建立合作、关怀与高效的关系：以接纳与承诺疗法（ACT）和慈悲聚焦疗法（CFT）为例
Building a Cooperative, Caring, and Productive Relationship: ACT and CFT as a Test Case There is an interesting juxtaposition between the human issues of acceptance and compassion on the one hand and the scientific relationship between accep- tance and commitment therapy (ACT) and compassion-focused therapy (CFT) on the other. In order to build quality human relationships, it is important that these relationships be based on understanding and caring. We have to be able to see the world through the eyes of the other person, with genuineness and openness take the time to feel what it might feel like to be that other person, and then not run away—perhaps even step forward—when what we see is painful or difficult. The skills needed to do these things are essential to the construction of cooperative, caring, and productive human relationships. And success in these processes predicts the degrees to which people enjoy being with each other and avoid the objectification and dehumanization of others. Finally, when challenges to that success are overcome, each party to the relationship is changed by it. It is relatively easy to care about and take the perspectives of people who are just like us; it is harder with people who seem to be different. Both the challenge and the importance of compassion are greatest when the divisions between people are greatest. In a parallel way, when dealing with the relationship between two scientific traditions, productive relationships are based on the ability to take the perspec- tive of the other tradition and to take the time to understand what it is that’s being said, even when this is hard. As in human relationships more generally, that is most important precisely when differences in background and assump- tions exist. It seems to me that this book reveals how profoundly these two different sci- entific perspectives, ACT and CFT, have taken the time to understand each other over the last several years. When we look at ACT and CFT side-by-side, we are looking at two perspectives with fairly different scientific backgrounds. ACT developed inside the functional contextual wing of behavioral psychology. CFT, conversely, grew out of developmental psychology, affective neuroscience, Buddhist practical philosophy, and evolutionary theory. Despite that fact, ACT and CFT have an overlap that is so great now that it is almost impossible for contemporary practitioners of either to avoid the other. The issue of compassion is now crucial to ACT and the issue of psychological flexibility is increasingly relevant to CFT. And each party to this scientific relationship is being changed by it. This book presents the issue of compassion for ACT practitioners, but not just that. It also presents the importance of psychological flexibility processes for CFT practitioners. Careful and comprehensive, this book is a kind of extended exercise that demonstrates the mutual benefit each tradition can have for the other. The issue the book addresses is critical. At the level of psychological process, it turns out that compassion is integral to psychological flexibility. Indeed, it is arguably essential. In the earlier days of ACT development, this was not obvious, but it has been for several years now. A person with good perspective-taking abilities and empathy will feel pain when seeing the pain of others. This means that in order for me to reject care and concern toward you when you are in pain, I would have to reject my own feelings; to be non-compassionate, I have to be non- accepting. Compassion and acceptance are two faces of the same issue. It is not possible for me to be truly accepting of myself as a human being if I’m rejecting of you as a human being. In a similar way, it is not possible for me to be truly compassionate toward you if I show no compassion toward myself. We have an essential bond in our common humanity which projects into our very con- sciousness and verbal abilities. Just as in a profoundly intimate and caring human relationship each party is changed, so too, in the handful of years in which topics of this kind have been central, have ACT and CFT moved closer and closer to each other. The linkage of each perspective to evolutionary thinking has increased a working alliance between ACT and CFT. CFT emphasizes the importance of cooperation and social inclusion to the fundamental neurobiology of stress. In contextual behav- ioral science, it’s been argued that concern for others and cooperation were fundamental to the development of basic relational-framing skills—that verbal meaning is a cooperative act of perspective taking. You can see this process of the two traditions moving closer to each other in the present volume. As I read this book, at times it was hard to say where ACT left off and CFT began, and vice versa. At the level of issues, technology, and focus, these therapeutic perspectives are now fellow travelers embarked on a common journey, and likely with a common fate. This book will profoundly change ACT practitioners who have not already come to view compassion as a central topic in their work. And those ACT prac- titioners who do know that compassion is key will be empowered by detailed, step-by-step knowledge of how to integrate the two. I think the same can be said for CFT practitioners who are not necessarily clear about the value of psycho- logical flexibility. Given the deep interconnections that are developing between these per- spectives, what is the likely end of this process? At this point we cannot say. But we can say that compassion work is now central to ACT practice, and that ACT practitioners look to CFT to help them apply evidence-based methods in this area. That sense of coming together is not very different than that which manifests in profound human relationships in general. When human beings meet each other with openness, cooperation, and caring, life moves in new directions. Where it will go we do not know—but it promises to be both excit- ing and productive. This scientific relationship is much the same. The reader can test the value of the emerging relationship of ACT and CFT easily enough. This book will provide you with a test case: you. Your work. Your clients’ progress. As I just said: It promises to be both exciting and productive. —Steven C. Hayes, PhD