Steven C. Hayes, Dermot Barnes-Holmes and Bryan Roche (eds.), Relational Frame Theory: A Post-Skinnerian Account of Human Language and Cognition, New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 2001 (Crossref’s publisher: Springer US) — DOI-10.1007/b108413
Key takeaways
Registered from the chapter list, not a reading. What follows is what the chapter records say, and what the read substitute says the book argues.
- Chapters (Crossref, with pages). Part I states the theory: 1 Language and Cognition: Constructing an Alternative Approach Within the Behavioral Tradition (Hayes, Blackledge, Barnes-Holmes; 3–20); 2 Derived Relational Responding as Learned Behavior (Hayes, Fox, Gifford, Wilson, Barnes-Holmes, Healy; 21–49); 3 Multiple Stimulus Relations and the Transformation of Stimulus Functions (Barnes-Holmes, Hayes, Dymond, O’Hora; 51–71); 4 Relations among Relations: Analogies, Metaphors, and Stories (Stewart, Barnes-Holmes, Hayes, Lipkens; 73–86); 5 Thinking, Problem-solving, and Pragmatic Verbal Analysis (Hayes, Gifford, Townsend, Barnes-Holmes; 87–101); 6 Understanding and Verbal Regulation (Barnes-Holmes, O’Hora, Roche, Hayes, Bissett, Lyddy; 103–117); 7 Self and Self-directed Rules (Barnes-Holmes, Hayes, Dymond; 119–139); 8 Relational Frame Theory: A Précis (Hayes, Barnes-Holmes, Roche; 141–154). Part II applies it: 9 Psychological Development (157–180); 10 Education (181–195); 11 Social Processes (197–209); 12 Psychopathology and Psychotherapy (Wilson, Hayes, Gregg, Zettle; 211–237); 13 Religion, Spirituality, and Transcendence (239–251).
- The theory, as the read substitute states it. Barnes-Holmes, Barnes-Holmes, McHugh and Hayes (LIT-541) give the book’s account in their Part 2. Relating events arbitrarily, under contextual cues such as “is” or “more than”, is a generalized operant learned from multiple exemplars. Its relational frames (coordination, comparison, distinction, opposition, hierarchy) share three properties: mutual entailment, combinatorial entailment, and the transformation of stimulus functions. Rules are relational networks, and the self is three verbal relations to one’s own behaviour.
Standing in the record
Filed on 2026-10-03 at the owner’s request, as the theory of language and cognition beneath Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. It carries no instruction for machine-learning practice, and no anthology topic holds a behaviour-analytic theory of human language.
Deferred because it was not read. Under the owner’s rule for long works,
a shorter, lawfully readable statement by the same authors was read
instead. LIT-541 (2004) is by two of the three editors, Dermot
Barnes-Holmes and Steven Hayes, with Yvonne Barnes-Holmes and Louise
McHugh. It states the book’s core concepts and carries them into
psychopathology and ACT, which is the use this batch makes of RFT. Two other
lawful statements by the editors were found in Maynooth’s repository and
not read. One is Hayes, Barnes-Holmes and Roche’s reply to the book’s
commentators (The Analysis of Verbal Behavior 19:39–54, 2003, DOI
10.1007/BF03392981). The other is Roche, Barnes-Holmes, Barnes-Holmes,
Stewart and O’Hora’s exposition for social behaviour (The Behavior Analyst
25:75–91, 2002, DOI 10.1007/BF03392046). The reply is the place to see the
editors answer the book’s critics, if a second reading is wanted.
This seed is kept beside the substitute because the record would otherwise lack the citation the later literature uses. The 2006 ACT review (LIT-555) calls ACT “the applied extension” of the programme this book reports, and takes from it the four implications for psychopathology it summarizes (p. 6 of the deposited draft). The process-based therapy paper of Hayes and Hofmann (2019), filed in parallel by another agent, comes from the same programme.
Priority for a reading: medium, chapter 8 (the précis) first, then
chapter 12 for the psychopathology the batch is about. Chapter 7 is the
one to read for the record’s self cluster. The substitute
cites “Hayes, 1995 and Barnes-Holmes, et al., 2001” for its “three
selves”, and chapter 7 is the book’s treatment of the self, so it is
probably, though not certainly, the chapter meant.
Access when seeded:
- Crossref records for the book and chapters 1–13 (chapters 14–16 do not exist).
- Unpaywall: not open access. OpenAlex: one location, a closed catalogue entry at UCLouvain.
- link.springer.com/book/10.1007/b108413 returned a “Client Challenge” page. It was not pursued.
- Maynooth University Research Archive Library (MURAL), searched for “relational frame”: 223 results, none a chapter of this book.