What place does affect have in CT?

Hi all, I'm writing a paper that discusses CT's perspective on the role of affect in psychopathology and treatment. This was stimulated by my being sick of hearing people, after telling them of my preference for CT, that CT pays insufficient attention to emotions. I wanted to synthesize what has been written on this in the CT literature into a paper that provides a powerful rejoinder to the above criticism. However, as I've been doing my research, I've noticed the complexity with which affect has been discussed in other areas, and the comparatively lighter attention it has received in the CT literature.

One specific example of this is how CT addresses conflicts between the head and the heart. How many of you have had your clients say "Yeah, intellectually that makes sense, but I still feel...." (now that I think of it, how cog therapists handle that one would make a nice separate thread for discussion). For the ease of discussion, let's refer to these as conflicts between an "intellectual belief" and an "emotional belief." Beck has distinguished between these as merely quantitative distinctions, or degrees of intellectually believing something. Others however, have raised the notion that there may be qualitative differences between these. If so, why do we not make more of a distinction between the two types in formal discussions of CT? I know that Teasdale and Barnard have proposed a model (Interacting Cognitive Subsystems) that addresses this. And I know I've read people distinguish between hot cognitions vs. cold cognitions. But I'm not sure this has caught on much in most formal discussions of CT. Why not? Can the research on emotion in recent years expand and refine the CT model of how clients have problems and how we fix them?

I guess what I'm looking for are sources on cognitive therapy that includes a richer discussion of the role of affect. I still see myself (or would like to see myself) as a cognitive therapist, but I think there is more I can do with the client's affect than simply reflect it back, and go on to the cognitions. Any of your thoughts on this matter, or references on affect in CT, would be very appreciated.

Replies:

The Role of Affect in Cognitive Therapy, by Jim Pretzer, 3/22/97

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