Proactive

Question

Hi.Please tell me what 'oproactive' means in:"other aspects of successful prevention included social-cognitive skills training (when combined with other interventions), academic skills training, proactive classroom management and teacher training, and group therapy."What about:"MST adopts a proactive and flexible focus in addressing risks at the individual, family, peer, school, and neighborhood level."?(both are taken from http://focus.psychiatryonline.org/article.aspx?Volume=2&page=558&journalID=21  )Dictionary lists two meanings for proactive which appear to be completely distinctThanks in advance!

KrisBlueNZ · Accepted Answer

Proactive is a popular word nowadays, and a common feature of politically correct language. It implies TAKING THE INITIATIVE, rather than being REACTIVE (waiting for things to happen, then reacting), or even worse, passive (not even reacting).
If someone is proactive, they ACTIVELY try to find ACTIONS that they can take in order to achieve the desired result.
Many people dislike the word, arguing that ACTIVE means the same thing, but this doesn't seem to have made any difference.

Anonymous · Answer

But this is pychology talk, and dictionary gives another sense for psychology talk.I wonder when will the second sense apply.

KrisBlueNZ · Answer

You need to look at the context. Obviously, if you're reading a psychology book about mental processes, PROACTIVE uses the psychology definition. In other contexts, it has the general definition.

Anonymous · Answer

Both are psychology talk.But I don't know  which one is about mental processes(if any);

Anonymous · Answer

Both are psychology talk.But I don't know which one is about mental processes(if any);
focus IS a mental process, but I can say class mgmt. also needs being mentally such and such

KrisBlueNZ · Answer

The two examples in your first post are:
"Other aspects of successful prevention included social-cognitive skills training (when combined with other interventions), academic skills training, PROACTIVE classroom management and teacher training, and group therapy."
"MST adopts a PROACTIVE and flexible focus in addressing risks at the individual, family, peer, school, and neighborhood level."
It's pretty clear from the context that in both examples, PROACTIVE is meant in the general sense, not the specific psychological sense. The psychology definition of PROACTIVE from dictionary.com is "of or denoting a mental process that affects a subsequent process". This relates to cognitive processing within the brain. If you substitute that definition into those examples, they don't make any sense. The general definition of PROACTIVE does make sense.

Anonymous · Answer

Why?
'focus' is a mental process, isn't it?

KrisBlueNZ · Answer

Loosely, perhaps. But read the sentence.
"MST adopts a proactive and flexible focus in addressing risks at the individual, family, peer, school, and neighborhood level."
It talks about ADOPTING a type of FOCUS in "addressing risks". This is a conscious, policy-based choice of attitude towards these "risks". This does not relate to mental processes that affect subsequent processes within the brain. The other clue that PROACTIVE is meant in the post-modern, politically correct sense is the overload of similarly indistinct feel-good words and phrases in that sentence. In fact, all the verbs, nouns and adjectives in that sentence (all the underlined words) reek of indirectness and political correctness, while the sentence as a whole has a very predictable, post-modern feel-good style.

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