Revisit Skinner 1945. Generally, private control shows up to the degree to
which the social environment facilitates it's development (don't forget you
need to be able to give a functional account of how private control
emerges). A less that consistent social environment will make private
variables much more vague--and increase the importance of tracking the more
immediate social contingencies in order to do what's "right."

Additionally, Phil Hineline always reminds his lab that much of what is
spoken of as "private" is often much more about being sensitive to
environmental events that are dispursed in time (e.g., patterns of social
interaction that would support speaking of private control) than any real
(measurable) physiological stimulation. You're still stuck with the need to
account for the environmental events of which the "private stimuli" are a
function (there's all kinds of internal activity going on--what would make
any of it particularly important?).

Since they (environmental events) are often subtle and spread out over
time--and beyond the convenient perspective of the therapist--it's easier to
speak of such events as being private and somewhat independent of
environmental influence. The trick for the analyst is not to be swept away
by the privacy of what he/she cannot see (i.e., the persons extended social
history) and then assume that people are behaving with respect to completely
private stimuli that are somewhere within the skin.

So my answer: excessive public control by fairly immediate social
contingencies as opposed to control by environmental events (public) that
are part of a larger functional pattern of socially supported behavior
environment relations that are conventionally supported by the majority
verbal community.

I hope you find this is helpful,

Tom

----Original Message Follows----
From: "Sara J. Landes, M.A." <sjlandes@...>
Reply-To: functionalanalyticpsychotherapy@yahoogroups.com
To: functionalanalyticpsychotherapy@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [functionalanalyticpsychotherapy] question about private and public
control in relationship to the self and DID
Date: Sun, 07 May 2006 21:21:03 -0000

Hi all-

Keri and I have been working on a paper and presentation for our
stimulus control class. The paper is on Dissociative Identity
Disorder and it's our attempt at describing the disorder in
behavioral terms and more specifically, in terms of stimulus
control. We have been using the chapter on the self from the FAP
book, along with several other articles that discuss private and
public control of the self. A lot of our references seem to be at
odds with each other.

We were hoping to get some input on how you all view DID in terms of
public and private control. More specifically, is DID inaccurate or
excessive private control, inaccurate or excessive public control, or
maybe both? We are primarily considering private and public control
in terms of how the disorder develops. For example, if abusive
environments are unpredictable, the child relies more on private
control because public control is not helpful. However, adults with
DID are often talked about as having excessive public control, e.g.,
relying on therapist reactions for as cues for how to behave.

This is a long email and somewhat tangential to FAP, but hopefully
it's interesting enough that you'll want to respond. :) We give our
presentation Tuesday (we didn't realize until today that we were
confused!), but have until next week to flesh it all out for the
paper.

Thanks!
Sara and Keri