ABSTRACT
Acceptance & Commitment Therapy is an approach with an aim of meeting the psychological needs of human beings, particularly those who are struggling to live consistently with their values as a consequence of their experience of psychological distress. Much of mainstream psychology, cognitive behavioural therapy included, adopts the central assumption of the physical health field; namely that it is normal to be healthy. This assumption often works well in physical health. Diagnostic classification systems are not without utility, although given that the strategy of looking for abnormality and disease as the causes of human suffering has borne relatively little fruit, it is reasonable to assert that a different model might be worth exploring. Whilst the healthy normality model makes sense in most areas of physical health, there are a number of problems that have arisen in the corresponding attempt to treat presentations of psychological distress as if they are equivalent to diseases.
