ABSTRACT

As we have emphasized throughout this book, knowledge of cognitive processes is beneficial to the theory and practice of all therapeutic modalities. However, it seems that cognitive theory has been of special benefit to psychodynamic theory. Various researchers have separated Freudian observations from his psychosexual drive theory, which is not amenable to empirical verification, and recast them as special cases of cognitive mechanisms, which can be tested empirically. This recasting covers fundamental psychodynamic principles such as the ubiquity of unconscious processing, interpersonal processes such as transference, and intrapersonal processes such as repression. In the process of this recasting, psychodynamic mechanisms have been determined to apply to healthy human functioning as well as to pathology. Researchers in this new tradition argue that these processes represent human functioning in the relevant domains and only sometimes result in psychological difficulty and suffering.