The WDEP Procedure and Its Correspondence with Sterling’s Section 7 Sub-step (d)
The WDEP Procedure and Its Correspondence with Sterling’s Section 7 Sub-step (d)
The WDEP procedure is the clinical operationalization of Choice Theory developed primarily by Robert Wubbolding, Glasser’s most important systematizer. The acronym stands for four components that structure the therapeutic conversation.
W — Wants
The first question is: what do you want? The therapist helps the patient identify what is in his Quality World with as much precision as possible. Not vague aspirations but specific pictures: what specifically do you want from this relationship, this situation, this life? What does the outcome you are pursuing actually look like? Vague wants produce vague and ineffective behavior. The W component makes the Quality World image concrete and nameable.
This maps onto the Stoic framework’s first diagnostic question: what external has been assigned genuine-good status? You cannot examine whether what you want is correctly valued until you have identified specifically what you want.
D — Doing
The second question is: what are you currently doing? Not feeling — doing. This is the most important redirection in the entire procedure. The therapist consistently moves the patient away from the feeling components of Total Behavior — over which he has no direct control — toward the acting and thinking components, over which he does. What are you actually doing, right now, in your life, that is or is not serving your wants?
This maps onto the Stoic framework’s identification of what is in the agent’s purview. The Doing question is the behavioral specification of Foundation One: what is actually yours to govern here?
E — Evaluation
The third component is self-evaluation: is what you are currently doing getting you what you want? This question must come from the patient rather than from the therapist. Glasser is explicit: the therapist does not tell the patient his behavior is not working. He creates the conditions in which the patient sees this for himself. The evaluation is functional, not moral — is this working? Is this effective? Is this getting you what you want?
This maps onto the Stoic framework’s correspondence test applied at the behavioral level: does what you are doing correspond to the appropriate object of aim in your situation? The Evaluation question is where the WDEP procedure comes closest to the Formation Strip — it asks the patient to stand between his current behavior and an honest assessment of its results.
P — Planning
The fourth component is planning: what will you do differently? A specific, achievable, realistic plan for different acting and thinking. The plan must be the patient’s own — not assigned by the therapist — and must address the components of Total Behavior the patient can directly control. The therapist does not accept excuses, does not focus on what cannot be changed, and does not allow the outcome of the plan to become the measure of the patient’s worth.
This maps onto the Stoic framework’s Discipline of Action: having identified the appropriate object of aim and the rational means available, commit to the action with reservation regarding the outcome. The Planning component is the behavioral specification of the reserve clause — the patient plans what he will do, not what result he will achieve.
The Correspondence with Sterling’s Section 7 Sub-step (d)
The WDEP procedure, and specifically its P component, corresponds closely to Nine Excerpts Section 7 sub-step (d). Sterling’s text reads:
“Consciously formulate true action propositions. ‘I should report truthfully to my boss regarding the sales numbers from the last quarter: truth telling is virtuous, and I have a duty to act faithfully at work. If my boss fires me, I should remember that my job is an external, neither good nor evil.’ By paying attention to preferred and dispreferred indifferents, and to the duties connected with my various roles in life, I can recognize what it would actually be correct for me to do in each situation. Bring this consciously to mind, and assent to it.”
Sub-step (d) has three components: consciously formulate the true action proposition — what I should do and why; attend to the duties connected with my various roles; bring this consciously to mind and assent to it. The WDEP procedure’s P component is the behavioral operationalization of exactly this. The patient formulates a specific plan, commits to it explicitly, and the therapist helps him bring it consciously to mind in concrete and achievable terms and secure his assent to it. The parallel is not loose — it is structural. Both sub-step (d) and the P component require a specific action proposition, explicitly formulated, consciously held, assented to.
The correspondence is tightest in sub-step (d)’s model proposition: “I should report truthfully to my boss: truth telling is virtuous and I have a duty to act faithfully at work. If my boss fires me, my job is an external, neither good nor evil.” This is a complete action proposition in two parts — the action to be taken and the reserve clause governing the outcome. The WDEP P component generates the action part; the Stoic framework adds the reserve clause that the WDEP procedure does not explicitly require.
The Integrated Practical Model (Document 32, System Map) registers that its constructive module (D1–D7) operationalizes sub-step (d), grounded in Propositions 32–38. The P component of the WDEP procedure connects directly into that architecture. The P component is not merely analogous to sub-step (d) — it is a clinical instrument for producing what sub-step (d) prescribes, operable by a Glasser-trained counselor without any modification to his existing practice.
What the WDEP Procedure Does Not Do
The procedure is effective and precise within its scope. What it cannot do — and what the Stoic framework adds — is ask the prior question at each stage. Before W: is what you want correctly valued? Before D: is what you are doing generated by a false evaluative assent about what you need? Before E: is the standard of evaluation itself correct — are you measuring your behavior against the satisfaction of genuine goods or of preferred indifferents? Before P: are you planning to pursue what is genuinely appropriate to aim at, held with reservation, or to secure what you have falsely treated as a genuine good?
The WDEP procedure and the inner discourse are consecutive rather than competing. The WDEP procedure brings the patient systematically to the behavioral level where change is immediately accessible. The inner discourse addresses the evaluative level prior to that — the assent that generated the behavioral event — and extends the WDEP procedure’s four questions into the territory of correct value judgment that the procedure itself cannot reach.
This is the rapprochement at its most practically useful: the counselor’s existing P procedure produces the action proposition; the Stoic framework supplies the role identification and the reserve clause that give the proposition its correct philosophical form. Neither party needs to change what he is doing. The combination makes explicit what both are already attempting.
Analysis and text: Dave Kelly, 2026. Theoretical foundations: the Stoic philosophical corpus of Grant C. Sterling, including Nine Excerpts Section 7, the Sterling Logic Engine v4.0, and the Integrated Practical Model. Clinical foundations: William Glasser, Choice Theory (1998); Robert Wubbolding, Reality Therapy for the 21st Century (2000). Prose rendering: Claude.
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