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The Emotional Stroop Task and Psychopathology

February 19, 2019August 5, 2017 by admin

Anxiety and depressive disorders remain the most common forms of psychopathology and represent a large challenge for psychological analysis and treatment. Although the various forms of emotional disorder differ in many ways, recent cognitive accounts have pointed out how each of them share a common feature: sensitivity to and preoccupation with stimuli in their environment that represent their concern. Central to these cognitive theories of psychopathology is the notion that such preoccupation arises from biases in attention. For example, hypervigilance to cues signaling impending danger from the environment is an important feature of recent models of anxiety (Beck, Emery, & Greenberg, 1985), and similar hypersensitivity to bodily sensations has been implicated in panic disorder (Clark, 1988; McNally, 1990). In posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), attention is drawn to stimuli that remind of past trauma and exacerbate the fear of future similar events (Yule, 1991 ). In depression, the preoccupation is with past losses, the mind being dominated by ruminations such as "I have lost my friends" and "

Inferring Motives in Psychology and Psychoanalysis

December 14, 2018September 9, 2017 by admin

Abstract

Grünbaum (1984) argues that psychoanalysis cannot justify its inferences regarding motives using its own methodology, as only the employment of Mill’s canons can justify causal inferences (which inferences to motives are). I consider an argument offered by Hopkins (1988) regarding the nature and status of our everyday inferences from other people’s behavior to their motives that seeks to rebut Grünbaum’s charge by defending a form of inference to the best explanation that makes use of connections in intentional content between behavior and motives. I argue that Hopkins succeeds in defeating Grünbaum’s objection as it is presented, but that work in social psychology presents a further challenge. I discuss the extent to which the challenge can be met, and conclude that certain types of inference in psychoanalysis are justifiable, but others, including those which are the target of Grünbaum’s objection, cannot be justified by the methods defended by Hopkins...