Maps in Psychology, Part 1: For Practitioners
The Polish-American mathematician and philosopher Alfred Korzybski famously quipped, “The map is not the territory.” Very simply, this just means that a representation (map) of something is not the thing (territory) being represented. In a lot of cases, this is an easy distinction to maintain — most people understand that photographs of their friends are not, in fact, their actual friends. In other cases, less so — most people forget that their narratives of themselves are not, in fact, all of who they are.
There is no map that is the “one true map.” This is because maps make trade-offs in how they’re constructed, and these tradeoffs are always dictated by what they’re used for. Consider these two maps of, say, North Carolina:
It would be ridiculous to suggest that one of these maps is “truer” than the other. In this case, that the two maps reflect different usages comes intuitively to us; map 1 might be used by an ecologist or biologist studying aquatic habitats, while map 2 might be used by you or me if it we had to drive through North Carolina. Expanding this a bit, the impossibility of any “one true map” reflects the wide range of possible uses for which people might require a map; that range of use itself reflects how diverse and dense are the number of features one could notice in any given territory. Maps, then, can’t be evaluated by their “truth,” but only by whether they get you where you need to go when you follow them (hold onto that thought).
So what does any of this have to do with psychology?
When it comes to practitioners, there’s the matter of theoretical orientations. It’s not uncommon that psychologists/mental health clinicians have to discuss their theoretical orientations when they’re interviewing for a job or getting to know colleagues and supervisors/supervisees. In my experience, most individuals are reasonable about differences in this kind of orientation; where it shows up more clearly is at the group and institutional levels. Entire organizations are built around single theoretical approaches to human behavior. Though most do not explicitly forbid “outsiders” from joining or at least visiting, communication can be difficult if not awkward when the participants aren’t going off the same map. Given such difficulties, people tend to not even try comparing their maps to see what overlaps and what doesn’t.
Because that’s what theoretical orientations really are: maps drawn up to guide our way through the territory of human behavior. And like in all cases where different maps are made of the same territory, the distinction between the maps mostly lie in what features of the territory are selected for representation. In the same way that waterways or roads may be the organizing feature of those North Carolina maps, psychological theories will take certain aspects of human behaving as their organizing features.
For instance, the cognitivist approach tends to focus on thoughts and beliefs of the subject individual, while the radical behaviorist approach will focus on the learning history of the same. Because the radical behaviorist map is organized around one’s history of contingent reinforcement and punishment, it views “thoughts and beliefs” (or really, “thinking and believing”) as just another kind of behavior (covert or private behaviors) that can be understood in terms of learning histories. This does not discount the importance of thinking and believing, but it simply does not place those events as the north star of guiding clinical choices. Conversely, the cognitivist map is organized around the influence of thoughts and beliefs on overt behaviors and feelings, with a particular eye towards how such relationships increase or decrease cognitive dissonance with deeply held schema. Here, the learning history that produced one’s thoughts and beliefs are not ignored either, but neither is it the north star for this particular way of guiding clinician behavior. This can be extended to various psychoanalytic and psychodynamic approaches (organized around unconscious conflicts and early relationship/attachment patterns, respectively), or systems approaches (organized around how non-linear systems within the self and immediate community maintain a stable state against sudden change), or any others.
And of course, as with all maps, these different psychological maps will also tend to converge on a great many things, simply because they are ultimately drawn based on the same territory. What might be called “schema” in cognitive-behavioral therapy will have a counterpart in “role re-enactments” in relational psychodynamic theory, and yet another counterpart in “rule-governed behaviors” in radical behaviorism. Some features of the landscape turn out to be too prominent to be ignored by anyone.
Keeping in mind that the value of maps is not their truth-propositions, but their utility for a going to a specific destination or in a specific direction, is instructive on how to approach theoretical orientations for practitioners. That is, where do you need to get to? This will vary depending on the patient(s) in the room, and what are their goals for therapy. For example, picture someone coming in with depression and anxiety due to a tough recent stretch of life, but also with a relatively healthy and flexible personality (or schema set, or behavioral repertoire, or whatever you prefer). This is a case I would feel more confident treating from a CBT or Solution-Focused (SFBT) approach; such a patient is more likely to be able to engage in the collaborative empiricism and curious inquisition that make CBT and SFBT useful. In such a case, focusing on thoughts and beliefs and their immediate connection to behavior and feelings could yield useful information that therapist and patient could both act on.
Now picture someone presenting very similarly with depression and anxiety, after a similarly tough recent stretch of life, and similarly attempting a CBT or SFBT approach. Maybe they end up illuminated by the insight, but fail to ever try anything new outside of therapy. Or they engage in the classic dance of “yes, but…” or turn therapy into a debate match, or stop sharing openly altogether. Certainly, obstacles are to be expected, and directly addressing such roadblocks are necessary; now picture doing so with such a patient, except afterwards, they simply move to one of the other defenses above, and then continue to cycle through them as each is addressed in turn. Meanwhile, their life continues to be depressing and anxiety-provoking. At some point in all this, it comes out that this patient has also had a terrible childhood, characterized by neglect, and later relationships that were abusive; both were possibly, if not likely, traumatic. It turns out that their learning history (or personality, or role re-enactments) has made them quite a bit narrower and more rigid than they first appeared.
Times like these might indicate that we’ve actually been traveling in a different swathe of the territory all along, but using maps that were drawn based on some other part. The thing to try then is to change maps, and see if a different one works any better. In this particular (and deliberately vague) example, I might think in a more psychodynamic or systemic mode, as there are likely repertoires learned from early on in life that prevent such an individual from engaging in a way that would have made CBT or SFBT effective for someone less narrow and rigid in the choices they can see. (I do note that this is also based on my experiences and those of more experienced clinicians I’ve worked with — the research on psychotherapy effectiveness is messy, and there are pieces of research that conflict with both common-sense wisdom and each other.)
The implication for clinical practitioners is that, unless psychology moves out of the pre-paradigmatic phase of science in our lifetime, it will be supremely useful, if not necessary, to be familiar with all the different clinical maps of human behavior. This can take some time, given the volumes and volumes that have been written on each major theoretical approach (i.e., cognitive-behavioral, radical behavioral, systemic, psychoanalytic/psychodynamic), not to mention less broadly popular approaches (e.g., relational-cultural, feminist, humanistic, gestalt). Beyond time and effort costs, though, there are other potential obstacles, many of which will be highly variable for each clinician — I will address this in a follow-up piece (see the P.S.).
But the payoffs are more than worthwhile, in my experience, and they don’t simply redound to increasing one’s range of clinical effectiveness (which might be as simple as being willing to “get lost” with what to do with some patients, if one feels in possession of the maps that can eventually guide them back on track). A longer-term benefit of knowing multiple maps is bridging the gaps that exist among all the differing schools of clinical psychology. As I alluded to above, this is characteristic of a pre-paradigmatic phase of science, and if we are to move past that phase, it will require that both practitioners and researchers from all approaches begin to compare their maps — in that CBT spirit of collaborative empiricism. The more experience I get in clinical work — the more orientations I’ve been exposed to and worked from — the more I notice how much each school overlaps with others. And if all the paths in the woods lead to the same clearing, then it’s not a bad guess to think that there’s something good and useful there. Seems to me it’s about time to start figuring out a map for us to find what’s in that clearing.
P.S. This is “Part 1 — For Practitioners.” There is a “Part 2” here, which focuses on the utility of the map-territory metaphor for patients — and really, everybody.
