Entrevista con H. J. Eysenck

RESUMEN

La obra de H.J. Eysenck ya forma parte, de hecho, de la historia de la psicología. Su labor de síntesis en el análisis científico de la personalidad (síntesis entre los procedimientos factoriales, los resultados de la psicología experimental, los datos clínicos y los análisis psicofisiológicos) ha marcado toda una época de estudio en este campo. Pero los intereses y aportaciones de Eysenck han ido más allá y abarcan desde los desarrollos primeros de la terapia de conducta al estudio de la determinación genética y ambiental de la inteligencia, de la exploración de las actitudes al análisis de las diferencias entre sexos. En esta entrevista el profesor Eysenck reflexiona sobre algunos puntos de sus teorías que han provocado fuertes controversias; la confusión entre posturas intelectuales e ideológicas, sus estudios sobre la eficacia de las terapias psicodinámicas, sus relaciones con la astrología, etc.     

Emotion Focused Therapy for Avoidant Personality Disorder: Pragmatic Considerations for Working with Experientially Avoidant Clients

Emotion-focused therapy (EFT), an empirically supported treatment for depression and interpersonal difficulties, is now being directed towards clients with personality disorders, such as borderline and avoidant personality disorder. In this paper, both the value of, but also potential difficulties therapists can encounter while engaging in, active EFT chair interventions with clients with avoidant personality disorder (AVPD) are described. While EFT interventions can effectively transform emotion schemes at the heart of both intra and interpersonal difficulties, avoidant clients may have difficulties engaging in EFT interventions that activate core maladaptive emotion schemes related to self and negative/unaccepting representations of ‘others’. Alliance ruptures, intransigent experiential avoidance, or ‘unresolvable stand-offs’ may result. To avoid these problems, the importance of working with a more refined and content based case conceptualization of the particular avoidant client is highlighted. Guidance in optimal emotional processing in order to transform layers of maladaptive emotion schemes present within the client with AVPD is provided. Supporting these clients’ full striving for life, and their capacity to self-soothe is also discussed. A case example illustrates application of the model and principles.     

Organizing awareness and increasing emotion regulation: revising chair work in emotion-focused therapy for borderline personality disorder

Emotion-focused therapy (EFT) is an empirically supported treatment that may have potential as a stage-two treatment for borderline personality disorder (BPD). Specific aspects of BPD--the tendency to experience fluctuating self-states; weakness in meta-cognitive or reflective functioning; and the tendency for self-states to be organized by presently occurring interpersonal processes--present challenges to applying some EFT interventions with this population. In particular, even within a highly attuned, validating and accepting empathic relationship, clients with BPD may have difficulty with the usual manualizations of chair work interventions. This is because these interventions often employ polarization and intensification of experience in order to activate adaptive alternate emotional resources and self organizations. For the client with borderline personality disorder, these interventions may be counter-productive, emotionally dysregulating and disorganizing. EFT chair work, however, also has the potential to provide structure to the borderline clients experience of self, to stimulate metacognitive awareness, provide an alive experience of the process of polarization, attenuate emotional activation, and increase the experience of self-coherence. This article describes the development of stepwise approximations of EFT two-chair intervention for self-critical splits. It outlines potential stages of two-chair work as well as intervention principles important for productive chair work with this population. The EFT change principles of awareness, expression regulation, reflection, transformation, and corrective experience still centrally apply. However, several additional strategies are discussed to scaffold clients' capacity to both experience and regulate emotion.     

Raising Consciousness About Women's Groups: Process and Outcome Research

Although therapy is a misnomer for consciousness-raising ( CR ) groups, some criterion for "therapeutic" or desirable outcome is necessary for evaluating clinical and social psychological change in the CR format. Quantitative and non-quantitative process and outcome findings are reviewed, and implications for theory, research and practice are discussed. Women in CR groups give testimony to their global effectiveness in fostering personal development as well as political awareness. Empirical findings likewise support the notion of the CR group as a potentiator of pro-feminist attitudes. However, those data are equivocal with regard to the formulation that any such liberalization of sociopolitical beliefs promotes personal growth and self-esteem.