Vittorio Filippo Guidano (4 August 1944, Rome, Italy – 31 August 1999, Buenos Aires, Argentina) was an Italian neuropsychiatrist, creator of the cognitive procedural systemic model and contributor to constructivist post-rationalist cognitive therapy. His cognitive post-rationalist model was influenced by attachment theory, evolutionary epistemology, complex systems theory, and the prevalence of abstract mental processes proposed by Friedrich Hayek. Guidano conceived the personal system as a self-organized entity, in constant development. Among his published writings are the books Complexity of the Self (1987) and The Self in Progress (1991). He was the first president of the Italian Society of Behavioural and Cognitive Therapy (SITCC) and he co-founded the Institute of Post-Rationalist Psychology and Psychotherapy (IPRA). Guidano's work has been called "the most important influence" on Jeffrey Young's schema therapy. He also influenced the elaboration of other constructivist psychotherapies such as coherence therapy.
Post-rationalist cognitive therapy Post-rationalist cognitive therapy is a type of constructivist cognitive therapy that was created by Guidano in the 1980s and 1990s. In the early 1980s, Guidano published the book Cognitive Processes and Emotional Disorders (1983) with his colleague Giovanni Liotti. In this book the authors still adhered to and used the cognitive restructuring techniques created by Albert Ellis and Aaron Beck, although they added to them their own theoretical model about evolutionary development from childhood, influenced by the Jean Piaget's genetic epistemology and John Bowlby's attachment theory. This model, which the authors call the "evolutionary-structural" approach to cognitive therapy, stated that human beings form certain knowledge schemes from childhood that are affective in nature and more central than propositional knowledge schemes in linguistic format. Central affective knowledge schemes are formed from attachment ties with parents or caregivers, and establish certain biased ways of perceiving the world, perceiving oneself, and relating to others. Guidano later incorporated the influence of Donald T. Campbell and Karl Popper's evolutionary epistemology (the study of knowledge from a biological perspective), complex systems theory, Humberto Maturana's radical constructivism. and Jerome Bruner's narrative psychology.
Autopoiesis
Guidano borrows the notion of autopoiesis, originally developed by Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela. Autopoiesis is the self-organizing nature of living beings, which means they have autonomy. Maturana and Varela defined autopoiesis as the characteristic of a system that maintains and reproduces itself through its own processes. A system is autopoietic if it is capable of producing and maintaining the components that constitute it. These systems have distinct boundaries that separate them from their environment, but they are open to interactions with the environment, such as the exchange of energy or matter. These interactions are regulated by the system itself. The key idea is that the system's internal processes are organized in a way that they produce the system's own components in a self-sustaining cycle. This makes the system autonomous, as it doesn't rely on external forces for its reproduction. In their view, living organisms are examples of autopoietic systems because they continually produce and regenerate the components necessary for their existence, such as proteins, cells, and organs. Vittorio Guidano extended the concept of autopoiesis to the realm of psychology and cognitive science. He applied the theory to human psychological development, suggesting that the mind itself is an autopoietic system. According to Guidano, our subjective experiences and the meaning we derive from them are generated by the mind through an ongoing self-organization of cognitive processes. Guidano also argued that self-identity is formed through this self-referential process. The way we perceive ourselves is constructed by an internal, dynamic system that adapts and responds to both internal and external stimuli.
Two levels of human experience
Guidano and Liotti distinguish two levels of human knowledge: the tacit level of sensorimotor, imaginative, and emotional knowledge, and the explicit level of linguistic and propositional knowledge. Explicit level: This level represents the conscious, verbalizable aspects of human experience. It includes thoughts, beliefs, memories, and emotions that individuals are aware of and able to express verbally. The explicit level is characterized by language and cognitive processes such as problem-solving and logical reasoning. It encompasses the narratives and stories that individuals construct to make sense of their experiences and identities. Tacit level: In contrast, the tacit level represents the unconscious, non-verbal aspects of human experience. It includes underlying assumptions, implicit memories, emotional reactions, and bodily sensations that may not be consciously recognized or articulated by individuals. The tacit level is characterized by automatic, non-conscious processes that influence individuals' perceptions, behaviors, and emotional responses. It encompasses tacit schemas, scripts, and patterns of relating that are formed through early experiences, attachment and social interactions. The tacit level is hierarchically supra-ordered, that is, it orders and determines the possibilities that the more superficial explicit schemes take. Tacit knowledge structures are "core ordering processes", unconscious rules that organize current experience and anticipate subsequent experience. Furthermore, tacit processes do not appear in consciousness, that is, they determine explicit cognition without being included in it. Guidano emphasized the dynamic interaction between these two levels of experience. He argued that while individuals may be consciously aware of their explicit thoughts and emotions, their tacit experiences and emotional responses often operate beneath conscious awareness, shaping their perceptions and behaviors in subtle ways. Guidano's therapeutic approach aimed to help clients explore and integrate both explicit and tacit aspects of their experience, facilitating greater self-awareness, emotional regulation, and personal growth.
Constructivist epistemology
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