How did we get to our current logo?

When the first ACBS website was created, Eric Fox created the logo below in 2005/2006.

Prior to the existence of ACBS, Eric had created the acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy.com and relationalframetheory.com websites.

ACBS sincerely thanks Eric Fox for starting off our web presence.  We don't know where we would be today without his significant efforts.

Between 2008-2010 we redesigned the website a bit, and created a new logo.  Lacking funds, I (Emily Rodrigues) stayed up late one night creating this less than brilliant logo.  (Design is not in my skillset unfortunately. Sorry everyone.)

In 2010-2011 the ACBS website underwent a major renovation.  With the new site unveiling in 2011, a new logo was commissioned for it.

We used a 3rd party design contest website to create our 2011 logo (which is still our logo as of 2019).  This was the description we gave of what we wanted:

We want something a bit more modern, but still professional. (many company logos in our field look old and boring, we don't want that)

We need for this logo to not be trendy (in 10 years we still need to like it).
95% of the time this logo will appear in full color, but we don't want it to look horrible when in black & white.

We're flexible on colors as we're in the middle of a complete website redesign, but we think we want more than one color in our logo. We're currently looking at something like FF8F00, 5A8F29, 3C7DC4 or CD6607, 528413, 2088152, although we don't LOVE any of those yet. Those are just some ideas.

The design part of the logo only needs to include "ACBS" not the full name.

We do not want any typical themes. No images of the head or brain, no using the greek symbol for psychology. Nothing that looks like gears.

The only good symbology we can think of is something to do with "interconnectedness", but that's not required.

Our audience is primarily Ph.D. and master's level folks. We do a "new" and "different" kind of psychology (but still based on good science) so we can be a little more modern with our logo.

Don't go off of our current logo... it is lame... I designed it. :)

Staff and a few former and current Board members took a look at our options and selected our logo. We had a wide variety of options including logos with animals in it, etc.

I can only speak from my own experience in the process, but I didn't want a logo that reminded me of another company I knew, and I didn't want something busy.  When looking at the logo I liked the idea of the six parts (like the hexaflex), and the 3 major ones (at the time, it made me think of ACT, RFT, and CBS... even though CBS is much more than that, it clicked with me at the time).  This logo was not chosen for any of those reasons, but those are thoughts that occurred to me, and made me like the logo a bit more.  Those were my relational frames. :) - Emily Rodrigues, ACBS

Why does the association name speak only of science, not practice?

In most traditional forms of behavioral science, practice is an after thought, of no fundamental importance to the integrity and truth of a scientific analysis. The hope and trust of the traditional approach, born of its assumptions, is that if we understand things, we may be able to do something useful with that understanding. If we cannot, that is unfortunate, but it does not indicate that there is anything wrong with our analysis.

A functional contextual approach is quite different. We do not see science simply as an analytic tool that touches on application only as a method of evaluating applied technologies, and we do not see application merely as a hoped for extension of our scientific knowledge. Our foundational assumption is our goal: prediction and influence with precision, scope, and depth. If that goal is not reached, there is something wrong with the analysis itself. Thus, for us, application is at the very core of science itself, no matter how basic, because doing something useful with scientific ways of speaking tests the ultimate adequacy of our understanding.

When an educator is guided by RFT principles and a child is taught, those principles are tested. When a clinician applies ACT techniques and principles and a client is helped, those techniques and principles are tested. Without careful, controlled comparisons that can be shared with others, these moments are not fully adequate tests scientifically, but they are tests. That is why there is no fundamental division in our approach between such disparate work as basic RFT studies on the nature of language and cognition, and effectiveness studies on the impact of ACT training. We assume that if a scientific principle or theory is "true" it is useful, and useful in a way that is precise, broadly applicable, and coherent across levels of analysis.

The name of our society speaks simply of science and not practice because our whole purpose is to seek a new kind of science – one in which that division no longer applies. In a functional contextual approach, good science is practice, and good practice is science.

ACBS is grounded in ACT, RFT, and the third wave of course. An early witness to that history, Rob Zettle, has written about it (see attached article).

But the actual spark that gave rise to ACBS was more specific and more emotional: the horrifying events of September 11, 2001. It think that matters that ACBS came in part from that event -- and it makes more sense of why ACBS has the motto that is does (which I will quote at the end of this short piece).

The ACBS "Story of Origin" goes something like this (by the way, while I have vetted the details with those involved, if you know of errors let me know).

I was set to go do two workshops in Sweden (one in Stockholm and one in Uppsala) organized by Ned Carter and Kennth Nillsson, suitcase in hand, when I got a call saying to put down my suitcase on turn on the TV. I did and watched in horror as humans jumped from the twin towers like dust falling from a shaken tree, which then fell to the ground.

All airlines were grounded. There would be no workshop in Sweden.

The next week I told my lab "we are going to study prejudice, bias, and stigma." I told them to watch what was about to happen: we in the West will objectify and dehumanize others out of fear. I remember saying "there are not enough bullets and enough bombs and enough soldiers to make ourselves safe in the world that is upon us. Soldiers and politicians are not enough. Behavioral scientists have to be part of the solution." The whole lab was crying. We wanted to do something.

My lab did alter its focus, beginning basic and applied work on acceptance, mindfulness, perspective-taking and values as antidotes to prejudice and stigma. That work in ACT and RFT continues world wide to this day.

In early 2002 Ned, Kenneth and I started to talk about what to do about the cancelled workshop. I wanted to up the ante in response to the horrifying way that workshop was cancelled.  I'm not sure if Ned or I said it first but in a call with him we began to talk about not just a workshop but a world wide event on ACT, RFT, and the new behavioral psychology. I suspect it was Ned who raised the idea of a conference, because I found out later that Ned had talked to the Wisung's (who you will meet below) in November 2001 about building behavior analysis in Sweden (which Ned was trying to do through his fledging "Swedish Association for Behavior Analysis" and the Wisung's were trying to do with their private practice). I likely added the expansive vision behind a World Conference for ACT / RFT / Functional Contextualism because it was linked to the horror that starting this process. That call on September 11, 2001 was part of the energy that led to the conference. It was not that we felt we had an answer -- it was that we felt we have to care about developing one and that behavioral psychology in a new form could be part of that. We would meet hate with love; ignorance with knowledge; division with community.  

Parenthetically I would not find out until ten years later that Kennth Nillsson had lost $20,000 when the hotel in Stockholm refused to cancel the contract despite the travel lock down. Had I known that I doubt if the replacement would have taken until 2003 ... and knowing about it makes what happened in 2003 all the more remarkable as you will see. 

As the idea began to form it spread out to organizational activities in other areas. The grand vision of a conference all about ACT and RFT caused a shift in thinking, not just in me but in many others close to the work. As we began to think of all the things that could go into such a conference we began to see that our work on philosophy, basic science, applied science, and psychotherapy had laid the foundations for something that did not exist.  

This conference would take money and organization. My own company, Context Press, put in a little; the Swedish Association for Behavior Analysis, and the Swedish Association for Behavior Therapy co-sponsored it (thanks to Ned and Kenneth). They lent some organizational help but we needed funds. That is why Ned and Ken approached Håkan Wisung and Olle Wadstrom in 2002. They owned "Psychology Partners" (PP) a small practice firm with big visions for behavioral psychology in Sweden. PP tentatively agreed to bankroll it. PP leaders Gisela Wisung, Thomas Gustavsson and Johan Holmberg bpought in. Other staff there at the time -- Alberto Santi, Fredrik Gunnarsson, Magnus Stalby, Hanna Stalby Olofsdotter, Cecilia Gustavsson, Sara Hillbom, and Marielle Ryberg -- were supportive. 

We met in a group at the Association for Behavior Analysis meeting in Toronto in May 2002. The attendees were me, Kelly Wilson, Dermot Barnes-Holmes, Yvonne Barnes-Holmes, JoAnne Dahl, Ned Carter, Kirk Strosahl, Jason Luoma, Olle Wadström, and Håkan Wisung. We set a date and a location: Linkoping, Sweden. We decided to do the unimaginable: to try to organize 4 tracks for three days! Wow!

I started the ACT list serve in January 2003 and the RFT list 2 months later. We were deep into the run up to the first World Conference by then (we did not then know there would be a second).  I think the list serves were designed in part to make the World Conference possible -- but they also happened because there had been a shift in our thinking.

In hindsight the leap by Ole and Hakan was pretty bold. They had in effect risked the financial health of Psychology Partners. That is why ACBS gave PP an award at the 10th World Conference.

Just a month before – it looked like it might fail. Registrations were way, way behind. It would lose gobs and gobs of money -- far beyond what Kenneth had lost just 2 years earlier because multiple honoraria had been promised; plane tickets had been paid for. It was do or die. For PP perhaps literally.

But it did not fail. The list serves fed the fever. People traveled. The Swedish professionals and students showed up. By the hundreds they came.

The opening event was a plenary on "The Third Wave: What is It and What, if Anything, Unites It?" Kelly Wilson chaired it. It had an all star list of panelists, Thomas D. Borkovec, Steven C. Hayes, Anna Kaver, Robert Kohlenberg, and Mark Williams. Looking at the panel and room packed with hundreds of registrants Kennth Nillsson proudly stood up and loudly proclaimed  "This is as close as psychology gets to Rock & Roll." We all laughed ... but the emotion of the moment had something to do with how this happened. We did not yet know there would be an ACBS. It took a while to see that step. But we did know we were a community. There was an "us." 

Out of the crucible of 9/11 had been forged a new form of behavioral psychology dedicated to "creating a psychology more worthy of the challenge of the human condition." 

 

 

- Steve Hayes