Introduction: Players and Setting
Learning Relational Frame Theory: A Prologue
If you’ve found this self-study guide there are only a few possible reasons why you are here. Perhaps you are an ACT clinician and have heard a little bit about RFT and want to know what it’s all about. Maybe you are already well versed in RFT and are looking for materials to send to a colleague or friend. The content in this self-study program has been curated by me (Jacob Martinez, ACT clinician and Matrix aficionado). I’ve carefully structured each element in a way that I believe best maximizes learning RFT, and that will help you put it into practice in your work.
At first glance the structure of this material may seem odd. You will not start this journey by learning the absolute basics about RFT. Rather you will encounter more advanced (but easy to digest) concepts, then work your way backward to the basic elements of the theory. This style of learning is intentional. Many people, including myself once-upon-a-time have become frustrated with trying to learn RFT by beginning with the initial elements of the theory, digging into technical terms, and attempting to piece together RFT from scratch. You do not need to do this. The work has been done for you. RFT has come a long way in the past 20 years. What was once deemed dense and hardly coherent to understand is now elegant and simple. This guide aims to prove that.
If you have any interest at all in RFT you likely already have some of the background of the history, like that it is a branch of behavior analysis that seeks to understand human language and cognition. You probably already know that it was developed in part by Steven C. Hayes, the co-founder of Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT). You may have heard that RFT is the scientific underpinning of ACT. Some of these statements are more true than others. Going through this guide will clarify them all for you.
Rather than doing a dive into the complete history of RFT, what I find more important to introduce is the many players and settings that go into this journey. You see, RFT is not a single thing. It’s not one person in one lab developing the theory. It’s not even many people in many labs working together to develop a theory. RFT is a field of research with many different people working on many different branches, independently, and in coordination. Developments in RFT occur naturally, through scientific rigor. It is not a linear process so much as it is a culmination of minds reaching out in excitement at the prospect of understanding more about the human condition. Each of these minds has its own motivations, own perspective, and own attitude.
You will see several names pop up again and again as you read through the guide. This introduction will serve to help orient you to the names that you will see, and what kind of work these professionals do.
Players & Settings
Steven C. Hayes, PhD.
Steve Hayes is a psychologist and researcher at the University of Nevada, Reno. He is the co-founder of Acceptance & Commitment Therapy. He also co-authored the original text on RFT and launched the study as a behavioral account of human language and cognition. It was seen as an analytical and experimental extension of B.F. Skinner’s work on Verbal Behavior. The early work on RFT, Relational Frame Theory: A Post-Skinnerian Account of Human Language and Cognition published in 2001 was the first book to present RFT to the masses.
Dermot Barnes-Holmes, PhD
Dermot Barnes-Holmes is one of the principle researchers in RFT at this time. He works at the Contextual Behavioral Science Group at Ghent University, where he runs a lab studying RFT. Many of the materials that make up this study-guide are provided by the GO-RFT lab and freely available on their website.
Yvonne Barnes-Holmes, PhD
Yvonne Barnes-Holmes is also a principle researcher in RFT at this time. She works at the RFT lab in Ghent. She is passionate about RFT applications to clinical work.
Niklas Törneke, MD
Niklas is a psychiatrist from Sweden. He wrote the first “user-accessible” book on RFT called Learning RFT published in 2010. It is often cited as one of the easiest entry points to RFT. Niklas does incredible work in the area of metaphors in therapeutic contexts. His book Metaphor in Practice is highly applicable to the information you will learn from this study guide.
Mattheiu Villatte, PhD
Matt Villatte, is a psychologist and researcher from France. His work is focused on creating a comprehensive clinical application of RFT. That is to say, he aims to use RFT as the primary therapeutic process of change. He is the co-author of Mastering the Clinical Conversation, a book about clinical RFT. He also runs a yearly 6-month long RFT study group conducted over Zoom. Some chapters and pages from this book are a part of this guide. You must own this book in order to access them, it is worth the cost.
ACBS Listservs
The Association for Contextual Behavioral Science (ACBS) is the community for all those interested in Contextual Behavioral Sciences, of which ACT, RFT, FAP, and others are a part. Being a member of the ACBS allows you to access “listservs”, which are discussion threads where members can ask and answer questions, and discuss a variety of topics. Some of the material in this guide will be discussions that can be seen only in these listservs. You must be a paying member of the ACBS to access them. If you have any interest at all in RFT or ACT it is worth the cost of membership.
How this guide is structured
The content contained in each of these modules is pulled from freely available sources. Nearly everything in this guide is free with the exception of the book Mastering the Clinical Conversation, and a couple of things that are free only for members of ACBS. Any research articles contained in these modules have been made available by the GO-RFT Lab and are linked to here: GO-RFT Lab Publications
I’ve simply curated this material for study purposes.
Each module builds off of the prior one, proceed in order rather than skipping around. If you have already seen one of the videos, or read the material before, try reading it again. Each module has discussion questions to help you reflect on what you just consumed. There also self-practices to try out.
While you can guide yourself through this guide at your own pace, it is recommended that you take a few days in between each module, in order to reflect and practice any of the short assignments I’ve tasked you with.
You can progress through the modules by clicking next, to the lower right.
Commenting
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