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Steven Hayes Explains It All, Mostly About Steven Hayes
“Ladies and gentlemen, scholars, clinicians, and anyone who has ever purchased a workbook with a tree on the cover,” begins Steven C. Hayes, his microphone adjusted just so. “Today I want to talk about flexibility. Not the kind you get from yoga — though I am spiritually limber — but the kind you get when you redefine words until they agree with you.”
He smiles. The crowd dutifully nods.
“You see, ACT is not just a therapy. It is a philosophy, a lifestyle, a collectible set of metaphors. Have I mentioned the hexaflex? That’s my six-sided shape, like a psychological snowflake. Each arm represents a construct, and together they form the perfect excuse to publish papers that look empirical but are really about me.”
A pause for applause.
“Some people say the measures have reliability issues. I say: why be rigid about reliability? Flexibility! Science is about bending until the data fit. The critics call this Machiavellian. I call it pragmatism with better hair.”
He strokes an imaginary beard of methodological gravitas.
“Remember, folks, I was there when behaviorism was getting stale. I rescued it by adding words like mindfulness and values. Do the values work psychometrically? Who can say? What’s important is that they make us…
