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Painful truths about depressives' cognitions
Author(s) -
Layne Christopher
Publication year - 1983
Publication title -
journal of clinical psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.124
H-Index - 119
eISSN - 1097-4679
pISSN - 0021-9762
DOI - 10.1002/1097-4679(198311)39:6<848::aid-jclp2270390606>3.0.co;2-1
Subject(s) - psychology , cognition , variety (cybernetics) , assertion , depression (economics) , developmental psychology , clinical psychology , psychiatry , artificial intelligence , computer science , economics , macroeconomics , programming language
Cognitive theories assert that depressed persons' cognitions are distorted. Most of the empirical literature directly contradicts this assertion. Using a wide variety of methods to study a wide variety of cognitive processes, experiments consistently find that depressed people suffer significantly less cognitive distortion than do both normals and nondepressed psychiatric patients. It was speculated that childhood traumas predispose depression by preventing the normal formation of a defensive screen against painful realities.