Matthew Israel Interviewed by Jennifer Gonnerman
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JG: Did you personally have any questions in your mind about whether your system would work for all of these types of kids? Even just the ones I met the other night? You have such a wide range of problems. Did you ever wonder about whether it would work for this rather than that, the autistic kid versus the other kids?
MI: I did have some questions whether as applied to the higher-functioning students maybe they would become so angry that there would be too much counter-aggression. Now for the first time, we have students like Katie who can tell you, "It helped me." But yes, I did have some questions.
JG: Was your fear primarily about whether there would be some kind of counter-aggression, or were there other questions?
MI: I had no question about whether it would be effective. Fortunately or unfortunately, these basic principles, such simple principles, do seem to work with all organisms. We all have events that will function to accelerate behaviors—that's rewards. For all of us, there are events that will function to decelerate behaviors—aversives. Gravity is a perfect example of a decelerent, a sort of aversive consequence that we can't escape. They seem to be very fundamental principles of behavior.
JG: When you said, "For the first time, we have people like Katie," when you say first time do you mean because she can talk to you?
MI: Yeah. She can talk to you. And she can say…If we had only autistic-like students, they wouldn't be able to say, "Gee this has really helped me. I didn't like it at the time. It was really painful. If I could have asked you at the time, I would have asked you to stop it. But this really helped me. That's when I stopped my [behavior]." They're also able to tell you how much they appreciate being off drugs.
JG: What kind of counseling do higher-functioning kids get?
MI: We call it "behavioral counseling."
JG: And that has nothing to do with psychotherapy, or sitting for an hour with a shrink?
MI: It's a behavior approach, and I describe it in the website; it's very easy to find that part. If you look under the "special features" there is a section that goes into the difference with behavioral counseling. Traditional counseling, one problem with it is that for some of our students it can be a rewarding event, a chance to get out of the classroom, sit down. Like one of the students did last night. I think he really appreciated the chance to talk to you about his feelings about his family, his father, his mother, whatever. In a behavioral approach, you have to be careful that no rewarding event takes place after a problem behavior. So if I engage in aggression and you immediately send me to see a therapist, and I can now talk about my problems and I enjoy doing that, there is a risk there that I have actually arranged a rewarding event after a problem behavior, and therefore you may show that problem behavior in the future to make that rewarding event occur again. In other words, it can function inadvertently, not intentionally, as a reward. So therefore, we don't schedule it on a weekly basis, because the weekly appointment might occur at the wrong time, during a loss of privileges status. We make it part of the rewards system. If you have been doing well, and gotten some contracts, then you can talk to your psychologist. The second thing is that we don't have the traditional privacy issues. Traditionally if you go to a psychologist or psychiatrist, they're not supposed to tell anyone what went on in that session. We want everything that happens to a student to play a role towards improvement. Here, what you say to a behavioral psychologist may very well…that psychologist may talk to a teacher and fix some things; there is not a wall between the two. Thirdly, there is an assumption in traditional psychology that simply gaining insight into a problem will be beneficial. Behaviorists tend to be skeptical. It's just like you might have knowledge that cigarette smoking causes cancer. But the knowledge, we're skeptical that it may cause a change in behavior. We have more skepticism than most about just having an insight. Thirdly, fourthly, or wherever we are, traditional counseling often makes the assumption that all of your problems now are related to something from back when you were a child. Behavioral psychologists are a little skeptical about that. We don't see why there is a special causal nexus that should be assigned to what happened when you were a child, versus what happened last week, or yesterday. We just have more skepticism about some of the things they have in traditional.
So in a behavioral counseling, the psychologist uses the same principles. First of all, the goal of the counseling is not just to provide a sounding board for the student for his or her problems and what their parents did and whatever in their past. The goal is to get desired behavior now and in the future, whatever the past was, and to help the student make the best of his time here. Also, the goal is to teach the student what these principles are, so that he or she will look at his or her behavior in the same way. It's very different if you are looking at your behavior and you've been taught to believe that everything has to do with what my parents did to me. And you look at life in a certain way. If you have a different view and you say, "My behavior comes from what I've been conditioned for in the past," that's a very different understanding, and it will lead to differences in how you handle your current problems. So we think it's more effective for the student to start to look at his own behavior in a behavioral way. So we try to teach in the behavioral counseling to analyze in the same way that we analyze behavior here when we're trying to change the student's behavior. We dispense with the generalities and we talk about specific behavior and how we go about changing it through rewards, punishments, whatever. So it has a different goal. It's not done on a rigid schedule. It's still talking.
Another thing is that there is an assumption in traditional therapy that verbal behavior has a lot of control over your nonverbal behavior. We're skeptical about that too. Human beings have verbal and nonverbal behavior. Saying the right thing does help a little bit, but it isn't the whole thing by any means. It's like saying, "I should quit smoking." That may help a little bit, but there's often not a total correspondence between what you say and what you do. We all know that. If these principles are so powerful that we're able to change behavior here effectively, I think it's probably the most effective treatment available.
JG: Would you ever think in some special circumstances that a kid needed more cognitive behavioral therapy?
MI: Well, if you can show that it really helps, I have no problem with any kind of therapy. I think cognitive therapy is useful, but I think that too should be done from a behavioral perspective. Some specific techniques—like in cognitive behavioral therapy, you're taught to take things to the extreme, to consider the logical inconsistencies of your thinking. I mean, if that really helps somebody, I have no problem with that. But these simple basic principles that we use, I think, are more powerful, should be done first and provided anyway. Also, as far as counseling, we don't just routinely provide it automatically on a schedule. If the student's doing well, then maybe they don't need it. We don't restrict it to once a week. They can talk to a psychologist clinician as often as they want to.
JG: If they are on LOP [Loss of Privileges] status they can't go to the psychologist?
MI: I doubt they're allowed to during the LOP period.
Photo: Larry Sultan
