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.

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Emotional processing of fear : exposure to corrective information

At the heart of emotion, mood, and any other emotionally charged event are states experienced as simply feeling good or bad, energized or enervated. These states--called core affect--influence reflexes, perception, cognition, and behavior and are influenced by many causes internal and external, but people have no direct access to these causal connections. Core affect can therefore be experienced as free-floating (mood) or can be attributed to some cause (and thereby begin an emotional episode). These basic processes spawn a broad framework that includes perception of the core-affect-altering properties of stimuli, motives, empathy, emotional meta-experience, and affect versus emotion regulation; it accounts for prototypical emotional episodes, such as fear and anger, as core affect attributed to something plus various nonemotional processes.

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Core Affect and the Psychological Construction of Emotion

The psychoanalytic concept of the working alliance is reviewed and elaborated. It is argued that various modes of psychotherapy can be meaningfully differentiated in terms of the kinds of working alliances embedded in them. Moreover, the strength, rather than the kind of working alliance, will prove to be the major factor in change achieved through psychotherapy. Strength of alliance will be a function of the goodness of fit of the respective personalities of patient and therapist to the demands of the working alliance. Past research bearing on these propositions and indicated future research are discussed. Extensions to changes sought in teaching and other group processes are briefly touched. Proliferation of psychotherapies has dominated the sixties and seventies. Thirty-six psychotherapies (Harper, 1959) had to be supplemented by an additional compilation (Harper, 1975). Unchecked, this trend would come perilously close to the solipsism, a psychotherapeutic method for each psychotherapist. Not unexpectedly, research in psychotherapy has suffered from an analogous lack of convergence, and with it a disappointing impotence about providing empirical tests of competing claims. As Donald Campbell (1976) suggests, given the wide prevalence of the need for psychotherapy, and the continuing ability of individuals or society to pay for it, the winnowing of this harvest of methods must come from research. Campbell (1976) speaks to the practitioner, exhorting him or her to engage in systematic follow-up. This essay addresses those prac1 An earlier version of this paper was given at the annual meeting of the Society for Psychotherapy, June, 1975. * Requests for reprints should be sent to Edward S. Bordin, Ph.D., University of Michigan Counseling Center, 1007 East Huron Street, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109. titioners who are also research workers, to call attention to a point of view that can encompass most, if not all, approaches to psychotherapy and can lead toward the needed convergence in research. There has been a promising rate of growth of research and research workers, with encouraging trends toward a coming together on basic issues: I aim to contribute to that movement. Moreover, because of the generalizability of my ideas to all change situations, I hope to stimulate research applications to teaching and to community change processes. 1 propose that the working alliance between the person who seeks change and the one who offers to be a change agent is one of the keys, if not the key, to the change process. The working alliance can be defined and elaborated in terms which make it universally applicable, and can be shown to be valuable for integrating knowledge—particularly for pointing to new research directions. As my initial statement suggests, a working alliance between a person seeking change and a change agent can occur in many places besides the locale of psychotherapy. The concept of the working alliance would seem to be applicable in the relation between student and teacher, between community action group and leader, and, with only slight extension, between child and parent. While I believe such extensions to be fruitful, they are beyond the scope of this paper. I shall confine myself to the therapeutic working alliance, making only brief inferences to extensions to other change enterprises.2 2 One might extend the idea of working alliances to nonchange situations. Although prisons, under reform ideology, have been set up as change situations, most observation suggests that staff and inmates typically arrive at a mutually agreed-upon alliance to get through their relationship with as little upset as possible.

https://psycnet.apa.org/journals/pst/16/3/252.pdf

The generalizability of the psychoanalytic concept of the working alliance.

Emotions are action dispositions--states of vigilant readiness that vary widely in reported affect, physiology, and behavior. They are driven, however, by only 2 opponent motivational systems, appetitive and aversive--subcortical circuits that mediate reactions to primary reinforcers. Using a large emotional picture library, reliable affective psychophysiologies are shown, defined by the judged valence (appetitive/pleasant or aversive/unpleasant) and arousal of picture percepts. Picture-evoked affects also modulate responses to independently presented startle probe stimuli. In other words, they potentiate startle reflexes during unpleasant pictures and inhibit them during pleasant pictures, and both effects are augmented by high picture arousal. Implications are elucidated for research in basic emotions, psychopathology, and theories of orienting and defense. Conclusions highlight both the approach's constraints and promising paths for future study.

The emotion probe. Studies of motivation and attention.

This theoretical model of emotion is based on research using the startle-probe methodology. It explains inconsistencies in probe studies of attention and fear conditioning and provides a new approach to emotional perception, imagery, and memory. Emotions are organized biphasically, as appetitive or aversive (defensive). Reflexes with the same valence as an ongoing emotional state are augmented; mismatched reflexes are inhibited. Thus, the startle response (an aversive reflex) is enhanced during a fear state and is diminished in a pleasant emotional context. This affect-startle effect is not determined by general arousal, simple attention, or probe modality. The effect is found when affects are prompted by pictures or memory images, changes appropriately with aversive conditioning, and may be dependent on right-hemisphere processing. Implications for clinical, neurophysiological, and basic research in emotion are outlined.

Emotion, attention, and the startle reflex.

Research in Psychotherapy is a comprehensive synthesis and assessment of the psychotherapeutic research literature for the use of both researchers and those in clinical practice. It is designed as a general reference work, an instruction guide, and a source of information about specific aspects and problems of research.The book consists of three parts. Part 1 discusses principles and methods of research as they are applied to psychotherapy. It provides general background material and principles to help non-researchers appreciate some of the important problems that are encountered. In Part 2, existing research on the effects of psychotherapy and the determinants and correlates of outcome are clustered and reviewed. Chapters 4 to 7 are concerned strictly with a review and appraisal of controlled studies that were designed to evaluate the effects of psychotherapy. Chapters 8 to 13 deal with a large body of research on various factors associated with therapeutic outcome--method, style, and technique variables; patient, therapist, and time variables. Part 3 is concerned with research on aspects of the therapeutic process and on the effect of many of these same variables on the therapeutic interchange as distinct from the outcome of therapy. Also discussed is research on various therapeutic phenomena and conditions about which so much has been written and so little really known.Research in Psychotherapy was written in the conviction that clinical practice should be influenced by research and that rigorous research that meets acceptable experimental standards can be done on the field of psychotherapy.

Melvin Kornreich

Papers

Research in Psychotherapy