Rodger Bufford is a licensed Psychologist in private practice through Western Psychological and Counseling Services in Tigard, Oregon. He specializes in Clinical Psychology; Behavioral Psychology, and Religious Issues in Psychotherapy. Dr. Bufford is a graduate of The King's College and received his doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana. He is currently a professor of psychology and Director of Research and Integration in the Graduate School of Clinical Psychology at George Fox University.

Dr. Bufford has written The Human Reflex: Behavioral Psychology in Biblical Perspective (1981), Counseling and the Demonic (1988), several articles in the Baker Encyclopedia of Psychology (1985, 1997), numerous articles in professional journals, and several articles for Christian publications. He is a contributing editor to the Journal of Psychology and Theology, was formerly a contributing editor and guest editor for the Journal of Psychology and Christianity, and has served as an ad hoc editorial reviewer for a number of journals. Dr. Bufford has taught at The American University, Huntington College, Psychological Studies Institute/Georgia State University (Atlanta, GA), Western Baptist Seminary and George Fox University.

Pocock proposed that "an adequate epistemology should include both the notion that what we know is always a constructed or storied reality and the notion that external reality is always present as context, and in some circumstances can act as a constraint to our stories" (p. 5; italics orig.). His view is quite similar to what I have proposed in two important respects. First, it recognizes that human knowing is limited and contains an inherent subjective bias (lenses, assumptions). Second, it postulates an external reality which may operate as a constraint on human knowing in such a way that when knowing is too distorted, corrective influences may be exerted.

One difference in our perspectives is that I am more optimistic about knowing than Pocock, and many other constructivists, seem to be. To paraphrase the language of object relations theorists, I believe that we can be "good enough " knowers. We have the capacity to know well enough that we can organize our lives around that knowing. We can send astronauts to the moon and back on the basis of such imperfect knowledge, even though Apollo 13 episodes are likely to continue as well, because we "see through a glass darkly."

Pocock is also overly pessimistic about grand theories, I believe. Pocock concluded that any theory involves both what can be seen and the position from which it is seen. Thus "any grand metatheory which tries to create a united position is doomed" (p. 6). There is little chance that we can all agree on precisely how things are in every respect, to be sure. But it seems reasonable that one or more theories can be constructed which take into account much of what we know, or at least much of what is known in a given discipline. Thus it may be possible to construct a general theory of psychology such as that attempted by Gordon Dember (1996). Further, I believe it is possible for there to be widespread agreement that some theories are better, and others worse. Kuhn's notion of paradigm shifts may parallel this. The fact that we have--or at least had--metanarratives is consistent with this view. The predominant metanarrative of modernism is being replaced. But postmodernism itself is a metanarrative, I believe. It simply has different features, including the rejection of modernism and the embrace of multi-culturalism. One of my colleagues proposed that postmodernism is a "cultural shift." I concur, and submit that culture is a metanarrative, typically existing in tension with one or more micronarratives which accompany it.

Another distinction from the view proposed here is that Pocock seems to believe that all knowing has these limitations. Certainly this seems true of all human knowing. Christians, however, generally hold the view that God's knowing is perfect.

In applications to clinical practice, Pocock proposed (in my words) a cautious testing of possible revised constructions of reality--new stories--which take into account previously discounted or shadowy elements of experience so that the new construction is more faithful to "the context of what is really going on --the nameless, unconstructed external reality" (p. 7; italics orig). This process may variously be called bringing into consciousness, deconstruction of the dominant story, or cognitive restructuring--perhaps even behavior modification.

What is distinctive about Pocock's postmodernist constructivist approach, and that only by way of emphasis, is that the therapist enters the process with an attitude of humility about her/his own knowing, theories, and approaches to intervention. Interestingly, this view parallels the Christian virtue of humility.