Cognitive Approaches to Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

The Evolution of Multirepresentational Theorizing

Dalgleish, Tim

¹Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit.

²Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Tim Dalgleish, Emotion Research Group, Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, 15 Chaucer Road, Cambridge, CB2 2EF, England. E-mail: [email protected].

I thank the following people for helpful discussions about PTSD theory over the years: Chris Brewin, David Clark, Anke Ehlers, Edna Foa, Mick Power, and Richard McNally. Thanks also to Phil Barnard, John Teasdale, and Jenny Yiend for comments on an earlier version of this article.

Received Date: April 25, 2002; Revised Date: June 30, 2003; Accepted Date: September 3, 2003

Psychological Bulletin 130(2):p 228-260, March 2004.

The evolution of multirepresentational cognitive theorizing in psychopathology is illustrated by detailed discussion and analysis of a number of prototypical models of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Network and schema theories, which focus on a single, explicit aspect/format of mental representation, are compared with theories that focus on 2 or more explicit representational elements. The author argues that the latter theories provide a more complete account of PTSD data, though are not without their problems. Specifically, it is proposed that at least 3 separate representational elements—associative networks, verbal/propositional representations, and schemas—are required to generate a comprehensive cognitive theory of PTSD. The argument that the development of multirepresentational cognitive theory in PTSD is a paradigm case for the development of similar theories in other forms of psychopathology is elaborated, and a brief agenda is proposed promoting 2 levels of theorizing—deep, formal theory alongside more localized, applied theory.