The most general aim of the proposed research is to investigate the phenomenology of stress, with an emphasis on the constructiveness of construals of, and cognitive and behavioral reactions to, events viewed as stressful, and to examine the relations of such processes to mental and physical well-being. A 5-year idiographic-nomothetic study is proposed to investigate coping with stress from the perspective of a general theory of personality. Successive classes of students will keep records of their most stressful experience each day for 42 days until a sample of 120 subjects is obtained. Subjects will rate a number of variables related to stress, including construals of situations, mental and behavioral coping responses, and symptoms. Weekly meetings with interviewers will be held to obtain physiological measures, information on illnesses, and ratings of the constructiveness of the subjects' construals and coping responses from an external viewpoint. Students will be given computer print- outs summarizing the means and correlates of their stress responses. A remedial program will then be initiated to teach constructive thinking. A battery of personality tests, including a test of constructive thinking, which will be administered at the beginning and end of the semester, will provide information on constructive thinking that will be correlated with the stress-data, and will also be used to assess improvement. The data will be analyzed intersubjectively and intrasubjectively, the latter both in individual and composite form. The purpose of this study is to elucidate the nature of coping with stress, with particular emphasis on destructive preconscious thinking, and its relation to mental and physical well-being. Other studies will investigate the correlates and antecedents of destructive thinking and of maladaptive basic beliefs about self and world, using specially devised inventories. Particular interest is in the relation between maladaptive thought processes and content, on the one hand, and mental and physical well-being, on the other.
| Epstein, Seymour; Epstein, Martha L (2016) An Integrative Theory of Psychotherapy: Research and Practice. J Psychother Integr 26:116-128 |
| Norris, Paul; Epstein, Seymour (2011) An experiential thinking style: its facets and relations with objective and subjective criterion measures. J Pers 79:1043-79 |
