AMERICAN DECADE

of BEHAVIOR
3 2000.

PSYCHOLOGIST
Hunger and Health Attachment and Culture

University Neighborhood Hilda Wilkinson Brown

Journal of the American Ryrhcslo~ic~l

haociafian @ October 2000 Vdurne 55 Number 10 lSSN 0003060X
 --
PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE AND PSYCHOTHERAPY
Philosophy of Science and the
Foundations of Psychotherapy
Alvin R. Mahrer
University of Ottawa
The field of psychotherapy rests on a foundation of basic
propositions, findamental starting points or cornerstones,
and ideas that are generally taken for granted as finds-
mental givens or truths. A case is presented that there are
ways in-which foundational beliefs may be kept essentially
immune from careful explication, study, examination, anal-
ysis, and challenge, and therefore from constructive im-
provement and change. Borrowed largely from the neigh-
boring field of philosophy of science, 5 solutions are pre-
sented to assist in explicating, challenging, improving, and
changing foundational beliefs. The subsequent 2 articles
(E. Erwin, 2000; .I F.
. Rychlak, 2000) illustrate how these
philosophy of science methods may be applied to 2 foun-
dational beliefs in thejield of psychotherapy.
v
irtually every field of study has its basic proposi-
tions, its fundamental starting points, corner-
stones on which the field rests. ideas that are
generally taken for granted as fundamental givens or truths.
These may be taken as the field's foundational beliefs, the
spirit of which is shared in such related but technically
different terms and phrases as theorems, postulates, as-
sumptions, axioms, dictums, self-evident truths, and basic
definitional truths. For example, one such taken-for-
granted foundational belief in Euclidian geometry is
"Through two points in space there always passes one and
only one straight line."
What are some of the foundational beliefs in the field
of psychotherapy? Although the field seems to lack an
officially sanctioned list of its formally stated, taken-for-
granted fundamental givens and truths, the field is rife with
foundational beliefs that are generally presumed, assumed,
implied, taken for granted, and occasionally spelled out.
Here is a tiny sample of these beliefs taken from a variety
of sources, representing different constituencies, and relat-
ing to theory, research, or practice. These examples are in
no official wording and in no particular sequence; they vary
in level of abstraction, range from the epistemological to
clinical lore, and may be inconsistent with one another.
Some may be more basic than others. They are merely
meant to illustrate what may be understood as some of the
foundational beliefs in or overlapping the field of psycho-
therapy:
October 2000 American Psychologist
Copyright 2000 by Ihc American Psychological Association, loc. W3-066X/00/$5.00
Vol. 55. No. 10. 1117-1 125 DOI: 10.1037/10003-066X.55.10.1117
There is a cumulative body of psychotherapeutic
knowledge; research is a primary gatekeeper for
what is admitted into or withdrawn out of the cu-
mulative body of knowledge.
Prediction and explanation of empirical facts are
important criteria for determining the worth of the-
ories of psychotherapy.
Scientific research on psychotherapy is to test and
thus confirm or disconfirm testable hypotheses.
Human beings are basically biological organisms.
Biological, neurological, physiological, and chemi-
cal events and variables are basic to psychological
events and variables.
The brain is a basic determinant of human behavior.
Human beings have intrinsic inborn needs, drives,
traits, and instincts.
There are biopsychological stages of growth and
development.
Behavior is a conjoint function of predominantly ge-
netic endowment and environmental circumstances.
Responses followed by satisfying consequences
tend to be strengthened; responses followed by un-
satisfying consequences tend to be weakened.
There are mental illnesses, diseases, and disorders.
0 Clients seek psychotherapy for, and psychotherapy
constitutes, treatment of psychological problems,
distress, mental disorders, and problems in living.
Practitioners assess, evaluate, and diagnose the cli-
ent's problem or mental disorder, then select and
apply the appropriate treatment.
The proper therapist-client relationship is a prereq-
uisite to successful psychotherapy.
Appropriate insight and understanding are prereq-
uisites to successful psychotherapy.
Editor's note. Alvin R. Mahrer developed this Philosophy of Science
and Psychotherapy section.
Author's note. Correspondence concerning this article should be ad-
dressed to Alvin R. Mahrer, School of Psychology, University of Ottawa,
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada KIN 6N5. Electronic mail may be sent to
amahrer@uonawa.ca.
 My aim in this article is not to argue on behalf of
any particular set of foundational beliefs. Rather, my
first aim is to present a case that in the field of psycho-
theTapeutic theory, research, and practice, foundational
beliefs have been and continue to be essentially hidden,
taken for granted, unexplicated, unspecified, camou-
flaged, and thereby immunized against careful- study, --
analysis, examination, scrutiny, explication, construc-
tive challenge, improvement, change, and advancement
(cf. Chalmers, 1982; Feigl, 1953; Fodor, 1987; Kagan,
1996; Kantor, 1945; Mahrer, 1998; Mays, 1977; Slife &
Williams, 1995). The second aim is to suggest using
some helpful tools, borrowed in large measure from
philosophers of science, to dig out and explicate foun-
dational beliefs; to study, analyze, and challenge them;
and thereby to improve and advance the foundational
beliefs in the field of psychotherapy.
The aim of the subsequent articles (Erwin, 2000,
this issue; Rychlak, 2000, this issue) is to illustrate how
these tools can be applied to the examination and chal-
lenging analysis of two foundational beliefs. Joseph F.
Rychlak is a psychotherapy theoretician, practitioner,
and researcher whose field of study includes philosophy
of science. Edward Erwin is a philosopher of science
whose field of study includes psychotherapy theory,
practice, and research. For his article, Rychlak has se-
lected a foundational belief dealing with causality,
namely, for given psychotherapeutic events, there is a
single best causal explanation consisting of underlying
mechanisms that constitute the antecedent efficient
causes of the consequent effects. Erwin selected a foun-
dational belief having to do with subjective interpreta-
tion, namely, although much of the data of psychother-
apy may be characterized by subjective interpretation,
these data can nevertheless enable rigorously objective
study and inquiry. Erwin examines this foundational
belief as it applies to the determination of which out-
comes are desirable, the determination of the truth value
of client and therapist interpretations and meanings, and
the conclusions arrived at when reviewing bodies of
studies of psychotherapeutic efficacy.
The Problem: Change-Immune
Foundational Beliefs
It is possible to make a case that most of the foundational
beliefs in the field of psychotherapy are essentially kept
immune from change and that the field may be handcuffing
itself to some foundational beliefs that perhaps are simply
wrong, fallacious, disposable myths (Mahrer, 1995, 1996;
Strupp, 1986a, 1986b). Perhaps even worse, changes in
foundational beliefs would likely occur, not from careful
study, challenge, and improvement, but more as "a function
of baffled boredom" (Meehl, 1978, p. 807) or "the vicissi-
tudes of social processes" (Gergen, 1985, p. 268). Follow-
ing are some ways in which foundational beliefs are essen-
tially kept change immune.
Foundational Beliefs Are Essentially Implicit
and Unspecified
It may be awkward to ask most psychotherapists to point to
a generally accepted, authoritative list of formally stated
foundational beliefs. Typically, there is a sense that such a
list is available or ought to be, but the bottom line is that
'
such lists are usually embarrassingly unavailable. It can be
hard to examine foundational beliefs in a relatively serious
way when a clearly formalized display of what they pre-
cisely are in the first place does not exist (Mahrer, 1999).
Foundational beliefs can be effectively immune from
study, challenge, and change when they are kept safely
implicit, unspecified, and known by a kind of loosely
collective complicity. .a
Foundational Beliefs Can Be Concealed in
Accepted Phrases, Common Practices,
and Inadvertent Validation
Foundational beliefs tend to be kept immune from study
and change when they are hidden inside the terms and
phrases of a commonly accepted vocabulary (Slife & Wil-
liams, 1995; Whitehead, 1929). By accepting and using
such common phrases as conditioned response, borderline
disorder, or anal stage of development, one is likely to have
bought, perhaps without fully appreciating, entire sets of
underlying foundational beliefs that provide the supporting
conceptual meaning and structure for such innocent-ap-
pearing terms and phrases. The choice of which vocabulary
to use in professional discourse can be exceedingly impor-
tant in determining which vocabulary's hidden and implicit
foundational beliefs shall be regnant (Feyerabend, 1978;
Rorty, 1991).
In much the same way, foundational beliefs are effec-
tively smuggled inside many commonly accepted clinical
practices-from diagnostic assessment to neurological
evaluation, from identifying conceptual schemata to iden-
tifying developmental fixations-so that carrying out the
practice often means taking in the implicit foundational
beliefs. For example, a practice of living out childhood
traumas can easily pass along hidden and implicit founda-
tional beliefs having to do with psychopathology, causality,
personality structure, and the nature of psychotherapeutic
change, all without the practitioner's acknowledgment of
precisely which foundational beliefs have been quietly
taken in and entrenched.
Foundational beliefs can benefit from inadvertent val-
idation when research is done from the foundational belief
but not directly on the foundational belief, thereby en-
trenching its behind-the-scenes immunity. A foundational
belief in schizophrenia is likely to be inadvertently vali-
dated by researchers investigating the kinds of schizophre-
nia, common elements and characteristics of people with
schizophrenia, the causes of schizophrenia, the epidemiol-
ogy of schizophrenia, and the treatment of schizophrenia;
in doing such research they are also effectively bypassing
and reaffirming the root foundational belief in something
called schizophrenia. Foundational beliefs can easily be
immunized from examination and change by being con-
October 2000 American Psychologist
cealed in commonly accepted phrases and vocabularies, in
common clinical practices, and in inadvertent validation.
Foundational Beliefs Can Be Embedded
Within an Entrenched Folk Psychology
It can be appealing to believe that foundational beliefs were
largely the products of pure reason, logic, theoretical anal-
ysis, and basic research. However, especially in the field of
psychotherapy, it .is more likely that most who enter the
doors of professional training are the well-honed products
of their own folk psychologies (Fodor, 1987; Furnham,
1987; Stich, 1983), complete with entrenched packages of
foundational beliefs, from why people are the way they are
to why people feel bad, from why people do what they do
to how people should be.
Even before professional training, many of these peo-
ple have deeply ingrained foundational beliefs from a life
of experience with real people, not from learning about the
findings of research or from studying theories of human
behavior. Kagan (1996) identified three of what he called
such "pleasing ideas," which are already embedded in
many professionals and thus pleasingly immune from chal-
lenging scrutiny: (a) Some originating causal infantile ex-
periences exert their powerful determining influences
throughout a person's entire life; (b) there are abstract
psychological processes, such as attention, learning, regu-
lation, memory, and fear, that exist as entities more or less
on their own; and (c) attainment of pleasure and reduction
in pain are preponderant incentives and goals of human
behavior.
The notions and ideas of folk psychology may be
somewhat hazy, disorganized, cloudy, or partly formed.
They may subsequently become dressed in psychological
vocabulary during the course of professional training.
However, these foundational beliefs are already relatively
embedded, entrenched, hidden, and immune from exami-
nation and change even as the candidates arrive for profes-
sional training.
In the Mind-Set of a Single Basic Truth,
Foundational Beliefs Easily Become
Entrenched Truths
One relatively common mind-set is that there exists a
single, grand, monolithic, basic truth. Whatever conceptual
system seems to provide the closest approximation of the
supposedly single basic truth is generally granted the
throne, and rivals are seen as lesser, inadequate, and infe-
rior. Unfortunately, this usually means that the founda-
tional beliefs of the reigning conceptual system are to be
respected as authoritative truths, especially if they came to
psychotherapy from respected, authoritative fields such as
physics, biology, neurology, physiology, or experimental
psychology, or if they were bequeathed by fashionable
intellectual movements such as operationalism, postmod-
ernism, Marxism, structuralism, logical positivism, empir-
icism, cognitivism, eclecticism, deconstructionism, or her-
meneutics (Achinstein, 1965; Chalmers, 1982; Speed,
1984). Foundational beliefs are also helped to become
change immune when they are stamped as authoritatively
October 2000 American Psychologist
true by the reciprocal principles that (a) if a foundational
belief is collectively held, it tends to become apotheosized
as authoritatively true, established, and exalted; and (b) if a
foundational belief is apotheosized as authoritatively true,
established, and exalted, it tends to be collectively held (cf.
Heaton, 1976).
Foundational Beliefs Can Be Exceedingly
Well-Defended Against Critical Analysis
or Outright Attack
Historians of the philosophy of science (e.g., Feyerabend,
1972, 1978; Kuhn, 1959, 1970, 1973; Lakatos, 1970) tell
about fields where dramatic advances in foundational be-
liefs have taken place once it is generally acknowledged
that the current basis of knowledge is no longer working or
is unable to solve important problems in the field. Unfor-
tunately, it would be hard to build a case that there have
been periods when psychotherapists have publically de-
clared that their field's foundational beliefs were inade-
quate, not up to the task of solving important problems
(Mahrer, 1995, 1997), or "open to revision, and . . . [psy-
chologists are] always ready to modify or abandon them if
evidence should render them doubtful" (Feigl, 1953, p. 13).
On the contrary, most foundational beliefs are exceedingly
well-defended against critical inspection or outright attack.
One effective defense is to exert pressure for the
dominant foundational beliefs to be saluted by most con-
stituencies. This is dignified as the clict~lrnof externrrl
consistencj~(Howard, 1985; cf. Kuhn, 1977; McMillan,
1983), the other side of which is that any new conceptual-
ization can be sold to the members of a transitioning field
if there already exists a substantial constituency, from
feminist therapists to computer-friendly practitioners, that
believes in the new conceptualization, whether it deals with
gender differences or models of metacognition in problem
solving. Goodness of fit with what members of a field
already believes is a powerful determinant of the fate of
alien, new, potentially threatening conceptualizations (D.
Campbell, 1988; Ciccetti, 1991; Fuller, 1993, 1996). This
seems to be the case in the field of psychotherapy as it was
in the cases of the grand new conceptualizations of Aris-
totle, Plato, Bacon, Kepler, Galileo, Locke, Hume, Kant,
Hegel, and others (Kantor, 1945).
Another effective defense is for researchers to dem-
onstrate the truth of what they already believe is true.
Almost without exception, researchers who set out to dem-
onstrate the truth of their foundational beliefs are doomed
to success. "If we can demonstrate something we believe,
we tend to think there must be something true about the
way we are thinking" (Slife & Williams, 1995, p. 196), and
if we researchers believe something is true, we can almost
always demonstrate that it is true. Foundational beliefs can
become safely immune from critical analysis when
wrapped in protective research findings from friendly
researchers.
Foundational beliefs are also made immune by a
mind-set in which attacking one's own foundational beliefs
is unfashionable and unwelcomed. Something is not quite
right if one deliberately sets out to falsify and refute the
precious beliefs of one's family (Fuller, 1996; cf. Popper,
1972a, 1972b, 1980). Indeed, most psychotherapy families
can and will turn on any members who dare to question its
foundational beliefs. Psychoanalysts, on paper, pride them-
selves on seeking the fundamental truth, yet "historically,
the analytic community often provided more disincentives
than incentives to investigators who had the intellect, ex-
pertise, and integiity needed to examine the basic tenets of
psychoanalysis" (Moras, 1994, p. 183). The same dire
warning seems to hold for many psychotherapeutic
families.
Foundational beliefs are even more likely to be pre-
served from outside attack than from inside attack. It may
seem fair-minded to believe that foundational beliefs will
dutifully be given up because of the sheer weight of dis-
confirming evidence, but that is usually an illusory myth
believed by those mounting the challenge from outside the
family that embraces the foundational belief in question.
Defenders of foundational beliefs seem to be able to with-
stand unfriendly research by rival families. For example, as
radical behaviorist researchers believed they were demon-
strating how their concepts can understand, predict, and
control human behavior, they trusted that their mentalistic
rivals would deferentially bow to the sheer weight of be-
havioristic evidence and surrender their false mentalistic
beliefs (Ringen, 1996; Skinner, 1969, 1971); that is,
if it were to turn out that the physical mechanisms that completely
explain human behavior at no level exhibited the structure of
beliefs and desires, then something we had all along believed,
viz., that beliefs and desires were among the causes of behavior,
would turn out to be false. (Loar, 1981, p. 14)
However, the sheer weight of radical behavioristic
research was unable to defeat the foundational beliefs of
the behaviorists' mentalistic rivals. Here is one example
that, in the field of psychotherapy at least, proponents have
a curious habit of retaining foundational beliefs that rivals
are convinced ought to be-dropped.
Beliefs tend also to enjoy immunity from outside
challenges because most challenges fail to target the real
reasons why the believer believes (Chalmers, 1982). Sup-
pose a practitioner has a deep-seated belief in the impor-
tance of interpretations. It is generally unlikely that con-
trary evidence or logic will succeed in depriving that prac-
titioner of that belief if the contrary evidence or logic
attacks reasons other than the ones why the practitioner
clings to that belief. No matter how indisputable the attack
on the wrong reasons, the foundational belief tends to
remain safely and satisfyingly immune.
Holders of foundational beliefs need not be especially
worried when deduced hypotheses suffer defeat, disconfir-
mation, or even refutation. There are simply too many
sacrificial alternatives available to take the hit: for example,
the process of deductive reasoning, the actual hypothesis,
the design and methodology, or the statistics. If these were
not enough, one can easily sacrifice one or more of the
auxiliary and secondary premises and principles standing
between the foundational belief and the hypothesis (Chal-
mers, 1982; Duhem, 1962; Gorman, 1996; Lakatos, 1970;
Mahrer, 1988; Quine, 1961). Further, negative findings
rarely can target which of these intervening premises and
principles is the culprit. About the best that may be con-
cluded "is that among the propositions used to predict the
phenomenon there is at least one error, but where this error
lies is just what it does not tell us" (Duhem, 1953, p. 239).
Foundational beliefs can also be preserved because
most proponents stoutly and vigorously refuse to put on the
table the reasonable grounds (e.g., research, clinical data,
logical reasoning) that they would accept as sufficient for
them to conclude that a foundational belief should be given
up (Mahrer, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998). It is one thing to
believe that a proper therapist-client relationship is a pre-
requisite to successful psychotherapy or that mental ill-
nesses, diseases, and disorders exist. However, it is quite
another thing to be unable or, perhaps worse, unwilling to
state what reasonable grounds would be deemed sufficient
to be willing to let go of these foundational beliefs. The
virtually universal refusal of psychotherapists to face this
test and their powerful reluctance to even state these evi-
dential grounds add up to an effective protective strategy,
even though their patients who use the very same protective
strategy to defend their own entrenched foundational be-
liefs are easily accused of being paranoid or worse.
A twist that almost guarantees immunity is a position
that a foundational belief is not only beyond disconfirming
evidence but is in no need of confirming evidence at the
present. Why? The answer is that supportive confirming
evidence might be found in the future. As one example,
Hempel (1953) gave illustrations across the history of
psychology of maintaining the foundational belief that psy-
chological events are to be reduced to the events and
concepts of supposedly more basic sciences; their reason
was that ample grounds might come from future knowledge
in fields such as physics, neurology, physiology, and chem-
istry. Here is almost ensured immunity.
Finally, any single foundational belief is protected by
being part of a whole network of surrounding foundational
beliefs, with each protecting and protected by its neighbors.
An endangered foundational belief that therapeutic change
is a function of insight into and understanding of childhood
experiences is protected when one points to a neighboring
foundational belief that childhood experiences determine
adult functioning. In the face of such collectively mutual
protection, attacks either become hopelessly diffused or
become hopelessly bewildered and lost in a hall of mirror-
ing foundational beliefs, with the net result that almost any
network of foundational beliefs can be safely immune from
just about any challenge or attack (cf. Chalmers, 1982).
Foundational Beliefs Can Be Immunized by
Being Collectively Accepted Definitional
Truths
Many fields rest on some foundational beliefs that are
essentially immune from questioning largely because they
are accepted as true by virtue of being collectively
agreed-on definitions; as such, they are virtually impervi-
ous to research inquiry (Lakatos, 1963, 1970). For exam-
ple, the field of mathematics can arrive at a basic proposi-
-
October 2000 American Psychologist
tion that 3 + 2 = 5, and it is essentially fruitless to try to
disprove this by controlled empirical research:
And this is so because the symbols "3 + 2" and "5" denote the
same number: they are synonymous by virtue of the fact that the
symbols "2"."3". "5" and "+" are dejtled (or tacitly understood)
in such a way that the above identity holds as a consequence of
the meaning attached to the concepts involved in it. (Hempel,
1953, p. 149)
In much the same way, many of the foundational
beliefs in the field of psychotherapy are immune from
challenge because they are mainly collectively accepted,
basic definitional truths. It is a matter of "definition by
postulate" (N. R. Campbell, 1953, p. 290). They are true
mainly because psychotherapists collectively agree they are
true, and they "cannot be contradicted by any experiment
because they constitute in reality dejnition" (Duhem, 1953,
p. 247).
Many of psychotherapy's foundational beliefs get
added protection when the definitions of key terms are so
slippery that the beliefs are rendered virtually immune from
research disconfirmation. For example, if the definition of
reinforcement in the law of effect includes that which,
contingent on behavior, tends to increase the probability of
that behavior, then failure can be taken as evidence of the
absence of a reinforcement rather than disconfirmation of
the law of effect (Erwin, 1997). In much the same way,
O'Donohue (1989) has concluded that many of the foun-
dational beliefs underlying behavior therapy, the heralded
bastion of scientific rigor, are logically unfalsifiable and
thereby immune from refutation.
Summary
The point of this section, for those willing to grant the spirit
of the arguments, is that a case can be made that the field
of psychotherapy has shackled itself to what may be called
foundational beliefs that are and have been made to be
virtually immune from critical analysis, explication, and
challenge and therefore to change, improvement, refine-
ment, modification, or replacement. This can be a serious
indictment of the field of psychotherapy theory, research,
and practice. However, I believe there is a way out of the
problem for those who are willing to grant that the serious
problem exists and who can be open to some solutions,
borrowed in large part from the neighboring field of phi-
losophy of science.
A Solution: Examination and Study of
Foundational Beliefs
Here are five ways, drawn largely from the field of philos-
ophy of science, to help solve the problem and to help in
examining, studying, eiplicating, scrutinizing, challensng,
improving, and changing the foundational beliefs in the
field of psychotherapy. I invite my colleagues to take these
seriously, to adopt them, to carry them out, and to study the
philosophy of science to find more and better solutions to
the problem of essentially change-immune foundational
beliefs.
October 2000 American Psychologist
Establish a List of Formally Stated
Foundational Beliefs
One useful place to start is for people in the field of
psychotherapy to undertake a genuine effort to arrive at and
to spell out the field's foundational beliefs. Once one or
more alternative formal lists are established, it can be easier
for individuals to arrive at their own personal lists and for
others to improve the lists by carefully examining each
foundational belief, flagging those that seem acceptable,
refining and modifying those that seem to need refinement
and modification (Bartley, 1962, 1984, 1988; Radnitsky,
1988), resolving contradictions and inconsistencies, and
eliminating the ghosts of discarded foundational beliefs
disguised in contemporary vocabulary (cf. Feigl, 1959;
Mays, 1977; Whitehead, 1929). The careful development
of a formally stated list or lists of foundational beliefs
seems to be a critical first step in the examination and study
of foundational beliefs.
Eliminate Selected Foundational Beliefs
Having a list of foundational beliefs allows one to examine
them by using the conceptual game of seeing what happens
if a particular foundational belief is deliberately eliminated.
This method can reveal how a hierarchy of foundational
beliefs may be logically interconnected. For example, by
dropping a foundational belief that there are mental ill-
nesses, diseases, and disorders, one may not only let go of
beliefs having to do with official nomenclatures of kinds,
types, causes, and determinants but also give up beliefs that
psychotherapy is treatment of mental disorders and that the
practitioner first assesses and diagnoses the mental disorder
and then selects an appropriate treatment.
Studying the consequences of deliberately eliminating
a selected foundational belief can also help to reduce the
threat of simply abandoning a foundational belief without
the safety of a plausible alternative. Ordinarily, the threat-
ened alternative to abandoning a foundational belief is
heightened vulnerability to conceptual chaos, bedlam, and
lack of structure. Instead, this method can serve as a con-
ceptual experiment to enable a person to sense, see, re-
ceive, be open to, explore, and discover all sorts of new
possibilities (cf. Bartley, 1988; Bunge, 1983; O'Donohue
& Vass, 1996; Popper, 1972a). This method may be espe-
cially fit for the conceptual experimenter who is inclined to
"guard against believing forever warranted those hypothe-
ses which have become universally adopted conventions"
and is excited by "resolutely carrying out a reform among
the propositions declared untouchable by common con-
sent" (Duhem, 1953, p. 250).
This method is capable of producing a preferred al-
ternative by first deliberately eliminating a selected foun-
dational belief and then seeing what occurs. "Like the
Gestalt switch, it must occur all at once (though not nec-
essarily in an instant) or not at all" (Kuhn, 1970, p. 151).
Dropping a belief that most clients seek therapy for relief of
problems and distress may all at once present the psycho-
therapist with the surprising alternative that seeking ther-
apy is merely a behavior best understood by whatever
principles he or she already counted on to understand
behavior: for example, as a psychoanalytic, unconscious
maneuver; the effect of environmental reinforcement con-
tingencies; or the playing out of social role relationships.
Create Alternative Models
A relatively y p u l a r mind-set is to think of conceptualiza-
tions as theories that are to approximate some presumed
single grand truth. Theories are then inclined to rival one
another over which can do the better job of describing,
predicting, controlling, and approximating this single grand
truth. In this mind-set, theories comprise premises, postu-
lates, propositions, and foundational beliefs that are
thought of as true. By means of a logical lattice, hypotheses
are deduced and can be tested to see how well they pre-
dictively approximate the presumed single truth.
The conceptual game is to adopt a mind-set in which
events are open to multiple descriptions and conceptualiza-
tions, each of which may be equally accurate, veridical, and
true (Feigl, 1953; Feyerabend, 1972; Kantor, 1945; Mahrer,
1989, 1996). These alternative conceptualizations are
thought of as models rather than theories, partly because
the premium is on usefulness in the achievement of some
goal, end, or use rather than on the approximation of a
presumed single grand truth (Rorty, 199 1; Speed, 1984).
Both the models as a whole and their component parts-
their notions, ideas, and foundational beliefs-are thought
of as conveniently useful fictions, hypothetical constructs
(MacCorquodale & Meehl, 1948; Whitehead, 1929) rather
than truths. "They are not . . . to be proved or disproved,
but are convenient representations of things" (Skinner,
1938, p. 44). Models are treated as pictorialized metaphors,
convenient guides helping to achieve the use for which the
models were conceived (Chalmers, 1982) as "free creations
of the human mind" (Einstein, 1923, p. 29) or as conve-
nient fictions set up for specific purposes and to be con-
stantly reconstituted if not found suitable.
The method helps to convert foundational beliefs into
unthreatening possibilities, rather than alien rivals to be
defeated. One's own foundational beliefs can be safely
preserved, because the game allows other foundational
beliefs to be friendly to one's own: "The truth of the
assertions of one approach does not entail the falsity of
assertions made in another approach" (Geer & O'Donohue,
1989, p. 4). A foundational belief that an object is ceramic
is not necessarily damaged by alternative foundational be-
liefs that it is white or that it is a cup. This method allows
for a measure of safe freedom to shop in the alternative
marketplace where foundational beliefs can be taken some-
what less seriously because they lose their need to be true.
Alter the Condition or State of the Subject
Matter, the Knower, and Their Relationship
Foundational beliefs seem to have a way of appearing to be
almost unconditionally and eternally true, especially when
one is not especially aware of the explicit circumstances
and conditions under which they are and are not true. Many
foundational beliefs may be examined and challenged by
deliberately altering these conditions. This can be done by
using a method that has at least two main rules: (a) Foun-
dational beliefs that seem to hold when the subject matter
is in one, common, ordinary condition or state will proba-
bly not hold when the subject matter is in a new, different,
uncommon, extraordinary condition or state; and (b) foun-
dational beliefs that seem to hold when the knower is in
one, common, ordinary condition or state relative to the
subject matter will probably not hold when the knower is in
a significantly new, uncommon, extraordinary position,
condition, or state relative to the subject matter (cf. Ein-
stein, 1923).
Researchers in many fields of study, such as phys-
ics, mathematics, engineering, and chemistry, have re-
lied on this method by following both game rules. They
have been able to examine and to challenge their foun-
dational beliefs by, for example, literally reducing their
subject matter to slow motion or actually stopping and
freezing the motion of their subject matter. They freeze
or heat up their subject matter until it assumes extraor-
dinary states and conditions. They add or subtract
change-inducing ingredients. They significantly alter
their relation to their subject matter by seeing their
subject matter up close by means of telescopes and
microscopes. Instead of studying their subject matter
from the outside, they get inside it by inserting tiny
cameras or by actually crawling around inside its cav-
erns and bowels. They significantly alter their own po-
sition, condition, state, and relationship to their subject
matter by living with it, whether it is a family of dol-
phins or a ward of hospitalized lost souls. They increase
or decrease gravity, weight, density, lightness, or dark-
ness. In many fields of study, foundational beliefs have
a way of shedding their aura of eternal universal truths
and opening to constructive examination, study, chal-
lenge, modification, and improvement when researchers
alter their condition or state, the surrounding conditions
or states, or the position, condition, or state of the
knower relative to the subject matter.
This method may also be used with the foundational
beliefs of psychotherapy. For example, consider applying
this method to the foundational belief that psychotherapy
consists of a therapist and a client who talk to and attend
predominantly to one another. This foundational belief may
be shorn of its apparent eternal truthfulness and restriction
to particular conditions and states by altering the condition
and state of the subject matter and of the knower in the
following ways: (a) Change the condition so that psycho-
therapy occurs in, with, and by oneself, as in meditation;
(b) change the condition so that both therapist and client are
predominantly attending to a third attentional center that is
of compelling importance for the client; (c) significantly
alter the condition by inserting both therapist and client into
a scene or situation of exceedingly powerful feeling and
emotion; or (d) significantly alter the position of the ther-
apist to one in which the therapist is essentially aligned
with, fused or welded with, or inside the identity of the
person who is the client.
October 2000 American Psychologist
 Apply Conceptual Tests to See Whether
Foundational Beliefs Are Open to
Modification or Replacement
Following are six conceptual tests that may be applied to
foundational beliefs to see if and how they may be open'to
scrutiny, challenge, and perhaps change. One test is to try
to specify the concretely reasonable grounds, whether log-
ical, research-based, clinical, or whatever, that one would
accept as sufficient to conclude that the foundational belief
needs substantive revision or abandonment (Mahrer, 1995,
1996, 1997, 1998; O'Donohue & Vass, 1996; Popper,
1972a, Popper, 1980). If these grounds can be specified and
laid on the table, the test not only labels the foundational
belief as open to modification or replacement but can even
help illuminate what portions of the belief need modifica-
tion or replacement. If these grounds cannot be specified or
if there are none, that alone may qualify the foundational
belief as a likely candidate for modification or replacement.
In either case, this test calls for grounds that are simple and
concrete. What might be the simple, concrete grounds for
replacing the belief in the common meaning of simultaneity
with a belief in the relativity of apparently simultaneous
events?
For instance, if a telephone connection with the planet Mars were
established, and we would have to wait a quarter of an hour for the
answer to our questions, the relativity of simultaneity would
become as trivial a matter as the time difference between the
standard times of different time zones. (Reichenbach, 1953,
p. 209)
In a similar way, try to lay out the simple, concrete
grounds that would be reasonably sufficient to alter, mod-
ify, abandon, or replace a foundational belief in the impor-
tance of the therapist-patient relationship.
A second test is to identify the underlying basic issue
or question for which the foundational belief can be seen as
merely one position or answer (Mahrer, 1989, 1996). If the
foundational belief is that causes of psychological prob-
lems generally lie in antecedent events, typically in child-
hood, one underlying question might be, What part does the
past play in current functioning? Another underlying ques-
tion might be, What accounts for psychological problems?
Many foundational beliefs may be seen as one particular
position or answer to underlying basic issues and questions
such as, How can a person discern what another person is
thinking, feeling, or undergoing? How can theories be
improved? How can a person make sense of what another
person is doing and saying? What are the reasons, aims,
and goals of research on psychotherapy? How can a person
determine a desirable direction of change for another per-
son? By carefully applying this test, a foundational belief
can be revealed as merely one position or answer on the
underlying issue or question. This test thereby opens the
exciting possibility of changing, advancing, modifying, or
replacing the foundational belief by allowing one to be
open to considering alternative positions or answers.
A third test is to take a careful look at one's own
foundational beliefs to see if any glaring inconsistencies or
contradictions might call for some modification or replace-
October 2000 American Psychologist
ment. One may be backed into an untenable corner with
beliefs that (a) clients may be diagnosed as psychotic on the
basis of factual data provided by the client, and (b) data
provided by a client are not to be accepted as factual if the
client is psychotic. Some modification or replacement of
foundational beliefs might be in order if one finds the
following foundational beliefs lack solid logical compati-
bility: (a) A therapist is to be open, honest, and genuine,
and (b) a therapist is to maintain a private, hidden stream of
clinical inferences about the client. It is not necessarily
easy to step back far enough to see the contradictory ideas
or beliefs that one has been embracing, but the payoff of
sounder logic through modification of incompatible beliefs
strengthens one's position and the field as a whole.
A fourth test is to see whether adopting a logically
opposite foundational belief makes a significant difference
or no discernible difference in actual in-session work. If the
logically opposite belief seems to make little or no discern-
ible difference in in-session work, then the foundational
belief may well qualify for modification or replacement.
Suppose the foundational belief is that present events are a
function of past learnings, conditionings, and reinforce-
ments. This fourth test would involve deliberately adopting
an opposite belief-in this case, present events are not a
function of past learnings, conditionings, or reinforce-
ments-or perhaps adopting Lewin's core rival founda-
tional belief:."We shall defend the hypothesis that neither
past nor future psychological events but only the present
situation can influence present events" (Lewin, 1936, p.
34). If one's honest appraisal is that little or nothing of
what is actually done in in-session work is altered signifi-
cantly by adopting a logically opposite foundational belief,
then one likelihood is that the culprit foundational belief is
open to modification or replacement.
A fifth test is the test of faulty generalization, whereby
a belief that may hold true under particular conditions is
elevated into a faulty general truth. Kantor (1950) applied
this test to two foundational beliefs: "Because some psy-
chological activities constitute conditioning, this is true of
all psychological events. . . . Because statistics is a neces-
sary procedure in treating data, it constitutes the scientific
method" (p. 26). This test identifies faulty generalizations
that masquerade as foundational beliefs by containing a
seed of conditional truth.
A sixth test is to determine if the foundational belief is
perhaps more a function of fashionable politics, lobby
groups, and practical bottom-line consideration than a
function of science, research, and rational analysis. Are
deep-seated foundational beliefs about the fundamental
nature of men and women altered by science, research, or
rational analysis, or are they instead surprisingly open to
easy manipulation, first by generations of men and more
recently by impressive female lobby groups? During the
course of deliberations, homosexuality has been moved in
and out of the ever-changing official nomenclature of men-
tal illnesses and disorders in response to the current climate
of political and professional opinion. Traditionally, the
foundational belief was that normal development included
successfully proceeding through an Oedipal stage and on to
 heterosexuality: "The outcome of elevating homosexuality
to the status of telos is that gay men and lesbians are barred
from access to the Oedipal stage" (Lesser, 1995, p. 91).
However, when gay men and lesbians win the status of
normality, then the likelihood is that changes in the appro-
priate foundational beliefs will dutifully follow suit.
When it wa&discovered that the ethical code on con-
fidentiality had the unforseen practical consequence of
making it difficult to collect on some unpaid bills, founda-
tional ethical beliefs became surprisingly easy to revise.
Resulting changes allowed confidential information to be
revealed in ways that had the practical consequence of
enabling practitioners to collect on those unpaid bills
(Kitchener, 1996).
This sixth test may well reveal some foundational
beliefs are convenient justifications to hide important per-
sonal moments that some sessions may provide for some
practitioners. Instead of acknowledging the important per-
sonal moment when the therapist embraced the attractive
client, the therapist instead recites foundational beliefs
about the exigencies of the helping alliance and the thera-
pist-client relationship and about ego diffusion in defined
mental disorders. Applying this test can strip away entire
curtains of high-minded, scientific-looking foundational
beliefs that divert attention from those special moments
when practitioners enjoy feelings of being the wise one, the
model of psychic maturity, the special confidante, the res-
cuer from awful psychopathology, the omniscient one, the
truly best fiiend, the one who knows best, the secret lover,
or the grand authority. If a foundational belief is perhaps
more a function of practical professional politics than of
science and reason, it may well qualify as a candidate for
revision or replacement.
Conclusion
This section has been addressed to psychotherapy theorists,
researchers, and practitioners who see some foundational
beliefs as essentially immune to change, who see that
immunity as a serious problem, and who are genuinely
interested in some usable solutions, borrowed largely from
the philosophy of science, to open up these foundational
beliefs to examination, explication, scrutiny, and challenge
and thereby to constructive change, improvement, and per-
haps replacement.
The purpose of this introduction is to make a case for
the following conclusions and invitations:
1. Most fields of study have what may be called
foundational beliefs, that is, basic propositions,
fundamental starting points, or cornerstones on
which the field rests, ideas that are generally taken
for granted as fundamental givens or truths.
2. In the field of psychotherapy, there are ways in
which the field's foundational beliefs are kept es-
sentially immune from study, explication, exarni-
nation, analysis, and challenge and therefore from
constructive change, refinement, modification, im-
provement, and replacement.
3. The neighboring field of philosophy of science
may be called on to offer some useful ways of
helping to solve the problem of change-immune
foundational beliefs and to open them up to con-
structive examination, explication, study, chal-
lenge, constructive improvement, and change. Five
of these methods were presented and described.
4. Both the field and individual theorists, researchers,
and practitioners are invited to put these suggested
solutions to work and to study the philosophy of
science for further and better solutions. The invi-
tation is also to open up a subfield of serious study
of foundational beliefs in the field of psychother-
apy. It is hoped that this special section is a step in
this direction.
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