ABSTRACT
This chapter describes decision making under emergency conditions. Emergency decision making involves choosing between "means" or methods of life saving. Since the stakes are high, emergency operations ideally consider alternative interpretations of a dangerous situation; and, alternative predictions about the outcome of different "avoidance strategies". In psychoanalytic theory, the anxiety-reducing function is served by coming to a "compromise formation". Perhaps the most important situational variable working to limit analysis and deliberation and working to promote "good enough" or "compromise" solutions, is time. In contrast to the psychoanalytic idea of "compromise formation", our notion of compromise recognizes the cognitive factor explicitly. Self-esteem is of great importance to the Cognitive Therapy School which has explicitly forbid examination of depth, unconscious processes, or motivation. Self-esteem is a cause and an effect of many social and psychological phenomena. Efforts to increase self-esteem and manage terror may be fine treatments for a child.
