Reframing Cognitive Therapy to Integrate Recent Research on Emotion, Imagery, and Self-Talk

The current research was designed to demonstrate that people concoct stories to explain lingering emotions, when the true source of emotion has passed without conscious integration. While viewing a DVD recording of nine abstract paintings in succession, subjects observed a) subliminal pictures of disgusting stimuli in the inter-painting intervals; b) supraliminal pictures of disgusting stimuli in the inter-painting intervals; or c) no pictures in the intervals. Over half of the subliminally stimulated subjects who experienced disgust failed to identify any of the disgusting stimuli and concocted stories about the source of their disgust. Future-oriented stories were more prevalent in subjects who were “desirous of explanations” and who had a futuristic attribution style, whereas past-oriented stories were more prevalent in subjects whose attribution style was not futuristic. The current results, like other findings reviewed in the introduction to this study, are not consistent with the theoretical underpinnings of cognitive therapy. Alternative research-based reasons for the effectiveness of cognitive therapy are suggested, and clinical cases integrating these suggestions are discussed.