Book Review

By Alan Kurtz

Lovett, H. (1996). Learning to Listen: Positive Approaches and People with Difficult Behavior. Baltimore: Paul H. Brooks. $23.00

Those looking for a "how-to" manual for positive approaches to behavior management will not find it in Herbert Lovett's new book. The author provides no advice about ' " "managing" difficult behaviors. Nowhere in the book does Lovett tell us how to control the behavior of someone engaged in socially inappropriate, aggressive, or self-injurious behaviors. He does not tell us how to restrain people positively. Instead Lovett focuses on supporting persons by helping them build relationships and by providing a positive context in which behavior may change. For Lovett, community, relationships, and choices about enjoyable activities, are not contingencies to be manipulated or earned. They are the fabric from which rich and meaningful lives are woven.

"Positive approaches" is not another term for positive reinforcers. As Lovett says with characteristic directness: "So far as I know, anyone can put a grass skirt on a cow, but it still won't dance the hula" (p.xv). Lovett treats difficult behavior as an expression of a person's complex needs and desires - contrasting with more traditional behavioral approaches in which individuals are seen as "emitters" of behaviors maintained by outside forces or "history of reinforcement." Rejecting claims of scleiitific objectivity, Lovett asserts that behavioral technology is not value free. The very use of behavioral technology implies the existence of both persons to control and persons who control (i.e. behaviorists). The issue of behavioral technology as a form of domination is explored in great detail in Chapters 3 and 4 "The Politics of Behaviorism", and "The Hierarchy of Control" respectively. Together they constitute more than half of the book. Recognizing that the larger issue is domination and control, Lovett places positive approaches within a broader context of human liberation. Lovett points out that liberation movements usually celebrate their identity and typically do not require those excluded to change. "In this context ... it makes sense that instead of trying to make people 'more normal' our energies would be better spent in learning to respect the existing skills of people and the choices they have already made as our first step toward a fully inclusive society" (p. 12).

Lovett irreverently attacks many sacred cows (as well as cows in grass skirts). While criticizing practices, technologies, and organizations, he remains consistent in his positive approach and refrains from blaming individuals. He seeks to understand the institutional (both large traditional and community based) structures that encourage domination and obedience to authority rather than understanding. He empathizes with direct care providers who want to help but find themselves instead compelled to control. Even while expressing moral and intellectual outrage over atrocities such as torture as therapy (aversives) and surgical mutilation, Lovett attempts to understand the motives of those who rationalize these actions.

Although it is not a "how-to" manual, Learning to Listen is practical. It's poignant stories stimulate us to think about the questions we should be asking. Lovett's straight-forward almost common sense approach is one that often eludes us when we focus on behaviors rather than people. Undoubtedly some readers will be frustrated because of the book's lack of specific solutions for specific problems. The lack of specifics should not be surprising. Individuals are complex. Lives are complicated. Building lives is not an activity amenable to quick fixes or simple solutions.

Alan Kurtz is Project Coordinator of Facilitated Communicalion at the Center for Community Inclusion, and editor of Facilitated Communication in Maine ... An Update, a quarterly newsletter published by the Center.

Centerpoint is the newsletter of the Center for Community Inclusion, Maine's University Affiliated Program.

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