Convergence: Connecting Levels of Analysis in Psychological Science
In the past, our field harbored distinct, and often competing, schools of thought that tackled different problems and produced findings that often appeared to diverge. Today, investigators attack shared problems at complementary levels of analysis and produce results that converge. Studies of people in a social world; mental systems of cognition and emotion; and biological mechanisms of the genome and the nervous system interconnect and yield an integrated psychological science. The APS 23rd Annual Convention displays, and celebrates, these advances in our field.

APS Award Address

The Origins, Diagnosis, and Treatment of Neuroticism: Back to the Future

Friday, May 25, 2012, 2:00 PM - 2:50 PM
Sheraton Ballroom III

David H. Barlow
Boston University

Neurotic disorders dominated the landscape of psychopathology for almost a century before dying a sudden and traumatic death in 1980 with the publication of the DSM-III. The cause of death was unbearably heavy theoretical baggage and acute empirical insufficiencies. But the study of the temperament of neuroticism lived on, mostly in the laboratories of developmental and personality psychologists. Now, research has delineated empirically supported common dimensions shared by all anxiety, mood, and related emotional disorders, including higher-order temperaments, mood distortions and dysregulations, and extent and types of avoidance. In this presentation, I suggest a new integrative diagnostic scheme for the emotional disorders, as well as a unified transdiagnostic treatment addressing shared higher-order temperamental factors.

Read the APS Daily Observation on David Barlow.

David H. Barlow is a recipient of a 2012 Association for Psychological Science (APS) James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award.

Continuing Education: 1 APA Credit

Learning Objectives

This Address is designed to help you:

1. List dimensions of temperament and key features that comprise the emotional disorders

2. List different emotional avoidance strategies

3. Describe core therapeutic strategies used to treat emotional disorders

Continuing education for psychologists is sponsored by the Psychology Department at the Wilford Hall Ambulatory Surgical Center (WHASC). The Psychology Department at WHASC is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. WHASC maintains responsibility for this program and its content. Point of contact for the CE Program is Howard Garb. He can be reached at howard.garb@us.af.mil, or 210.671.4084.