THE Behavior Analysis Book Everyone Should Read RIGHT NOW

For those of you who know me, you know that I love reading. I love reading SO MUCH. My current ACTIVE reading list includes 12 books that spans the Dune universe, geriatric care, Stephen King, poetry, you name it. I’m what Stephen King lovingly refers to as a “constant reader.” I don’t read QUICKLY, per se. But I read ALL THE TIME.

A few years ago, a friend of mine recommended a book that I’d had on my TBR list for a few years. I finally decided to pull the trigger on the book and I’m so fucking glad I did. It changed EVERYTHING about the way I thought about behavior analytic work. We even did a full season on the book for our podcast Paperback Behavior (wherever podcasts are published). This book is called How To Rethink Human Behavior: A Practical Guide to Social Contextual Analysis by Bernard Guerin.

Check out this description:

“Developed from the author’s long teaching career, How to Rethink Human Behavior aims to cultivate practical skills in human observation and analysis, rather than offer a catalogue of immutable ‘facts’. It synthesizes key psychological concepts with insights from other disciplines, including sociology, social anthropology, economics, and history.

The skills detailed in the book will help readers to observe people in their contexts and to analyze what they observe, in order to make better sense of why people do what they do, say what they say, and think what they think. These methods can also be applied to our own thoughts, talk and actions - not as something we control from ‘within’ but as events constantly being shaped by the idiosyncratic social, cultural, economic and other contexts in which our lives are immersed.

Whether teaching, studying, or reading for pleasure, this book will help readers learn:

• How to think about people with ecological or contextual thinking

• How your thinking is a conversation with other people

• How to analyze talk and conversations as social strategies

• How capitalist economies change how you act, talk and think in 25 ways

• How living in modern society can be linked to generalized anxiety and depression

How to Rethink Human Behavior is important interdisciplinary reading for students and researchers in all fields of social science, and will especially appeal to those interested in mental health. It has also been written for the general reading public who enjoy exploring new ideas and skills in understanding themselves and other people.”

For those of you unfamiliar with Dr. Guerin’s work, he has spent many years evaluating concepts related to contextual analysis and cultural behavior. He’s written some INCREDIBLE articles about concepts of racism and behavior analysis that most behavior analysts would benefit from reading. This guy has done some incredible work on the subject of cultural humility and, unfortunately, many behavior analysts don’t see his work.

Why might that be? Well, he doesn’t write for behavior analysts. He writes for behavior analysts AND psychologists. He writes for helping professions. But everything you read from him harkens back to good behavioral health practices. His work is incredibly fascinating and is quite relevant given the current movement toward more culturally informed practices in behavior analysis. We would be remiss to ignore his work.

How to Rethink Human Behavior is the second book in a series of titles he’s written on the subject of social contextual analysis. He’s written about psychology (How to Rethink Psychology) and mental illness (How to Rethink Mental Illness) with no true signs of slowing down. While I think that How to Rethink Human Behavior is the most pertinent book for behavior analysts, I do believe it would be a failure to ignore the other texts from him.

Anyway, that’s a long winded way of saying you should get this book because it will absolutely improve your work. It takes Friman’s “Circumstances View” and dives so much further. It’s a game-changer.

Grab a copy HERE.

Also, please note that this isn’t a paid advertisement. This is simply a recommendation as an avid reader. Please enjoy this one. And if you’ve already read it, let me know what you think!

Happy reading!

Shane