Relational Frame Theory: a simple summary

I've become a bit interested in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) over the last few months, as I think it might have a lot to offer the careers world. Underpinning ACT is a theory by Steven Hayes, called Relational Frame Theory (RFT). I don't know how vital it is to understand RFT in order to make good use of ACT, but I thought I would have a go. 

RFT is a cognitive behavioural theory, which means that it is interested in the links between thoughts and behaviour. RFT has a reputation for being terribly difficult to understand, but I think that at least some of its key tenets are actually quite intuitive. One challenge is that the literature about RFT uses complex, technical and inaccessible language. It describes itself as an account of arbitrary derived relational responses non-arbitrarily applied. Well, that's clear, isn't it?

Let's start with the idea of relational responses. This is really based on the old notion of associations, but it takes it a bit further. So, an association is when you have an experience which links two things in your mind. At a basic level, you can imagine that the first time you tasted apple pie, you thought it tasted great. You thus established a link between apple pie and deliciousness. But you can go further. Perhaps you spent time during your childhood visiting your Granny in Woking and eating her fabulous apple pie; this may have established a link in your mind, between Woking and the loveliness of apple pie. And even though the chain of associations goes: Woking...Granny...Apple pie...delicious taste, the link between Woking and delicious taste becomes direct for you;  Woking forever becomes a place which warms your heart. And you remember about reinforcement? The more times you had delicious apple pie in Woking, the stronger and more enduring that link between Woking and happy times becomes. 

RFT talks about arbitrary relational responses, which are associations (relational responses) which are not linked to physical properties (ie are arbitrary). This can be illustrated with language as an example: there is 'cat' the animal, 'cat' the collection of sounds that we can produce and hear as the word 'cat', and the written word 'cat', spelled C-A-T. These are three separate things, and the links between them are entirely arbitrary. There is no God-given reason why the letter C should be pronounced the way we say it, or that the animal should be given the name 'cat' - the links are arbitrary, human inventions. But for us, the links have been very well reinforced, and it's almost hard for us to remember that the animal, the written word and the spoken word are three separate things. 

So the idea of relational responses is about two or more things that in your mind are related to each other. The two things linked together are known as a frame, and the relationship between them is defined in different ways, for example, the two things might be considered as equivalent, one might contain the other or one might cause the other.

The idea of derived relational responses means that you can make links between things you haven't actually experienced. For example, you might have been told about a link between two things, and even if you hadn't seen the link for yourselves, you could still internalise the association and make one of your own relational frames. For example, if you are told that tigers are dangerous because they bite, you might be afraid of a tiger, even if you have never actually seen a tiger bite. You have thus established an association (a relational frame) between tiger and fear, even though you had never seen a tiger do anything to frighten anyone. 

As well as these vicarious associations, which you can learn from others. you can also create associations between things based on two different sets of associations. So, if you went to a job interview in Tooting, and the interview went badly, you might develop two associations: job interviews make me feel bad; and; job interviews happen in Tooting,  and this could lead you to believing that therefore Tooting makes me feel bad.

This could then become even more obscure as you might then establish a close link in your mind between Balham and Tooting (two stations next to each other on the tube line) and this then extends the relational frame in this way: job interviews make me feel bad; job interviews happen in Tooting; Tooting is very similar to Balham and therefore Balham makes me feel bad. This is called transformation of stimulus which refers to the process by which one association (Tooting and feeling bad) is applied elsewhere (Balham is similar to Tooting, so Balham also makes me feel bad). 

RFT goes into a fair bit of detail about the different kinds of relationships that can be established between things, and talks about how they are built up. I'm not sure that level of detail is important for those engaging with RFT in order to understand ACT, but it's useful to know they are part of the overall RFT theory. 

One final important aspect of RFT is the idea of cognitive fusion in which thoughts get tied up (fused with) reality and you start believing that your thoughts are in fact literally the same as the truth - the idea that thinking the thought or using the words 'I'm rubbish at interviews'  leads you to believe that this is a true, literal fact. One thing that ACT is really good at, is making people understand that thoughts and words aren't the same as facts: the words are just words, the thoughts are just thoughts - and both these are distinct from the reality of your interview performance. 

References

Blackledge, J. T. (2003). An introduction to relational frame theory: Basics and applications. The Behavior Analyst Today, 3(4), 421.