Why Context Is Everything: An Introduction to Functional Contextualism

By Todd Schmenk

Functional contextualism is a philosophical framework, not a therapy model. It is the lens through which contextual behavioral science, and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy by extension, understands behavior, language, and change. 

There is a question that sits underneath most clinical work, even when nobody says it out loud. Why does this person keep doing what they are doing when it clearly is not working? The answer most frameworks reach for involves something inside the person. A belief. A schema. A trauma response. A diagnosis. Something residing within them that explains the behavior.

Functional contextualism reaches for something different. It asks: what is this behavior doing, and under what conditions does it make sense?

That shift sounds small.

Its implications are not.

What Functional Contextualism Actually Is

Functional contextualism is a philosophical framework, not a therapy model. It is the lens through which contextual behavioral science, and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy by extension, understands behavior, language, and change. It sits beneath ACT the way a foundation sits beneath a building. You can live in the building without thinking much about the foundation. Understanding the foundation, though, changes how you understand everything above it.

The core commitment of functional contextualism is this: behavior only makes sense in context. Not in isolation. Not as a symptom of an internal state. Not as a character flaw. Behavior is a transaction between an organism and its environment, shaped by history, maintained by consequences, and always serving some function even when that function is hard to see.

This is not a minor reframe. It is a fundamentally different way of understanding what human beings are doing when they struggle.

Form Versus Function

Most clinical frameworks are organized around form. What does the behavior look like? Is it a panic attack or a depressive episode? Is it avoidance or aggression? The form of behavior drives the diagnosis, and the diagnosis drives the treatment.

Functional contextualism organizes around function instead. What is the behavior doing? What does it produce, reduce, or avoid? Two behaviors that look identical on the surface can serve entirely different functions. Two behaviors that look nothing alike can serve exactly the same function. Treating them the same because they share a form, or differently because they do not, misses the point entirely.

A client who isolates may be avoiding shame. Another who isolates may be protecting a fragile sense of self. Another may be following a rule absorbed in childhood that connection leads to loss. The behavior looks the same. The function is different. The clinical response that works for one may be entirely wrong for another.

This is why function matters more than form. Always.

Context Includes History

One of the things that makes functional contextualism genuinely useful rather than merely philosophical is its insistence that context includes learning history. The behaviors a person brings into your office did not arrive from nowhere. They were shaped. Somewhere, in some context, this pattern of responding was reinforced, punished, or simply never given an alternative. The behavior persisted because it worked, at least well enough, at least some of the time, in at least some context.

This does not mean the past causes the present in some mechanical chain of events. It means the past is part of the context that makes current behavior understandable. A person who learned early that expressing needs led to rejection is not broken. They are behaving in a way that was shaped by a very specific set of conditions. The behavior made sense then. It may no longer work now. The clinical question is not what is wrong with this person, but what context would need to change for a different repertoire to develop.

Workability as the Standard

Functional contextualism does not evaluate behavior by whether it is rational, healthy, or consistent with a diagnostic category. It evaluates behavior by whether it is working. Working toward what? Toward a life the person actually wants to live. Toward valued directions they have identified as mattering.

This is the concept of workability, and it is one of the most practically useful ideas in all of contextual behavioral science. When a client defends a behavior, the question is not whether they are right or wrong. The question is whether it is working. Not working in some abstract sense. Working in the specific context of their life, their values, their relationships, and the person they are trying to become.

Workability keeps the conversation functional rather than evaluative. It sidesteps the trap of arguing about whether a behavior is good or bad and returns attention to whether it is moving the person toward or away from what matters.

Why This Changes Everything

When you stop asking what is wrong with this person and start asking what this behavior is doing and under what conditions it makes sense, clinical work changes in several important ways.

Judgment decreases, because behavior that seemed irrational becomes understandable in context. Precision increases, because you are no longer treating a category of people but a specific person with a specific history and specific behavioral patterns. Flexibility increases, because if behavior is shaped by context, changing context becomes the clinical lever rather than fixing something inside the person.

This is the foundation. Everything else on this site, every article on ACT processes, clinical skills, supervision, and the science of behavior change, is built on this base. If you want to understand the work, start here.

Context is not background.

Context is everything.