An integrative process model for psychopathology and psychotherapy

Abstract

Effective living involves the ability to respond effectively to the continous flow of new information generated by one's interactions with specific situations. Generalized plans, schemas and constructs need to be continously revised to accomodate the moment to moment shifts and changes that make up the flow of everyday life. The ability to respond in a productive mastery-oriented way to feedback indicating that one has encountered a problem or block is particularly important. Different therapies are different theories of how individuals fail to cope productively with problematic feedback. They also provide models of productive processing of such feedback. Pathology is more a matter of failing to learn from feedback than it is a matter of distortions or dysfunctional behavior per se. The self-self relationship is crucial to effective functioning. Learning how to have a productive relationship with onself when encountering problems is the goal of therapy. Therapeutic change need not always be second order. Productive first order change consists of mining the implicit potential in core schemas or personality traits and evolving them in a functional way.