The role of mentalism in the production of suffering and its impacts on psychotherapy

Abstract

The prevalence of a mentalist point of view in our culture brings implications, because when there’s an indication of an internal component as cause, a discourse that blames the individual occurs, corroborating segregations based on socioeconomic factors. Radical Behaviorism is against this model and has a monistic and anti-mentalist perspective, and that is the philosophy that guides the Behavioral-Analytical Therapy (TAC). Thus, the objective of this paper is to describe, through Holland’s perspective, the potential implications of the use of mentalist practices in the production of suffering, which aspects are brought to the clinic
and our role as therapists. To investigate that, the Procedure of Conceptual Text Interpretation (PICT) was used. It was chosen to only use Holland’s Productions, due to its relevance to our field. As results, we have the selection of four papers that were chosen because they directly addressed mentalism, namely: Behaviorism for a revolutionary Society; Behaviorism: part of
the problem or part of the solution; Toward a solution: a rejoinder; Are behavioral principles for revolutionaries? From its reading, the categories of “blaming the victim”; “privilege system” and “role of the behavioral analyst on the clinic” were reached.