My Integral Coaching and the Wisdom of Behaviorism

              I believe that the insights of the psychotherapeutic schools associated with behaviorism might be helpful for my coaching clients. Now, I engage in Integral Coaching activity, which is based on Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory and Robert Kegan’s Subject-Object Theory. In each coaching case, I always need to assess client’s behavioral aspects. For example, in every coaching session, I make sure that I ask my clients about questions related to individual objective things (e.g., action, respond, behavior, energy flow, etc.). Furthermore, I pay attention to my behavior during coaching session, for instance, my posture, gesture, facial expression, energy state, and breathing rhythm.  

In addition to the assessment, I sometimes offer some developmental exercises for my clients to create a new way of being, considering my client’s past behavioral patterns. When I think about the best exercise for my clients, I’d like to refer to psychotherapeutic techniques more. Especially, I think that Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy will be helpful to modify clients’ behavioral patterns, and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is also useful to make clients’ life rich and meaningful. In a word, the wisdom of behaviorism is indispensable in my coaching in order to assess and transform my clients.   

Subjectivity and Objectivity

At first, when I was thinking of behaviorism, I felt as if I had been a “machine” and all my acts, behaviors, and movements had been predetermined by outside force. Literally, I was not a human being but a machine without mind during the imagination. However, my perception came to change gradually. I was able to appreciate the both subjective and objective aspects in reality, though behaviorism is apt to emphasize objectivity in human beings. In other words, by virtue of the wisdom of behaviorism, I came to perceive vividly both subjective and objective realms in this world.  

“I” am living today, and “I” am the last “I” who live today

“I” am living today (actually, I don’t know whether I’m living or not), and “I” am the last “I” who live today. I came up with this while running this morning. 

Gifts and Limitations in Behaviorism

From my perspective as an Integral practitioner, the most important gift of behaviorism is to enhance my understanding of objective aspects in human beings. In behaviorism, human beings are defined as measurable objects in a scientific manner. Due to this objective approach, a plethora of human behavioral mechanisms are elucidated. 

Although behaviorism has contributed to social science extensively, that includes inherent limitations. For instance, Skinner (1957) explains that “[t]he simplest and most satisfactory view is that thought is simply behavior” (p. 449). This statement implies one of the limitations in behaviorism. Even though our subjective experiences (thoughts, emotions, feelings, etc.) can’t be measured objectively, Skinner reduced our thoughts (subjective aspect) into our behaviors (objective aspects). We need to respect the wisdom of behaviorism mentioned above, but we need to pay attention to the intrinsic limitations at the same time. 

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Modifying Someone Else’s Behavior

              I’d like to introduce a simple practice in behaviorism to modify someone else’s behavior. A lot of experiments have shown that “verbal behavior can be conditioned by selectively rewarding types of words or phrases” (as cited in Frager & Fadiman, 2002). Considering this concept, we can give others some rewarding verbal behaviors by simply nodding our heads or saying “yeah” or “uh-huh.” That kind of verbal behaviors may be effective to reinforce other’s behaviors whenever they express emotional statements in particular.  

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Personality and Personal Growth (6th Edition)

Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy: Socratic Questions

              Socratic questions is generally used in Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) in order to make a client discover and understand his/her irrational beliefs. Dryden (1999) articulates the key point in Socratic questioning. Firstly, Socratic questioning encourages clients to understand rational principles. In this method, therapists don’t give clients a certain answer but ask several questions in order to encourage them to think by themselves. If the client’s answer is still irrational, RBET therapists ask further questions based on the answer to guide him or her to the rational answer (Dryden, 1999). Through this process, a client discovers his or her irrational beliefs and changes them into rational ones gradually.

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