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TOWARD A CONSTRUCTIONAL APPROACH TO SOCIAL PROBLEMS: ETHICAL AND CONSTITUTIONAL ISSUES RAISED BY APPLIED BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS
Behavior and Social Issues, Spring 2002 by Goldiamond, Israel
Consideration of other aspects of the outcome will be found in discussions of other elements of the program, since they bear differently on the outcome.
2. Current relevant repertoires: - What is considered pathology may also be defined as a competent operant, maintained by the environmental reinforcers it produces, but presently (or foreseeably) producing these at high cost or otherwise placing the person in jeopardy. The use of this analysis in constructional programing has already been considered, and I shall simply confine myself to noting its ethical and legal effects. The person is thereby regarded as a competent individual, like thee and me, who may have had to resort to unusual tactics to get what thou and I have obtained through conventional means. My career line is obvious and how I got to where I am can be understood by conventional wisdom. For someone else, not as fortunately endowed (by environment or biology, or both), getting to "do his thing" may have required and produced entirely different patterns. Since their instatement does not follow conventional lines, they may be unique (or may statistically represent a small sample). We can learn from an individual's unique solutions something about our own that we have overlooked, or learn new ways to get what we and others are after, or learn about our social system, and so on. Our learning is contingent on one basic orientation: that we do not regard his repertoires as aberrant or do not so classify them. These repertoires do not make him non compos mentis (although the situations the repertoires put him into may prevent him from acting in his best interests, as legally defined). Disturbing to others, yes; disrupting the social fabric, yes; requiring attention and resources which compete with others and diminish our possibilities, yes. This is a justifiable source of our anguish. And the affected social unit may then act to decrease, isolate, or otherwise control the disrupting patterns by eliminative means. These include forced separation of the person from that unit. The person is jeopardized by his exercise of the only repertoires he has which can produce his critical consequences. This is a justifiable source of his anguish. To assume that somehow this makes the person superior, or closer to genius, or more deserving of our respect may be an effective tactic therapeutically, and make therapeutic sense (and perhaps one had better believe it to use it), but I doubt if it makes much other sense. Suffering is painful, and intense suffering is intensely painful, and one need not have experienced it to be sensitive to it and help find a way out (cf., Goldiamond, in press). The person deserves the same respect as we do (not more, not less) and legal treatment might follow such guidelines.67 I am not suggesting answers to solve the reciprocal anguish noted but am simply noting the current relationships.
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