abandoned, and its fall freed scientists to appreciate the full range of embryonic changes that evolution can produce—an appreciation that has yielded spectacular results in recent years as scientists have discovered some of the specific genes that control development.
Applications to Other Areas
The idea that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny has been applied to some other areas.
Cognitive Development
English philosopher Herbert Spencer was one of the most energetic proponents of evolutionary ideas to explain many phenomena. In 1861, five years before Haeckel first published on the subject, Spencer proposed a possible basis for a cultural recapitulation theory of education with the following claim:
If there be an order in which the human race has mastered its various kinds of knowledge, there will arise in every child an aptitude to acquire these kinds of knowledge in the same order… Education is a repetition of civilization in little.
G. Stanley Hall used Haeckel’s theories as the basis for his theories of child development. His most influential work, “Adolescence: Its Psychology and Its Relations to Physiology, Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion and Education” in 1904 suggested that each individual’s life course recapitulated humanity’s evolution from “savagery” to “civilisation”. Though he has influenced later childhood development theories, Hall’s conception is now generally considered racist. Developmental psychologist Jean Piaget favoured a weaker version of the formula, according to which ontogeny parallels phylogeny because the two are subject to similar external constraints.
The Austrian pioneer of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, also favoured Haeckel’s doctrine. He was trained as a biologist under the influence of recapitulation theory during its heyday, and retained a Lamarckian outlook with justification from the recapitulation theory. Freud also distinguished between physical and mental recapitulation, in which the differences would become an essential argument for his theory of neuroses.
In the late 20th century, studies of symbolism and learning in the field of cultural anthropology suggested that “both biological evolution and the stages in the child’s cognitive development follow much the same progression of evolutionary stages as that suggested in the archaeological record”.
Music Criticism
The musicologist Richard Taruskin in 2005 applied the phrase “ontogeny becomes phylogeny” to the process of creating and recasting music history, often to assert a perspective or argument. For example, the peculiar development of the works by modernist composer Arnold Schoenberg (here an “ontogeny”) is generalised in many histories into a “phylogeny” – a historical development (“evolution”) of Western music toward atonal styles of which Schoenberg is a representative. Such historiographies of the “collapse of traditional tonality” are faulted by music historians as asserting a rhetorical rather than historical point about tonality’s “collapse”.
Taruskin also developed a variation of the motto into the pun “ontogeny recapitulates ontology” to refute the concept of “absolute music” advancing the socio-artistic theories of the musicologist Carl Dahlhaus. Ontology is the investigation of what exactly something is, and Taruskin asserts that an art object becomes that which society and succeeding generations made of it. For example, Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. John Passion, composed in the 1720s, was appropriated by the Nazi regime in the 1930s for propaganda. Taruskin claims the historical development of the St John Passion (its ontogeny) as a work with an anti-Semitic message does, in fact, inform the work’s identity (its ontology), even though that was an unlikely concern of the composer. Music or even an abstract visual artwork can not be truly autonomous (“absolute”) because it is defined by its historical and social reception.
Person-centred therapy, also known as person-centred psychotherapy, person-centred counselling, client-centred therapy and Rogerian psychotherapy, is a form of psychotherapy developed by psychologist Carl Rogers beginning in the 1940s and extending into the 1980s. Person-centred therapy seeks to facilitate a client’s self-actualising tendency, “an inbuilt proclivity toward growth and fulfilment”, via acceptance (unconditional positive regard), therapist congruence (genuineness), and empathic understanding.
It is one of the most influential and fundamental modalities of treatment in modern psychological practice, and is applied almost universally in modern psychotherapy. However, it is rarely used on its own; typically it is combined with other forms of therapy.
Background
Person-centred therapy, now considered a founding work in the humanistic school of psychotherapies, began with Carl Rogers, and is recognised as one of the major psychotherapy “schools” (theoretical orientations),[clarification needed] along with psychodynamic psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, classical Adlerian psychology, cognitive behavioural therapy, existential therapy, and others.
Rogers affirmed individual personal experience as the basis and standard for living and therapeutic effect. This emphasis contrasts with the dispassionate position which may be intended in other therapies, particularly the behavioural therapies. Living in the present rather than the past or future, with organismic trust, naturalistic faith in one’s own thoughts and the accuracy in one’s feelings, and a responsible acknowledgment of one’s freedom, with a view toward participating fully in our world, contributing to other peoples’ lives, are hallmarks of Rogers’ person-centred therapy. Rogers also claimed that the therapeutic process is essentially the accomplishments made by the client. The client having already progressed further along in their growth and maturation development, only progresses further with the aid of a psychologically favoured environment.
Although client-centred therapy has been criticised by behaviourists for lacking structure and by psychoanalysts for actually providing a conditional relationship, it has been shown to be an effective treatment.
What is Required for Therapeutic Change?
Rogers (1957; 1959) stated that there are six necessary and sufficient conditions required for therapeutic change:
Therapist-client psychological contact: a relationship between client and therapist must exist, and it must be a relationship in which each person’s perception of the other is important.
Client incongruence: that in-congruence exists between the client’s experience and awareness.
Therapist congruence, or genuineness: the therapist is congruent within the therapeutic relationship. The therapist is deeply involved – they are not ‘acting’ – and they can draw on their own experiences (self-disclosure) to facilitate the relationship.
Therapist unconditional positive regard: the therapist accepts the client unconditionally, without judgment, disapproval or approval. This facilitates increased self-regard in the client, as they can begin to become aware of experiences in which their view of self-worth was distorted or denied.
Therapist empathic understanding: the therapist experiences an empathic understanding of the client’s internal frame of reference. Accurate empathy on the part of the therapist helps the client believe the therapist’s unconditional regard for them.
Client perception: that the client perceives, to at least a minimal degree, the therapist’s unconditional positive regard and empathic understanding.
Core Conditions
It is believed that the most important factor in successful therapy is the relational climate created by the therapist’s attitude to their client. The therapist’s attitude is defined by the three conditions focused on the therapist, which are often called the core conditions (3, 4, and 5 of the above six conditions):
Congruence: the willingness to transparently relate to clients without hiding behind a professional or personal façade.
Unconditional positive regard: the therapist offers an acceptance and prizing for their client for who he or she is without conveying disapproving feelings, actions or characteristics and demonstrating a willingness to attentively listen without interruption, judgement or giving advice.
Empathy: the therapist communicates their desire to understand and appreciate their client’s perspective.
Processes
Rogers believed that a therapist who embodies the three critical and reflexive attitudes (the three core conditions) will help liberate their client to more confidently express their true feelings without fear of judgement. To achieve this, the client-centred therapist carefully avoids directly challenging their client’s way of communicating themselves in the session in order to enable a deeper exploration of the issues most intimate to them and free from external referencing. Rogers was not prescriptive in telling his clients what to do, but believed that the answers to the clients’ questions were within the client and not the therapist. Accordingly, the therapists’ role was to create a facilitative, empathic environment wherein the client could discover the answers for him or herself.
1937 – Amos Tversky, Israeli-American psychologist and academic (d. 1996).
People (Deaths)
1841 – Félix Savart, French physicist and psychologist (d. 1791).
Amos Tversky
Amos Nathan Tversky (Hebrew: עמוס טברסקי; 16 March 1937 to 02 June 1996) was an Israeli cognitive and mathematical psychologist, a student of cognitive science, a collaborator of Daniel Kahneman, and a key figure in the discovery of systematic human cognitive bias and handling of risk.
Much of his early work concerned the foundations of measurement. He was co-author of a three-volume treatise, Foundations of Measurement. His early work with Kahneman focused on the psychology of prediction and probability judgment; later they worked together to develop prospect theory, which aims to explain irrational human economic choices and is considered one of the seminal works of behavioural economics. Six years after Tversky’s death, Kahneman received the 2002 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for the work he did in collaboration with Amos Tversky (The prize is not awarded posthumously). Kahneman told The New York Times in an interview soon after receiving the honour: “I feel it is a joint prize. We were twinned for more than a decade.” Tversky also collaborated with many leading researchers including Thomas Gilovich, Itamar Simonson, Paul Slovic and Richard Thaler. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Tversky as the 93rd most cited psychologist of the 20th century, tied with Edwin Boring, John Dewey, and Wilhelm Wundt.
Felix Savart
Félix Savart (30 June 1791 to 16 March 1841) was a physicist and mathematician who is primarily known for the Biot–Savart law of electromagnetism, which he discovered together with his colleague Jean-Baptiste Biot. His main interest was in acoustics and the study of vibrating bodies. A particular interest in the violin led him to create an experimental trapezoidal model. He gave his name to the savart, a unit of measurement for musical intervals, and to Savart’s wheel – a device he used while investigating the range of human hearing.
Biography
He was the son of Gérard Savart, an engineer at the military school of Metz. His brother, Nicolas, who was a student at the École Polytechnique and an officer in the engineering corps, did work on vibration. At the military hospital at Metz, Savart studied medicine and later he went on to continue his studies at the University of Strasbourg, where he received his medical degree in 1816. Savart became a professor at Collège de France in 1820 and was the co-originator of the Biot–Savart law, along with Jean-Baptiste Biot. Together, they worked on the theory of magnetism and electrical currents. Their law was developed and published in 1820. The Biot–Savart law relates magnetic fields to the currents which are their sources.
Savart also studied acoustics. He developed the Savart wheel which produces sound at specific graduated frequencies using rotating disks.
Félix Savart is the namesake of a unit of measurement for musical intervals, the savart, though it was actually invented by Joseph Sauveur (Stigler’s law of eponymy).
Open Dialogue is an alternative approach for treating psychosis as well as other mental health disorders developed in the 1980s in Finland by Yrjö Alanen and his collaborators.
Background
Open dialogue interventions are currently being trialed in several other countries including Australia, Austria, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Norway, Poland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Key principles of the open dialogue method include: the participation of friends and family, responding to the client’s utterances (which may seem nonsensical in the case of pyschosis), trying to make meaning of what a client has to say, and “tolerating uncertainty”.
Theoretical Basis
In a paper illustrating the Open dialogue method Seikkula, Alakar and Aaltonen postulate that “from the social constructionist point of view, psychosis can be seen as one way of dealing with terrifying experience in one’s life that do not have language other than the one of hallucinations and delusions” and that “psychotic reactions should be seen [as] attempts to make sense of one’s experiences that are so heavy that they have made it impossible to construct a rational spoken narrative” arguing that people may talk about such experiences in metaphor.
They offer a model that “psychotic reactions greatly resemble traumatic experiences” with experiences of victimisation “not being stored in the part of the memory system that promotes sense-making”. Postulating that “an open dialogue, without any pre-planned themes or forms seems to be important in enabling the construction of a new language in which to express difficult events in one’s life.”
This understanding differs radically from common psychiatric models of psychosis that view it as being caused by a biological process in the brain, such as the dopamine hypothesis of schizophrenia.
Effectiveness
A systematic review of academic publications on the topic in 2018 concluded that: “most studies were highly biased and of low quality” and that “further studies are needed in a real-world setting to explore how and why [open dialogue] works.”
Mental Health Matters 
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