Chapter 5 Self and Mindfulness 1,2 Robert J. Kohlenberg, Mavis Tsai, Jonathan W. Kanter, and Chauncey R. Parker I think therefore I am. Rene Descartes Descartes’ statement has given birth to countless philosophical theses, books and scholarly papers. In the present context our interest is in the psychological level of analysis, more specifically, functional analysis. From this functional perspective several speculations can be made about Descartes based on his statement. First, it seems he knew who he was and that his experience of ‘I’ the thinker, was stable. Thus we would not expect Descartes to request therapy to discover ‘who he is’ or complain that he feels like a chameleon who changes his persona depending on the circumstances in which he finds himself. Des- cartes’ statement also implies that he was self-observant or aware of the private experience of thinking as an activity or process independent of the content of his thoughts. It suggests that he could step back and objectively observe the raw data of his experience. The act of being non-judgmentally aware of the process of thinking enters into the definition of mindfulness, an increasingly popular strategy in treatments for psychological problems (e.g., Linehan, 1993; Hayes, Follette, & Linehan, 2004), and one that plays an important role in many FAP cases. The goals of this chapter are to provide a behavioral account of self and mindfulness, explain how a lack of sense of self may interfere with mindfulness, and provide suggestions to shape treatment interventions that target the self and mindfulness in FAP. R.J. Kohlenberg (*) Department of Psychology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195-1525, USA e-mail: fap@u.washington.edu 1 The authors are indebted to Madelon Y. Bolling, Ph.D. for her contributions—they greatly improved this chapter while we take full responsibility for its shortcomings. 2 Portions of this chapter are based on Parker, Bolling and Kohlenberg (1998). M. Tsai et al., A Guide to Functional Analytic Psychotherapy, DOI 10.1007/978-0-387-09787-9_5, Ó Springer ScienceþBusiness Media, LLC 2009 103