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MISSION STATEMENT

          Compass Mental Health, LLC provides exceptional psychological services, through education, knowledge & insight.

          Our purpose is to improve the health & independence of individuals, couples & families, with tailored services to meet specific needs.

OUR GOAL & OUR PROMISE

Goal Directed -- Volition Centered Counseling.

          We will develop a plan that will help compensate, provide direction,  and assist in maintaining purpose in your work and in your life, to your satisfaction.

Perceptual Control Theory (PCT) History

THE EVOLUTION OF THE CONTROL PARADIGM

By Dag Forssell

The PCT paradigm originates in 1927, when an engineer named Harold Black completed the technical analysis of closed loop control systems. He was working with the negative feedback amplifier, which is a control device. This led to a new engineering discipline and the development of many purposeful machines. Purposeful machines have built-in intent to achieve specified ends by variable means under changing conditions.

The explanation for the phenomenon of control is the first alternative to the linear cause-effect perspective ever proposed in any science.

The first discussion of purposeful machines and people came in 1943 in a paper called: Behavior, Purpose and Teleology by Rosenblueth, Wiener and Bigelow. This paper also argued that purpose belongs in science as a real phenomenon in the present. Purpose does not mean that somehow the future influences the present.

William T. (Bill) Powers developed PCT, beginning in the mid-50's. In 1973 his book called Behavior: the Control of Perception (often referred to as B:CP) was published. It is still the major reference for PCT and discussion on CSGnet.

B:CP spells out a suggestion for a working model of how the human brain and nervous system works. Our brain is a system that controls its own perceptions. This view suggests explanations for many previously mysterious aspects of how people interact with their world.

Perceptual Control Theory has been accepted by independently thinking psychologists, scientists, engineers and others. The result is that an association has been formed (the Control System Group), several books published, this CSGnet set up and that several professors teach PCT in American universities today.

PCT Philosophy in Counseling. 

The following is a clear and concise description of Perceptual Control Theory (PCT) applied to counseling and is taken from the introduction of Edward Ford's book Freedom From Stress,1989.

          Center to this counseling approach is perceptual control theory, which is a model for describing how people behave and why they think as they do. Control theory teaches that we create our own unique world through a hierarchy of control systems and store them in our memory. From these created perceptions, we build our own systems of values and standards, which form the basis for how we make decisions and deal with both others and ourselves so that we can create satisfying lives.

          Unlike other theories, control theory is concerned solely with feedback, that is, the result of our actions, not with the actions themselves. Our system of values and standards continually operates as a closed-loop control system to satisfy our internal goals by trying to reduce the difference between what we want to perceive and what we perceive from the results of our actions.   

        We always deal with the external world to satisfy our own internal goals, never the goals of others. Regardless of what happens to us as we interact with the environment, the ultimate reason for our actions is our attempts to satisfy our own individually set values, priorities, and standards. No one else creates our goals - nor sets them. We do.

        Most behavioral scientists teach otherwise. These scientists don't think in terms of a closed-loop system. They see the perceptual inputs as causing the organism to produce behavioral outputs. Stimulus simply produces response. They recognize that actions do have effects on future stimulation, but they see this as something separate, not a part of one single process. Frankly, I've never believed we are at the whim of what happens to us. My study of control theory has confirmed this suspicion.

        What all this means is that we are responsible for what we do. It is not our parents, not drugs or alcohol, not the pressure of our friends, not our feelings, not the seductive advances of others, not the product we bought, not the hot weather or the freezing temperature, not the Good Lord, not the media, not our job, not our spouse or children, not the other driver, and certainly not a thing called stress. The bottom line is that we are the captains of our own ships.

        We live in a culture that has been taken in by excuse-makers. We keep trying to find out why we are the way we are. This constant searching leads us through a maze of endless pathways. The fact is that we are not diseased when we act irresponsibly. Feelings do not cause us to act foolishly. No medicine or operation is going to cure a lifetime of bad eating, excessive drinking or drugging, and lack of exercise.

          Someone yelling and screaming does not cause us to be upset. The solution is obvious. We must look to the one source of all stress: our own self-made conflicting goals or impossible desires. It is our ability to maintain harmony throughout the whole network of values we've built, priorities we've established, standards we've set, and decisions we've made that will bring us the most satisfaction in life.

        As long as we look outwardly for reasons for our unhappiness, we will remain miserable. Fortunately, internal peace is possible. All we have to do is to examine the world that we have constructed, reflect on what is really important to us, critically review our values, look at how we've set our priorities, set forth standards that reflect these values, and begin to make decisions that are based on our own standards. If our own values and standards don't bring us the peace we want, we had better reevaluate our entire system. Eventually, we will find this internal harmony.

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