Social Cognition and Clinical Psychology

Over the past 15 years, social and personality psychologists have made progress toward understanding cognitions concerning the self and others. At the same time, clinical psychologists have demonstrated the importance of cognitive processes in the etiology, maintenance, and treatment of a wide variety of psychological problems. In this book, Lyn Abramson and her colleagues synthesize these exciting developments in social/personality and clinical psychology. Such a synthesis, they show, facilitates application of basic work to the clinical domain and permits the study of clinical phenomena to enrich clinical psychology.
The first chapter delineates the relevance of biases in causal attribution to a variety of clinical phenomena, showing how errors in information processing contribute to the cause and/or maintenance of such psychological disorders as paranoia, anxiety, and depression. Chapters two through six examine psychological health and maladjustment for the social/cognitive perspective, while concluding chapters critique psychotherapy in this same light. Several important conclusions are drawn, and intriguing hypotheses stated, among them:
Links between attributional styles and behavior may have implications for depressed and learned helplessness, deviant' personalities, neurotic ego-defense, interpersonal conflict, and anxiety.
Attributional assumptions subserving different psychotherapies may be the reason each modality is differentially effective in treating psychological disorders.
Some very basic assumptions held by cognitive therapists may not be true, for example, the belief that realistic conceptions are functional for people and contribute to their well-being, or that normals are more accurate in their judgements than neurotics.
Some helpless' behaviors may actually represent strategies intended to maintain or enhance self-esteem.
Two distinct types of self-blame--characterological versus behavioral-- explain the apparent paradox that, while self-blame is generally seen as damaging, disease and accident victims often benefit from this negative attribution.
Causal attribution patterns and level of mindfulness affect the development of dysfunctional interaction and conflict in intimate relationships.
Research strategies to test the popular hopelessness theory of depression have been sorely inadequate.
An invaluable resource for clinical and experimental psychologists alike, SOCIAL COGNITION AND CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY is an expansive yet highly critical work that raises new questions about the cognitive mechanisms of psychological distress and the heuristics that inform its treatment.