Radical Approaches to Social Skills Training (Psychology Revivals)

Peter Trower

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781317932505
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Psychotherapy
• Index: Psychology

Originally published in 1984, one of the few facts that emerged clearly in the beleaguered field of psychology and mental health at the time was the extent of poor social skills in psychiatric patients, the mentally handicapped and problem adolescents. As a result, during the 1970s, social skills training – espoused as a form of behaviour therapy – seemed to offer great promise, based on the notion that social skills, like any other skills, are learnt and can be taught if lacking. However, in evaluating social skills training, many investigators found that skills did not endure and generalise.

This book attempts a major re-assessment of social skills training. It examines the underlying paradigms, which are shown to be fundamentally behaviourist. Such paradigms, it is argued, severely constrain the aims and method of current types of training. Thus the book develops what is termed an 'agency' approach, based on man as a social agent who actively constructs his own experiences and generates his own goal-directed behaviour on the basis of those constructs. This new model is developed in both theoretical and practical ways in the main body of the book and should, even today, be of great interest to all those involved with social skills training.

Part I

Theory and Research

Introduction and Review

Peter Trower

One of the few facts that emerges clearly in the beleaguered field of mental health is the extent of poor social skills in psychiatric patients. The studies and surveys show skills problems to be a major component in schizophrenia, mental handicap, depression, social anxiety, addiction disorders, psychosexual disorders, psychopathy, childhood and adolescent problems – in fact virtually the whole spectrum of problems categorized as psychiatric. Deficient social skills can be shown to play a major role in these problems, either as a primary cause or secondary effect. There is evidence that maladaptive social behaviour is probably the most common single factor to be found across disorders, either in a primary or secondary form. There is evidence, too, that individuals with the poorest social competence have the worst prognoses and highest relapse rate, and childhood competence level is predictive of severity of adult psychiatric problems.

The development in the 1970’s of social skills training (SST) – espoused as a form of behaviour therapy – excited great interest as offering perhaps the first real option, besides traditional medicine, for tackling this problem on a wide scale. SST was based on the comparatively simple notion that social skills, like any other skills, are learned, and could be taught where lacking, and a wealth of assessment and training methods were then devised and utilized (Goldstein, Sprafkin, & Gershaw, 1976; Liberman, King, deRisi, & McCann, 1975; Trower, Bryant, & Argyle, 1978; Bellack & Hersen, 1979; Curran & Monti, 1982).

The appeal of SST was not lost on the host of investigators and practitioners who have applied and adapted SST to numerous psychiatric disorders and social problems, as well as to the training of professional helpers themselves. It is commonly used by, and for, counselling, clinical and educational psychologists, psychiatrists, occupational therapists, social workers, psychiatric nurses, volunteer helpers and many others (Argyle, 1981; Ellis & Whittington, 1981).

Few would dispute the need for, and the appeal of, SST. The problem comes with its evaluation. The principal investigators have voiced serious reservations in recent years.

Although now well into its second decade of development, and despite much research effort and popularity, SST has so far proved to be, at best, only modestly successful in mental health. The reviews are in, and few are claiming that SST produces changes that endure and generalize (e.g. Twentyman & Zimering, 1979). Many SST pioneers themselves have written sceptically of research, assessment and training methods (e.g. Bellack, 1979) and there is always a danger that healthy scepticism will give way to terminal pessimism.

The Need for Reformulations in Social Skills Training

How can we make SST more effective? A robust empiricist, or an ideological opponent, might say that SST has had its day, and it is time to turn our attention to other forms of therapy. Fortunately few would maintain this argument, which is the most easily dismissed. SST is modestly successful and would continue to play an invaluable role even without further advances. More importantly, however, one might argue that SST goes on all the time informally. In other words the learning and teaching of social skills is part of the process of normal socialization, so that the real question is, can we augment and learn from this natural process to help those deprived of normal learning opportunities? The answer is yes, but can we do it more effectively?

One approach to this question is to simply carry out more research. The problem here is that a good deal of research has already been done with only modest results, which may mean the research questions may be wrong, because the theories from which they spring are wrong. The time has come, perhaps, for developing new theoretical formulations – a view that a number of SST investigators now clearly share (McFall, 1982).

There are two possible approaches to theoretical reformulation. The first is a conservative one, by way of conceptual clarification, modification and/or enlargement within the set of existing paradigms, and might be termed the evolutionary approach. It is probably fair to say that the conceptual clarification of social skills issues developed by Curran et al. (this volume) represents this conservative position. It is certainly widely advocated, and is well expressed by Schroeder and Rakos (1983) who see the whole of behaviour therapy gradually evolving from an original and simple operant approach to an enlarged approach taking account of cognitions and other variables. (However, it must be stated that they do not make reference to the underlying paradigms except by implication.) The second approach is a radical one, and involves a break with existing paradigms and the construction of new ones. It is the one advocated by myself, and Harre (chapters two and three of this volume) and others, and it is one which might be termed the “revolutionary” approach. It advocates, in effect, a paradigm shift. It embraces much of what has come to be known as the “cognitive revolution” but the term “cognitive” has become somewhat imprecise, some (especially the originators of the cognitive approach) placing it within a radical approach, others within a conservative one, but often the term is used confusedly, as we shall later show.

There are two points that need to be made about paradigms at this stage. Firstly, as any philosopher of science knows, any science begins with a set of presuppositions which guide subsequent theory formation, research and practice and are thus very powerful in formulating the questions we ask and the things we do. However, because the paradigms are assumed, or presupposed, they are not themselves the focus of research inquiry, and therefore invariably operate implicitly, remain unnoticed and tend to be uncritically accepted, as critics like Coyne (1982) have noted. Not surprisingly, researchers and practitioners may be unaware of the very principles which guide their research and practice. This is acceptable so long as the science in question makes good progress, but given the power of such paradigms, they will inevitably create major and persistent problems if they are wrong, and then need to be brought into focus and critically scrutinized. Given the need for reformulation in SST, it is imperative that we also examine the underlying paradigms at this stage, and make a decision on their adequacy. It is my contention that not sufficient attention has been given to this last pointy even by those who have recently offered useful reformulations (McFall, 1982).

What are the paradigms underlying SST? A detailed exposition is given in chapter two, but in brief, I am arguing that behaviourism, and particularly methodological behaviourism, provides the paradigms which are most influential in SST. One of the assumptions is that the individual is behaviourally and cognitively under the control of determining forces other than the individual himself – what Bandura calls “uni-directional determinism”. This view, in which the individual has a passive role in the push and pull of determining forces, is also common to the psychoanalytic and medical models (though they locate such forces differently), and I have collectively termed them the “organism approach”. This approach also contains epistemological and methodological assumptions about behaviour, cognitions and events which gives them the status of independent entities that are causally related, and can be externally varied and manipulated without changing their identities.

If the “organism approach” underlies SST, what is wrong with that? I shall be arguing, along with others, that these powerful guiding paradigms are indeed wrong and likely to produce the very problems that bedevil social skills assessment and training. The solution, it will be proposed, is to change the paradigms, and an alternative set, here termed collectively the “agency approach”, should be introduced and used to guide future theory, research and practice. There are a number of complex facets to the “agency approach” (a version of which is particularly well expounded by Harre & Secord, 1972 and subsequently developed by Harre in a series of publications) but for present purposes suffice it to say that it conceptualizes man as a social agent who actively constructs his own experiences and generates his own goal-directed behaviour on the basis of those constructs. It also advocates radically different epistemological and methodological assumptions. The adoption of these assumptions would dissolve several of the present pseudo-issues, and be better fitted to solve others, particularly in assessment and practice. There are obviously objections to these claims and these will be taken up later in this chapter and in chapters two and three.

But at this point it is important to try, to state as clearly as possible the implications of these two approaches for the practice of SST, since it is the practice that the whole exercise is about. Such a brief account inevitably is a distortion and is offered at this point purely for explanatory purposes rather than as a critical analysis, which is given in chapter two.

Component Skills Versus Process Skill

I have suggested a distinction elsewhere between social skills per se, i.e., the behavioural components, and social skill i.e., the generative process (Trower, 1982). To some extent, the organism approach is based entirely on social skills training (the acquisition of components) while the agency approach is primarily based on social skill training (the development of the generative process) with skills training playing a secondary role.

In the organism approach, the passive human organism is assumed to be unable to generate his or her own socially skilled behaviour, and is therefore assessed for “deficits” and, as it were, supplied with “skills”, through instigative training, and these skills are subsequently reinforced by social stimuli. The commonly voiced problems are, firstly that no one seems to be able to validly identify in a nonsubjective (i.e., “scientific”) way either deficits or skills to be taught, so inappropriate ones may be selected, and secondly, the “skills” that are taught often fail to endure or generalize.

In the agency approach the person is assumed to be able to generate his or her own socially skilled behaviour and if failing to do so, is assessed, the source of the breakdown identified, and the individual helped to restore his or her generative capacity. Skills training can then be used within the framework of the individual’s own generative activity. As regards the particular problem just mentioned, firstly deficits and skills are readily identifiable, since they are assumed in the agency approach to be a part of common, public (i.e., inter subjective) knowledge and therefore accessible to anyone within the local language community. And, secondly, since the individual can, if therapy is successful, generate his own unique social solutions, he should be able to generalize, maintain and modify his newly developing skills.

However, there are further differences between the two approaches as regards the actual behavioural component skills. It must suffice here to claim that the behavioural skills are misdescribed and misunderstood in terms of the organism approach and quite unlike normal social behaviour. The agency approach claims to correct both of these errors. These points are elaborated in detail in chapter two and in Trower (1983).

Plan and Purpose of the Book

Let us now return in the light of the above discussion, to the original question, and the purpose and plan for this volume. The theme of the book addresses the question: how can we improve the effectiveness of SST? A conservative approach is to undertake a critique of the main problems which have impeded progress and develop a conceptual reformulation within the terms of the existing behavioural paradigms.

In chapter one Curran et al. carry out a penetrating analysis on this level, and present a clearer conceptual framework for further research. This goes as far as possible, I believe, within the existing paradigms. However, I have advocated the adoption of a radical approach, involving the critical dismantling of the old system of paradigms, the building of a new one, and the development of theoretical and practical consequences of this change. A first attempt at such a programme is made in the rest of the book.

The radical programme of change proposed involves a series of steps, and the contributions from vari...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Dedication
• Contributors
• Part I: Theory and Research
• Part II: Practice
• Index