RAYMOND M. BERGNER, PH.D.


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Illinois State UniversityDepartment of Psychology

SOME EXCERPTS FROM VARIOUS WORKS


[Almost all of the articles below can be accessed on the net at ResearchGate or Academia.edu]

 

From Bergner R (2000).  Love and barriers to love: An analysis for psychotherapists and others, American Journal of Psychotherapy, 54, 1-17.          

            “To say that “Romeo loves Juliet” (or vice versa) in the romantic sense of that term is not to say that Romeo has certain feelings, but rather that he has a certain kind of relationship to Juliet.  This relationship is one in which he has given Juliet a certain kind of place, or status, in his world.  This place is one of extraordinary honor, value, and centrality; and is perhaps the ultimate such place that one human being can bestow upon another.   In the giving of it, which at the outset has the quality, not of choosing, but of ‘falling’ in love, a highly affirming relationship is established between Romeo and Juliet.  The characteristics of this relationship will be the subject of this article.”  (Empirical research supportive of this formulation may be found at: http://spr.sagepub.com/content/27/5/620.full.pdf)


From Bergner R (2007). Status Dynamics: Creating New Paths to Therapeutic Change.   

                  Ann Arbor,  MI: Burns Park Publishers.

The status dynamic therapist occupies a world of places.  Our particular interest is in places that carry  power -- places from  which our clients can act effectively in their worlds to bring about personal change.  And, as active agents of change, our interest is in helping our clients  to occupy such positions of power.   We would like to position them to fight downhill battles and not uphill ones, to be “in the driver’s seat” and not the passenger one.  We would like them to approach their problems as proactive, in-control actors and not helpless victims.  We would like them to attack these problems from the position of acceptable, sense-making, care-meriting persons who bring ample strengths, resources, and past successes to the solution of their difficulties.  We would like them to proceed from reconstructed worlds, and from places within these worlds, in which they are eligible and able to participate in life in meaningful and fulfilling ways.

Everything that will be said in this book, in one way or another, centers around this core agenda.  To further it...

~ We assign certain empowering statuses -- places of power -- to our clients 

based, not on observation, but on the fact alone that our clients are 

fellow persons (chapter 2).  

~ We assist our clients in reconstructing both their worlds and their places 

within their worlds (chapter 3).  

~ We assist our clients in changing their self-concepts, utilizing the largely

unrecognized truth that “status takes precedence over fact” to circumvent 

that concept’s notorious resistance to change (chapter 4). 

~ We co-create with our clients formulations of their problems in which they are 

the active initiators of certain “linchpin” factors at the heart of  their 

difficulties, and thus are already in positions of power from which  to 

bring about broad changes in their lives (chapter 5). 

~ We assist our clients in accepting these new conceptions of themselves 

            and their worlds by adhering to certain policy guidelines such as 

“appealing to what matters” to them and “going where we are 

welcome” (chapter 6). 

~ We  communicate places of power for our clients to occupy through the 

vehicle of  stories and other images  (chapter 7).  

~ Finally, in all that we do, we endeavor to be credible persons so that our 

clients will accept our status assignments.  

My colleagues and I have found the ideas put forward in this book extrraordinarily helpful and  powerful over the course of several decades.   I hope that they will prove of equal value to you and your clients. 


From: Bergner, R. (2009).  Trauma, exposure, and world reconstruction.  

American Journal of Psychotherapy, 63, 267-282,

  In post-traumatic stress disorder, a traumatic event (or series of events) very suddenly ushers the individual into a new world.  Typically, the individual has to that point inhabited a world marked for the most part by characteristics of safety, predictability, and controllability......The traumatic event  radically transforms this world.  Like the sudden announcement of imminent atomic holocaust, it takes over the person's whole world and thrusts other parts of that world to the periphery. This transformed world, in contrast with the old one, is precisely unsafe, unpredictable, and uncontrollable.......The purpose of this article is to develop the many advantages and implications of conceptualizing trauma in terms of such devastating transformations to patients' conceptions of their worlds........ The article includes (1) an analysis of how this view renders the symptoms of PTSD intelligible; (2) a demonstration of how it integrates research findings on who is most vulnerable to PTSD; (3) a critique of the currently dominant “reprocessing of maladaptive memory structures” accounts of how exposure therapy works; and (4) a reconceptualization of how exposure therapies achieve their salutary results.


From Bergner R, & Bridges A. (2002).  The significance of heavy pornography 

involvement for romantic partners: Research and clinical implications.

  Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy, 28,  198-206.

This paper presents a paradigm case portrait of the female romantic partners of heavy pornography users.  Based on a sample of 100 personal letters, this portrait focuses on their often traumatic discovery of the pornography usage, and the significance they attach to this usage for (a) their relationships, (b) their own worth and desirability, and (c) the character of their partners.  Finally, a number of therapeutic recommendations are made for helping these women to think and act more effectively in their very difficult circumstances.


From Bergner, R. (1987). Undoing degradation.  Psychotherapy, 24, 25-30. 

     An individual subjected to a successful “degradation ceremony” is literally “de-graded” or demoted in his or her community. That is, this individual is relocated to a new community position conveying drastically reduced eligibilities for participation in the social practices of that community. This article presents a systematic analysis of the conditions necessary for one person to successfully degrade another. It then delineates a large number of therapeutic interventions which are heuristically suggested by this analysis for undoing degradations which have befallen our clients.


From Bergner, R. (2010), Severe public humiliation: Its nature,   

     consequences, and clinical treatment.  Psychotherapy, 49, 492-501.

In this paper, we present an analysis of what is involved when our clients undergo severe public humiliation at the hands of another person or persons.  We describe (a) the structure of such humiliation; i.e., the factors that, taken collectively, render certain interpersonal events and circumstances humiliating ones for people; (b) the most common damaging consequences of being subjected to these, up to and including suicide and homicide; and (c) a number of therapeutic interventions that have proven effective in our own work with humiliated clients, as well as certain obstacles we have encountered in this work.


From Bergner, R. (2006). The many secure knowledge bases of psychotherapy.  American 

Journal of  Psychotherapy, 69, 215-232.

Psychotherapy, well and carefully undertaken by competent individuals adhering to certain practice guidelines, while it can and should benefit from scientific research, rests on many other epistemic foundations, some of which are more certain than the necessarily probabilistic outcomes of psychological research.  In this paper, a scale of justified belief is presented.  This scale rates the degree of certainty of propositions yielded by different sources of knowledge, and thus the confidence with which we may believe and act upon them.  Following the presentation of this scale,  an analysis of the degree to which each of these knowledge sources enters into the practice of psychotherapy is developed.  In the end, what is proffered here is a view of psychotherapy as a distinctly rational and empirical activity whose judgments and decisions rest, not only on scientific research, but on many further secure foundations. 



From Bergner R (2004). “Is it all really biological?”  Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 24, 30-49.

            “The hypothesis that our current psychological forms of description and explanation will one day be replaced by biological ones, while not universally held, is wide-spread and highly influential in both the scientific community and the broader culture.  The purpose of this paper is to examine this hypothesis.  It will be argued that, while biology has had and will undoubtedly continue to have many extremely valuable and illuminating findings, it cannot and will not replace psychological explanations and concepts in our understanding, scientific and otherwise, of human behavioral phenomena.  That is to say, the science of biology will not replace or subsume that of psychology.”

 

From Bergner R (1998). Therapeutic approaches to problems of meaninglessness. American Journal of Psychotherapy, 52, pp. 1-16.

            “In support of this conception as a paradigm case of meaningful action (or living) and as a useful point of departure for understanding failures to achieve it, it is instructive to consider what many would view as the epitome of meaninglessness, namely, the "absurd" as it is described in the existential literature.23,24  Consider the excellent example of an absurd world captured in the following suicide note:  ‘Imagine a happy group of morons who are engaged in work.  They are carrying bricks in an open field.  As soon as they have stacked all the bricks at one end of the field, they proceed to transport them to the opposite end.  This continues without stop and every day of every year they are busy doing the same thing.  One day one of the morons stops long enough to ask himself what he is doing.  He wonders what purpose there is in carrying the bricks.  And from that point on, he is not quite as content with his occupation as he had been before.  I am the moron who wonders why he is carrying the bricks’5 (p. 419). 

            This description, highly reminiscent of Camus'23 classical description of Sisyphus, may be usefully contrasted with our paradigm case of meaningful action.  When viewed thus, what emerges is that the absurd world it describes is the diametric opposite of our paradigm case.  The man's precise complaint is that, in the world as he finds it, there is no instrumental, intrinsic, or spiritual significance.  His actions, analogized as a pointless carrying of bricks back and forth, accomplish no valued utilitarian end that he can detect.  They possess no intrinsic value for him.  And, unlike Sisyphus, he can find no spiritual or transcendent value in the activity that might enable him to endure or even to affirm it.  The absurd, the quintessence of meaninglessness, is precisely what is generated when instrumental, intrinsic, and spiritual value are missing from human behavior.”         


From Bergner R (2002). Sexual compulsion as attempted recovery from degradation. Journal of Sex       and Marital Therapy, 28, 373-387.

             “The central theses comprising the present theory are the following:  (1) Sexually compulsive individuals are obsessed with the enactment of certain preferred sexual scenarios.  (2) These preferred scenarios have their origins in early experiences of degradation, and represent attempts to recover from this degradation They embody interpersonal transactions that, were they to occur in reality, would (or so persons envision) lift them from their degraded positions among other persons to new and more viable ones, and in so doing convey personal redemption and recovery.  (3) These scenarios function as impossible standards against which compulsive individuals measure their actual relationships, activities, and achievements, with the result that the latter are found not to measure up and thus not to satisfy them.  (4) Finally, these recovery attempts are unsuccessful.  While momentarily gratifying, they do not in fact bring about recovery, and typically leave their enactors feeling more degraded than before.  Thus, they engender ever greater needs to reenact the preferred sexual scenario in the future, and set up a compulsive cycle.”

 

From Bergner R (1999). Status enhancement: A further path to therapeutic change. American Journal of Psychotherapy, 53, 201-214.

            “In the field of psychotherapy, our time-honored paths to change have been through bringing about alterations in our clients' behaviors, cognitions, insight into unconscious factors, and patterns of interaction with significant others.  In this article, a further option will be presented--that of changing our clients' ‘statuses.’  In the article, I shall present the key idea behind ‘status dynamics’ as developed by Ossorio (1-3) and others(4-6), and describe how this idea may be implemented powerfully in clinical practice.”

 

Bergner R (1997). What is psychopathology?  And so what? Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 4, 235-248.

            “In this paper, it has been argued, per Ossorio (1985), that psychopathology is best defined as significant restriction in the ability of an individual to engage in deliberate action and, equivalently, to participate in available social practices.  Such a definition meets the intellectual criteria that an adequate definition represent a non-empirical articulation of the necessary and sufficient conditions for correct application of a concept, and that it successfully discriminate instances of a concept from non-instances.  Further, the definition conveys other advantages such as (a) successfully addressing the problem of psychopathology's relativity to time, culture, and situation; (b) illustrating a straightforward entree to an integration of existing theoretical approaches to psychopathology and treatment; and (c) providing a coherent principle of classification for mental disorders.  The widespread adoption of Ossorio's definition would, I believe, go far to remove the theoretical and practical chaos that characterizes the field of psychopathology today.”

 

From Bergner R & Holmes J (2000).  Self-concepts and self-concept change: A status dynamic formulation.  Psychotherapy, 37, 36-44.          

            “On the present account, an individual's self-concept is conceived as that individual's summary formulation of his or her status (Ossorio, 1978; 1998).  This conception differs significantly from traditional ones in which the self-concept is universally considered to be a kind of organized informational summary of perceived facts about oneself, including such things as one's traits, values, social roles, interests, physical characteristics, and personal history (James, 1890; Snygg & Combs, 1949; Rogers, 1959; Wylie, 1968; Kihlstrom & Klein, 1994; Baumeister, 1995).  For this reason, and because the notion of "status" will be unfamiliar to most readers, this section will be devoted to explaining the present conception.

            A helpful means for making the transition from thinking in informational summary terms to thinking in status terms is to consider what we might naturally say to a child if we were teaching her the game of chess.  Suppose that we have a board set up, the pieces arrayed in a mid- game situation, and we are explaining what a "knight" is.  In doing so, it is highly unlikely that we would use an informational summary approach, which would include telling her such things as that our knights were made of onyx, weighed 2 ounces, were forty years old, and were made in Mexico.  Rather, we would provide her with information that has to do with the knight's place or position in the total scheme of things.  Thus, we would describe what a knight is by informing her of its relationships to the other pieces in the game (e.g., its ability to capture them, to block their movements, to move vis-à-vis them only in a certain distinctive fashion, etc.).  Further, looking at any given knight's position relative to other pieces in the game situation displayed, we would help her to understand its current strategic importance.  The crucial point here is that our thinking about the knight, indeed our thinking about what it is to be a knight, is quintessentially relational or positional in nature.  When we have completed our description, what we have given our child is a summary formulation of the knight's status---its overall place in the scheme of things---not an informational summary of many different kinds of facts about knights.

            Returning from chess pieces to persons, the status dynamic view maintains that the self-concept is most usefully identified, not with an organized summary of myriad perceived facts about oneself, but with one's summary formulation of one's status.  That is to say, it is one's overall conception of one's place or position in relation to all of the elements in one's world, including oneself.  In a simple and humorous, yet illuminating, illustration of this notion, cartoon character Charlie Brown once lamented that he was unable to initiate a relationship with a little girl on the playground because "I'm a nothing and she's a something."  He then went on to relate that, if he were a "something," or she a "nothing," he could pursue her, but that, since "nothings" cannot hope to succeed with "somethings," he could not act.  In this example, Charlie provides us with a simplified illustration of the self-concept as a summary formulation of one's status ("nothing" existing in a world comprised of "somethings" and "nothings"); and illustrates how what is fundamental about self-concepts is not that they are informational summaries of myriad facts about oneself, but that they place one somewhere in the scheme of things.

 

From Bergner R (1997). The use of a recent formulation of bulimia nervosa in the successful treatment of a bulimic woman. Family Therapy, 24, 71-79.

            “Bulimic binge eating represents a rebellious reaction against ... coercive and self-disregarding methods of familial and self governance.  Bulimic purging represents a reinstatement of the coercive regime, and sets the stage for further rebellion in the future.  A critical practical implication of this formulation is that therapeutic emphasis should be placed on changing the self-governance strategies of bulimic individuals.”

 

From Bergner R. (2003). Emotions: A relational view and its clinical applications.  American Journal of Psychotherapy, 57, 471-490.

            “In this paper, three major tasks are undertaken.  The first of these is to show that our traditional understanding of the nature of emotions, which equates them with certain sorts of inherently private affective experiences that are brought about by various causal factors (esp., exciting events, cognitive interpretations, and biological states of affairs), does justice neither to the conceptual nor to the empirical facts.  The second is to present an alternative conception of emotions as a specific class of perceived relationships between oneself and some person, object, event, or state of affairs.  The third is to demonstrate how this relational conception of emotions heuristically suggests a far greater range of therapeutic options than does the traditional view. 

 

From Bergner R (1998). Characteristics of an optimal clinical case formulation.  American Journal of Psychotherapy, 52, 287-300.

            “When one can discern the presence of a central organizing linchpin factor in a given clinical case, this represents a highly advantageous state of affairs.  One can, by virtue of this, proceed in a highly efficient and economical, as opposed to piecemeal, fashion.  Further, one can achieve this economy and efficiency without paying the price of superficiality, since one is getting to what might be termed "the heart of the matter" in the client's case.  Finally, one has in a linchpin formulation a central blueprint that provides (a) a clear, constant goal for therapist and client; (b) a clarification for clients of both their power and of where and how they would best target their efforts; and (c) a vast heuristic suggestiveness as to how one might proceed therapeutically to bring about important change.”

 

From Bergner R (1998).  Introduction to “Leadership in athletic coaching.” Advances in Descriptive Psychology (Vol 7).  Ann Arbor, MI: Descriptive Psychology Press.

        “All head coaches, regardless of the sport they are coaching, and regardless of the age or gender of their players, face a common set of critical tasks.  These tasks are of such importance that team success or failure will usually rest on how well they succeed at them.  Certainly, the very best coaches, the ones who year in and year out develop teams of skillful, highly motivated, cohesive overachievers, are those who do the best job of implementing these tasks.

        Coaches face, first of all, a leadership task.  Like the head of any other organization, whether it be a business, a school, or a volunteer organization, the head coach must find an answer to this question: "What must I do, and how must I be as a person, if I am to maximize the likelihood that those under me will follow my lead in the pursuit of a shared mission?"

        Second, coaches face a motivational task.  The great majority of athletes do not enter their teams with ideal levels or kinds of motivation.  Left to their own inclinations, few of these athletes would give their utmost to make themselves the best individual and team players that they could be.  Coaches must therefore find ways to motivate their players to become the most skillful, intelligent, unselfish, and hardworking team members that they are capable of being.

        Third, coaches have a teaching task.  They have the task of helping players to learn--of helping them to develop the superb technical skills and decision-making abilities that are necessary for success in their sport.  Thus, coaches must acquire learning principles and methods that enable them to teach their game as well and as efficiently as possible.

        All of the above are extremely vital tasks for coaches.  Failure at them will, depending on the specific nature of the failure, result in such things as refusals to follow the coach's leadership, poor effort on the part of players, inadequate skill development, disciplinary problems, low team morale, and losing.  Success at them produces such exciting results as team unity and commitment in the pursuit of a common mission, maximum personal effort, high levels of skill development, overachievement, and winning.

        Despite this, a review of the coaching literature reveals that very little has been written about these tasks.  The overwhelming majority of the hundreds of coaching books on the market pertain to some specific sport--e.g., to baseball, soccer, basketball, or football.  In them, the same formula is repeated with remarkable regularity.  This formula comprises a recounting of the rules, the necessary equipment, the basic skills, the positional responsibilities, some plays or general patterns of play, and some instructional drills.  Many of these books are very well done and quite helpful to coaches.  However, as a group, they leave a gigantic gap in the coach's knowledge: they say at best very little, and at worst nothing at all, about the vital coaching tasks mentioned above.

        The three chapters that comprise this section will, to the author's knowledge, be the first to thoroughly and systematically address these critical coaching tasks.  In them, the nature of the leadership, motivation, and teaching tasks will be discussed in depth, and their necessity for overall team success made clear.  Further, numerous practical ideas and procedures will be presented that enable coaches to lead, motivate, and teach their teams in highly effective ways.