Imagination,Cognition and Personality

This article evaluates relevant links between theory and research on attachment relationships; cognitive structures including schemas and internal working models; aspects of the client-therapist relationship; and psychotherapeutic intervention models, arguing that attachment theory can be employed to more fully understand psychotherapeutic processes and change. First we review relevant background literature on attachment theory, delineating distinctions between attachment and other relevant theoretical formulations. Then we discuss aspects of the client-therapist relationship which may be affected by attachment, providing a brief overview of extant research on attachment and psychotherapy. Finally, we discuss the ways in which attachment theory has been employed in the design of psychotherapy models, specifically focusing on two treatment models which illustrate diversity in attachment-based treatment. Throughout we argue that the recent addition of reflective function, which is the capacity to understand the ways in which mental states underlie behavior in self and others, both enhances attachment theory and elucidates the connections between psychotherapeutic process and the development of self-regulatory insight during childhood through sensitive parental caregiving.

Attribution theory has a rich history of empirical and applied work over more than 50 years. This article draws on literature from social, cognitive, developmental, and clinical psychology to examine attribution theory and its applications to psychotherapy. Work in attribution retraining within cognitive-behavioral therapy, school-based interventions, and couples and family therapy is reviewed. Additionally, the implicit use of attribution retraining within other types of therapy is discussed. Finally, future directions for attribution retraining research and practice within various psychotherapeutic modalities are presented.

The current research was designed to demonstrate that people concoct stories to explain lingering emotions, when the true source of emotion has passed without conscious integration. While viewing a DVD recording of nine abstract paintings in succession, subjects observed a) subliminal pictures of disgusting stimuli in the inter-painting intervals; b) supraliminal pictures of disgusting stimuli in the inter-painting intervals; or c) no pictures in the intervals. Over half of the subliminally stimulated subjects who experienced disgust failed to identify any of the disgusting stimuli and concocted stories about the source of their disgust. Future-oriented stories were more prevalent in subjects who were “desirous of explanations” and who had a futuristic attribution style, whereas past-oriented stories were more prevalent in subjects whose attribution style was not futuristic. The current results, like other findings reviewed in the introduction to this study, are not consistent with the theoretical underpinnings of cognitive therapy. Alternative research-based reasons for the effectiveness of cognitive therapy are suggested, and clinical cases integrating these suggestions are discussed.

The theory of successful intelligence developed and tested by Robert Sternberg attempts to predict success in life across analytical, creative, and practical dimensions. This article presents the theory of successful intelligence as a useful framework for incorporating various psychotherapy techniques. Application of the theory has effectively trained teachers to enhance important skills in normally functioning children and adolescents, as well as adults in real world settings. Presumably it can be taught to therapists to be applied in a psychotherapy setting. In support of this argument, the article is divided into four sections. First, a definition of the theory of successful intelligence is presented. Second, empirical efforts for construct validation of the theory—both internal and external—are described. Third, the research that has been conducted on each aspect of the theory (analytical, creative, and practical) is discussed along with related constructs from the field of psychotherapy. Fourth, an example of the use of the theory in clinical practice is described, drawn from older case material which actually anticipated the uses of analytical, creative, and practical skill development with a depressed client.