Psychopathology arises from intertemporal bargaining as well as from emotional trauma

Abstract

AbstractThe role of emotional trauma in psychopathology is limited. One additional mechanism is predictable from hyperbolic discounting: When a person uses willpower to control urges each success or failure takes on extra significance through recursive self-prediction, potentially motivating several constricting defense mechanisms. The need for eliciting emotion in psychotherapy is as the authors say it is, but their hypothesis about reconsolidation of memories adds no explanatory power.