Drew Westen
Biographic Data
| ID | 278060 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Drew Westen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Drew |
| FAMILY NAME | Westen |
| SIGNATURE | WESTEN D |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Michigan |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 32 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 299 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 32 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1984 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Psychology
With CyberPsych Print and Interactive E-Text
The Development of a Psychoanalytic Outcome Study: Choices, Conflicts, and Consensus
This article tells the story of the development of an outcome study of psychoanalysis and describes the debate that took place over critical methodological issues. The protocol committee included career psychotherapy researchers who have conducted rigorous outcome studies, clinical psychoanalysts, study methodologists, and a statistician with clinical trial expertise. The committee worked for two years to develop the study design. This project is…
What Happened to Obama? An Opinion Piece
DREW WESTEN is Professor of Psychology and Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Emory University, and the founder of Westen Strategies, a strategic messaging firm
Rats, We Should Have Used Clinton: Subliminal Priming in Political Campaigns
Political strategists decide daily how to market their candidates. Growing recognition of the importance of implicit processes (processes occurring outside of awareness) suggests limitations to focus groups and polling, which rely on conscious self‐report. Two experiments, inspired by national political campaigns, employed Internet‐presented subliminal primes to study evaluations of politicians. In Experiment 1, the subliminal word “RATS” increas…
Neural Bases of Motivated Reasoning: An fMRI Study of Emotional Constraints on Partisan Political Judgment in the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election
Research on political judgment and decision-making has converged with decades of research in clinical and social psychology suggesting the ubiquity of emotion-biased motivated reasoning. Motivated reasoning is a form of implicit emotion regulation in which the brain converges on judgments that minimize negative and maximize positive affect states associated with threat to or attainment of motives. To what extent motivated reasoning engages neural…
A Multidimensional Meta-Analysis of Psychotherapy for PTSD
Ebp ≠ Est: Reply to Crits-Christoph et al. (2005) and Weisz et al. (2005)
Clinical Judgment in Science: Reply
The Next Generation of Psychotherapy Research: Reply to Ablon and Marci (2004), Goldfried and Eubanks-Carter (2004), and Haaga (2004)
When clinical description becomes statistical prediction
This article reconsiders the issue of clinical versus statistical prediction. The term clinical is widely used to denote 1 pole of 2 independent axes: the observer whose data are being aggregated (clinician/expert vs. lay) and the method of aggregating those data (impressionistic vs. statistical). Fifty years of research suggests that when formulas are available, statistical aggregation outperforms informal, subjective aggregation much of the tim…
The Empirical Status of Empirically Supported Psychotherapies: Assumptions, Findings, and Reporting in Controlled Clinical Trials
This article provides a critical review of the assumptions and findings of studies used to establish psychotherapies as empirically supported. The attempt to identify empirically supported therapies (ESTs) imposes particular assumptions on the use of randomized controlled trial (RCT) methodology that appear to be valid for some disorders and treatments (notably exposure-based treatments of specific anxiety symptoms) but substantially violated for…
Rethinking therapeutic action
Like other core psychoanalytic constructs, the theory of therapeutic action is currently in flux, as theorists of differing persuasions propose different mechanisms. In this article, the authors attempt to integrate developments within and without psychoanalysis to provide a working model of the multifaceted processes involved in producing change in psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy. A theory of therapeutic action must describe both…
Quantifying construct validity: Two simple measures
Construct validity is one of the most central concepts in psychology. Researchers generally establish the construct validity of a measure by correlating it with a number of other measures and arguing from the pattern of correlations that the measure is associated with these variables in theoretically predictable ways. This article presents 2 simple metrics for quantifying construct validity that provide effect size estimates indicating the extent…
Developments in Cognitive Neuroscience: I. Conflict, Compromise, and Connectionism
The strength of psychoanalysis has always been its understanding of affect and motivation. Contemporary developments in cognitive neuroscience offer possibilities of integrating sophisticated, experimentally informed models of thought and memory with an understanding of dynamically and clinically meaningful processes. Aspects of contemporary theory and research in cognitive neuroscience are integrated with psychoanalytic theory and technique, par…
Developments in Cognitive Neuroscience: II. Implications for Theories of Transference
An integration of psychoanalytic theory with contemporary developments in cognitive neuroscience offers a useful perspective on long-standing controversies about the nature of transference, and a better understanding of the precise mechanisms by which transferential processes occur. Contemporary psychoanalytic views of transference are reviewed, and the many processes that constitute transference are described. Two issues that have emerged in dif…
The Scientific Status of Unconscious Processes: Is Freud Really Dead
At regular intervals for over half a century, critiques of Freud and psychoanalysis have emerged in the popular media and in intellectual circles, usually declaring that Freud has died some new and agonizing death, and that the enterprise he created should be buried along with him like the artifacts in the tomb of an Egyptian king. Although the critiques take many forms, a central claim has long been that unconscious processes, like other psychoa…
The scientific legacy of Sigmund Freud: Toward a psychodynamically informed psychological science
Although commentators periodically declare that Freud is dead, his repeated burials lie on shaky grounds. Critics typically attack an archaic version of psychodynamic theory that most clinicians similarly consider obsolete. Central to contemporary psychodynamic theory is a series of propositions about (a) unconscious cognitive, affective, and motivational processes; (b) ambivalence and the tendency for affective and motivational dynamics to opera…
A Model and a Method for Uncovering the Nomothetic from the Idiographic: An Alternative to the Five-Factor Model
A Clinical‐Empirical Model of Personality: Life after the Mischelian Ice Age and the NEO‐Lithic Era
A theory of personality should lead to both accurate prediction and interpretive understanding. Aside from its empirical uses, a personality theory should provide a grammar that allows personality psychologists to infer meaning from overt behavior with more sophistication than a layperson, and the best laboratory for testing the interpretive utility of a personality theory remains the clinic. With respect to the appropriate data for constructing …
Toward an Integrative Model of Affect Regulation: Applications to Social‐Psychological Research
This article describes a model of affect regulation that integrates research and theory from psychoanalytic, cognitive, behavioral, and evolutionary perspectives on personality. It proposes that feelings are mechanisms for the selection and retention of behavioral and mental responses. Individuals select behaviors, coping strategies, and defensive strategies that regulate aversive affective states and maximize pleasurable ones. These affect regul…
Maternal Empathy, Family Chaos, and the Etiology of Borderline Personality Disorder
Psychoanalytic writers have traced the etiology of borderline personality disorder (BPD) to be a preoedipal disturbance in the mother-child relationship. Despite the prevalence of theories focusing on the role of mothering in the development of BPD, few empirical studies have tested the hypothesis that borderlines were the recipients of unempathic mothering. The current preliminary study compared 13 mothers of borderline adolescents with 13 mothe…
Sex Differences in Jealousy: Evolution, Physiology, and Psychology
In species with internal female fertilization, males risk both lowered paternity probability and investment in rival gametes if their mates have sexual contact with other males. Females of such species do not risk lowered maternity probability through partner infidelity, but they do risk the diversion of their mates' commitment and resources to rival females. Three studies tested the hypothesis that sex differences in jealousy emerged in humans a…
The Assessment of Complexity of Representations of People Using TAT and Interview Data
The complexity of mental representations of self and others is a central dimension of personality structure and interpersonal functioning. The richness, differentiation, and integration of representations develops throughout childhood and adolescence and differs among individuals and among various psychopathological populations. The nature and development of mental representations is central to object relations theories in psychoanalysis, and has…
Social cognition and object relations
Social cognition research and psychoanalytic object relations theory both address the cognitive and affective processes that mediate interpersonal functioning. Each approach faces a number of difficulties that could be more readily addressed by examining the methods, assumptions, metaphors, and models of the other. Social cognitive research could benefit from the psychoanalytic understanding of affective processes, defensive processes, and uncons…
Physical and sexual abuse in adolescent girls with borderline personality disorder
Recent investigations suggest that a history of childhood sexual abuse may be associated with borderline personality disorder. This study compares a group of female adolescents diagnosed as borderline with a control group for history of physical and sexual abuse. History of both forms of abuse, particularly sexual, distinguishes the two groups. Results point to the impact of repeated trauma on character structure, cognitive functioning, and Axis …
The Empirical Status of Empirically Supported Psychotherapies: Assumptions, Findings, and Reporting in Controlled Clinical Trials
This article provides a critical review of the assumptions and findings of studies used to establish psychotherapies as empirically supported. The attempt to identify empirically supported therapies (ESTs) imposes particular assumptions on the use of randomized controlled trial (RCT) methodology that appear to be valid for some disorders and treatments (notably exposure-based treatments of specific anxiety symptoms) but substantially violated for…
Rethinking therapeutic action
Like other core psychoanalytic constructs, the theory of therapeutic action is currently in flux, as theorists of differing persuasions propose different mechanisms. In this article, the authors attempt to integrate developments within and without psychoanalysis to provide a working model of the multifaceted processes involved in producing change in psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy. A theory of therapeutic action must describe both…
Developments in Cognitive Neuroscience: I. Conflict, Compromise, and Connectionism
The strength of psychoanalysis has always been its understanding of affect and motivation. Contemporary developments in cognitive neuroscience offer possibilities of integrating sophisticated, experimentally informed models of thought and memory with an understanding of dynamically and clinically meaningful processes. Aspects of contemporary theory and research in cognitive neuroscience are integrated with psychoanalytic theory and technique, par…
The Scientific Status of Unconscious Processes: Is Freud Really Dead
At regular intervals for over half a century, critiques of Freud and psychoanalysis have emerged in the popular media and in intellectual circles, usually declaring that Freud has died some new and agonizing death, and that the enterprise he created should be buried along with him like the artifacts in the tomb of an Egyptian king. Although the critiques take many forms, a central claim has long been that unconscious processes, like other psychoa…
Developments in Cognitive Neuroscience: II. Implications for Theories of Transference
An integration of psychoanalytic theory with contemporary developments in cognitive neuroscience offers a useful perspective on long-standing controversies about the nature of transference, and a better understanding of the precise mechanisms by which transferential processes occur. Contemporary psychoanalytic views of transference are reviewed, and the many processes that constitute transference are described. Two issues that have emerged in dif…
Social cognition and object relations
Social cognition research and psychoanalytic object relations theory both address the cognitive and affective processes that mediate interpersonal functioning. Each approach faces a number of difficulties that could be more readily addressed by examining the methods, assumptions, metaphors, and models of the other. Social cognitive research could benefit from the psychoanalytic understanding of affective processes, defensive processes, and uncons…
The scientific legacy of Sigmund Freud: Toward a psychodynamically informed psychological science
Although commentators periodically declare that Freud is dead, his repeated burials lie on shaky grounds. Critics typically attack an archaic version of psychodynamic theory that most clinicians similarly consider obsolete. Central to contemporary psychodynamic theory is a series of propositions about (a) unconscious cognitive, affective, and motivational processes; (b) ambivalence and the tendency for affective and motivational dynamics to opera…
Rats, We Should Have Used Clinton: Subliminal Priming in Political Campaigns
Political strategists decide daily how to market their candidates. Growing recognition of the importance of implicit processes (processes occurring outside of awareness) suggests limitations to focus groups and polling, which rely on conscious self‐report. Two experiments, inspired by national political campaigns, employed Internet‐presented subliminal primes to study evaluations of politicians. In Experiment 1, the subliminal word “RATS” increas…
When clinical description becomes statistical prediction
This article reconsiders the issue of clinical versus statistical prediction. The term clinical is widely used to denote 1 pole of 2 independent axes: the observer whose data are being aggregated (clinician/expert vs. lay) and the method of aggregating those data (impressionistic vs. statistical). Fifty years of research suggests that when formulas are available, statistical aggregation outperforms informal, subjective aggregation much of the tim…
Quantifying construct validity: Two simple measures
Construct validity is one of the most central concepts in psychology. Researchers generally establish the construct validity of a measure by correlating it with a number of other measures and arguing from the pattern of correlations that the measure is associated with these variables in theoretically predictable ways. This article presents 2 simple metrics for quantifying construct validity that provide effect size estimates indicating the extent…
A Model and a Method for Uncovering the Nomothetic from the Idiographic: An Alternative to the Five-Factor Model
Self and Society: Narcissism, Collectivism, and the Development of Morals
The relation between individual and collective processes is central to the social sciences, yet difficult to conceptualize because of the necessity of crossing disciplinary boundaries. The result is that researchers in different disciplines construct their own implicit, and often unsatisfactory, models of either individual or collective phenomena, which in turn influence their theoretical and empirical work. In this 1985 book, Drew Westen attempt…
Cultural Materialism: Food for Thought or Bum Steer? [and Comments and Replies]
In its specific theories Harris's cultural materialism has often proven illuminating. As a model of and method for studying culture, however, it is seriously flawed. One of the dilemmas it faces is the conflict between its epistemology and the assumption of infrastructural determinism: if empirical science is a superstructural concomitant of a particular infrastructure, then it can be neither more valid than any other view norcausally or practica…
The Development of a Psychoanalytic Outcome Study: Choices, Conflicts, and Consensus
This article tells the story of the development of an outcome study of psychoanalysis and describes the debate that took place over critical methodological issues. The protocol committee included career psychotherapy researchers who have conducted rigorous outcome studies, clinical psychoanalysts, study methodologists, and a statistician with clinical trial expertise. The committee worked for two years to develop the study design. This project is…
What Happened to Obama? An Opinion Piece
DREW WESTEN is Professor of Psychology and Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Emory University, and the founder of Westen Strategies, a strategic messaging firm
Ebp ≠ Est: Reply to Crits-Christoph et al. (2005) and Weisz et al. (2005)
Clinical Judgment in Science: Reply
The Next Generation of Psychotherapy Research: Reply to Ablon and Marci (2004), Goldfried and Eubanks-Carter (2004), and Haaga (2004)
Maternal Empathy, Family Chaos, and the Etiology of Borderline Personality Disorder
Psychoanalytic writers have traced the etiology of borderline personality disorder (BPD) to be a preoedipal disturbance in the mother-child relationship. Despite the prevalence of theories focusing on the role of mothering in the development of BPD, few empirical studies have tested the hypothesis that borderlines were the recipients of unempathic mothering. The current preliminary study compared 13 mothers of borderline adolescents with 13 mothe…
Cultural Materialism: Food for Thought or Bum Steer? [and Comments and Replies]
In its specific theories Harris's cultural materialism has often proven illuminating. As a model of and method for studying culture, however, it is seriously flawed. One of the dilemmas it faces is the conflict between its epistemology and the assumption of infrastructural determinism: if empirical science is a superstructural concomitant of a particular infrastructure, then it can be neither more valid than any other view norcausally or practica…
On Westen on Cultural Materialism
The Superego: A Revised Developmental Model
The superego is not, as psychoanalytic theory asserts, primarily heir to the oedipus complex. Freud proposed two theories of identification and superego formation, only one of which is widely known and accepted. The first, which he abandoned, argues for the genesis of conscience as compensation for lost narcissism. The second explains superego formation as a response to object loss and fear of castration. The latter view faces a number of anomali…
Self and Society: Narcissism, Collectivism, and the Development of Morals
The relation between individual and collective processes is central to the social sciences, yet difficult to conceptualize because of the necessity of crossing disciplinary boundaries. The result is that researchers in different disciplines construct their own implicit, and often unsatisfactory, models of either individual or collective phenomena, which in turn influence their theoretical and empirical work. In this 1985 book, Drew Westen attempt…
Three New Essays on Human Nature and Culture
Are "primitive" object relations really preoedipal
Developmental models of object relations attempt to explain severe character pathology strictly in terms of preoedipal fixations and regressions. While aspects of the object relations of severe character disorders do appear to be preoedipal, developmental research suggests that others are preadolescent, adult, or abnormal, but not developmentally primitive
The relationship between borderline personality disorder and anxiety disorders
Eleven "pure" borderlines, ten borderlines with depression, 16 "pure" depressives, and 31 normal subjects were compared on a number of standardized inventories of anxiety. While patient groups experienced more anxiety of all types than did normals, borderlines did not emerge as more anxious than other patient groups. Qualitative differences in the anxiety experienced by borderlines and nonborderlines are discussed
Physical and sexual abuse in adolescent girls with borderline personality disorder
Recent investigations suggest that a history of childhood sexual abuse may be associated with borderline personality disorder. This study compares a group of female adolescents diagnosed as borderline with a control group for history of physical and sexual abuse. History of both forms of abuse, particularly sexual, distinguishes the two groups. Results point to the impact of repeated trauma on character structure, cognitive functioning, and Axis …
Social cognition and object relations
Social cognition research and psychoanalytic object relations theory both address the cognitive and affective processes that mediate interpersonal functioning. Each approach faces a number of difficulties that could be more readily addressed by examining the methods, assumptions, metaphors, and models of the other. Social cognitive research could benefit from the psychoanalytic understanding of affective processes, defensive processes, and uncons…
Sex Differences in Jealousy: Evolution, Physiology, and Psychology
In species with internal female fertilization, males risk both lowered paternity probability and investment in rival gametes if their mates have sexual contact with other males. Females of such species do not risk lowered maternity probability through partner infidelity, but they do risk the diversion of their mates' commitment and resources to rival females. Three studies tested the hypothesis that sex differences in jealousy emerged in humans a…
The Assessment of Complexity of Representations of People Using TAT and Interview Data
The complexity of mental representations of self and others is a central dimension of personality structure and interpersonal functioning. The richness, differentiation, and integration of representations develops throughout childhood and adolescence and differs among individuals and among various psychopathological populations. The nature and development of mental representations is central to object relations theories in psychoanalysis, and has…
Toward an Integrative Model of Affect Regulation: Applications to Social‐Psychological Research
This article describes a model of affect regulation that integrates research and theory from psychoanalytic, cognitive, behavioral, and evolutionary perspectives on personality. It proposes that feelings are mechanisms for the selection and retention of behavioral and mental responses. Individuals select behaviors, coping strategies, and defensive strategies that regulate aversive affective states and maximize pleasurable ones. These affect regul…
Maternal Empathy, Family Chaos, and the Etiology of Borderline Personality Disorder
Psychoanalytic writers have traced the etiology of borderline personality disorder (BPD) to be a preoedipal disturbance in the mother-child relationship. Despite the prevalence of theories focusing on the role of mothering in the development of BPD, few empirical studies have tested the hypothesis that borderlines were the recipients of unempathic mothering. The current preliminary study compared 13 mothers of borderline adolescents with 13 mothe…
A Clinical‐Empirical Model of Personality: Life after the Mischelian Ice Age and the NEO‐Lithic Era
A theory of personality should lead to both accurate prediction and interpretive understanding. Aside from its empirical uses, a personality theory should provide a grammar that allows personality psychologists to infer meaning from overt behavior with more sophistication than a layperson, and the best laboratory for testing the interpretive utility of a personality theory remains the clinic. With respect to the appropriate data for constructing …
A Model and a Method for Uncovering the Nomothetic from the Idiographic: An Alternative to the Five-Factor Model
The scientific legacy of Sigmund Freud: Toward a psychodynamically informed psychological science
Although commentators periodically declare that Freud is dead, his repeated burials lie on shaky grounds. Critics typically attack an archaic version of psychodynamic theory that most clinicians similarly consider obsolete. Central to contemporary psychodynamic theory is a series of propositions about (a) unconscious cognitive, affective, and motivational processes; (b) ambivalence and the tendency for affective and motivational dynamics to opera…
The Scientific Status of Unconscious Processes: Is Freud Really Dead
At regular intervals for over half a century, critiques of Freud and psychoanalysis have emerged in the popular media and in intellectual circles, usually declaring that Freud has died some new and agonizing death, and that the enterprise he created should be buried along with him like the artifacts in the tomb of an Egyptian king. Although the critiques take many forms, a central claim has long been that unconscious processes, like other psychoa…
Developments in Cognitive Neuroscience: I. Conflict, Compromise, and Connectionism
The strength of psychoanalysis has always been its understanding of affect and motivation. Contemporary developments in cognitive neuroscience offer possibilities of integrating sophisticated, experimentally informed models of thought and memory with an understanding of dynamically and clinically meaningful processes. Aspects of contemporary theory and research in cognitive neuroscience are integrated with psychoanalytic theory and technique, par…
Developments in Cognitive Neuroscience: II. Implications for Theories of Transference
An integration of psychoanalytic theory with contemporary developments in cognitive neuroscience offers a useful perspective on long-standing controversies about the nature of transference, and a better understanding of the precise mechanisms by which transferential processes occur. Contemporary psychoanalytic views of transference are reviewed, and the many processes that constitute transference are described. Two issues that have emerged in dif…
Rethinking therapeutic action
Like other core psychoanalytic constructs, the theory of therapeutic action is currently in flux, as theorists of differing persuasions propose different mechanisms. In this article, the authors attempt to integrate developments within and without psychoanalysis to provide a working model of the multifaceted processes involved in producing change in psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy. A theory of therapeutic action must describe both…
Quantifying construct validity: Two simple measures
Construct validity is one of the most central concepts in psychology. Researchers generally establish the construct validity of a measure by correlating it with a number of other measures and arguing from the pattern of correlations that the measure is associated with these variables in theoretically predictable ways. This article presents 2 simple metrics for quantifying construct validity that provide effect size estimates indicating the extent…
The Next Generation of Psychotherapy Research: Reply to Ablon and Marci (2004), Goldfried and Eubanks-Carter (2004), and Haaga (2004)
When clinical description becomes statistical prediction
This article reconsiders the issue of clinical versus statistical prediction. The term clinical is widely used to denote 1 pole of 2 independent axes: the observer whose data are being aggregated (clinician/expert vs. lay) and the method of aggregating those data (impressionistic vs. statistical). Fifty years of research suggests that when formulas are available, statistical aggregation outperforms informal, subjective aggregation much of the tim…
The Empirical Status of Empirically Supported Psychotherapies: Assumptions, Findings, and Reporting in Controlled Clinical Trials
This article provides a critical review of the assumptions and findings of studies used to establish psychotherapies as empirically supported. The attempt to identify empirically supported therapies (ESTs) imposes particular assumptions on the use of randomized controlled trial (RCT) methodology that appear to be valid for some disorders and treatments (notably exposure-based treatments of specific anxiety symptoms) but substantially violated for…
A Multidimensional Meta-Analysis of Psychotherapy for PTSD
Psychology (26 works) · Psychotherapy Techniques and Applications (14 works) · Personality Disorders and Psychopathology (12 works) · Psychotherapist (12 works) · Social Psychology (12 works) · Cognitive psychology (11 works) · Computer Science (10 works) · Psychoanalysis (10 works) · Psychoanalytic theory (10 works) · Epistemology (9 works)