Patty Bach, Ph.D., is an assistant professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. She received her PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Nevada in 2000. Her primary activities include graduate training in clinical psychology and ACT and RFT research. Her major research interests are ACT in the treatment of psychosis; the role of AADRR in psychopathology; and implicit behavior. Other professional activities include ACT training and psychotherapy practice.
Statement
The ACT/RFT community has been a largely informal group and we are now large enough to benefit from an organization that will facilitate dissemination of relevant research and technology while being inclusive of all fellow travelers. ACBS can be a useful forum for the sharing of ideas and information among researchers, practitioners, educators, students, and other interested parties. This is an exciting stage in the development of functional contextual science and practice. Issues that I matter about include facilitating the dissemination of third-wave technologies and basic science while managing the growth of ACBS responsibly; I’d like to see ACBS balance the challenges of providing a unified voice for the advancement of contextual behavioral science in contexts where strength in numbers matters; promoting quality training, research and practice; and maintaining the core values of a focus on empirical science and practice, inclusion, collegiality, and benefit to others that have been the hallmarks of our tradition.