Episode Guide
Here's an episode-by-episode guide, so you can read more about each episode in depth and search by keyword.
Please note: transcripts and summaries are AI generated.
Episode 004 - Introduction to SASB, part 2 - Touring the SASB model
Building on the previous episode, Ken and Eliza dive deeper into how SASB is applied in therapy. They explore the “copy process,” complementarity, and the use of alternative responses to help shift rigid, repetitive patterns toward flexibility and health. Through examples and reflection, they show how SASB helps reveal the logic of clients’ loyalties and self-treatment, bringing IRT’s core theme—learning to love differently—into concrete, behavioral focus.
🎙️ Episode Overview:
In this follow-up episode, Ken and Eliza expand on SASB’s clinical uses—how the model helps therapists decode interpersonal dynamics, understand self-treatment, and identify where clients are “stuck.” They explore how SASB integrates with IRT’s focus on love, loyalty, and change.
🧩 Major Themes and Discussion Points:
From Description to Application
SASB is more than a taxonomy—it’s a practical guide for recognizing repeating relational patterns. By plotting interactions on the model, therapists can see how behaviors mirror (“copy”) early relationship templates.The Copy Process
Central to both IRT and SASB, the “copy process” describes how people recreate patterns from early attachments in current relationships and in self-treatment.
Identification: Treating others as one was treated.
Introjection: Treating oneself as one was treated.
Recapitulation: Being in the same position as in past relationships
These processes describe and help explain why people repeat painful dynamics even when they wish to change.
Mapping the Inner World
The “introject” surface of SASB represents how individuals treat themselves—whether they are self-loving and self-accepting or self-attacking and self-punitive. Recognizing these patterns helps link external relationships to internal dialogue.Complementarity and Antithesis
Complementarity describes how interpersonal patterns pull for matching behaviors (e.g., control elicits submission). Therapists use “antithesis” or “antidote” responses—unexpected, healthy reactions -- technically the opposite of the complementary position —to disrupt these cycles and model new ways of relating.Rigidity, Context, and Health
The goal is in part to engage in more affiliative and reciprocal ways, and also to increase flexibility and context sensitivity. SASB helps identify when patterns are hostile, extreme, rigid, repetitive, or context-inappropriate—markers of maladaptation.Integration with IRT Formulation
Ken and Eliza connect SASB back to IRT’s conceptual frame: red (regressively loyal, maladaptive) and green (collaborative, reality-based, growth-oriented) modes. SASB provides the behavioral precision to describe those modes in action—showing where “red” and “green” patterns each play out in daily life.
💡 Key Takeaways:
SASB operationalizes the interpersonal logic of IRT.
The copy process is a language to capture how early attachment experiences repeat in adulthood.
Change involves recognizing old patterns and practicing new, antithetical responses.
Health involves a baseline of friendliness, coupled with behavioral flexibility that attends to context.
📚 Next Episode:
Ken and Eliza preview a deeper dive into SASB’s applications in therapy—how to identify patterns, interpret the “copy process,” and understand the logic behind rigid interpersonal cycles.
⏰ Timestamps/Notes:
(2:35) Overview of the positions of SASB, starting with cluster 2 (“I’m ok and you’re ok”)
(5:09) Cluster 3 - love
(8:39) Cluster 4 - protect/teach
(13:08) Cluster 5 - control
(19:17) Cluster 6 - blame
(30:29) Cluster 7 - attack
(38:59) Cluster 8 - ignore
(47:14) Cluster 1 - emancipate
📓 References:
Benjamin, L. S. (2018). Interpersonal Reconstructive Therapy for Anger, Anxiety and Depression: It’s about broken hearts, not broken brains. American Psychological Association (APA).
Critchfield, K. L., & Benjamin, L. S. (2024). Structural analysis of social behavior: A primer for clinical use. American Psychological Association (APA).
Episode 003 - Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Social Behavior (SASB), part 1
In this episode, Dr. Ken Critchfield and Dr. Eliza Stucker-Rozovsky introduce the Structural Analysis of Social Behavior (SASB), the core model that maps how people relate to others and to themselves. They explain SASB’s three dimensions—Focus, Affiliation, and Interdependence—and show how it provides a clear framework for understanding complex interpersonal patterns. This foundational discussion sets the stage for how SASB connects to Interpersonal Reconstructive Therapy (IRT) and the “red” and “green” ways of loving differently.
🎙️ Episode Overview:
This episode introduces Structural Analysis of Social Behavior (SASB)—the core descriptive system underlying Interpersonal Reconstructive Therapy (IRT). Dr. Ken Critchfield and Dr. Eliza Stucker-Rozovsky explain how SASB maps human behavior and inner experience across three dimensions, showing how interpersonal patterns shape both our relationships and our self-treatment.
🧩 Major Themes and Discussion Points:
What SASB Is
SASB is a systematic model for describing interpersonal behavior—how people treat others and themselves. It is a three-dimensional coordinate system that helps clinicians and researchers capture the complexity of human interaction without reducing it to vague intuition.Three Dimensions of SASB
Focus: Determines who the behavior is about—focus on other, self, or self-in-relation-to-self (the “introject”).
Affiliation: Ranges from love to hate, describing the warmth or hostility of the action.
Interdependence: Ranges from interdependence (enmeshment, co-coordination: control, submission) to independence (differentiation: freedom, separation, granting or taking autonomy).
Together, these axes create a “map” of interpersonal behavior—allowing therapists to locate any interaction in a consistent conceptual space.
Why It Matters
SASB helps therapists go beyond intuition by identifying patterns objectively. It reduces bias by focusing on observable behaviors rather than personal impressions or cultural connotations of words like “control,” “trust,” or “care.”Language and Cultural Nuance
Ken and Eliza discuss how language can mislead us—terms like “self-care” or “control” can mean different things to different people. SASB clarifies these by tying them to specific, observable behaviors.Rigidity vs. Flexibility
Healthy functioning involves behavioral flexibility—being able to move fluidly within the SASB model based on context, especially when the baseline includes friendliness. In addition to hostility or extremes of interdependence, pathology often reflects rigidity: patterns that repeat regardless of situation, including when they are problematic.Complementarity and Patterns
People naturally elicit complementary behaviors in others (e.g., control invites submission, and vice versa). Recognizing these dynamics helps therapists understand stuck relational loops and guide clients toward more adaptive positions.
💡 Key Takeaways:
SASB provides a structured, three-dimensional way to describe interpersonal and intrapsychic behavior.
Focus, Affiliation, and Interdependence map the range of human relating in terms of “who, how warm, and how connected”.
Flexibility, not friendliness alone, marks healthy adaptation.
Understanding SASB deepens case formulation in IRT by linking present behavior to early learning and attachment patterns.
📚 Next Episode:
Ken and Eliza preview a deeper dive into SASB’s applications in therapy—how to identify patterns, interpret the “copy process,” and understand the logic behind rigid interpersonal cycles.
⏰ Timestamps/Notes:
3 axes of SASB: Focus, Affiliation, and Interdependence
(08:52) - Axes of SASB
Axis 1 - Focus: Is this about you, or is this about me?
(10:00) - Focus on other
(10:35) - Focus on self relative to other
(11:35) - Focus on self
Axis 2 - Affiliation: Are we in friendly space, or are we in hostile space? Axis 3 - Interdependence: Do we go our separate ways or do we share?
(12:56) - Describing SASB visually, with axes of affiliation (13:00) and interdependence (19:17)
(26:52) - Goals of IRT using SASB - flexibility
(30:40) - The “dances” within SASB
-Principles of similarity, opposites, and complementarity
(38:15) - Baseline of healthy relatedness
📓 References:
Critchfield, K. L., & Benjamin, L. S. (2024). Structural analysis of social behavior: A primer for clinical use. American Psychological Association (APA).