The aim of this article was to describe the clinical behavior analysis background related to the topic unconsciousness. In order to understantd the topic, some B. F. Skinner’s publicatons about unconscious were examined, as well as some publications in the clinical behavior analysis field. Results indicated that, according to Behavior Analysis, there are two main conditions on which the term unconscious is applied in certain theoretic traditions in Psychology. Both conditions depend on a social-verbal environment that teaches self-descriptive behaviors and also teachs the response class of avoiding such descriptions. The first condition relies on the unconsciousness caused by the lack ou poor exposure of a verbal environment which would promote the knowlege about what one has done, what one is doing, what one tends to do or about the controling variables of a given behavior. The second condition in which the term unconscious is used is closely related to what certain theories would call repressed unconscious and it is produced by punishing contingencies. In the clinical behavior analysis, these both conditions are analysed, but the sencond type is specially focused, that is, those conditions that produce the response class of escaping/avoiding the de tacts of punishable behaviors.
Clinical behavior analysis and RFT: Conceptualizing psychopathology and its treatment
