A CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS OF THE PROBLEM OF THE … · dos para pasar a analizar el ejemplo...

VOLUME 3. NUMBER 1. 1999. PSYCHOLOGY IN SPAIN 3

Among those working in behaviour modification,there exists the basic assumption that this thematic

field developed as a logical extension of the data andtheories of experimental psychology in general, or of thetheory of learning and animal conditioning in particular

(e.g., Franks, 1991). From the outset it has been consi-dered, in the fields of behaviour modification and ofpsychology as a basic science, that the relationship bet-ween the two thematic fields is unidirectional: profes-sionals and researchers interested in applications aremore or less passive receivers of a basic knowledgeabout relationships of a general kind among variables,which allows the explanation, with varying degrees ofsuccess, of human behaviour. If this were the case, andirrefutably so, the present work would make no sense,for everything would have been said on the matter andthere would be no point in going on. In order to solve theproblem of the divorce between basic research andapplication it would be enough just to leave it where itwas, and fall back as a possible solution on, for example,the formal analysis of the theories that support beha-

The original Spanish version of this paper has been previouslypublished in Apuntes de Psicología, 1998, No 1 and 2, 81-114...........(*) This work originally came about as part of a series of lectures onthe same topic organised by the Clinical Psychology Commission ofthe Spanish Psychological Association, which unfortunately did notget past the planning stage. I should like to thank Salvador PeronaGarcelán for trusting me to take it on, even though its eventual des-tination was a different one from that which we initially had in mind............Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed toFrancisco Javier Carrascoso López. C/Sta. María Magdalena, nº 2,4º D. 41008. Sevilla. Spain. E-mail: [email protected]

Copyright 1999 by the Colegio Oficial de Psicólogos. Spain

Psychology in Spain, 1999, Vol. 3. No 1, 3-24

Using Wittgensteinian methodology of conceptual analysis we show how the problem of the relationships between basic andapplied psychological research has been considered in an inappropriate way, as a direct extrapolation of scientific know-ledge for the solution of behavioural problems. The results of the conceptual analysis carried out allow the reformulationof the problem, recognising that: a) in the case of psychology, at least three ways of knowing can be identified; b) these arerelatively independent of one another by virtue of their conditioning factors and their objectives; c) they are continuouslyinterrelated through everyday language. The three ways of knowing are described, before moving on to an analysis of theexample provided by The Experimental Analysis of Behaviour and Applied Behaviour Analysis. This analysis shows howtwo thematic fields, reproducing the logic of the direct extrapolation of scientific knowledge for developing a behaviouraltechnology, constitute closed, isolated units, with almost negligible mutual communication. Some solutions to this problemare suggested in the light of its reformulation.

Mediante la metodología del análisis conceptual wingensteiniano se muestra cómo el problema de las relaciones investi-gación básica- aplicaciones en psicología se ha planteado de forma inadecuada, como una cuestión de extrapolación direc-ta del conocimiento científico para la solución de problemas conductuales. Los resultados del análisis conceptual realiza-do permiten reformular el problema reconociendo que: a) en el caso de la psicología pueden identificarse al menos tresmodos de conocimiento; b) relativamente autónomos unos de otros por sus condicionantes y objetivos; c) que se interrela-cionan entre sí continuamente mediante el lenguaje cotidiano. Se caracterizan los tres modos de conocimiento identifica-dos para pasar a analizar el ejemplo proporcionado por el Análisis Experimental de la Conducta y el Análisis ConductualAplicado. Dicho análisis muestra cómo ambos campos temáticos, que reproducen la lógica de la extrapolación directa delconocimiento científico para desarrollar una tecnología conductual, constituyen islotes cerrados en sí mismos, que esta-blecen comunicación apenas nominal. Se sugieren algunos modos de remediar este problema a la luz de la reformulaciónefectuada del mismo.

A CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS OF THE PROBLEM OF THERELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN BASIC RESEARCH AND APPLIED

WORK IN PSYCHOLOGY: THE EXAMPLES OF EXPERIMENTALAND APPLIED BEHAVIOUR ANALYSIS *

Francisco Javier Carrascoso LópezUNED. Centro Asociado de Sevilla

viour modification following the canons of the theory ofscience, as do O’Donohue and Krasner (1995 a, 1995 b).

However, things cannot be so deceptively simple.Other, perhaps more fruitful points of view are also pos-sible. In fact, we shall start out from the basis that thereare no such things as a basic and/or academic psycho-logy and an applied psychology; that these are no morethan names that often, through the magic of language,appear to refer to irrevocably and perfectly establishedfacts that are, nevertheless, merely arbitrary creations.We shall assume from the outset that the history of rela-tionships in psychology between basic research andapplications is nothing more than the (historical) chroni-cle of a (secretly) foreseeable divorce that must be tra-ced from the very moment of their crystallisation as pro-jects of science and technology, respectively, up to thepresent time, in which our disciplines have neither theirown model of how to approach scientific, technologicaland applied work, nor an object of study, nor whatKantor called a meta-system (Kantor, 1959). In order todevelop our arguments on the basis of these premises,we shall use the methodology of conceptual analysis,since we consider the nature of the problem of the basicresearch-applications relationship to be, like so manyothers in psychology, conceptual.

Consider the opening paragraph. The expressions usedin it are not neutral. Terms such as “basic research”,“applied work”, “knowledge”, “explain”, “professio-nal(s)”, “knowledge of a general kind”, do not conveyprecise meanings, because the context in which they areused is loaded with a sense that we must strip away inorder to correctly identify conceptual questions thatusually remain hidden by our familiarity with the use ofthese terms. We shall try to discover what the meaningof these expressions might be in the context of traditio-nal discourse about the relationships between basic rese-arch and applications.

The terms “basic research” and “applied work” appearto make reference to two autonomous and independentfields of activity, one of which (basic research) constitu-tes the ultimate and irreducible segment of a sector ofreality, which in our case is human and animal beha-viour, whilst the other (applied work) consists in theapplication of knowledge to the solution of some relati-vely well-defined problem. “Professional(s)”, anothercommon term, refers to the existence of a clearly-deli-mited thematic field of work to which any speaker canmeaningfully refer, in this case the field of the applica-tions of psychology. Our language appears to take forgranted that two clearly-defined thematic fields exist, sothat we need two different nouns to refer to them. In fact,

to talk about the products of basic research knowledge,we use the expression “knowledge of a general kind”,stressing the abstract and generic nature of this thematicfield. Paradoxically, in spite of the different categorisa-tions established by our language, these two thematicfields are supposed to be closely coordinated, with one(basic research) constituting the matrix knowledge thatlegitimates the other (applied work). And this coordina-tion is based on extrapolation, on the direct appropria-tion of knowledge from basic research by applied work.

We might now ask: What assumptions underlie suchuses of these terms in this context? What conclusionsare we obliged to draw by the context of use just descri-bed? Let us look at some possible ones:

1. There exist a psychology as scientific knowledge anda psychology as the application of that knowledgeand/or as professional practice that are perfectlyconstituted and articulated. This assumption, expli-citly stated in textbooks (e.g., FernándezTrespalacios, 1997; see Chap. 1) does not do justiceto the reality we encounter at the current historicalmoment of psychology. The multiplicity of metho-dological conceptions and traditions in both thema-tic fields constitutes the rule more than the excep-tion, in the background being the problem of theundefined nature of psychology’s object of study.Such an assumption ignores the historical fact thatpsychology, at the very moment of its constitution asa science, found itself trapped in a twofold problem.On the one hand was the need to study the rationalprocesses of knowledge, a problem approached wit-hin the academic environment and at the time of itsinception as an independent scientific discipline, andon the other, scarcely articulated and/or delimitedheterogeneous social demands, arising in some casesas problems at the margin of other perfectly articula-ted professions such as medicine or teaching, or asproblems arising from new needs, such as those pre-sented by engineering or the selection of specializedpersonnel. Thus, two fields developed, one corres-ponding to an ill-defined academic problem, withoutobject of study or agreed meta-system, and the otherto the contexts of problems socially defined as suchthat demanded a solution (Ribes Iñesta, 1989).Given this historical situation, a divorce between thetwo thematic fields is practically inevitable and irre-versible. Not only, at this point in history do we lacktwo well-defined thematic fields, for on top of thisthere are no conceptual or methodological links bet-ween them, except for the flavour given by the useof concepts and procedures that have become deta-

VOLUME 3. NUMBER 1. 1999. PSYCHOLOGY IN SPAIN4

ched from their origin. And it is doubtful, therefore,that there exists professional practice in the traditio-nal sense of “professional”, unless we are to identifyit, as has been the case, with specific practice con-texts and with what psychologists do (Ribes Iñesta,1982 a), a poor option conceptually, organisationallyand socially speaking, given the problems it genera-tes.

2. Ontologically, it is possible to speak of the existenceof an object, process or faculty, “knowledge”, that isindependent of its specific circumstance and easilytransferable in a transfer process considered as a setof point-by-point correspondences. This assumptionis logically possible if we start out from openly dua-listic premises. However, the dualism implicit in theconception of knowledge as a universal ability raisesvarious problems that are insoluble from its pers-pective. In the first place, if knowledge is universal,by definition it cannot possess an historical dimen-sion that is easily demonstrable (see Fleck, 1935;Turbayne, 1970, 1991). Secondly, knowledge isoften identified with product, which in the case ofscientific knowledge may be a set of data, a state-ment such as a law, an explanatory model, etc.However, on being identified with specific products,we lose sight of the process, the operations carriedout in context to elaborate these products.Furthermore, the dualistic conception of knowledgeis contradictory when it treats it as a set of storedproducts and, at the same time, conceives of themrepresentationally, that is, as more or less vividreflections of an objective reality external to the sub-ject knowing. And this contradiction is avoided,apparently, on locating on an internal level the ope-rations leading to the production of representations,a leap in the dark that is observed in recent cons-tructionist versions of cognitive psychology, andwhich in no way saves the dualistic conceptions ofknowledge from their inherent difficulties (RoblesRodríguez, 1996). Thirdly, knowledge appears to bestrongly contextualised, even if it involves such abs-tract and academically prestigious fields as calculus,as Lave (1988) has recently demonstrated.

If we assume that knowledge possesses an historicaldimension and is exercised as operations, as an activityin context, on referring to it we cannot speak with anysense if we treat it as a product or as a materialisedand/or reified object or thing, that is, decontextualisedand therefore synchronous. “Knowledge” should be aterm reserved to refer to a concrete product or event,such as a law-type statement, or an expression such as “I

knew that Juan came yesterday.” In contrast, to know, inits double sense as a verb of action and a verb of relation(Ribes Iñesta, 1990 a), should be reserved for two uses.As a verb of action it should refer to the concrete activi-ties carried out in a certain context that gives meaning tothese actions as knowing; e.g., on referring to the explo-ratory behaviour of a infant on becoming acquaintedwith a vase for the first time, or the computer operationsnecessary for activating a computerised laboratory. As averb of relation, it should be employed to refer to thosecircumstances in which we relate a set of actions (ofknowing or not) with special circumstances and events;e.g., when we make a theoretical interpretation of the“getting to know” process of the boy that is handling avase, we relate his concrete responses to the vase withthe context in which these responses take place (in thepresence of his mother who has given him the vase, andwho uses expressions such as: “What a clever boy!”,“Isn’t it nice and smooth?”, “Look how white it is!”,etc.).

In this sense, we cannot consider teaching as a simpleprocess of correspondence and/or transfer. Knowledge isnot transferred in the same way as, for example, wetransfer money to a bank, we transmit an e-mail messa-ge or we make a phone call. Actions and the coordina-tion of multiple actions with special circumstances andevents take place within spatial coordinates, but they arenot spatial objects, given the fact of their being transi-tory in time, and their relational and/or interactive natu-re. Rather, what are taught or learned are ways of proce-eding or interacting, both conceptual and empirical, con-textualised in a conceptual tradition and a socio-histori-cal moment, and which are taught in the actual processof carrying out those actions, such as operating a com-puter, consulting a book, implementing an assessment orintervention procedure, drawing conclusions from a setof data, etc.

3. As a corollary to the previous point, knowledge isneutral and is devoid of ideology as long as it isdecontextualised and ahistorical. The products ofknowledge and knowing as action and as relation, onpossessing an intrinsic historical dimension and acontext, cannot be neutral, that is, removed from theconditions in which they appear and are carried out.If they are neutral, on being taken out of context, theproducts of knowledge could not generate any ten-sion since they constitute a (representational) reflec-tion of a reality that is objective and/or external tothe subject knowing. Moreover, scientific knowled-ge as a product is merchandise like any other, sub-ject to the rules of capital (Talento and Ribes Iñesta,


1980). The products of knowledge and knowing asaction and relational operation cannot be bereft ofideology, understanding ideology in a wide sense, ascultural practices transmitted by use and custom.Lakoff and Johnson (1980), have shown the ideo-logy underlying the use of terms and expressions ofemotion (e.g., “to be happy is to be up; to be sad isto be down”) and specific terms such as “argument”(“an argument is a war”). In this sense, ideologyimplies belief, ways of life. To use the expression ofOrtega y Gasset (1986), “we have ideas, we arebeliefs”. Thus, it can be said that we live a metaphor,and we actually do live it, if we consider that anargument is like a war, following the example ofLakoff and Johnson: we do not really talk to ourfellow arguer, we try to convince him that he is mis-taken, bringing up one reason after another, raisingour voice, using subtle rhetorical resources, and soon. All with the aim of showing him how wrong heis and finally coming out victorious. In this sense,we have been dominated by the metaphor on takingit as the literal truth, as the world itself as it presentsitself to us (Turbayne, 1970).

This problem becomes especially important when weconsider the question of the nature of the specializedtechnical languages used in science. In the specific caseof psychology, understood in its double sense as basicand applied science, the technical terms available aretaken directly from everyday language (Ribes Iñesta,1990 b). However, this process of appropriation of psy-chological terms and expressions from ordinary langua-ge has historically remained implicit. That is, it has beentaken for granted that, e.g., because the term “percep-tion” exists, e.g., there exists a process or processesidentified by this name, the use of this term thus beinglegitimated as part of the technical vocabulary. Hencethe importance of being aware of the problem, since thelogical and ethical implications of this tacit ideologycontinue to operate even when we are unaware of it,generating important tensions even in fields of psycho-logy that have apparently developed a truly technicalvocabulary from the very interior of the discipline, as isthe case of The Experimental Analysis of Behaviour(TEAB). For example, in questionnaire-based researchamong the members of the editorial boards of severaljournals in the TEAB field (such as the Journal of TheExperimental Analysis of Behaviour, the Journal ofApplied Behaviour Analysis and The Analysis of VerbalBehaviour) on the use of the terms “reinforcer” and “dis-criminative stimulus”, Schlinger, Blakely, Fillhard andPoling (1991) found that researchers working in human

behaviour used the two technical terms in a way incon-sistent with their original formal definitions when theyoverlooked the temporal parameters (contiguity). Theseresults point to the possibility, not considered by theirauthors, that these technical terms are being employed ina merely formal way when researchers deal with speci-fic characteristics of human behaviour which, thoughwell recognised by them, are not taken into account bythe use and type of technical terminology available. Asecond example, though in the context of psychopatho-logy (another apparently well-defined language), is pro-vided by Berrios and Fuentenebro de Diego (1996) intheir historico-conceptual analysis of the symptom delu-sion. These authors show how the diverse conceptionsof delusion rest on the use of an everyday term that isemployed differently according to the native language ofeach of the authors that have worked on the descriptionand explanation of this symptom, with diverse and com-plex implications that, nevertheless, continue to anchorits study to rationalistic conceptions of delusion as a per-fectly structured belief, with true value and replete withinformation on its etiology.

It would appear, then, that we have identified a tre-mendous conceptual confusion that actually constitutesthe problem of the relationships between basic researchand applied work. Our next task is to reformulate thisproblem. In order to do so, we shall first identify what itsinstrument might be, the conductive thread of it all, sothat, as Turbayne would say, we can tear off the maskand see the face of the problem. This instrument is noneother than everyday language understood as social prac-tice among individuals in context. Our position with res-pect to the above is well stated by Ribes Iñesta (1990 c):

“Science constitutes a specific way of knowing,a way characterised by a way of proceeding in theformulation, systematisation and legitimation ofconcepts. Nevertheless, even if the content ofscience is peculiar to the analytical and thus abs-tract nature of its concepts, it permits, insofar asits language is based on ordinary language, thatother ways of knowing (religious, artistic, politi-cal, technological) appropriate this content andtransform, deform and adapt it to other socialuses. It is in this way that ordinary language beco-mes established as a means of appropriation ofcontent by diverse social ways of knowing. Thereexists a trade route between the contents of scien-ce and other ways of knowing maintained bymeans of the articulatory social instrument consti-tuted by ordinary language” (Ribes Iñesta, 1990 c,pp. 24-25; original author’s italics).


If this is to provide a reasonable starting point, we the-refore need, in order to try and reappraise the problem ofthe relationship between basic research and applications,among other things, to describe the everyday activity ofindividuals in contextualised interaction that carry outtheir activities in laboratories and clinical settings. Withan initial analysis such as this we assume that, in the waythe problem of the relationship between basic researchand applications is put, the problem does not makesense. What we do believe to make sense as our disci-pline currently stands is to describe how and in whatconditions there is an everyday interchange of knowled-ge contents between ways of knowing that are in princi-ple divergent due to their relatively autonomous nature,resulting from their different conditioning factors andbasic objectives.

Arising from the above conceptual analysis are the the-ses that we have formalised in the following way:

1. The relationship between basic research and appli-cations in the field of behaviour modification hasbeen conceived as a unidirectional and direct extra-polation of both procedures and of empirical rela-tionships isolated in the laboratory (Ribes Iñesta,1977). This extrapolation is possible, among otherreasons, if we start from the assumption that thereexists a psychology as a consensus-based scientificdiscipline, and an applied psychology properly deli-mited by an indisputable social commission. Thesetwo basic conditions are not fulfilled at the currenttime in the historical development of psychology.

2. This type of extrapolation and/or generalisation islogically possible as long as we assume in an impli-cit way that knowledge is universal; that is, that itexists in a way that is decontextualised from practi-ce and the contexts in which it is deployed, constitu-ting a kind of faculty or unitary processing device, orhowever we wish to call it (Lave, 1988). In otherwords, it has been assumed historically and in animplicit way that only one type of representatio-nally-conceived type of knowledge –the rationalone, of course– is possible and legitimate.

3. To conceive of knowledge in such a dualistic waygenerates tensions of all kinds, within and betweenthe different ways of knowing that are to be coordi-nated, since this conception does not recognise (norpermits their recognition) the different practical con-texts of interaction of individuals that earn a livingworking in the two conflicting fields. These contextsmediate/organise activity within each way of kno-wing and the relationships between them. A dualis-tic conception of knowledge is blind to ideology and

to the historical dimension of knowledge (RibesIñesta, 1990 c), and therefore does not recognise thatit is itself impregnated with ideology.

4. Knowledge should be considered in terms of threedifferent senses or uses: a) knowledge as a product,for which we reserve the term knowledge; b) know-ledge as a verb of action, for referring to knowledgeacquisition actions or operations, in contexts identi-fied as being concerned with obtaining knowledge;and c) knowledge as referring to relationships, forwhich we reserve the verb to know employed as aterm of relation (Ribes Iñesta, 1990 a), this meaningbeing synonymous with that of way of knowing.

5. Taking as a starting point Ribes Iñesta’s proposal(1989), we assume that: a) more than one type ofknowledge is possible, b) each one of which is con-textually determined, and therefore conditional upondiverse social interests and criteria, c) so that eachhas its own validation criteria, and d) hence, they allconstitute different degrees of empirical generality,making them relatively independent of one another.Therefore, the relationships between these ways ofknowing cannot be characterised as linear interchan-ges; it is simply a problem that it makes no sense toapproach from this particular perspective.

6. As a corollary to point 5, each way of knowingshould be analyzed, then, in its own terms, that is,understood as an autonomous way of knowing. It isnot legitimate to analyze them from exclusively for-mal perspectives; rather, they should be analyzed aspractices that by definition take place and develop insociocultural contexts.

7. Therefore, it is not legitimate to consider what basicresearch can teach applications and vice versa. Whatshould be looked into is how knowledge and know-ledge procedures are transferred from one way ofknowing to another at a particular historical point inthe development of psychology, describing thesetransmission and/or appropriation processes andsubsequently considering which is the best way ofinterchanging knowledge between different ways ofknowing; that is, what way or ways of knowinginterchange we consider to be the best or most use-ful at the current time.

Below we analyze the field of Applied BehaviourAnalysis (ABA), following the steps set down in the the-ses outlined above. That is: a) to attempt a tentative des-cription of the activities of individuals working in basicresearch and in applications, considering that this des-cription is applicable in a general way to psychology asa scientific and applied way of knowing; b) to extract


from this description a series of continuous dimensionsbetween the different ways of knowing; and c) to applythese dimensions to the analysis of the relationshipsTEAB-ABA.

EVERYDAY LIFE IN THE LABORATORY: THESCIENTIFIC WAY OF KNOWING Science is usually described as an activity that is essen-tially different from other human activities. An activitythat is intrinsically intellectual, rational, abstract, thatseeks to discover the facts written in the book of Natureor, in other words, reality as it really is. Hence, the tra-ditional presentation of science as the activity of develo-ping a hypothesis and its corresponding set of deduc-tions, and the subsequent verification and testing ofthese that it is made through experiment. The followingextract from an introductory psychology handbook is agood description of this view of science:

“The scientific method is the so-called hypothe-tical-deductive method, in which, after observingsome data, hypotheses are produced for explai-ning them; from these hypotheses, conclusionsare deduced, which must be tested through induc-tive reduction as a result of experiment. Thus, thecharacteristic feature of the scientific method isthat it begins with experience (observation ofdata) and ends with experience (testing throughinduction, which is why it is called inductivereduction). This contrasts the scientific methodwith other ways of knowing that, although star-ting out from experience, do not return to it at theend, but rather to some kind of abstraction orsomething that is merely intelligible, not empiri-cally observable; something that may be believa-ble or intelligible, but not empirically testablethrough inductive reduction. The scientific met-hod is also in contrast to other methods that, alt-hough being based on observation, do not testtheir hypotheses, even though these may be empi-rical” (Fernández Trespalacios, 1997, p. 66; origi-nal author’s italics).

Continuing with the traditional description of science,we can observe how it is conceived as a dispassionateactivity, which tries to rid itself of all the obstacles andprejudices that distance the scientist from the reality heor she is seeking to discover. The only acceptable preju-dice is that of the scientific theory that guides the scien-tist’s steps in the selection of the analytical unit and ofthe data considered worthy of close attention. However,this classical and rational conception of scientific acti-vity, in the first place, commits the sin of tautology

(Latour and Woolgar, 1986), through the merely justifi-catory introduction of terms with a formal flavour suchas “hypothetical-deductive”, “hypothesis” or “inductivereduction.” Secondly, it is too simple to be right. Thescientist is not dispassionate, decontextualised, like thearchetypal solitary professor totally absorbed in hisexperiments and theories. A careful reading of trans-cripts (Latour and Woolgar, 1986) of everyday conver-sations between those working in a neuroendocrinologi-cal laboratory reveals that, in some sense, the traditionalnotion of the scientific way of knowing is correct. It isindeed characterised by being analytical, abstract, enun-ciative and descriptive, eliminating references to thespecific circumstances in which the studied event takesplace (Kantor, 1953; Ribes Iñesta, 1989). Where the tra-ditional conception of the scientific way of knowingfalls down is in the formal nature attributed to it. Theabstract, analytical character of science comes not fromthe formal and special nature of its operations, but fromits objectives and the specialized linguistic descriptionby those working in it of the knowledge operationscarried out. A linguistic description that is crystallisedin the background of a conceptual tradition that selectsand discards data and relevant constructs in an oftenimplicit and apparently synchronous way.

What factors might be involved in this process of cons-truction and/or selection of facts? Without going intoexcessive detail, we can group them in three large cate-gories: a) historical factors (individual, group, of thespecific thematic field, of the group or groups of thin-king styles used as a reference for the individual resear-cher); b) macro and micro-social contextual factors; andc) behavioural factors, referring to the types of interac-tion involved and the relationship between them.

We start out from the basis that all scientific facts areconstructed, not given. Etymologically, the term “fact”is derived from the Latin factum, facere (to make, tofabricate), as Latour and Woolgar (1986) rightly pointout. But this fabrication, this making, takes place in thecourse of a set of activities that are eminently social.And the object of these social activities, in the case ofthe scientific mode of knowledge, is the production offacts in the form of written texts and records, articles,books, etc. (Latour and Woolgar, 1986). Being construc-ted, scientific facts cannot be of just any kind whatsoe-ver, or produced with total freedom. Researchers’ con-ceptual frames of reference, determined by their initia-tion in a field and the dominant styles of thinking in theircommunity, will be those that determine what type offact is finally produced and no other (Fleck, 1935). Thisconceptual frame of reference is the world for the rese-


archer and the community to which he or she belongs.At first, when the researcher begins work in a field, hisor her “vision of the fact” is, as it were, diffuse, blurred,such as when a myopic person puts on someone else’sglasses. However, after successive contacts with the stu-died event, guided by the all-pervading style of thinkingof his/her community, the new fact becomes decontex-tualised from the process through which it comes tolight: it seems as though it had always been that way,and that we had been looking for precisely this from thestart. We forget the long, slow process of gestation wehave had to follow to produce a fact that will finally bepublished. In other words, we have lost all connectionwith the historical referents of the process of producingthe fact (Fleck, 1935; Turbayne, 1970; Latour andWoolgar, 1986). As Turbayne would say, we have beco-me dominated by our metaphor (Turbayne, 1970) or, inother words, the historical referents of the fact end upbeing those of the community –with its own style ofthinking– in which it was born.

The fact thus established persists not only because ofits disconnection from the historical referents of the pro-cess of its gestation, from being well-worn through con-tinuous use as currency in the interactions between indi-viduals making up a thinking-style group, and becauseof the pressure exercised by the thinking-style groupduring its genesis. To change this fact for another or takeit down from the pedestal of truth is somewhat more dif-ficult than it might seem. As Latour and Woolgar write(1986), established scientific facts constitute a set of sta-tements whose review and questioning is judged to bevery costly. Thus, the process of reviewing a fact is sub-ject to multiple pressures: those from the context exter-nal to the thematic field in which one works and thoseimposed by the thinking-style group itself through theinteractions between individuals working in the thema-tic field. There is no lack of historical examples withregard to this matter. In his description of the historicaldevelopment of the Wasserman reaction, Fleck (1935)showed how the initial experiments were based on mis-taken assumptions. Nevertheless, Wasserman and hiscollaborators interpreted their data as supporting theirinitial hypotheses, despite the fact that some of themopenly contradicted them (for example, the case of thenegative reactions obtained in brain tissue taken frompatients with progressive general paralysis). Accordingto Turbayne (1970), Newton started out from theassumption that he did not construct hypotheses.However, his Principia Mathematica constitute an outs-tanding example of hypothetical-deductive construction.What we wish to underline in saying that “...their ques-

tioning is judged to be very costly” is the difficulty, notto say impossibility, of erring from our point of view.This means, then, that we are somehow inside a belief,which constitutes the very way in which we live(Wittgenstein, 1979; Ortega and Gasset, 1986). Thus,even if the questioning or review of a previously-esta-blished fact were to be easy, it could be an enormouslylong and difficult process. This amounts to saying thatwe cannot allow ourselves to doubt that such a fact istrue. Indeed, it is often the case that we do not realisethat we cannot allow ourselves to doubt that such a factis true (Wittgenstein, 1979). This means that the fact hasbeen reified, transformed into something with an objec-tive reality external to its own process of production. AsLatour and Woolgar state in the work cited above:

“The result of the construction of a fact is that itappears that no-one has constructed it; the resultof rhetorical persuasion in the agonistic field isthat the participants are convinced that they havenot been convinced; the result of materialisationis that people can swear that material considera-tions are only smaller components of the “thin-king process”; the result of investments in credi-bility is that the participants can claim that neitherbeliefs nor the economy have anything to do withthe solidity of science; as far as circumstances areconcerned, they simply disappear from thereports, so that it is better to leave them for politi-cal analysis and not for the appreciation of thesolid and simple world of facts! (Latour andWoolgar, 1986, p. 268 of Spanish translation; ori-ginal authors’ italics).

And when the fact has been produced and is conside-red incontrovertible, and when the scientists that produ-ced it present it as something that was always there andhas finally been discovered, this fact decontextualised ofthe circumstances of its production process is ready forconsumption by colleagues from the same thematicfield, by colleagues from different fields of basic orapplied research, by manufacturers, by the public ingeneral with an interest in science, etc. But this factready to be consumed remains decontextualised fromthe historical referents of its production process. Fromthe very moment it appears as an objective fragment ofthe reality that is out there, the distortion of the factwhen consumed by its potential users is already assured.It is as though this fact was not an abstraction, but theworld itself. It would seem that the production of the facthad taken place through a mysterious process, a mysteryamplified and maintained by the formal terminologywith which scientists themselves describe their activi-


ties. In fact, in scientists’ descriptions of their activity tolay people they tend to omit all reference to the cir-cumstances in which science takes place (Latour andWoolgar, 1986), thus safeguarding the prestige of scien-ce as superior knowledge incomprehensible to all but theinitiated –though the ideology in which science is wrap-ped up is in reality interchange between lay people andscientists.

WAYS OF LIFE IN CLINICAL SETTINGS: THETECHNOLOGICAL AND PRACTICAL WAYS OFKNOWINGBefore going on, it should be stressed that the appliedway of knowing is not a unitary way. We can distinguishtwo applied ways of knowing, following Ribes Iñesta’s(1989) proposal. In the first place, we have the techno-logical way of knowing, characterised by its syntheticnature of scientific knowledge and its basically operati-ve and predictive character. This way of knowing is gui-ded in an implicit or explicit way by a theory that allowsthe bringing together of various types of scientificknowledge, these first having been selected. On analy-zing the work of Fleck, and referring to the specific caseof medicine, Schäfer and Schnelle (1980) provided agood description of the technological way of knowing,its inherent peculiarities and the factors conditioning itsdevelopment:

“Fleck sees two particularities in medicine (...).The first consists in that in medicine knowledge isoriented not to regularity, to “normal” manifesta-tions, but precisely to that which strays from thenorm, to states of illness of the organism.Therefore, the formulation of regularities in thephenomena of illness, the delimitation of nosolo-gical entities, is only possible through a highdegree of abstraction based on the observation ofeach individual case. Thus, conceptualisations inmedicine are often of a statistical type. Thesecond particularity resides in the fact that theknowledge goal of medicine is not, primarily, theextension of knowledge in itself, but rather amuch more pragmatic one: dominion over suchpathological states. The conceptions, models andprinciples, that is to say, all that is involved in thetheoretical clarification of the observations of ill-ness, is subject to a permanent and immediateneed for success. Therefore, abstract statementsare often seen to be insufficient in medicine (...).The nosological entities established are, to a largeextent, fictitious, since between the knowledge inbooks and real observations there is an enormous

gulf (...). The enormous range of particularities inthe specific states of illness obliges the constantvariation of medical conceptions (...), often, newtypes of problem, new pathological conditions,are unable, due to the need for success, thedemand for a cure, to be inscribed in terms of theforms and pseudoforms established for that ill-ness. This obliges, then, the formulation of newdefinitions of illness. But the direction in whichthis development moves depends not only on thenew observations carried out (...). It can only haveits roots in the previous development of medicine,so that the new definitions of the illness grow fromtheir historical antecedents” (Schäfer andSchnelle, 1980, pp. 18-19 of Spanish translation;italics in final phrase are our own).

In this long quotation we can see how the technologi-cal way of knowing is basically subjected to the condi-tioning factor of success and/or effectiveness in statisti-cal terms. And it is this condition that marks the diffe-rence, the point of inflection or discontinuity betweenthe scientific and technological ways of knowing. Incontrast to the scientific way, whose objective is des-cription, the objectives of the technological way are pre-diction and control, that is, effectiveness in the solutionof a problem. This discontinuity in terms of objectivesand the related conditioning factors makes these twoways of knowing relatively autonomous and indepen-dent of one another.

However, there is a sort of continuity between the twoways of knowing in two senses: a) the very fact of thesynthesis of knowledge produced by the scientific wayof knowing, which implies that the technological way isto a certain extent dependent on the other; and b) as itshould be noted, in our description of the scientific wayof knowing in the previous section, we wrote that “...thisfact ready to be consumed remains decontextualisedfrom the historical referents of its production process.”That is, knowledge produced via the technological wayitself contains a particular degree of distortion, of bias,that is difficult to determine. And in the very process ofsynthesis further distortion will occur, basically determi-ned by the often implicit character of the theory that gui-des the process of synthesis of the knowledge selected tobe produced. The implicit nature of this results above allfrom the pressure exerted on the technological way ofknowing so that it is effective in the solution of the pro-blems with which it is charged. Moreover, though, afurther form of pressure is often constituted by the verylack of definition with which the problems proposed areformulated, problems that are clarified by the technolo-


gist, whose conceptual frame of reference often remainsimplicit. As Fleck (1935) showed on analyzing the his-torical development of the concept of syphilis, the con-ceptions of the time that arose with respect to theWasserman reaction were rooted in previous ideas,dating from medieval and Renaissance times, about theimpure blood of syphilitics, a form of moral stigma,denoting sin, which was often identified with certainnations, such as France (it was no coincidence that oneof the medical terms coined to refer to syphilis was“morbus gallicus”). In fact, what Wasserman and hiscollaborators were looking for was precisely what wouldnow be called a specific biological marker of a disorder,which could have apparent value as a diagnostic proof.Nevertheless, this connection with past notions of syp-hilis remained implicit, on the one hand because thesocial commission given by the corresponding Ministryto Wasserman and his team (officials of that Ministry)was not clarified, and on the other due to the pressurethat existed in view of the scientific rivalry with Francecaused by the Franco-Prussian War.

The example of the Wasserman reaction analysed byFleck illustrates the implicit persistence of a style ofthinking, in this case, efficient causal thinking. Inmodern terms, Wasserman and his team were looking toisolate a specific biological marker with high diagnosticprecision for syphilis. This research objective was inad-vertently based on previous concepts of syphilis. Similarcausal notions of what today we call mental disordersarose in the medieval and Renaissance periods, develo-ping up to the present day. Nowadays, the cause of theseproblems is no longer demons or spirits, but biologicalmarkers, contingencies of reinforcement, cognitive bia-ses and similar factors. Notice that what appears to havechanged is the nature of the cause, but not the causalscheme itself. In the case of (biological) psychiatry,Ross (1995) carried out an analysis of the implicitassumptions in articles published in the AmericanJournal of Psychiatry. All of these assumptions can bedescribed as based on a linear and mechanical causalmodel.

The implicit nature of this “distortion of the distortion”can also be detected in other more recent cases that weshall discuss in some detail. In the case of ABA, Hayes,Rincover and Solnick (1980) carried out a bibliometricanalysis of the first ten volumes of the Journal ofApplied Behaviour Analysis in order to see whether thepublished literature fitted the defining dimensions ofABA proposed by Baer, Wolf and Risley (1968) in theirinaugural article. What they detected was precisely theopposite: ABA was facing what they called technical

drift, to the detriment of the conceptual reflection neces-sary for properly situating the problems to be analysedand of empirical and technological-developmentaleffort. This tendency was detected in the meteoric speedwith which specific technical solutions were (and conti-nue to be) proposed for a limited and topographically-defined set of problems. Another interesting examplefrom the context of behaviour therapy is provided byintervention programmes for obsessive-compulsivedisorder. Experimentally validated and fully operativeprogrammes have progressed very slowly, and scarcelygo beyond the traditional techniques of exposition andprevention of response, as demonstrated in recent hand-books (Foa and Wilson, 1991; Steketee, 1993).Analysing the conceptual history of the descriptive psy-chopathology of obsessions and compulsions, Berrios(1995) finds that the current definitions of both symp-toms, on which intervention programmes proposed forbehaviour modification are based, had already crystalli-sed and were fully operative in the nineteenth century; itdoes not appear that recent advances impelled by cogni-tive models (e.g., that of Tallis, 1995) have remediedthis situation, since they maintain intact the traditionaldefinitions of both symptoms, translating them operatio-nally into another technical language. It is implicitlyassumed that the language of descriptive psychopatho-logy is transparent or neutral, an unfortunate assump-tion, historically and conceptually speaking (Berrios,1984).

The other way of knowing or way of life in the clinicalcontext is the practical way, exercised daily by clinicalpsychologists in their work environment. This way ofknowing could be described as being bound up with thespecific circumstance in which it takes place, so that itdoes not have the aim of generalisation. Also, it is basi-cally narrative in nature, and is reproduced in a routineway, which gives it a certain repetitive character. Its fun-damental objective is the solution of individual pro-blems, in the sense that its aim is to modify the uniquecircumstances of individuals or particular groups withunrepeatable interactive histories. This is something anyclinical psychologist knows. The users of their servicescan request help in a variety of ways. Not all clients aremotivated in the same way to see a psychologist: thecouple who both think they are in the right and comemore or less to demonstrate to one another that there isno possible solution; the adolescent that comes becausehis parents oblige him to... and so on, in a wide varietyof different situations (1).

As it can be seen, the practical way of knowing is dif-ferent from the technological one in a fundamental


sense: it is concerned with the prediction and control ofbehaviour, but in particular cases. In this sense the cli-nical psychologist employs the technology developed bythe technologist, but in a way that is flexible and adap-ted to the particular circumstances with which s/he isdealing. The use of technology by the clinical psycholo-gist can by definition never be the norm, and in factnever is, not even in cases of shoddy or amateurish prac-tice, or in those in which the novice tries to apply in themost orthodox way a specific technique. The clinicalpsychologist is conditioned in an immediate way by atleast two factors: a) the particular case s/he is trying tosolve; and b) the particular style of thinking s/he hasabsorbed during his/her initiation as a clinical psycholo-gist, a complex hotchpotch of those prevailing in thescientific and technical reference group and in thesociety in which s/he lives. In other words, the clinicalpsychologist is an expert in the general sense, in thesense that s/he shares with the user of his/her services anideology in terms of social practice that is manifested inthe everyday language to which we refer above.

There is also an important divergence between thepractical way of knowing and the technological one. Incontrast to the technologist, whose problem is to maxi-mise the effectiveness of his/her knowledge or, in otherwords, his/her percentage of successes, the clinical psy-chologist is interested not only in effectiveness, but alsoin the percentage of failures, which the technologist doesnot need to explain. In either case, however, the clinicalpsychologist is not only asked for success, but also hasto be seen to be successful. It is for this reason that wecan describe the everyday practice of the clinical psy-chologist in the consulting room as one that is itself ide-ologised (Ribes Iñesta, 1990 d), although it is not recog-nised as such. What do we mean by the expressions“individual case” and “has to be seen to be successful”?“Individual case” means that the problem about whichs/he is consulted is that of an individual. Thus, the useror patient becomes the target of the clinical interven-

tion, an intervention that is external to the client, admi-nistered, of course, by an expert in the problem thatafflicts the client. But the client’s problem, the trust s/hedeposits in the clinical psychologist and the judgementmade by the latter are by no means divorced from thescientific-social ideology that prevails at any givensocio-historical moment. Nevertheless, this ideologyremains implicit and is exercised daily as a way of life,as a belief, within the clinical context. In the specificcase of Freudian psychoanalysis, Pérez Álvarez (1992)carried out an historical analysis that shows us how itsbirth and its practice were at all times intimately boundup, entwined with life in Vienna around the turn of thecentury (2), just at the time when there began to crysta-llise what Béjar (1993 a) refers to as a “psychologicalculture”.

By the expression “has to be seen to be successful” wewish to refer to none other than those characteristics allclinical psychologists should display: empathy, attenti-veness and sympathy, calmness and naturalness, goodappearance, a correct and considerate treatment of theclient with respect to his/her values, etc. At this point weshould like to describe clinical practice, still in terms ofits ideological character and, following Pérez Álvarez(1996), introducing two interesting anthropological con-cepts: a) ceremony (therapeutic) as the context in whichit is carried out, and b) rhetoric. It is within the frame-work of these two anthropological concepts that clinicalpractice is developed as an ideologised activity.

Ceremony is an interesting contextual concept in thatall forms of psychological treatment involve a certainpreparatory ceremony; moreover, it could be proposedas an interesting hypothesis that human behaviour has aninherently ceremonial dimension (Wittgenstein, 1976).All that comes afterwards is conditional upon these cere-monial operations. For example, one of the initial stepsin all cognitive therapy is what Beck (1995) calls “socia-lisation in the cognitive model.” This ceremony involvesa series of operations well-known to behaviour thera-pists: familiarising the client with written recordings ofthoughts or other behaviours, conceptualising the pro-blem in terms of the cognitive model, labelling ofunderlying cognitive distortions, prescription of tasks tobe done at home and insistence on their importance forthe process of improvement, etc. A set of operations thatwill condition the rest of the process. And in this opera-tive context, rhetoric will enter as an exercise unnoticedby the clinical psychologist; indeed, few clinical psy-chologists would describe their everyday activity as rhe-torical, perhaps because of both the possible pejorativeconnotations of the term and the prevailing technical


(1) As a collateral reflection that we shall not develop here, it iscurious that, given such a great diversity of situations, the existenceof an actual profession (clinical psychology) can be conceived, in thesense of the term “profession”, that is, with well-defined frontierswith respect to other professions, and a social commission that ismade clearly explicit and is clearly delimited from others.

(2) It would be interesting to analyse the interactions betweenmedicine and the nascent psychology, as well as their parallel deve-lopment and the absorption by clinical psychology of aspects of workthat were previously the exclusive domain of doctors, initially inter-nists in the first asylums in Britain, and later becoming convertedinto psychiatrists. The emergence of psychiatry as a medical specia-lity and the development and crystallisation of clinical psychologymight be seen as parallel processes of the division of labour.

ideology in the field of behaviour modification, in thesense that the techniques employed appear to be the onlyeffective ingredient of any psychological treatment.However, techniques of any kind remain the ceremonialwrapping in which rhetoric is deployed as a linguisticexercise. Whether we like it or not, the clinical psycho-logist is rhetorical, although hardly aware of it, and mustlook as though s/he is effective through, among otherthings, the exercise of rhetoric, persuasion with theclient, an exercise that may be noble, but may also bewretched, given the contributions of both players in thisdialectical game. Laín Entralgo (1987) is keen to emp-hasise the great likeness between the practice of psy-chotherapy and the rhetorical exercises of the Sophistsin classical Greece. In a similar way, it is curious to findthe figure of the clinical psychologist compared withthat of the confessor, in the context of an emotivist andindividualist culture (see Béjar, 1988, 1993 b).

As Pérez Álvarez (1996) points out, the rhetorical per-son becomes a kind of sceptic. This is logical if we bearin mind that through rhetoric one has to persuade, toconvince in diverse, unique situations –and this is veryclose to the everyday practice of clinical psychologistsin their consulting room. In fact, in a way, the clinicalpsychologist is a sceptic, but a sceptic who believes wit-hout knowing s/he believes (Wittgenstein, 1979). Thisbelieving without knowing one believes underlies a lin-guistic practice peculiar to all clinical psychologists,which can be observed in public and private clinicalcontexts: the use on the part of clinical psychologistsfrom various doctrinal affiliations of a kind of commonvocabulary, an “Esperanto”, as it were, which, withoutbeing technical, seems to have its origin in the vocabu-laries of diverse schools of psychotherapy that are inprinciple diametrically opposed. For example, a psycho-analyst or a behaviour therapist may use the term “rein-forcement” to refer to an observable consequence admi-nistered to a given response. However, the term is inco-rrectly used, as it does not refer to the increase in fre-quency of that response, which is a condition sine quanon for defining reinforcement as an operation. The term“unconscious” is another example; it is often heard inconversations between two clinical psychologists dis-cussing a case, and it sometimes seems to refer tosomething that happens in an automatic way, other timesit is found correctly used in the psychoanalytical con-text, and on other occasions it is unclear to what it refers.This common, everyday jargon, which is nothing moreor less than the everyday rhetoric of the consultingroom, where doctrinal diversity tends to be the norm,becomes an instrument through which the clinical psy-

chologist, without knowing it, lives in the metaphor (touse Turbayne’s expression), but also “sells” that metap-hor in a believable (i.e., “scientific”) way to the client.

Due to the routine nature of their work, that is, rootedin the everyday, bound up with the specific circumstan-ces of each individual case, clinical psychologists areoften unaware of their connections with the scientificand technological ways of knowing or with the ideologyunderlying these and their own professional practice.The more or less sophisticated clinical psychologist willuse a theoretical model, not as an approximate descrip-tion of a problem, but as the literal truth, without ques-tioning him/herself whether the model s/he is using as acategorisation tool is conceptually congruent with theraw data s/he is observing and seeks to systematise. Thisis logical due, among other things, to the fact that thetechnologist has developed techniques for promotingbehavioural change, but has not defined any criteria thatallow its application and/or modification in individualcases. These criteria are defined by the clinical psycho-logist as s/he goes along. In fact, the clinical psycholo-gist selects the information of interest when, for exam-ple, identifying symptoms, unaware that s/he is assu-ming, among other things, that psychopathology istransparent (Berrios and Chen, 1993) and, moreover,ideologically neutral, that is, devoid of normative judge-ment criteria. For the clinical psychologist, the psycho-pathology is simply there, and what s/he has to do isidentify it and give it a name/concept. Clinical psycho-logists are so anchored to the specific circumstances oftheir everyday work that they are scarcely able to consi-der its connections with other ways of knowing, nor withthe prevailing ideology. And in this sense the clinicalpsychologist is dominated by the metaphor, among otherreasons, because the technical vocabularies of the scien-tific and technological ways of knowing have developedin other circumstances and for other uses quite differentfrom those of the practical way of knowing. Technicallanguage is often used in the context of this way of kno-wing, as the wrapping for persuasive discourse, based onthe social criteria of the evaluation of science and of pro-fessional practice as an intellectual profession (Talentoand Ribes Iñesta, 1980).

CONTINUITY BETWEEN WAYS OF KNOWING From this brief description of the three possible ways ofknowing in the context of psychology, we have isolated,by way of synthesis, two continuous dimensions of theirrelationships:

1. Everyday language as a means of appropriation ofknowledge and knowledge operations between ways


of knowing. In the case of psychology, this dimen-sion is critical given the origin in everyday languageof its vocabulary of technical terms (Ribes Iñesta,1990 a). Moreover, psychology has the curious pri-vilege of being (or seeking to be) both a science andthe object of science at the same time. Thus, at thesame time as a term such as “to think” is used to des-cribe a certain interaction, the use itself of the wordrequires its own explanation. In other words, wehave to determine the origin in everyday language ofour scientific, technological and practical knowled-ge (Lee, 1988).

2. In the successive transfer operations, knowledge andknowledge operations suffer a progressive distortionthat is all the more accentuated the more a particularway of knowing is anchored to specific circumstan-ces. This distortion is in fact the decontextualisationof a particular piece of knowledge or knowledgeoperation, which with use become reified. This reifi-cation is facilitated by the relatively autonomousnature of the different ways of knowing, and by theabsence, in the spaces between ways of knowing, ofdefined criteria that permit the translation of know-ledge and knowledge operations from one way ofknowing to another. These criteria have to be deve-loped ad hoc, and in the majority of cases are impli-cit and ideologically impregnated. From this followsthe notion of direct extrapolation. Among otherthings, the direct extrapolation of scientific know-ledge and knowledge operations to the technologicaland practical ways of knowing constitutes a practiceof ideological self-justification of these ways of kno-wing. In other words, a sort of quasi-scientific, rat-her than scientific ideology. It should also be bornein mind that, given the absence of explicitly-definedcriteria that permit the transfer of knowledge andknowledge operations from one way of knowing toanother, the interrelations between them are cut,contributing to the ways of knowing becoming iso-lated, converted into islands, into networks of quota-tions closed in on themselves, whose main objectiveis their own survival. The development of suchexplicitly-defined criteria requires basic research ofa domain type (Fuentes Ortega, 1993) or, put moresimply, the return of psychology to mundane mat-ters, to everyday life.

Against this background the scientific, technologicaland practical ways of knowing interact constantly. To acertain extent, the technological and practical ways ofknowing depend on the scientific way, as a database forsynthesis in the case of the technological way, and as a

context of ideological justification in the case of thepractical way. In turn, the practical way of knowing deli-mits the frontiers of technological knowledge, identif-ying exceptions that can be transformed into problemspertinent to its own processes of theoretical and empiri-cal inquiry, a delimiting role that is also played by thetechnological way of knowing with respect to the scien-tific way.

Operationalising these continuous dimensions betweenthe three ways of knowing, what criteria should be satis-fied so that this interrelation can be found? The three cri-teria proposed by Ribes Iñesta (1982 b, pp. 102-103)are: a) the existence of scientific knowledge and techno-logical knowledge that provides the theoretical and met-hodological foundation for practical knowledge; b) acommon language that permits the analytical assessmentof technological application; and c) explicit social crite-ria with regard to the characteristics and conditions ofapplication of the available technology. As it has beenseen up to now, academic and applied psychology andthe professional practices derived from them do not ful-fil any of these criteria. We shall now test this affirma-tion, analysing, in the light of these criteria, the rela-tionship between TEAB and ABA, as an excellentexample from psychology of the development of a tech-nology of behavioural change based on basic research.This is an interesting example since the two fields appe-ar to be related, resulting from the use of a commontechnical vocabulary and a set of relatively well-stan-dardised procedures. Moreover, ABA appears to havederived logically as an extrapolation of TEAB outside ofthe laboratory. In the light of what has been argued up tonow, we shall show that this conclusion is, at the veryleast, imprecise.

AN ANALYSIS OF THE INTERRELATIONSTEAB-ABA: INTIMATE RELATIONSHIP ORMARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE? The theoretical and conceptual structure of TEAB Does TEAB currently fulfil its role as a database for thedevelopment of a scientifically-based technology ofbehavioural change? Or, in other words, is there know-ledge to be synthesised? The answer, although there aredetails that lack of space prevents us from dealing withhere, is, on the whole, negative. TEAB constitutes morea promise of empirical and theoretical development withregard to human behaviour than a reality. Some authorshave pointed out the inherent difficulties in its theoreti-cal structure (Kantor, 1970; Ribes Iñesta and LópezValadez, 1985). Though not the only ones, conceptssuch as reinforcement, and knowledge operations such


as the obtaining of response rates as a basic measure andthe selection of repetitive and easily quantifiable discre-te responses take up almost exclusively the attention ofresearchers. Assumptions such as that of continuityamong species (Hayes and Hayes, 1992) continue tooperate within the TEAB community; despite the strongquantitative increase in basic research with humansdetected by Hyten and Reilly (1992), the strategy ofresearch has not changed substantially, given the greatimportance still attached to the use and design of animalmodels with the purpose of isolating general parameterswhose generality and relevance for human behaviourwill be confirmed (or not) later in a second researchphase. The error is often made of identifying all mentalterms of everyday vocabulary with verbs of action (e.g.,Chiesa, 1994; Verplanck, 1996), in a way coherent withthe above-mentioned methodological routines of TEAB.

In spite of these inadequacies, TEAB can be conside-red to constitute a good database for the development ofABA. Let us see whether this is the case, in the light ofthe three criteria formulated by Ribes Iñesta (1982 b), sothat we can speak of harmonious TEAB-ABA relations.

To begin with, we should ask ourselves whether TEABhas determined the origin in everyday language of itsknowledge. Skinner realised early on the theoreticalneed to take on this task, in conceptual and empiricalterms, in his article on operationism (Skinner, 1945).Skinner knew it was necessary to identify the variablesthat determine the use of the mental concepts of every-day language, as a scientific enterprise of the first orderthat could contribute, among other things, to explainingthe behaviour of scientists. In this sense, instead ofrejecting mental expressions without directly empiri-cally observable correlates, the procedure characteristicof methodological behaviourism, it is legitimate to askoneself about the variables that control the use of theseexpressions. For example, instead of rejecting psychoa-nalytical vocabulary on the grounds of its inaccessibilityto an observer of the constructs it contains, the beha-viour analyst should consider the psychoanalyst’s verbalbehaviour as an object of study in its own right, isolatingthe contexts and variables that control the use of expres-sions such as “Oedipus Complex” or “resistance.” Thisattractive research programme, whose parallels with thework of Wittgenstein have not gone unnoticed by beha-viour analysts (Day, 1969), has made hardly any impacton TEAB. With the exception of Day’s work (see itsappreciation by Moore, 1991), only recently (Leigland,1989, 1996) has this thematic field been taken up oncemore in publications. As Leigland (1996) notes, Skinnerabandoned the systematic exploration of the use of the

mental terms of everyday language in favour of TEAB.Skinner himself (1945) remarked that this undertakingwas of only historical interest, and that the objective ofthe nascent science of behaviour was to develop its owntechnical vocabulary and a strong empirical corpus. Theabandonment of the analysis of the use of the mentalterms of everyday language had, historically, disastrousconsequences for the development of the experimentalanalysis of human behaviour:

1. Paradoxically, the analysis of verbal behaviour as alegitimate object of study was abandoned. Onlyrecently have we seen a renewed interest in this the-matic field with the explosion of research on equiva-lence relationships between stimuli, rule-governedbehaviour, and the appearance of the journal TheAnalysis of Verbal Behaviour, even if (and this issymptomatic) this journal is still published irregu-larly, and its production is quantitatively far inferiorto that of other specialised journals in the field ofTEAB.

2. Research effort was concentrated on the experimen-tal analysis of animal behaviour, a methodologicallymore obvious and theoretically more fruitful enter-prise, since it allowed the development of the tech-nical language and knowledge operations of TEAB.

3. It fell into what Hayes (1992) called the observer’sperspective, characteristic of theoretical systemsinterested in prediction and control; that is, TEABbecame a kind of technological undertaking wherethe demonstration of control over a kind of behaviourand the subsequent prediction of its future occurren-ce become the ultimate criteria of the goodness of fitof a scientific principle. The consequences of theobserver’s perspective, beyond control by the eventsof interest, are observed in the identification of rea-lity with the knowledge operations carried out by theresearcher. For example, in their recent review ofhuman and animal research for applied purposes inthe area of reinforcement schedules, Lattal and Neef(1996) affirm that, though lacking the precision attai-ned in the laboratory and the formal prescriptions ofprocedure details, reinforcement schedules are opera-tive in real environments. Even if these authors showexemplary caution in their statement, they fail toidentify the control variables of their use of the term“reinforcement schedules”: are they an analogicalmodel of an observation of reality, or do they consti-tute an operation identifiable in reality as such? Dothey constitute simple structural descriptions ofobserved real covariations? With what level of realityare they identified?


4. The identification of the events under observationwith the knowledge operations used involves impor-tant problems on trying to extrapolate these opera-tions from the context in which they were designedto the study of complex human behaviour. It is suf-ficient to consider the example of the area of rule-governed behaviour. Schlinger (1990) argues againstthose researchers that continue to identify a rule witha discriminative stimulus, proposing that the term“rule” be reserved for those verbal stimuli that spe-cify contingencies and thus alter behavioural func-tions. So, then: what type of functional alteration isproduced, and what contingencies should be speci-fied? The use of the terminology of TEAB in thisarea is severely limited, since, if Wittgenstein (1967)was correct, the term “to think” and its relatedexpressions are employed multivocally in very dif-ferent contexts and, functionally speaking, we canfind ourselves dealing with different kinds of events.Thus, do the studies reviewed by Catania, Shimoffand Matthews (1989), Chase and Bjarnadottir(1992) and Verplanck (1992), constitute examples ofrule-governed behaviour? And, if so, are they of thesame type, functionally speaking, or can we isolatedifferent types, some identified with thinking andothers with other behaviours? It is not possible, atthe present time, to give a clear answer to the ques-tion. The limitations of the technical terminology ofTEAB, in the sense of its difficulties for dealing withqualitative details of the organization of humanbehaviour, can be observed in the mentioned studyby Schlinger, Blakely, Fillhard and Poling (1991).

Thus, TEAB appears up to now to have failed to eluci-date the strategic concepts contained in so-called“everyday psychology”, that is, the mental terms andexpressions of everyday language, which constitute theorigin of its knowledge, in the sense that they are thevery events it is sought to understand, describe, controland predict (Lee, 1988). It would appear difficult, then,for TEAB to be able to explain properly the develop-ment and maintenance of ideology in the sense of cultu-ral practice transmitted through use and custom, andeven less to provide the database that would permit thetechnologist to develop significant behaviour modifica-tion techniques. With this last statement we intend torefer to the fact that in TEAB it is common practice toidentify a particular knowledge operation (e.g., a rein-forcement schedules) with an observed event that it issought to predict and control. The criterion that controlsthis practice is precisely success in the prediction andcontrol of a kind of behaviour. However, the parameters

isolated by basic research may lose relevance in othercontexts or settings (setting factors, as Kantor [1924]called them), where each event (not instance of stimulusand response) is unique, and not necessarily repetitive.

It is only recently that the TEAB community hasbegun to become aware of this problem. Thus, resear-chers appear to use the term “equivalence relations” ina variety of ways: a) as an experimental proceduredirectly extrapolatable to reality, in the case of restric-ted situations such as learning to read, or of specifictheoretical problems, such as the generative nature ofhuman language; b) as a special behavioural phenome-non; c) as an experimental procedure that, despite theimpossibility of direct extrapolation, is increasingknowledge about certain properties of complex humanverbal and non-verbal behaviour, thus becoming trans-formed into a conceptual tool for the generation ofapplied implications that are counter-intuitive to thetraditional logic of the TEAB and ABA fields. Thequestion remains open, with no solution foreseeable inthe short term.

THE THEORETICAL AND CONCEPTUALSTRUCTURE OF ABA Baer, Wolf and Risley (1968) isolated seven key dimen-sions that characterise ABA: a) applied, b) behavioural,c) analytical, d) technological, e) conceptually systema-tic, f) effective, and g) generalisable. These dimensionswere conceived as a way of assessing a study as applied.Baer, Wolf and Risley were aware that research outsideof the controlled environment of the laboratory couldnot be assessed according to the current criteria forassessing it. These authors situated the ultimate criterionfor distinguishing between basic and applied research inthe differences in emphasis on the focus of experimentalcontrol of the relevant variables, and in the selection ofbehaviours relevant to the study (treated as dependentvariables). Thus, basic research may potentially selectany behaviour for its study and any variable on whichthis behaviour may be dependent. In contrast, appliedresearch is restricted to the analysis of socially impor-tant behaviours in the contexts in which these occur,together with the relevant variables of which thesesocially selected behaviours are a function. But: whatdoes the expression socially important behavioursmean? How are these behaviours selected? Are theyreally selected for their social importance, or for metho-dological convenience? Who decides which behavioursare socially important and which are not? The answer tothese questions is crucial for determining whether ABAconstitutes an authentic technology of behaviour based


on a relevant database. The keys to these answers can befound in the original article by Baer, Wolf and Risley, aswell as in their reappraisal of ABA almost twenty yearslater (Baer, Wolf and Risley, 1987).

As regards the question: what does the expressionsocially important behaviours mean?, we should replyto it bearing in mind that the criteria of social relevancemay be fixed simultaneously by at least two socialgroups: the users likely to benefit from research andapplication activity, and the groups that offer such servi-ces. The group of potential users is obviously interestedin solving a problem, and the group of professionals hasa double interest: on the one hand in the study of thevariables that contribute to the genesis and the mainte-nance of the problem, and on the other in its solution.The two social communities share as a cultural practiceeveryday language. Also, each community has develo-ped its own solution procedures, based on its own crite-ria for defining a given behaviour as problematic. Andthese sets of procedures, independently of their effecti-veness, are functional forms of behaviour in the contextsin which they are exercised. It is at the heart of thesecontextualised practices that the criteria of social judge-ment that define a given behaviour as problematic aregenerated, maintained and disseminated.

If the above is true, we greatly fear that ABA has notdealt correctly with the problem of the social definitionof its target behaviours. Given that TEAB abandoned fora long period, as a legitimate scientific enterprise, theelucidation of the control variables of everyday langua-ge, especially of the language of mental operations,ABA could not have had better conditions in which toanalyse this question. Let us consider the extent of thisargument.

In their original article of 1968, Baer, Wolf and Risley,on defining the behavioural dimension of ABA, set as anultimate assessment criterion that which a given subjectcan do effectively, drawing a strict distinction betweenwhat the subject does and what s/he says. As an obviousconsequence, they rejected as a valid measure what thesubject says about his/her non-verbal behaviour, unlessthis verbal report could be independently validated. Thisassessment criterion can be considered an obvious andprudent methodological requirement given the scarcityof available data on verbal behaviour, which at that timeconsisted basically in the demonstration of sensitivity toreinforcement of discrete, repetitive verbal and easilyquantifiable topographies (Greenspoon, 1950; Wilsonand Verplanck, 1956), or of larger functional units, suchas statements of opinion (Verplanck, 1955). However,the entrenchment of applied behaviour analysts in this

methodological precaution due to the need to demons-trate cleanly the effectiveness of their procedures, in aperiod in the history of ABA characterised by its mili-tancy against the medical model prevailing in clinicalcontexts, was to have disastrous consequences.

In the first place, ABA was restricted to the analysisand modification of a limited group of target behavioursin institutional settings in which it could guarantee gre-ater control and availability of subjects (Hopkins, 1987),a limitation to some extent understandable since the ini-tial target populations of ABA were under governmentcontrol in large institutions. These target behaviourswere considered socially important according to theirimmediate effects on the subjects emitting them, it thusbeing considered that ABA fulfilled its first (applied)dimension defined by Baer, Wolf and Risley in theirseminal article. However, it is reasonable to assume thatdue to their own methodological demands of obtainingreliable measures of repetitive physical events (responserates), and the rejection of verbal behaviour as a crite-rion for assessing change, they eliminated from ABA’saction context complex behaviours such as those refe-rred to as “neurotic.” These methodological require-ments continue to be present in published research, ascan be observed in the resort to the use of analogies fromphysics, such as behavioural momentum, applicable inquantitative research concerned with the analysis of thetemporal distribution of response rates (e.g., Mace,Mauro, Boyajian and Eckert, 1997), or the recent rene-wal of interest in procedures of response effort, definedoriginally as the force of pressure necessary to work anoperandum in the animal laboratory (Friman and Poling,1995). It is somewhat paradoxical to find this emphasison response rate (which, among other things, oftenimpedes strict comparison between basic and appliedstudies, as exemplified in the mentioned review byFriman and Poling on response effort), when it is recog-nised that frequency measures often do not constitute thebest measures of behavioural change in applied settings(Baer, 1986).

Secondly, with regard to the selection of the targetbehaviours of ABA, apart from the methodological biasdiscussed, it would seem that ideological biases wereinadvertently introduced. For example, the behaviour ofrepeatedly banging one’s head against the wall observedin retarded subjects in institutions, or the delusional spe-ech of institutionalised psychotics, are examples of dra-matic behaviours that clearly affect not only the imple-mentation of therapeutic and/or rehabilitative program-mes and the health and quality of life of the subject thatemits them; they also seriously perturb the climate of the


institution in which they are patients. If we reduce thefrequency of delusional speech behaviours in a psycho-tic subject in the context of his/her hospital, we canachieve a situation, among other effects, in which thesubject can hold reasonable conversations with otherpatients and with staff. But: what is the objective ofachieving a greater frequency of reasonable conversa-tions? What is a reasonable conversation in this context?Describing clearly the subjective symptoms experiencedby the subject in a clinical interview? Talking about theweather with another patient or with a member of staffon a boring shift? Discussing the current political situa-tion? It is a well-known fact that these interventions aregeneralisable only to the limited context in which theintervention is implemented, while increasing the tran-quillity of the institution. If we take as a reference adultsubjects categorised as “neurotic”, and put into histori-cal perspective the procedures employed for the solutionof their psychological problems, we frequently find thatthese procedures, supposedly experimentally designedand validated, are clearly –though unconsciously andimplicitly– inspired in historical-cultural traditions(Pérez Álvarez, 1991). Only recently have those wor-king in basic and applied analysis recognised the pres-sing need to take into account setting factors in order todevelop a true behavioural technology (Baer, Wolf andRisley, 1987; Wahler and Fox, 1981), with the beginningof the experimental analysis of contextual control (e.g.,Bush, Sidman and de Rose, 1989; Steele and Hayes,1991), sometimes limited to questions of a quantitativeand structural nature about the phenomenon of equiva-lence relations (Sidman, 1994; see pp. 475-531).

Thirdly, in the initial stages of its development, ABAemerged as a critical alternative, along with other fields,to the medical model prevailing in clinical contexts. Itscontribution of new methodologies and different con-ceptual points of view on human behaviour werethought to be sufficient, together with the proof of theireffectiveness, to achieve its generalisation as the techno-logy of behavioural change necessary for the solution ofa wide range of health problems. However, when ABAarrived in the professional arena, it found alreadysolidly-established practices, which it simply confron-ted. Just as TEAB abandoned the analysis of the varia-bles of control of verbal behaviour, at no time did itmake any effort of historical-conceptual analysis of thetechnical terms of psychopathology and the traditio-nally-established therapies. Such analyses might haveallowed the development of a new theoretical and tech-nological corpus, as well as the identification and empi-rical and conceptual foundation of behavioural change

procedures that were effective, but developed on thebasis of common sense (and thus scarcely evaluated), atthe same time as the reconstruction of a set of technicalvocabularies such as that of psychopathology, foundedon a consensus-based definition of the object of study ofbehavioural sciences. Thus, the virulence of the con-frontation between irredeemably opposed doctrinalpositions was inevitable. Finally, ABA (and behaviourmodification in general), has ended up revolving aroundthe old psychopathological concepts, which, redefinedoperationally in successive editions of the DSM system,are undergoing a new process of change in which symp-toms are selected and discarded according to whether ornot they can be adapted to the operationalisation pro-cess. Thus, for example, although ABA seeks to analy-ze and modify autolesive behaviours, the functionalmeaning of these behaviours continues to revolvearound classificatory categories such as “autism” or“mental retardation”, or descriptive categories such as“hallucination”, in an uncritical way, without it beingnoticed that the conceptual load of these terms remainsintact. In this way, ABA has not in fact become a bri-lliant contributor to the analysis and classification ofbehaviour judged as abnormal, nor has it contributedespecially to the elucidation of this judgement process.

Fourthly, we should even consider whether criteria d)and e) listed by Baer, Wolf and Risley in their 1968 arti-cle are fulfilled by ABA in a general way. With regard tocriterion d) (technological), Hopkins (1987) recognisesthat it is often the case that not all of the variables thatmay be mediating the effectiveness of a procedure arespecified. Ribes (1977) provides the example of thetime-out procedure in a study in which the aversivenature of this procedure did not appear to be responsiblefor its effectiveness. Similarly, and halfway betweendimensions d) and e) (conceptually systematic),Schlinger, Blakely, Fillhard and Poling (1991) commentthat referring to a functional relationship as discrimina-tive or reinforcing in the case of verbal human subjectsmay lead to our losing sight of the operation of otherspecifically human variables that have not been adequa-tely analysed. Other examples can be quoted –withoutpretending to be exhaustive–, that call into question theconceptually systematic character of ABA due to theinconsistent use of technical terminology (Carr, 1996;Woods, 1987). In fact, Baer (1986) recognises that ABAundertook its task using terms with an analytico-beha-vioural flavour, but “free of the laboratory”, a situationthat was contributed to, paradoxically, by the assessmentof the social validity of the effects of behavioural tech-niques.


RECAPITULATION: TEAB-ABAINTERRELATIONSHIPSThe time has come to respond to the question of whetherTEAB and ABA interact with one another in some waybeyond the terminological and methodological façade,beyond verbal appearances and the flavour of their tech-nical terminology. The fact of whether TEAB and ABAinteract with one another transcends the mere verifica-tion of that fact. On this interaction depends the very factof our having an authentic technology of behaviouralchange. To answer the question, let us return to a consi-deration of the three criteria proposed by Ribes Iñesta(1982 b), which we already saw in the third section ofthis paper.

a) The existence of scientific knowledge and technolo-gical knowledge that provides a theoretical and met-hodological foundation for practical knowledge.This criterion is not fulfilled in a strict sense by eit-her TEAB or ABA. In the case of TEAB, due to thescarcity of data and theoretical work on humanbehaviour, which has only begun to appear over thelast two decades at most. Moreover, this work isconditioned by the very theoretical structure ofTEAB, which poses questions relevant to research,of a quantitative nature, and focused on the analysisof phenomena observed in the laboratory, claimingto provide appropriate and sufficient descriptions ofbehaviour in its real settings. In the case of ABA, thefunctional relationships isolated in the laboratoryhave not been translated into parametric researchand systematic technology. Its efforts have concen-trated almost exclusively on the assessment of theeffectiveness of the procedures used themselves,perhaps based on the notion that the basic knowled-ge available on the effects of diverse knowledgeoperations constitutes the necessary and sufficientjustification for embarking on a pragmatic enterpri-se that restricts itself to translating knowledge ope-rations (only some of them) to a different environ-ment and in showing their effects a posteriori. Thistranslation should never be confused with the synt-hesis of knowledge, which does not in any wayinvolve the use of identical knowledge operationsbetween ways of knowing that are incommensura-ble. Rather, synthesis, as we see it, constitutes a pro-cess of derivation of implications starting out from adatabase, which may allow: a) the complete and glo-bal characterisation of a problem, not only withregard to the variables involved in an immediateway, but also to its ideological determinants; b) themodification and use of culturally pre-existing beha-

vioural change procedures, with the object of achie-ving new effects or the same ones where desirable;and c) the development of new procedures of beha-vioural change.

b) A common language that permits the analyticalassessment of technological application. Such acommon language does not exist, as some authors,such as Baer (1986) have concluded, or is at leastequivocal, according to others, such as Carr (1996),Schlinger, Blakely, Fillhard and Poling (1991) orWoods (1987). However, in addition to this commonlanguage, it is necessary to bear in mind the differentcontextual determinants of the scientific, technologi-cal and practical enterprises, which give differentmeanings to this language, transforming and/or dis-torting it according to their own needs. It should beremembered that the knowledge operations andknowledge characteristic of each way of knowingcan undergo distortions on losing sight of the histo-rical referents of their genesis, distortions that aremore and more pronounced the more a particularway of knowing is bound up with a specific cir-cumstance. We are also aware that the different tech-nical languages refer to different types of event: a)the events being studied (descriptive languages); b)the knowledge operations used (methodological lan-guages); and c) the data finally produced (data lan-guages). Each technical language, we repeat, isunder the control of its own contextual determinants,which it is necessary to describe and analyse. As faras we know, such a task has as yet scarcely beenbegun (Dougher, 1993). Only when suitable data areobtained, based on premises that are appropriate tohuman behaviour, can we begin to assess the extentto which the technology of behavioural change ful-fils this criterion.

c) Explicit social criteria with regard to the characte-ristics and conditions of application of the availabletechnology. Such criteria have been identified byapplied behaviour analysts with the empirical deter-mination of criteria of social validity on the part ofthe users of professional services, or “subjectiveevaluation” (Wolf, 1978). They were initially dis-couraged on grounds of methodological prudence(Baer, Wolf and Risley, 1968). However, the explici-tation of these social criteria, an enterprise appro-priate to ABA, does not appear to us to have yetbeen properly undertaken. In the first place, the stra-tegy of the assessment of the social validity of abehavioural intervention involves inherent ideologi-cal dangers, already analysed elsewhere (Ribes,


1982 b; Talento and Ribes, 1980). Secondly, even onthe basis that the strategy of social validity is appro-priate, a difficulty arises when we consider its sub-jective nature. What is “subjective”? What does thisterm mean in this context? As employed by Wolf(1978) and Baer, Wolf and Risley (1968), the termappears to refer to responses of verbal topographythat are neither repetitive nor easily quantifiable,employed in relatively particular circumstances, thatis, unique. If this is the case, we have to ask oursel-ves how it is possible to determine empirically thecriteria of social validity. Are they generally appli-cable to any technological undertaking because theyalways refer to specific behavioural topographieswith similar effects (i.e., to an operant class)? Andeven then, if we bear in mind TEAB research itself,different subjects may emit different verbal respon-ses to the same contingency. Thus, how can we findpoints of agreement between several rules self-gene-rated by different individuals? Which of these rulesdo we select as the appropriate criteria of social vali-dity? Or should we take them all into account? Wefear that these authors have fallen into importantcontradictions with regard to the logic of TEABitself, since such rules and/or criteria are functionalunder contextual control. Therefore, these verbalresponses cannot per se constitute appropriatelyexplicitated social criteria if their contexts of emis-sion are not taken into account. In other words, whatbecomes essential is the explicitation of the ideologythat sustains these verbal practices, both on the partof the users of professional services and on the partof the professionals that provide these services. Nosolution to this problem is foreseeable in the shortterm whilst ABA continues to be anchored to thelogic imposed upon it by operant conditioning.

In conclusion, we believe that we cannot speak of aninterrelationship between TEAB and ABA. At the pre-sent time, the relationship between the two thematicfields seems more like a marriage of convenience thatsustains a rhetorical practice of survival: quasi-scientificideology. Their history is nothing more than the chroni-cle of a foreseeable divorce.

CONCLUSION: WHAT KIND OFMETAPHYSICISTS DO WE WANT TO BE? The conclusions of this work (or rather, the possibleways forward) are focused on aspects we consider to benegative in the scientific and technological projects thatconstitute basic and applied psychology, respectively, atthe current socio-historical time. Pointing out the nega-

tive aspects in the current development of the so-called(by themselves) basic and applied psychologies in thespecific cases of TEAB and ABA constitutes a startingpoint for considering the possible future development ofthese two projects, which we summarise in a series ofpoints:

1. Basic and applied researchers, as well as “profes-sionals” should situate their everyday practice in itshistorical context. All scientific and/or professionalpractice is carried out at a given socio-historicalmoment. However, in undergraduate and postgra-duate programmes the history of psychology, as it istaught, amounts to nothing more than a historio-graphy that does not aid the identification of con-ceptual specimens, nor its assessment as a corpus ofdata as important as the empirical data per se.Furthermore, there is a need for the learning of tech-niques of conceptual analysis. If university teachingand professional practice become converted intoignoble rhetorical exercises, it is often due to thelack of a critical perspective with regard to the tech-nical discourse itself. Conceptual analysis becomesmore relevant in the so-called Humanities, whichconstitute the subject and object of analysis simul-taneously. This allows the avoidance of a situationof uncritical acceptance of conceptual specimensthat are transmitted with astonishing ease in formaleducation and training through constant use. Thishistorico-conceptual analysis, on the basis thateveryday language is the instrument of the transferof knowledge between ways of knowing, and theirreducible foundation of psychological knowledge,should consider: a) the relevant technical vocabula-ries; b) everyday mental and/or psychological lan-guage; and c) the articulations between the two lan-guages.

2. There should be explicit recognition, rather than adenial, as tends to be the norm, of the qualitative dif-ferences between the diverse ways of knowing iden-tified in the case of basic and applied projects in psy-chology. The recognition of these differences pre-vents falling into simplifications on conceptualisingthe relationships between ways of knowing, andallows the consideration of new forms of relations-hip that have up to now been obscured. Such recog-nition does not imply considering each way of kno-wing as an island closed in on itself. Quite the con-trary, in fact. Although they constitute universes ofdifferent empirical generality with different objecti-ves and contextual determinants, they start out froma common matrix characterised by a model of how


to carry out science, technology and practice, a cle-arly delimited object of study, and a minimum meta-system. None of these requirements is fulfilled atpresent by the scientific and technological projectsthat make up basic and applied psychology.

3. Up to now, and concentrating on the case of the inte-rrelationship between TEAB and ABA that we haveanalyzed as an example, efforts to avoid their divor-ce have consisted in lamenting it, in simplified pre-sentations for professionals of the findings of basicresearch, or in an insistence on practical training.When the conceptual dimension of the problem hasbeen approached, it has been done so on the basisthat the differences between basic science and appli-cations are questions of degree and of work context.In the case of psychology, as far as we are aware,there has been no attempt at the empirical analysis ofhow individuals adopt and reproduce a set of lin-guistic and instrumental practices, nor even of theways in which psychologists actually work, whichcould follow, for example, Latour and Woolgar’s(1986) procedure in their empirical analysis of theinteractions between those working in a neuroendo-crinological laboratory. As far as psychology is con-cerned, to our knowledge there is only Skinner’sretrospective report on how he carried out his labo-ratory work (Skinner, 1956).

With the above in mind, we feel it would be interestingto embark on a wide-ranging research project which,based on the historico-conceptual analysis referred to inthe first section of this paper, takes into account thefollowing areas of work: a) the empirical analysis ofeach way of knowing in its own context; b) the empiri-cal analysis of the articulations and/or correspondencebetween the languages of each way of knowing. Thisresearch project would be both transversal and longitu-dinal. The transversal research would be oriented to theanalysis of practices in immediate contexts, whilst thelongitudinal research would allow us to discover theprocess of acquisition and change of systems of practiceor ways of life. Such empirical analysis might permit thedevelopment of a model for undertaking scientific, tech-nological and practical tasks –something that is lackingat the moment–, as well as the determination of the rele-vant variables that affect their undertaking.

This work constitutes an attempt to adopt a criticalperspective with regard to the author’s own professionalactivity, so that it is the object of its own analysis. It hasemerged as a product at a given point of his personal andprofessional development, and therefore does not cons-titute a complete and final product. At the current time

in our disciplinary projects, it is no longer a question ofchoosing between different schools of thought. Theissue is not whether we are behaviourists, cognitivists,psychoanalysts or whatever other name may be given towhat we do, but rather which type of metaphysicist weare, according to Turbayne’s (1970) description:

“Those that fall victim to the metaphor accept away of classifying, grouping or locating facts asthe only one that exists for classifying, groupingor situating them. The victim not only has a parti-cular view of the world, but also considers that hisis the only possible view, or rather, confuses aspecial perspective on the world with the worlditself. He is, then, without knowing it, a metaphy-sicist. He has confused the mask with the face.This victim, a metaphysicist malgré lui, should bedistinguished from the other metaphysicist who isaware that his classification of the facts is arbi-trary and could have been different” (Turbayne,1970; p. 42 of the Spanish translation, 1974).

Which of these two kinds of metaphysicist do we wantto be? Which of these two metaphysicists is the reader?

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