Nonlinear Contingency Analysis is a guide to treating clinically complex behavior problems such as delusions and hallucinations. It’s also a framework for treating behavior problems, one that explores solutions based on the creation of new or alternative consequential contingencies rather than the elimination or deceleration of old or problematic thoughts, feelings, or behavior.
Chapters present strategies, analytical tools, and interventions that clinicians can use in session to think about clients’ problems using decision theory, experimental analysis of behavior, and clinical research and practice.
By treating thoughts and emotions not as causes of behavior but as indicators of the environmental conditions that are responsible for them, patients can use that knowledge to make changes that not only result in changes in behavior, but in the thoughts and feelings themselves.
This book is fantastic! As an old student of psychology I loved behaviorism and can't understand why every one enrolled in psychology was so found of 'mental stuff'. Non-linear contingency analysis open up a modern view of behaviorism and deals directly with complexity of behavior manifestations. I enjoyed a lot of stuff from this book, namely: The constructional approach opposed to the pathological approach opens up a lot of complexity in human behavior and not just 'reducing the negatives'. I absolutely loved it. Behavior (even the so call 'pathological') is always 'rational' in the sense that derives from a costs/benefits analysis of all the possible behaviors at hand. Therapy seen as a way to allow the patient to obtain his/her own goals following a less costly path (building new behavioral routines) and not just 'stop being crazy'. The case story is about depression and personal, family and work issues (not the classic autistic children) of a law expert. This implies, to me, that behavioral therapy can address 'psychological' or 'mental' issues with efficiency and focus thanks to the introduction of the Non-linear contingency analysis (NCA). Really astounding.