Allen E. Bergin

Bio: Allen E. Bergin is an academic researcher from Brigham Young University. The author has contributed to research in topic(s): Mental health & Psychological intervention. The author has an hindex of 37, co-authored 103 publication(s) receiving 12526 citation(s). Previous affiliations of Allen E. Bergin include Miami University & Columbia University.

Handbook of Psychotherapy and Behavior Change

Abstract: Methodology, Design, and Evaluation in Psychotherapy Research (A. Kazdin). Assessing Psychotherapy Outcomes and Processes (M. Lambert & C. Hill). The NIMH Treatment of Depression Collaborative Research Program: Where We Began and Where We Are (I. Elkin). The Effectiveness of Psychotherapy (M. Lambert & A. Bergin). Research on Client Variables in Psychotherapy (S. Garfield). Therapist Variables (L. Beutler, et al.). Process and Outcome in PsychotherapyNoch Einmal (D. Orlinsky, et al.). Behavior Therapy with Adults (P. Emmelkamp). Cognitive and Cognitive-Behavioral Therapies (S. Hollon & A. Beck). Psychodynamic Approaches (W. Henry, et al.). Research on Experiential Psychotherapies (L. Greenberg, et al.). Psychotherapy for Children and Adolescents (A. Kazdin). The Process and Outcome of Marital and Family Therapy: Reseach Review and Evaluation (J. Alexander, et al.). Experiential Group Research (R. Bednar & T. Kaul). Research on Brief Psychotherapy (M. Koss & J. Shiang). Behavioral Medicine and Health Psychology (E. Blanchard). Medication and Psychotherapy (G. Klerman, et al.). Research on Psychotherapy with Culturally Diverse Populations (S. Sue, et al.). Overview, Trends, and Future Issues (A. Bergin & S. Garfield). Indexes.

Handbook of psychotherapy and behavior change: An empirical analysis

Abstract: An empirical approach to the classification of disturbed children. Journal of Clinical A new direction for education: Behavior analysis (Vol. 2). Lawrence A. E. Bergin & S. L. Garfield (Eds.), Handbook of psychotherapy and behavior change:. This is in contrast to the view that the effectiveness of psychotherapy and counseling to edit many editions of the Handbook of Psychotherapy and Behavior Change with a literature review of empirical studies of psychotherapy outcomes in 1975, the Their multidimensional scaling analysis represented the results.

A Spiritual Strategy for Counseling and Psychotherapy

Abstract: The Alienation Between Religion and Psychology The New Zeitgeist Western and Eastern Spiritual World Views A Theistic Spiritual View of Personality and Mental Health A Theistic Spiritual View of Psychotherapy Ethical Issues and Guidelines Religious and Spiritual Assessment Religious and Spiritual Practices as Therapeutic Interventions Spiritual Interventions Used by Contemporary Psychotherapists Case Reports of Spiritual Issues and Interventions in Psychotherapy A Theistic Spiritual View of Science and Research Methods Directions for the Future.

Psychotherapy and Religious Values

Abstract: This is reprinted from th Journal of Consulting and Clincal Psychology 1980 Vol. 48, No. 1, 95-105. It is an abridged sythesis of several lectures he delivered in symposia on the outcome of therapy Psychotherapy sponsored by the Institute for the Study of Human Knowledge, the University of Southern California, College of Continuing Education and Psychology Department, the Albert Einstein Medical College, and the European Conference of the Scoiety fro Psychotherapy Research (delivered in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and Oxford, England, in January, February, April and July 1979, respectively). Brother Bergin expresses gratitude to Victor Brown, Truman Madsen, Spencer Palmer, Jeff Bradshaw, and Karl White for their helpful suggestions. He also indicates that he does not take credit for these ideas, but recognizes that they are inherent in the Gospel. He also expresses the feeling that the reason his lectures have been so widely and favorbly received is that so many people everywhere respect these values. We are grateful to him for expressing them so clearly and eloquently!

Pharmacological interventions for somatoform disorders in adults.

Abstract: BACKGROUND: Somatoform disorders are characterised by chronic, medically unexplained physical symptoms (MUPS). Although different medications are part of treatment routines for people with somatoform disorders in clinics and private practices, there exists no systematic review or meta-analysis on the efficacy and tolerability of these medications. We aimed to synthesise to improve optimal treatment decisions.OBJECTIVES: To assess the effects of pharmacological interventions for somatoform disorders (specifically somatisation disorder, undifferentiated somatoform disorder, somatoform autonomic dysfunction, and pain disorder) in adults.SEARCH METHODS: We searched the Cochrane Depression, Anxiety and Neurosis Review Group's Specialised Register (CCDANCTR) (to 17 January 2014). This register includes relevant randomised controlled trials (RCTs) from The Cochrane Library (all years), MEDLINE (1950 to date), EMBASE (1974 to date), and PsycINFO (1967 to date). To identify ongoing trials, we searched ClinicalTrials.gov, Current Controlled Trials metaRegister, the World Health Organization International Clinical Trials Registry Platform, and the Chinese Clinical Trials Registry. For grey literature, we searched ProQuest Dissertation {\&} Theses Database, OpenGrey, and BIOSIS Previews. We handsearched conference proceedings and reference lists of potentially relevant papers and systematic reviews and contacted experts in the field.SELECTION CRITERIA: We selected RCTs or cluster RCTs of pharmacological interventions versus placebo, treatment as usual, another medication, or a combination of different medications for somatoform disorders in adults. We included people fulfilling standardised diagnostic criteria for somatisation disorder, undifferentiated somatoform disorder, somatoform autonomic dysfunction, or somatoform pain disorder.DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS: One review author and one research assistant independently extracted data and assessed risk of bias. Primary outcomes included the severity of MUPS on a continuous measure, and acceptability of treatment.MAIN RESULTS: We included 26 RCTs (33 reports), with 2159 participants, in the review. They examined the efficacy of different types of antidepressants, the combination of an antidepressant and an antipsychotic, antipsychotics alone, or natural products (NPs). The duration of the studies ranged between two and 12 weeks.One meta-analysis of placebo-controlled studies showed no clear evidence of a significant difference between tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs) and placebo for the outcome severity of MUPS (SMD -0.13; 95{\%} CI -0.39 to 0.13; 2 studies, 239 participants; I(2) = 2{\%}; low-quality evidence). For new-generation antidepressants (NGAs), there was very low-quality evidence showing they were effective in reducing the severity of MUPS (SMD -0.91; 95{\%} CI -1.36 to -0.46; 3 studies, 243 participants; I(2) = 63{\%}). For NPs there was low-quality evidence that they were effective in reducing the severity of MUPS (SMD -0.74; 95{\%} CI -0.97 to -0.51; 2 studies, 322 participants; I(2) = 0{\%}).One meta-analysis showed no clear evidence of a difference between TCAs and NGAs for severity of MUPS (SMD -0.16; 95{\%} CI -0.55 to 0.23; 3 studies, 177 participants; I(2) = 42{\%}; low-quality evidence). There was also no difference between NGAs and other NGAs for severity of MUPS (SMD -0.16; 95{\%} CI -0.45 to 0.14; 4 studies, 182 participants; I(2) = 0{\%}).Finally, one meta-analysis comparing selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) with a combination of SSRIs and antipsychotics showed low-quality evidence in favour of combined treatment for severity of MUPS (SMD 0.77; 95{\%} CI 0.32 to 1.22; 2 studies, 107 participants; I(2) = 23{\%}).Differences regarding the acceptability of the treatment (rate of all-cause drop-outs) were neither found between NGAs and placebo (RR 1.01, 95{\%} CI 0.64 to 1.61; 2 studies, 163 participants; I(2) = 0{\%}; low-quality evidence) or NPs and placebo (RR 0.85, 95{\%} CI 0.40 to 1.78; 3 studies, 506 participants; I(2) = 0{\%}; low-quality evidence); nor between TCAs and other medication (RR 1.48, 95{\%} CI 0.59 to 3.72; 8 studies, 556 participants; I(2) =14{\%}; low-quality evidence); nor between antidepressants and the combination of an antidepressant and an antipsychotic (RR 0.80, 95{\%} CI 0.25 to 2.52; 2 studies, 118 participants; I(2) = 0{\%}; low-quality evidence). Percental attrition rates due to adverse effects were high in all antidepressant treatments (0{\%} to 32{\%}), but low for NPs (0{\%} to 1.7{\%}).The risk of bias was high in many domains across studies. Seventeen trials (65.4{\%}) gave no information about random sequence generation and only two (7.7{\%}) provided information about allocation concealment. Eighteen studies (69.2{\%}) revealed a high or unclear risk in blinding participants and study personnel; 23 studies had high risk of bias relating to blinding assessors. For the comparison NGA versus placebo, there was relatively high imprecision and heterogeneity due to one outlier study. Although we identified 26 studies, each comparison only contained a few studies and small numbers of participants so the results were imprecise.AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS: The current review found very low-quality evidence for NGAs and low-quality evidence for NPs being effective in treating somatoform symptoms in adults when compared with placebo. There was some evidence that different classes of antidepressants did not differ in efficacy; however, this was limited and of low to very low quality. These results had serious shortcomings such as the high risk of bias, strong heterogeneity in the data, and small sample sizes. Furthermore, the significant effects of antidepressant treatment have to be balanced against the relatively high rates of adverse effects. Adverse effects produced by medication can have amplifying effects on symptom perceptions, particularly in people focusing on somatic symptoms without medical causes. We can only draw conclusions about short-term efficacy of the pharmacological interventions because no trial included follow-up assessments. For each of the comparisons where there were available data on acceptability rates (NGAs versus placebo, NPs versus placebo, TCAs versus other medication, and antidepressants versus a combination of an antidepressant and an antipsychotic), no clear differences between the intervention and comparator were found.Future high-quality research should be carried out to determine the effectiveness of medications other than antidepressants, to compare antidepressants more thoroughly, and to follow-up participants over longer periods (the longest follow up was just 12 weeks). Another idea for future research would be to include other outcomes such as functional impairment or dysfunctional behaviours and cognitions as well as the classical outcomes such as symptom severity, depression, or anxiety.

In a Different Voice. Psychological Theory and Women’s Development. Cambridge, MA (Harvard University Press) 1982.

Abstract: Introduction 1. Woman's Place in Man's Life Cycle 2. Images of Relationship 3. Concepts of Self and Morality 4. Crisis and Transition 5. Women's Rights and Women's Judgment 6. Visions of Maturity References Index of Study Participants General Index

In search of how people change: Applications to addictive behaviors.

Abstract: How people intentionally change addictive behaviors with and without treatment is not well understood by behavioral scientists. This article summarizes research on self-initiated and professionally facilitated change of addictive behaviors using the key transtheoretical constructs of stages and processes of change. Modification of addictive behaviors involves progression through five stages—precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, and maintenance—and individuals typically recycle through these stages several times before termination of the addiction. Multiple studies provide strong support for these stages as well as for a finite and common set of change processes used to progress through the stages. Research to date supports a transtheoretical model of change that systematically integrates the stages with processes of change from diverse theories of psychotherapy.

Emotional processing of fear : exposure to corrective information

Abstract: In this article we propose mechanisms that govern the processing of emotional information, particularly those involved in fear reduction. Emotions are viewed as represented by information structures in memory, and anxiety is thought to occur when an information structure that serves as program to escape or avoid danger is activated. Emotional processing is denned as the modification of memory structures that underlie emotions. It is argued that some form of exposure to feared situations is common to many psychotherapies for anxiety, and that confrontation with feared objects or situations is an effective treatment. Physiological activation and habituation within and across exposure sessions are cited as indicators of emotional processing, and variables that influence activation and habituation of fear responses are examined. These variables and the indicators are analyzed to yield an account of what information must be integrated for emotional processing of a fear structure. The elements of such a structure are viewed as cognitive representations of the stimulus characteristic of the fear situation, the individual's responses in it, and aspects of its meaning for the individual. Treatment failures are interpreted with respect to the interference of cognitive defenses, autonomic arousal, mood state, and erroneous ideation with reformation of targeted fear structures. Applications of the concepts advanced here to therapeutic practice and to the broader study of psychopathology are discussed.

Principles of behavior modification

Abstract: ions as internal properties of clients rather than as hypothetical constructs of therapists has resulted in considerable confusion about the types of changes effected by different approaches to the modification of behavior. It is widely assumed that behavioral and psychodynamic approaches are concerned with fundamentally different subject matters. The latter methods supposedly treat complexes, repressed impulses, ego strengths and mental apparatuses, the underlying causes of behavior, whereas behavioral approaches are believed to modify only superficial behavior. This apparent difference in subject matter, however, exists primarily in the therapists’ conceptualizations, not in actual practice. Ego strength, to take an example, is a www.freepsychotherapybooks.org 235 hypothetical construct and not an entity within the client. One can neither observe nor modify hypothetical constructs. The person’s behavior— broadly defined to include cognitive, emotional, and motor expressions—is the only class of events that can be altered through psychological procedures, and therefore it is the only meaningful subject matter of psychotherapy. Similarly, stimulus variables are the only events that the therapist can modify to effect behavioral change. Psychotherapy, like any other social influence enterprise, is thus a process in which the therapist arranges stimulus conditions that produce desired behavioral changes in the client. If, for instance, a psychotherapist creates conditions that increase the frequency of the behaviors from which ego strength is inferred, the client will be said to have acquired increased ego strength as a function of treatment. On the other hand, if the frequency of www.freepsychotherapybooks.org 236 ego-strength behaviors has been reduced in the course of psychotherapy, the client has suffered a loss in ego strength. Clearly, ego strength is simply a hypothetical abstraction whose presumed behavioral referents are the only reality the psychotherapist can modify. In the final analysis, social-learning approaches and all other existing forms of treatment modify the same subject matter, namely, behavioral phenomena. Most discussions of change-inducing processes, however, focus on treating the inferences made from behavioral events as though these abstractions existed independently and caused their behavioral referents. Philosophers of science have cautioned against the attribution of causal potency to described properties of behavior. Their warnings have had little impact on personality theorizing. Neither traits nor types, as concepts, have www.freepsychotherapybooks.org 237 any real existence. They are merely words, and words do not exist in the eye of the observer nor in the people observed. A man can not be said to have either a type or a trait, but he can be said to fit either a type or a trait. At present the fit will be inexact, for dimensions of personality have not yet been quantified well enough to permit of accurate measurement. In the case of height, the measurement can be precise, and little confusion results from saying that a man has a certain height. Observation and concept are so closely related that the phrase is not ordinarily understood to mean more than it says, namely, that the extent of a given datum of observation in one direction fits a certain section of an ideal dimension of distance. But if an attempt is made to fit some mode of human conduct to the trait of courage, the looseness of correspondence between behavior and concepts leads to mischievous reification. The concept parts company with behavior, picks up undefined notions in its flight from reality, and finally acquires an independent real existence in its own right, so that when it is said that a man has courage, he will be thought of as the fortunate owner of something considerably www.freepsychotherapybooks.org 238 more significant than a certain pattern of behavior [Pratt, 1939, p. 115]. Similarly, a person who is plagued with “weak ego strength” will be viewed as suffering from something vastly more significant than the behavioral referents from which the construct is inferred. For purposes of further illustration, let us designate behaviors in which persons violate social and legal codes of behavior and frequently engage in assaultive activities as the external expressions of an inferred zoognick. Based on prevailing clinical practices, the zoognick would come to represent an intrapsychically functioning agent. An honorific causative power would be conferred upon this hypothetical zoognick, whereas the observed behavior from which its existence is inferred would be depreciated as superficial behavioral manifestations. Before long, www.freepsychotherapybooks.org 239 psychological tests would be constructed to measure zoognick strength on the basis of which diagnosticians would tautologically attribute clients’ behavior to the action of the underlying zoognick. Proceeding on the assumption that “patient variables are not conceived to be behaviors, but constructs concerning internal constellations” (Wallerstein, 1963), psychotherapeutic goals would be stated in terms of removing the pernicious zoognick. On the other hand, direct modification of the deviant behavior would be considered not only superficial but potentially dangerous, since elimination of the symptomatic expressions might force the zoognick to emerge in equally pernicious substitute forms. A sufficiently charismatic exponent of zoognick theory could undoubtedly develop a sizable following with the same extraordinary conviction in the vital importance and causative potency of www.freepsychotherapybooks.org 240 zoognicks as that shown by adherents of libidinal forces. Oedipal complexes, collective unconsciouses, and self-dynamisms. Finally, humanists would embrace zoognick theory as more befitting the complexities of human beings than those simplistic mechanistic doctrines that stubbornly insist that the zoognick is the deviant behavior rechristened. Most treatment approaches devote remarkably little attention to the selection of objectives; when they are specified (Mahrer, 1967), the intended outcomes generally include a variety of abstract virtues described in socially desirable terms, such as reorganization of the self, restoration of functional effectiveness, development of individuation and self-actualization, establishment of homeostatic equilibrium, where there is id there shall ego be and where superego was there shall conscious ego be, achievement of identity, www.freepsychotherapybooks.org 241 acceptance of self-consciousness, enhancement of ego strength, or the attainment of self-awareness, emotional maturity, and positive mental health. While some of these objectives allude to vaguely defined behavioral characteristics, most refer to nebulous hypothetical states. These abstractions convey little information unless they are further defined in terms of specifically observable behavior. Behavioral Specification of Objectives A meaningfully stated objective has at least two basic characteristics (Mager, 1961). First, it should identify and describe the behaviors considered appropriate to the desired outcomes. The term “behavior” is used in the broad sense to include a complex of observable and potentially measurable activities including motor, cognitive, and physiological classes of responses. www.freepsychotherapybooks.org 242 After the intended goals have been specified in performance, and preferably in measurable terms, decisions can be made about the experiences that are most likely to produce the desired outcomes. For example, the statement, “Increase the person’s self-confidence and self-esteem,” designates a therapeutic intent; but it furnishes little guidance, since it does not reveal the kinds of behaviors the person will exhibit after he has achieved increased self-esteem. Once self-esteem and the behaviors that will be esteem producing for a particular client have been delineated, one can arrange conditions that will create the requisite behaviors and thereby produce the condition of positive selfevaluation. In some instances learning vocational skills may be most relevant to acquiring selfesteem; in some cases developing interpersonal competencies that will secure positive responses from others may be most appropriate; in other www.freepsychotherapybooks.org 243 cases eliminating alienating social behaviors may be required if self-evaluation is to be altered; and finally, in cases where a person is relatively competent socially and vocationally, an increase in self-esteem behavior may require the modification of stringent, self-imposed standards of behavior upon which self-approving and self-deprecatory responses are contingent. Similarly, unless the goals specify the behavior that persons will exhibit when successfully self-actualized, internally integrated, self-accepted, personally reconstructed, homeostatically equilibrated, or emotionally matured, such goals provide little