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Development and Psychopathology, Volume 20 Issue 01


This multidisciplinary journal is devoted to the publication of original, empirical, theoretical and review papers which address the interrelationship of normal and pathological development in adults and children. It is intended to serve and integrate the field of developmental psychopathology which strives to understand patterns of adaptation and maladaptation throughout the lifespan. This journal is of interest to psychologists, psychiatrists, social scientists, neuroscientists, paediatricians, and researchers.

Psychological Medicine, Volume 38 Issue 10


Now in its fourth decade of publication, Psychological Medicine is a leading international journal in the fields of psychiatry, related aspects of psychology and basic sciences. There are twelve issues a year, each featuring original articles reporting key research being undertaken worldwide, together with shorter editorials by distinguished scholars and an important book review section. The journal's success is clearly demonstrated by a consistently high impact factor.

The purpose of this article is to highlight commonalities and facilitate links between the domains of psychotherapy and positive psychology. The authors describe the Broaden-and-Build theory and suggest that it has heuristic value for understanding psychotherapeutic processes. The authors propose that broadening represents a common factor in intrapersonal therapy that contributes to many helpful change events across different psychotherapies. The upward spiral in which positive emotions and broadening feed one another enlarges current psychotherapeutic conceptualizations by suggesting that positive emotions are not just indicators but also generators of change. The positive emotion-broadening spiral offers new avenues for research and ways to understand existing research, an alternative avenue to therapeutic change, and a method to tailor therapeutic work to individual clients. It also bridges researcher, clinician, and client points of view about key change events. Links between different viewpoints enhance therapeutic work. Links across lines of theorizing and research foster interdisciplinary ties that fertilize both fields. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved)

This article introduces the Special Section, which explores the potential importance of positive emotions in our theory, research, and practice. The authors propose that the peripheral role that psychotherapy theory, research, and practice has allotted to the variable "positive emotion" can be understood in terms of the foundational axioms of our discipline. The authors argue that psychotherapy has implicitly adopted an attitude of caution and suspicion toward the potential therapeutic value of experiencing positive emotions, an all embracing attitude toward the therapeutic value of experiencing negative emotions, and an identity focused on healing psychological wounds at the expense of promoting psychological well-being. The authors trace the adoption of these axioms to Judeo-Christian ideas of human nature and to the identity formation process of psychotherapy, and the authors speculate on the sociopolitical forces that have promoted a shift in our theorizing in the last few decades. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved)

Positive affects in the context of positive dyadic interactions are fundamental to mental health and the development of the self; the authors consider them from within accelerated experiential dynamic psychotherapy (AEDP), an attachment and emotion model of psychotherapy. The authors explore 3 phenomenological, affective, and behavioral sets of positive affects--mastery affects, healing affects, and core state--and understand their adaptive value by referencing the realms of attachment, intersubjectivity, and affective neuroscience. In the context of a positive coordinated therapeutic relationship, the authors detail an experiential process in which the dyadic regulation of painful emotion naturally culminates in the emergence of positive affects and positive emotional states, which, in turn, are vehicles for accessing the emotional resources associated with resilient functioning and emotional flourishing. Detailed transcripts from 2 videotaped sessions are microanalyzed to delineate the moment-to-moment phenomenology and dynamics of the AEDP therapeutic process and to document the spontaneous emergence of these positive affective phenomena in a context designed to make the most of their therapeutic effectiveness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved)

Motivational interviewing (MI) techniques have been described in cognitive and behavioral terms, as means to positively resolve tension created by unresolved ambivalence about change. This view of motivation is consistent with a negative reinforcement model, in which behaviors are performed to escape from negative states. In contrast, the concept of positive reinforcement involves seeking positive states through behaviors that lead toward more satisfying conditions. From this perspective, motivation involves a desire to experience positive emotions. This paper focuses on the potential role that emotions may play in MI, particularly positive emotions. The authors posit that MI elicits positive emotions of interest, hope, contentment and inspiration by inviting clients to envision a better future, to remember past successes, and to gain confidence in their abilities to improve their lives. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved)

Psychodynamic therapists are often suspicious of positive emotions and consider them to be nothing more than a form of denial or of another defense aiming to diminish painful or difficult affects. Positive emotions seem to exist only through the absence of negative emotions or as something that may happen outside of therapy. On the other hand, clinicians also agree that psychoanalytic work could not be successful without such positive emotions as interest, pleasure, surprise and creativity. Contemporary psychoanalytic thinking and new research findings in the area of relationship regulation are likely to give positive emotions an increasingly prominent place in dynamically oriented therapies. With today's emphasis on the therapeutic relationship and intersubjectivity, the time appears right to integrate positive emotions more formally into psychodynamic clinical theories. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved)

Positive emotions are discussed within the context of experiential, client-centered, and related psychotherapies. An attempt is made to discuss the idea that the effects of such psychotherapies could be enhanced if positive emotions were viewed as a cause of positive psychotherapy outcomes rather than a consequence of focusing on painful and disturbing emotions. It is concluded that therapists within the humanistic tradition have highly positive views of persons and their tendency to be forward moving. Prizing patients while they express "negative" emotions seems much more likely to lead to positive emotions than the reverse. Thus, the positive psychology movement with its emphasis on giving preference to positive emotions seems misguided in a clinical context. Despite these reservations about the value of focusing on positive emotions in psychotherapy, the authors call for research to test the consequences of such a focus in experiential psychotherapy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved)

Historically, the role of positive emotions has been somewhat obscured in family therapy by focus on relational processes, behavioral sequences, and interactional patterns. Despite increasing interest in the role of positive emotions in the field of psychology, little attention has been given to these issues in family therapy. As a result, the specific role of positive emotions is neither theoretically nor clinically well understood. The authors analyze the role of positive emotions in Functional Family Therapy, a model in which positive emotions serve as a key element in the proximal and distal outcomes of the phase-based systematic change process. The authors suggest that the important question is not if but how positive emotions are important. It is apparent that positive emotions play a vital role in family therapy. However, the authors are only beginning to uncover the abundant complexities tied to the therapeutic role of positive emotions within the relational patterns of families. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved)

This article elaborates on the themes and directions that emerged from a dialogue on the potential usefulness of positive emotions in psychotherapy. In defining a positive emotion, the authors propose that there are two intersecting axes of interest. The axes are emotional experience--whether something feels good or bad to the client--and therapeutic value--how helpful the emotion is to the therapeutic process. Three of the four quadrants formed by the intersection of these axes potentially contain positive emotions. Special consideration is given to the quadrant of positive experience/positive value, which has been relatively neglected until now. In this quadrant, positive emotions generate change either in their facilitating role--often in the therapeutic relationship--or as central agents of the change process. The authors conclude by considering how positive and negative emotions interact and call for careful theorizing and research to clearly understand positive emotions in psychotherapy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved)