The term ‘goal’ occupies a genuinely contested space within the depth-psychology corpus, where it functions simultaneously as therapeutic instrument, psychological phenomenon, and potential pathological fixation. The tradition divides, broadly, into two orientations. The first, represented by Hillman’s archetypal critique, treats the literal goal as a kind of psychic trap: goals are ‘thrown up by the psyche as bait,’ useful fictions that become dangerous when reified into ‘overvalued ideas’ feeding paranoid certainty. Here the living sense of purposefulness — what Adler called striving for perfection, Jung individuation — must be kept from collapsing into any fixed terminus. The second, represented by the clinical-behavioral tradition (Harris, Miller, Najavits), insists on goal specificity as a therapeutic necessity, distinguishing emotional goals from behavioral ones, dead persons’ goals from living persons’ goals, and informal goal-setting from SMART protocols. Van der Hart’s structural-dissociation framework adds a third register: goals as neurobiological organizers of perception-motor action cycles, disrupted by trauma and dissociation. Lench’s functional-emotion perspective situates goals as reference points against which pre- and post-goal emotional states are calibrated. Across these positions, the central tension is between goal as liberating direction and goal as imprisoning literalism — a tension that renders this term among the most theoretically charged in the clinical lexicon.
Goals are thrown up by the psyche as bait to catch the living fish, fictions to instigate and guide action… We can keep this way moving only by keeping purposefulness from becoming literalized into definite goals.
Hillman argues that goals are psychically generative fictions whose value lies in sustaining purposefulness, not in literal attainment, and that literalized goals metastasize into delusional overvalued ideas.
, Healing Fiction, 1983thesis
Values are here and now; goals are in the future… people who lead a very goal-focused life often find that it leads to a sense of chronic lack or frustration.
Harris draws the ACT distinction between values (present-tense and always accessible) and goals (future-oriented and inherently productive of lack), arguing that a values-focused life yields fulfillment where a goal-focused life yields frustration.
, ACT Made Simple: An Easy-To-Read Primer on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, 2009thesis
They are coordinated by our goals that emerge from action systems, and include ongoing evaluation of progress toward goals… specific perception-motor action cycles — what we perceive, think, feel, and do — are organized and limited by the constraints of the action system(s) of which they are a part.
Van der Hart situates goals as neurobiologically embedded organizers of perception-motor action cycles, with traumatic dissociation producing parts whose goals are inappropriate to the present situation.
, The Haunted Self Structural Dissociation and the Treatmentthesis
Emotional goals = how I want to feel. Behavioral goals = what I want to do… These goals basically all boil down to the same agenda: Get rid of my unwanted thoughts and feelings; I want to feel good!!!
Harris establishes the foundational ACT clinical distinction between emotional and behavioral goals, identifying emotional goals as expressions of experiential avoidance that must be converted into behavioral targets.
, ACT Made Simple: An Easy-To-Read Primer on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, 2009thesis
The focusing process within MI is about finding that direction and within it more specific achievable goals. This naturally blends into evoking and planning to explore specific ways for moving in that direction.
Miller frames goal-specification in MI as an ongoing collaborative focusing process that is inseparable from the broader motivational work of evoking and planning.
, Motivational Interviewing: Helping People Change, Third Edition, 2013supporting
In ACT, we want to set ‘living person’s’ goals — things that a living human being can do better than a corpse.
Harris introduces the ‘dead person’s goal’ heuristic as a clinical tool for converting avoidance-based or negatively-framed goals into positive behavioral commitments.
, ACT Made Simple: An Easy-To-Read Primer on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, 2009supporting
A ‘dead person’s goal’ means any goal that a corpse can achieve better than you can… A ‘living person’s goal’ is something you can do better than a corp[se].
Harris elaborates the dead/living person’s goal distinction, anchoring goal quality to its demand for active, embodied engagement rather than mere cessation or avoidance.
, ACT Made Simple: An Easy-To-Read Primer on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, 2009supporting
Change Goal — A specific target for change in motivational interviewing; typically a particular behavior change, although it may also be a broader goal toward which there are multiple avenues of approach.
Miller’s MI glossary entry formally defines the change goal as a specific behavioral target while acknowledging broader superordinate goals, thereby contextualizing goal within a layered change architecture.
, Motivational Interviewing: Helping People Change, Third Edition, 2013supporting
The woman was described as feeling either devastated or happy (post-goal emotions), fearful, or hopeful (pre-goal emotions) about her goal of maintaining a long-term relationship with her boyfriend.
Lench’s research operationalizes the goal as a temporal reference point distinguishing pre-goal from post-goal emotional states, with differential effects on memory scope and information processing.
, The Function of Emotions: When and Why Emotions Help Us, 2018supporting
Many clients have goals about what they want to get from others or how they want others to behave… these are all outcome goals — they describe the outcomes the client wants — so we need to convert them into behavioral goals.
Harris addresses a recurring clinical scenario in which goals about changing others must be reframed as behavioral goals about what the client themselves will do.
, ACT Made Simple: An Easy-To-Read Primer on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, 2009supporting
The method of goal attainment scaling can be useful in honing a goal within any of the three scenarios… At the heart of this method is finding a way to specify degrees of change for the goal.
Miller introduces goal attainment scaling as a systematic method for calibrating and evaluating incremental progress toward a specified change goal across multiple problem areas.
, Motivational Interviewing: Helping People Change, Third Edition, 2013supporting
Did you notice how the therapist reframed the dead person’s goal of ‘stop worrying’ to the living person’s goal of ‘unhook from anxious thoughts and refocus attention on the activity at hand’?
Harris demonstrates via clinical transcript how the dead/living person’s goal distinction is applied in practice, converting avoidance-framed cognitive goals into active engagement goals.
, ACT Made Simple: An Easy-To-Read Primer on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, 2009supporting
People are easily overwhelmed when thinking about a larger change goal, but can more readily entertain one small step. Coming up with the right next step is a collaborative process, combining your own expertise with the client’s.
Miller advocates for breaking large change goals into successive small steps during replanning, emphasizing collaborative determination of the next achievable action.
, Motivational Interviewing: Helping People Change, Third Edition, 2013supporting
On a scale of 0–10, how realistic do your goals seem to you?… If your goals seem less than a 7, it’s doubtful you will follow through.
Harris provides a practical assessment heuristic for goal realism, linking perceived likelihood of follow-through to goal scaling and recommending downward calibration when realism falls below threshold.
, ACT Made Simple: An Easy-To-Read Primer on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, 2009supporting
Alchemical Images of the Goal… the intellect of the human animal bears witness to the cosmos, and that the good of society requires both the courage of disciplined imagination and the courage of the imaginative disruption of discipline.
Hillman frames the alchemical image of the goal — the Stone — as a figure demanding both disciplined imagination and its disruption, contextualizing goal within the opus of psychological transformation.
, Alchemical Psychology, 2010aside
Goal Attainment Scaling — A method originally developed by Thomas Kiresuk for evaluating treatment outcomes across a range of problem areas.
Miller’s glossary entry situates goal attainment scaling within the formal MI apparatus, attributing its origins to Kiresuk and its function to cross-domain outcome evaluation.
, Motivational Interviewing: Helping People Change, Third Edition, 2013aside
Each time you are able to cross off a completed step, you will feel a comforting sense of satisfaction, as well as being one step closer to accomplishing your goal.
Wu Wei presents goal pursuit through the frame of incremental step-completion, drawing on the I Ching’s journey metaphor to link satisfaction to progressive movement rather than final arrival.
, The I Ching Handbook: Getting What You Want, 1999aside
The question of ends: Is the person heading in a good direction? And the question of means: Is the person taking a good road to get there?
Pargament organizes religious coping inquiry around the classical ends/means distinction, implicitly situating the goal as the evaluative criterion for both the direction and the path of coping.
, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001aside