Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T06:29:22.116Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Memory reconsolidation keeps track of emotional changes, but what will explain the actual “processing”?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 June 2015

Antonio Pascual-Leone
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario N9B 3P4, Canada. [email protected]://www1.uwindsor.ca/people/apl/
Juan Pascual-Leone
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, York University, Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3, Canada. [email protected]://tcolab.blog.yorku.ca/

Abstract

We question memory reconsolidation and emotional arousal as sufficient determinants of therapeutic change. Generating new feelings and meanings must be contrasted with activating and stabilizing the evolving memories that reflect those novel experiences. Some therapeutic changes are not attributable to a memory model alone. “Emotional processing” is also needed and is often an undeclared form of complex executive problem solving.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Fredrickson, B. L. (2001) The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: The broaden and-build theory of positive emotions. American Psychologist 56:218–26.Google Scholar
Greenberg, L. & Pascual-Leone, J. (1995) A dialectical constructivist approach to experiential change. In: Constructivism in psychotherapy, ed. Neimeyer, R. & Mahoney, M., pp. 169–91. APA Press.Google Scholar
Greenberg, L. & Pascual-Leone, J. (2001) A dialectical constructivist view of the creation of personal meaning. Journal of Constructivist Psychology 14:165–86. Available at: http://doi.org/10.1080/10720530125970.Google Scholar
Greenberg, L. S. (2002) Emotion-focused therapy: Coaching clients to work through their feelings. APA Press.Google Scholar
Greenberg, M. A., Wortman, C. B. & Stone, A. A. (1996) Emotional expression and physical health: Revising traumatic memories or fostering self-regulation? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 71:588602.Google Scholar
Ogrodniczuk, J. S., Piper, W. E. & Joyce, A. S. (2011) Effect of alexithymia on the process and outcome of psychotherapy: A programmatic review. Psychiatry Research 190:43–8. Available at: http://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2010.04.026.Google Scholar
Paivio, S. C. & Pascual-Leone, A. (2010) Emotion focused therapy for complex trauma: An integrative approach. American Psychological Association.Google Scholar
Pascual-Leone, A. & Greenberg, L. S. (2007) Emotional processing in experiential therapy: Why “the only way out is through.Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 75(6):875–87. Available at: http://doi.org/10.1037/0022-006X.75.6.875.Google Scholar
Pascual-Leone, A., Greenberg, L. S. & Pascual-Leone, J. (2014) Task analysis: New developments for programmatic research on the process of change. In: Quantitative and qualitative methods in psychotherapy research, ed. Lutz, W. & Knox, S., pp. 249–73. Taylor & Francis.Google Scholar
Pascual-Leone, A., Paivio, S. & Harrington, S. (in press) Emotion in psychotherapy: An experiential-humanistic perspective. In: Humanistic psychotherapies: Handbook of research and practice, second edition, ed. Cain, D., Rubin, S., Keenan, K.. American Psychological Association.Google Scholar
Pascual-Leone, J. (1997) Metasubjective processes: The missing “lingua franca” of cognitive science. In: The future of the cognitive revolution, ed. Johnson, D. & Erneling, C., pp. 75101. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Pascual-Leone, J. (2013) Can we model organismic causes of working memory, efficiency and fluid intelligence? A meta-subjective perspective. Intelligence 41:738–43. Available at: http://doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2013.06.001 Google Scholar
Pascual-Leone, J. & Johnson, J. (2004) Affect, self-motivation, and cognitive development: A dialectical constructivist view. In: Motivation, emotion, and cognition: Integrative perspectives on intellectual functioning and development, ed. Dai, D. Y. & Sternberg, R. S., pp. 197235. Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Pos, A. E., Greenberg, L. S., Goldman, R. N. & Korman, L. M. (2003) Emotional processing during experiential treatment of depression. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 71(6):1007–16. Available at: http://doi.org/10.1037/0022-006X.71.6.1007.Google Scholar