The Science of Interaction: Relationships in and out of psychotherapy using the structural analysis of social behaviours (SASB) with Dr. Ken Critchfield Part 2

In part 2, Dan and Dr. Ken Critchfield continue to dive deep into the science of interactions and the SASB.

Dr. Critchfield is Associate Professor and Program Director of the Clinical Psychology Program of the Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology at Yeshiva University.

Dr. Critchfield explains the Structural Analysis of Social Behavior (SASB) model, discussing its terminology, the importance of understanding interpersonal dynamics, and the application of the model in clinical settings. Then, explore the concepts of focus on self and focus on other, the idea of introject, and the significance of measurement in therapy. Dan ask about the case study of a certain client and how it illustrates how early attachment experiences shape current behaviours and relationships. Dr. Critchfield touches on the pushback of the SASB model has received and how its potential for integration crosses various therapeutic approaches.

Special Guest: Dr. Ken Critchfield

Structural Analysis of Social Behavior (SASB): A Primer for Clinical Use

IRT Institute

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Transcript

Broadcasting the host, Dr. Dan Cox, a professor of counseling psychology at the University of British Columbia.

Welcome to episode number 22 of psychotherapy and applied Psychology, where we dive deep with world's leading applied psychology researchers to uncover practical insights, pull back the curtain and hopefully have some fun along the way.

Today I couldn't be more excited to welcome back one of the world's foremost experts in the science of interpersonal interaction.

He's the director of clinical psychology at Yoshhea University and recent author of the book structural analysis of social behavior or SASB, a primer for clinical use, a link to his new book is in the show notes.

In part two of our conversation, we discussed the structural analysis of social behavior or SASB for short, interaction with others and interactions with ourselves, using measurement in therapy, attachment, and the SASB as a trans theoretical tool. So without further ado, it's my pleasure to welcome back Dr. Ken Critchfield.

So, right, and that this is I would say this is my one, the one critique is almost too strong of a word, but one of the challenges with the SASB model is like, um some of the terminology.

And so what, uh, and you offer in your book, I think lots of variations to try to help the reader get it.

And so one of the things that I would encourage folks to do, particularly if you're learning this for the first time is sort of like, make your, you know, your terms and your clauses that work for me, you know, whatever those happen to be, your short term.

And then I'm sure that as you dig into it more, as, you know, if I were to dig into it more, then you start to see more depth and realize where those phr the phraseology you develop for yourself is limited. And I think it's helpful to get your foot in the door for some of the terms that and some of the phrases that are a little less familiar or intuitive. Are there um particular things you have in mind that I could speak to on that topic?

Yes because at at this point, I at this point, I'm 20 years in and all of it seems like the most like intuitive thing ever to me.

I forget how to think differently.

I know I feel yeah, that's whatever um when I when I oftentimes when I'm talking to my students or what I'm teaching, I often say, please please please ask me questions if things don't make sense because at this point, I have lost all perspective, you know?

It for so long.

You know, I think I think cluster three, the the extreme of love, is something that made me realize, oh, this is what focus is, or a way to hold on to it.

Like there's the parent child thing that is is helpful in some respects. And there's some other, you know, kind of tropes and metaphors I try to use in the book.

But um cluster three, you know, what is active love versus reactive love?

Is there is the labeling in there?

And focus on other love is like giving someone a back rub.

And focus on self love is is being delighted and saying and enjoying it.

So it's, you know, the person giving the back rub it's about the other person and the person receiving the back back rub, what they're expressing is it's about the self, one's own expression of delight, their their experience, their worldview, their content.

If you go to the opposite extreme, the extreme of hostility is, you know, to murderously attack someone is to focus on them.

The reactive surface, the focus on self is is to to flinch or recoil or or to be devastated by to be impacted by.

And I think that if the language being used already about focus of attention and all these kind of formalities, if that's not working for folks, then the other way to bootstrap an understanding of the model is just to like look at the model and stare at it for a while, because it makes a bunch of assertions that I think of as as assertions about dialectics, like control and submit or two sides of the same coin, just like to ignore someone and to have someone wall off or two sides of the same coin, just like attack and recoil or two sides of the same coin.

So you you think in terms of there is a way in which these two things are the same, and that's their dimensionality in terms of affiliation and interdependence.

And then there's a respect in which they differ and whatever that difference is, that's called focus.

So we've talked about sort of that the affiliation dimension when it comes to focus on self.

Could you give us some examples of the interdependence dimension?

Oh, yeah, yeah, on the you know, we talked about control and submit for that's sort of one anchoring point, then the opposite of that, where there's separate space, it's the language of differentiation comes in up there, but that's a fancy term.

So it's it's more like um focus on other is to emancipate someone and allow them to go free, encourage them to do what they like.

It's not particularly friendly nor hostile.

It's just a neutral go be free. As opposed to the warm kind of go be free. Uh there are shades of these things the way that model is is laid out.

So you can have friendly versus hostile versions of o emancipating someone else or encouraging them to have their own autonomy. The focus on self aversion would essentially be to insist on having one's own autonomy to separate to think your own thoughts, to assert, if necessary, uh to be uninfluenced by the behavior of someone else.

And and that can be neutral as well.

It doesn't have to be an aggressive pushing off against someone and it doesn't have to be a a a warm explanation of one's own position.

It can just simply be, you know, I I see it differently.

So I think a lot of the power of of interventions that we have, like assertiveness training, um have a position up there we're trying to help people not meet control with control or defense or or something like this, but to have a neutral position of having one's own self separate from others.

And one of the things there might be a subset of people listening to this watching this who are used to other uh interpersonal models, uh particularly the tradition of single layer circumplexes that trace back to Timothy Leary and have these other scholarly roots.

And and instead of having the opposite of control be free, their model has a vertical dimension where the opposite of control is submit, which in the S as we model says, oh, those are two sides of the same coin, but there's also a way in which, you know, they're they're opposites and in the SASB model, the way that their position is as complementary where they they both carry interdependence a coordination with another person is implied in them, and in the opposite of both would be to free another person or to be separate from them.

What I really like about SASB is this separate space that can have its two different focuses has a friendly um variant.

It rotated over on the model a little bit and warm it up.

You get to this uhugerian space of I'm okay and you're okay.

And it's something that in a lot of interpersonal models that are not structured this way, you just don't have a language in there for what a lot of our therapy instruction is usually about.

It is to be able to have a self that is one's own and and can be expressed in a nonproblematic way, even if others disagree.

And and so the separate space part is something that I think is an advantage and a unique feature of this SASB model that I also think is very, very relevant for clinical practice.

So like I in my little notes to myself, I wrote, um something like, uh, to be self-determined.

Yes.

Yep.

That would be a focus on self and separate from others. Differentiating from others.

Right.

And I, you know, I think about that as as as I was coming up with examples sort of like people may try to influence me, control me, and I'm going to listen to what they say and be aware of what they say, but regardless of their degree of attempted control, I'm going to do what I am going to do.

I'm going to do what I will.

I'm not going to submit to them.

Yes.

It's the office of submitting.

Right.

And I guess that gets to sort of the Roggerian piece that you're suggesting, which is that you trying to facilitate or wanting people to be autonomists.

Yeah, autonomy is up there.

It's it's another good language for that region of the model.

The other um contrasting language is is maybe more podynamic in origin.

It's it's meshment versus differentiation or dependence versus independence, if we're thinking on the focus on self- surface.

And then there are warm, then then there are warm versus hostile ways to implement those, and that creates the overall circular structure of the two dimensions together.

Right.

And I you know, one of the things, and you know, I'm familiar with the sort of the other circumplex model and done coding with that sort of things.

And one of the things that did jump out to me in doing some of that historically, I've sort of I had the thought of, you know, oftentimes in an interaction if even in a therapeutic interaction, you'll say something, then what I will say, well, so if I'm therapist, right, and your client, that client will say something, and therapist will say something that is responding to the thing that the client just said and then they will introduce something new to the conversation, you know, and I guess probably a lot of times in both of those, I guess they're still well, I don't know, um because part of it could be f focus on self, right, if I'm in the moment.

Yeah, hearing you say that I can really feel the hesitancy and the concern in your voice. Right?

So that's that's sort of that's a focus on self, right?

Now, you know, the as if we're sitting around a coding table and trying to get reliability now, I would parse that a little bit where the there is a little nod in the the I can hear is the therapist disclosing a little something. But what the therapist can hear is all about the patient and the implications of saying it are all about the patient.

So there might be a little nod in the direction of a disclosure, but it's it's mostly still focused on the patient, but if it's an accurate reflection of what the patient just said, it's it's not trying to uh manipulate or change or instruct or exert some kind of control over what is being said.

It's simply holding the space, allowing it and appreciating what that other person is bringing in.

So it's it would code up in the therapist being affirming an understanding and the patient probably being disclosing. And and with maybe a little nod in the direction of the the I feel being a disclosed on the therapist's part, but it wouldn't be quite the same qualitatively as if the therapist said, you know, this reminds me of a time in my life when I da d then then the whole focus has truly shifted.

And even that, even that example I gave if it's still on target and a helpful little story that has direct implications for something about the patient, it could still be a useful therapeutic maneuver.

It's just then a complex code, it's called, because as humans, we can do fancy dances in the SASB space where we can do simultaneously more than one thing at a time.

So I can tell you a story about my experience that is instructive about your experience or that connects us sympathically and that that's my point in telling you the story, then I'm simultaneously focused on me and you and that one, so complex codes are allowed.

So we have this focus on other focus on self.

We have this affiliation dimension with the hostile friendliness on the two poles and we have this interdependence dimension with this more enmes enmeshed versus differentiated.

So, um would it make sense now to talk about the interject?

Yeah, definitely.

So interject is is some very definitely psychoanalytical language as as a word.

And at least as it's used in SASB, it traces pretty directly back to Harry's Stack Sullivan's articulation of this idea that, you know, we come to treat ourselves in the way that we've been treated by others.

And in SASB, the term interject means a much more plain spoken behavioral thing, which is just how one treats oneself.

And it's as if I am somewhere inside of me.

I am a another person and I am going to treat that person in a particular way.

So it's it exactly mirrors focus on other behaviors, it runs the same range from friendly to hostile.

I can treat myself in very loving nurturing ways or very destructive ways.

I can control and manage myself versus let myself do whatever, and I have different contexts where I can let myself do whatever in a way that's hostile to me or in a way that's friendly to me and the same for ways of controlling myself.

I can, you know, practice my classical guitar lesson because I'm trying to, you know, discipline myself in a friendly way that leads to my life or I can criticize myself roundly for not doing that lesson very well and make it a destructive force in my life.

So all of the focus on other behaviors, if they're taken by one person and directed inwardly at themselves, that's the what's captured on the interject surface.

It's so it's very intracesychic as opposed to interpersonal.

I do use the language interpersonal very, very broadly to just refer to all this stuff because it's relational.

It's interact.

It's social.

It has reference to what was once outside can be brought inside.

But um in in strict terms, focus on interject is just how one treats oneself.

And I wrote down for my little crib notes.

I wrote down for interject I, but would I tell myself?

Oh yeah, I just be more of a cognitive kind of a language, but that's how I yeah.

Well, and it just gets a little carve out in the in the book, but uh Lorna did articulate in addition to this ASI, like behavioral model.

There's there's parallel affective and cognitive um labels and experiences that are supposed to flow right along with them.

And so I I think that's a useful enough shorthand to, uh, you know, if you're tracking something about cognitive or affective phenomenology that, you know, affecting cognition predisposed to behavior, so they should flow along with each other.

So within the interjector sort of this, how I feel about myself or my language, but I tell myself or communicate to myself, we get the same thing as the as for the other focus.

So we get this, uh, how friendly, warm am I towards my loving am I am towards myself?

That's on the one side of the affiliation and the other of how how hostile, how cruel, how, you know, mean I am to myself is on the other.

And then on the other um dimens of the interdependence, how much am I, uh I wrote trying to control or manage myself is sort of the on the one end and on the other end um on the other end, I put something like, uh, let myself be who I am or what I am sort of just sort of an acceptance and just being who I am.

Yeah.

Is that flowing flowing with the moment, um not specifying what you need to do, following your nose.

Right.

Right.

So one of the things for the listener, one of the reasons so we can think about, we have these three different folk what it be foci?

You know, I've looked it up so many times foci and focuses are both acceptable ways to say it.

Oh okay okay there we go. Uh yeah foci seems a little uh pretentious but uh it sounds so fancy.

Yeah. Uh you know other self or interject slash what I tell myself and then these dimensions.

And so the idea is that right we can code these interactions using this system and the reason the you have a quote in here that I really think you use a quote in the in your book from Fritz Heider, I'm presuming I'm honestly and I I thought that that was a really nice explanation, justification, explanation for like, why would you want to use a system like this that's so complex, right?

Like it's so complicated.

So if you don't mind, I'll read the quote and then sort of if you can throw in some additional thoughts.

So the quote is, though nonscientific language in the hands of a master is unsurpassed for the description of even the most subtle relationships, it lacks the features of a real system.

The relations between terms are only crudely defined and understood. Though we know the meanings of words like promise, permit, or pride, we do not know them in the same way we know the meanings of words like two and four or words like speed and acceleration, and you have more from the as well, but can you what are your thoughts about that?

Yeah, well, I was sort of stunned when I saw that it comes from a book written in the 1950s and and the whole intellectual tradition around the interpersonal um s starts with people like Harry Stack Sullan who are are thinking conceptually, but then we start to move into the 50s and 60s around folks who want to make a real science of this.

And I think that was anticipated in quotes like that one where there's a a subset of humanity that likes to pin things down and describe them and measure them.

And there's an advantage to that because it brings precision when precision is needed and an ability to articulate in the context of some kind of training enterprise or teaching something specific rather than something kind of amorphous or metaphorical.

And I like how that quote starts off, too, with, you know, in the in the hands of a non-professional um there there's something to be deeply respected as well about not having to define everything.

And the way I I meet this context is, um, I know that there are many, many really truly great and therapists out there, folks who are um deeply experienced and they navigate through the lens of all the therapies they have done in their own personal experience, and they often will develop what I think of as their own internal metaphors and intuitions and sensing. And I'm not saying any of that should be thrown out.

I think that's actually very useful and on track.

And what what Sazby does and what any kind of systemization does is allows science to let go run all run along behind people like that and describe what they do in some way to see like is is there a regularity to it?

Can we learn something?

But it's no replacement for it and it may not even be a way to get there directly.

It's more, again, like just a way to describe something.

But as a way of describing, it does allow one person's internal metaphors and sensing to have a way to be conveyed sort of separate from the metaphors themselves to another person and to see if they square.

And so I I was in this book very, um kind of just aware that I I want to help a bunch of people who I think are already very advanced in their craft, as well as people starting into the field and everyone in between.

And I've got my own version of that where I know that I am often thinking in SASB terms, but I don't only think in SASB terms.

I have my own like organizing metaphors that come from all the parts of my life and images shared from people who shared their stories with me where SASB becomes very helpful is when I'm stuck or lost or my own metaphors fail me, or where I meet someone else's description of something, and I'm not quite sure I'm mapping my schema in a way that's helpful with theirs.

And and their Sby can be very helpful for unpacking complex interactions or descriptions of complex interactions.

It can help you know whether or not you have enough detail to truly understand something yet like maybe I get the general tenor that something hostile is going on, but I'm not really sure who was focused on whom and if they were separate or together, you know, I so I want to ask for more details until I um bring this into focus. Uh I'm I'm a genexer and Star Wars 1977, was a very, very important moment for me.

And Luke Skywalker at the end of this is about to blow up the Death star for those I does anyone not know the metaphor?

But maybe people won't know the metaphor at some point. Uh he's he's riding in his spaceship to blow up the evil death star and he's just got to shoot a missile into a little tiny target and he's got this little tracking system that pulls out in front of his eyes and hears his his his mentor in his mind say, you know, use the force l Luke, and he pushes the guidance system away and he trusts his instincts and he blows up to destar and wins the day.

I think Stasby is uh like that navigation system and as much as I love intuition, there are times when you really want a navigation system.

And so I think of SASB as helping you be precise when you need to be precise.

And a lot of the other times simply being human is enough because your your humanity has already been programmed in a way that is aligning with what's helpful.

Does that I don't know if I'm making any sense now.

I'm like tracking tracking Star Wars into this.

Yeah, I think that one of the things Hey, as far as I'm concerned, you can bring Star Wars into whatever you want.

So the what I thought about when I was reading that quote is so I recently had an episode where I interviewed Robert Kruger, who's one of the lead people in the alternative model personality disorders.

And I think that one of the and, you know, there' affiliated also with the the high top stuff, the higher the, you know, where they're sort of trying to do this for all the DSM disorders.

And I think one of the real values in the alternative model of personality disorders is it allows me to, you know, if I have, let me back up, if I just have these ten personality disorders and I say this person has borderline personality disorder, this person has narcissistic, this person is antisocial, or whatever, it doesn't tell me anything about the relation between those personality disorders, right?

It doesn't tell me like I don't have any information, like what are like it's the, you know, I want to put um, um, uh, whatever it happens to be, uh, you know, psychopathic behavior.

I don't even have a language, but like I want to put that on a continuum.

Where does the narcissistic person fall on that continuum versus the anisocial person who would obviously be your 10 out of ten and then where does, you know, like I don't have that kind of nuanced information where I can sort of really think about these different dimensions and where this these folks are on these multiple dimensions.

So I can sort of map them in this space and really have an understanding of how these, you know, these categories, how they differ, right?

And so that what SASB does is it allows me to get the, you know, not just categorize this behavior, but then think about that behavior in relation to all sorts of other behaviors.

You know, so I can just sort of say like, where is this person on the affiliation, you know, how, like if a ten out of ten and I know that that's not the scale that's used.

But if, you know, if, you know, rather than just saying, oh, they're really friendly or they're not, I can actually say on a ten scale, where are they on that friendliness scale?

You know, or where are they on that or where are they on host?

Like I can actually map them on the space and I can make more meaning of it.

Yes.

And I just think that that's, you know, it just makes it in a way, it just like I have I can take one bit of information and now all of a sudden I have a lot more bits of information because I'm integrating it into this system.

That's right.

It's it's uh three-densional spatial room and you've located it there and it's not you have a context.

You not only have the thing you're describing, but you have the thing you're describing in a context and that makes it sensible.

And I I I think personality disorder is relative to SASB and other dimensional models is is a really interesting case in point where um the language of the SASB model would describe personality disorder as, and Lorna has a whole book on this, like each of the DSM4 categories gets its own like chapter about that prototype and how to recognize it and how to work with it in SASB term.

And the across the whole book what gets developed is a way in which each of the different personality disorders has measured comorbidity because they have interpersonal overlap.

So like the narcissistic person and the antisocial person and the paranoid person, each of those prototypes has a certain amount of focusing on others with control as part of the signature of what they do, but it's not the only thing, and then they diverge in different areas.

And so you've got areas of overlap and difference that allows for differential diagnosis from an interpersonal point of view.

And it's not the um it is not the dimensions of personality itself.

It's the dimensions of of relating.

And so it's it's an interesting application.

I think of of taking a dimensional model and being able to create a type of a profile analysis to distinguish among people or categories or however you want to think of these prototypes.

It additionally does something where it doesn't assume that there's traits about any of this.

It also says, you know, you can define traits in in whatever what you like, but one of one of them would be, how consistently does this person act in this way across contexts or how consistent is it whenever this one context comes along?

And I really have found SASB to be incredibly useful for thinking about personality in a way that has reference to prototypes if I find those useful, because, you know, there's usually like pockets of of wisdom and intervention strategies that attend to each of the personality disorder labels, but but people tend to also just be really, really unique and they have features that are blends of things that are complex if you're thinking personality disorder signs and symptoms.

But can become incredibly simple if you're just thinking in terms of, you know, this person was abused in this way using these languages from a loved one and now they're repeating exactly those same words to themselves, and so we need to talk about what God internalized there that shapes all the behavior now, and then use the particular behaviors to sense when that script's been activated or whatever it is.

And I think I want to what I want to jump into if you don't mind is I want to jump into some clinical application.

But before I do that just real fast, and maybe I'm doing a little bit too much of a sales job here, but I think it is worth trying to communicate to folks the potential value of this system, similar types of system for them in real life.

So it's very common that you'll hear a practitioner say something like, you know, when referring to a client that, you know, they have this for example, blah, and they're a little border liney or something like that.

Like that that and that is that does mean something, right?

But the and I think of I'm times or, you know, typically the clinic's correct, but to have a tool that can allow you to say, well, what does that actually mean?

Right?

So that means when does that have to do with when the client is responding to me?

Or does that have to do with what what how how the client is responding after I say?

Like, is that a focus on me?

Is that a focus on them or is that what they're telling them?

Like even that, just putting that on those like, what is that when I say it's the borderline?

What does that actually mean and be able to have a tool that can now and I can see it across my patience where I see that, oh, this thing that I feel like is border.

Oh, this is what this is.

This is what I actually need.

This is what I feel, which is a real thing.

And I bet you there is consistency that clientients experience from patient to patient.

They say, oh, this is actually what I'm saying.

And so this gives me a tool to say like, oh, this is more precisely what's happening that I'm experiencing.

And then that can also tell me how what I should do moving forward or what I could do moving forward or what are some of the things that could make the way that I typically work with clients, what what could get in the way of that?

What could make that more challenging because I don't know exactly how to respond to this, which then also gives you more precision for, oh, I should get to some supervision or talk to some colleagues figure out, how should I respond?

How could I respond to this more effectively just allows that?

So let's, what would you think would be the most useful way to sort of talk about this in more of an applied real world, even if these are, you know, quasi-al patients?

But what would be the most beneficial way to sort of bring this to life for the listener?

You know, there's there's a lot of different angles.

Certainly talking about personality disorders is is one of those angles. Um but I but I think I've also kind of evolved to a place where that language system, well, I think it does have meaning has been so used and misused.

So like if someone says, oh, this person is going to borderline, usually what their meaning is, I'm frustrated with by whatever the interaction process is with this person.

And and simply using fancy language to say I'm frustrated is is is problematic and it's a stuck place in our field.

But but it's also it's not simply saying I'm frustrated.

It's invoking a kind of prototype or an intuition or an or an image that you're absolutely right um to turn and say, well, what is it that has happened, that you're feeling, whatever this means?

What are you observing?

SASB can then come in to to to look at, oh, am I feeling critical towards this person because they were just sulking about something that I asked them to do?

Or is it a bit different where I'm feeling this way because they are are intermittently behaving this way and then that way, which would be a different type of configuration?

Are they reactive to my control?

Are they uh trying to counterc control me?

Each of those would have a different helpful potential counter intervention or conceptualization that could come in.

So I I really like SASB for work with personality disorder because it it makes things concrete and behavioral at times when there's usually a bunch of affect mixed messages and and complex interact cycles that are happening. Um The way that I um, I guess have evolved in the application of SASby is, you know, this thing called interpersonal reconstructive therapy.

Lorna developed it from observations made using SASB with personality disordered folks by large, but all sorts of clients.

The idea is that everything makes sense in the way people treat themselves and experience themselves with others now, uh has often been learned and shaped in earlier relationships with close attachment figures.

And so when people are acting borderliney, or whatever it is, um it it often makes sense not as here's a broken person or here's a person with a who's a problem.

It it usually is some story that makes sense about some kind of attachment relationship or some kind of love story that's going wrong.

And you can I'm wondering just to just sorry to cut you off, but in the book, you give the case example of Sarah, which I'm assuming that's the pudonym. Um I'm if you remember it, uh where she talk It talks about yeah, I know there's so many of them where you talk about her relationship with her father and how what she was doing in that context was adaptive and then later on in life, her relationship with her boss, how she was bringing it into her relationship with her boss and how that got her into some trouble.

And I was just overworking herself and being, exactly.

Exactly.

And I found that I thought it was really nice.

Like it really hit like I was like, oh, that makes sense.

And it just it's so I'm would you be able to sort of talk about that or use that as like a tool for communicating?

Because I think it I think it lines up very well with what you're saying.

Exactly.

So so the idea is it very broad terms that if you're understanding someone in terms of their patterns of relating, and and that's usually not too hard to do.

I mean, yes, people come in and they say I'm depressed, help me with it.

I mean anxious help me with it.

But that usually gets unpacked as like tell me about what that's like for you and tell me about the context and what's happening and the timeline and what are your life events and what's going on.

So so standard clinical practice, whether your IRT or anything else usually involves understanding the context, and that context will usually involve a fair amount of relational process, especially if you ask for more detail about whatever comes up, including the relationship with the self.

So so what's asby does is allow you to get a sense of um what are the ways this person is relating with themselves that relates also to symptoms.

So in in Sarah's example, uh, when we first meet her, she is suicidal.

She's part of our IRT clinic archive um sample that we're still doing research out of and so on. Um So we meet her in an inpatient psychiatric hospitalization.

She was either suicidal or made an attempt.

I don't recall right now, but the context was that she was just overwhelmed and burned out and could not figure out how to be a good person.

She double down on self criticism, so her interject was very, very hostile towards herself.

She was going to kill herself off for a failure to figure out how to be successful at making other people happy, basically.

And her relationship with other people, um there there were a few other people in her life, but the most important story that we summarize in the in the book is um at work where she's incredibly competent.

She does a great job.

She um doesn't say no, however, and is taking on and her boss is expecting her to do the work of several people and to not be compensated and she's feeling unappreciated.

She's pushing herself to the point of having carpal tunnel and being sleepless and her family is complaining that she's not there and she's working really hard, uh submitting to a controlling person. Uh, with all these negative consequences towards herself.

Hidden in this is that the controlling person who is her boss is also simultaneously neglecting reality and her needs.

She is herself neglecting herself by pushing herself so far, so so this is her pattern, and it's the pattern that if you live that way long enough, it wouldn't be too hard to understand how that could get you depressed after a long period of being anxious and trying and trying and trying. And uh I guess the mysterious part is why would someone do that and why would someone blame themselves having failed to do the impossible?

And in her story, all of that makes a lot of sense because it it is a repeat of what it was like for her in childhood with her father, where from a very young age she was demanded to do all kinds of things that were beyond what he was able to do, but she could make him happy at least, and she was like the favored kid and the other Sis were envious of that relationship.

So it was a complex attachment relationship where there was love and connection, but there was also this type of um training in how to overwork yourself.

And one of the things started to interrupt one of the things that jumped out to me in that example when I was reading it is that the way you describe it is that it was very adaptive that maybe we would say, yeah, in a perfect world, dad would have been a bit different, but that he wasn't and that they actually had a really great relationship and that he, you know, they were really tight and it was really, it was really great, right?

And that, um, so it wasn't a, I don't know, it sort of a, it jumped out a little bit because it wasn't a, let's shit on dad in this case example uh, and talked about it It was like no, yeah, you know, I mean, there was a sort of, um, it felt like a, yeah, it's at least how I read it was like, yeah, this could have been better, but this guy wasn't like abusive or anything.

He wasn't a bad father.

He just sort of had these expectations and whatever and she she figured that out.

She met them and it allowed her and it facilitated them to have a wonderful relationship.

Yeah, and gave her a way of looking at the world, where when it you solve a problem by doubling down and working harder.

And in a lot of settings in a lot of workplaces, that actually works out pretty well. Uh we all would like to be able to, you know, be some nice mix of focused and hypoanic and and sly perform and do all the things we want to do.

We've please other people, please ourselves, get stuff done.

I I can relate to all that.

Maybe too much.

But she just happened to be in a position where her boss was going to pool for those things and then take advantage of them. Or or not care or step on her or whatever it was.

And and also not to to down on that other person.

It was maybe that, but also a little bit of and and she never well, I don't know that she ever did.

This is the question mark over it.

Like did she ever assert effectively about setting limits with this boss and did he respond or not?

Like like she was not programmed to assert in the in the first place.

And so when she did, it was sort of questionable exactly what played out.

Anyway, that's sort of a side trail, but the except that interpersonal complimentarity is part of what we're talking about is um if you submit and perform, it does invite people to give you more work.

And some people have a dark set about like, yeah, I would like to look for some people to uh get as much work out of them as I can and be um exploitive about it Others maybe are just sort of blind and that also might have been a question in her kind of attachment.

History and injury about her father is like, well, you know, which version was he too, that doesn't all come into the case example the way I play it out.

What what we emphasize in the book or what I was trying to illustrate was how the SASB codes of that early history map very precisely with the thing at work, and she wasn't necessarily thinking about her dad when she was making her suicide attempt or um or just overwhelmed and despondent, it was sort of through the process of making the connections and saying, oh, could it be that the way you're treating yourself and the way you're responding at work uh has some relationship with this same pattern that was there with your dad.

How do you make sense of that?

And uh oftentimes that is the opening into some awareness about not only where the pattern came from, but also what, um, what purpose am I play in a person's life right now?

Like, you know, why why should I work so hard for this boss?

And it could be like, well, on some level, I'm grieving my father, who's now deceased, and I wish he was still around because he would get this and so I will keep going instead of listening to my therapist who says, hey, let's do this as sort of his training and change these things. Uh, which he had heard before, and, you know, I think a lot of things about personality sort of treatment and the patients who may be frustrate us the most or most easily.

If you have this kind of compassionate love story gone wrong, attachment, history, if you understand how current behavior not just resonates with past behavior, but it it invokes it and kind of keeps attachment figures close as a result. Um that can help I mean, it helps me to not be frustrated at all at all by people, because I can at least see what with some compassion, what they're doing to themselves, and my heart goes out to them, and there is often a need for a grief process on their part to help shepherd them through coming to terms with whatever the other relationship was sufficient that they could choose to do things different now.

And it goes all the way back to the Harry Harlowe lab, right?

I mean, the the point of that work with the Reese's monkeys was that love organizes um the patterns of the life. And it's the early attachment experiences that can be internalized and and not just create some kind of weak schema for a tentatively going through the world.

It creates a strong set of rules and values that feel and our identity, basically.

And so when people struggle to shift those, it's often because they're they're trying to seek safety and security and and value by invoking those old patterns.

Well I think that one of the things, one of the things I really like about SASB really in terms of the podcast, one of my goals is to have very trans theoretical kind of bring those in.

And I think, you know, that the case example of Sarah in even describing it, you're using somewhat of a typically dynamic kind of language talking about attachment and that sort of thing.

And I can easily see.

I mean, it's obvious how this could be integrated from a, you know, a strict uh cognitive therapist that, you know, that we're able to see these, you know, these types of patterns of behaving, were you able to see what the client is telling herself, you know, either both in the moment we able to use this as a tool to to help us to assess core beliefs.

We're able to bring it into the session.

So when my client isn't uh doing homework, I I can that I'm assigning I can look at that interaction and what's happening there, right?

I can I actually have the tool to say, why is it?

You write that what am I doing?

What is she doing?

How does this relate in our interaction?

What's the motivation behind her not doing the homework, right?

Or whatever it is, um and then I can bring this up to identify, you know, well, what are the beliefs?

What are her?

You know, what is she telling her?

What are our automatic thoughts?

What's her?

You know, I mean, like that you can uh that, um we're talking about, bringing it back to her childhood and that and you can use this tool without doing that.

You know, maybe maybe that gives you nightmares.

I'm not sure, but that that a person doesn't need to identify the early attachment patterns with this, you know, although they certainly could. That this is a really trans theoretical tool.

Absolutely.

Well, and and even the even that psyodynamic formulation conceptualization strategy, within Lorna's writing and within irT, it's it's not this top down like it must be this way, the interpretation is there.

We just need to convince them of it.

It if it doesn't come from the data themselves from bottom up, from looking basically at observable behavior and representation of experience.

If it doesn't come straight from the data, it's it's not true you don't pursue it.

And and I think that's something where War knew a joke that, you know, her method is far too behavioral for the psychoanalytic camp who are suspicious of this obsessive need to, you know, pin everything down and be behavioral and not just trust things. And far too dynamic for the, you know, cognitive and behavioral folks.

It's like, why are you focused on relationships so much and that just sounds so touchy feely?

And I think there's without being so funny about it, there is this overlapping space if you take all the orientations and put their diagrams on top of each other.

It's a focus on interpersonal experience.

And it's it's a place where it's observable we can think about consensus, so we can get detail and we can track pattern.

And if the pattern links to early history, then that's a sign that maybe that's something to talk about.

If it doesn't, then it might link somewhere else.

It takes us somewhere else.

If it links back to the therapeutic process itself, you you follow where the structural analysis takes you.

One of the questions I asked everyone, I ask everyone I talked to, because I was thinking it's interesting, is what pushback, if any, that they've gotten for their work?

You know, you set that in your email and so I thought about it a little bit and I realized I have two answers and and one I've kind of already given you is that like on the one hand it's uh kind of far too behavioral and far too dynamic. Uh I I think that the part that I feel I have failed just a little bit is is when folks say, oh, it's too complex.

I feel like, oh, wait a minute, this is me as an educator and a communicator.

I want to be more clear because it's it's not all that.

I don't think the model is complex.

I think that humans are complex, and so when you try to describe what they're doing inside the model, they do complex things.

So we, you know, I continue to tinker away at the same bench that Lorna wants all these years and trying to do good work and keep our heads down, I guess.

I was going to say your you are kind of popping your head up now with your book. Um and I'll give it a proper um shout out in the intro that I'll do at the beginning of our episode that I'll record.

But on the back end here, could you give everyone just the name of your book and I'll link to it?

And then also you're starting doing some work with the IRT Institute, which I'll also link to.

Could you give it give everyone just a quick rundown on that?

The book is structural analysis of social behavior, a primer for clinicians.

So for a long time, SASB has been what L Lauren has always intended it for clinical use and and teachers and trains that way, but I think it had more visibility as a research tool.

And so this book is is very much written with clinicians in mind.

You'll have to forgive the degree to which I'm still an academic at times with my focus on details in the book, but but I am proud of it and it was sort of 20 years in the making and um I I am at a place with uh some research data coming out now and our prior publications about SASB and clinical practice and mechanisms have changed and all this stuff that I'm turning increasingly towards teaching, training, doing workshops, um, trying to build community around these ideas both on the research side and on the clinical side.

And so that's the focus of a thing that I've founded called the IRT Institute.

And we've got a website, IRT Institute.com.

And at this point you can get SASB-based resources and contact me for trainings and workshops and all this kind of stuff.

So I'm trying to get out from underneath the uh the researcher identity and the sort of quiet clinician doing his work identity and uh getting into community building.

So if if folks want a home for a conversation for these ideas, please reach out to me and we can build a a community.

Great.

Well, again, I I really appreciate your time and uh the book I've found very useful, I think that, you know, you have there's lots of pictures, which is great in terms of ways of, and as you sort of said, just to take some time to be able to just sort of look and think about what is being presented in the images and the figures, then um I think it's just such a wonderful, practical tool for clinicians.

So I think that it's great.

Well, thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Ken Critchfield that's a wrap on part two of my conversation with Dr. Ken Critchfield, and please send me your questions, thoughts, or anything else using the links in the show notes until next time.

Broadcasting the host, Dr. Dan Cox, a professor of counseling psychology at the University of British Columbia.

Welcome to episode number 22 of P psychotherapy and applied Psychology, where we dive deep with world's leading applied psychology researchers to uncover practical insights, pull back the curtain and hopefully have some fun along the way.

Today I couldn't be more excited to welcome back one of the world's foremost experts in the science of interpersonal interaction.

He's the director of clinical psychology at Yeshiva University and recent author of the book structural analysis of social behavior or SASB, a primer for clinical use, a link to his new book is in the show notes.

In part two of our conversation, we discussed the structural analysis of social behavior or SASB for short, interaction with others and interactions with ourselves, using measurement in therapy,