IMPLICATIONS OF COGNITIVE SCIENCE FOR PSYCHOTHERAPY - PROMISES AND LIMITATIONS

The target articles show the promise of research in cognitive science for psychotherapy as well as the limitations of cognitive models. All three papers demonstrate the utility of empirical research for clinica l thinking, but they point as well to four issues that must be address ed by cognitive scientists if their research is to inform clinical pra ctice and to withstand challenges from clinical data. First, cognitive models must increasingly address the issue of consciousness, and wres tle with some of the clinical implications of distinguishing implicit and explicit mental processes, particularly those involving affect and motivation. Second, cognitive models need to address defensive proces ses if they are to be accurate as conceptual models or useful to clini cians. Third, knowledge generation should be viewed as a dialectical p rocess, in which conceptualizations that emerge in the laboratory and the clinic mutually inform and correct one another, rather than a line ar process, in which scientists impart the latest knowledge to clinici ans.