This fresh exploration of the utility of “person schemas” for understanding interpersonal
behavior and intrapsychic conflict brings together psychoanalytic researchers, social learning
theorists, and cognitive scientists. The contributors show that a fuller conceptualization of
person schemas can begin to close the gap between psychodynamic and cognitive science
research, providing new methods for understanding disorders of personality.

“There are many strengths in this volume beyond the clear presentation of the person schema
as a concept linking cognitive and psychodynamic perspectives. . . . Students will have an
opportunity for comparison of perspectives while those working in the field will have an
opportunity to follow the shift from concept to method to case application to theoretical
context for understanding personality change.”—Bertram J. Cohler, University of Chicago

Contributors are Lorna Smith Benjamin, Paul Crits-Christoph, Randolph L. Cunningham, Roy
D'Andrade, Amy Demorest, Mary Ewert, Scott H. Friedman, Frances J. Friedrich, Jess H.
Ghannam, Dianna Hartley, Mardi J. Horowitz, John F. Kihlstrom, Peter H. Knapp, Lester
Luborsky, David Mark, Thomas V. Merluzzi, Stephen E. Palmer, Carol Popp, Peter Salovey,
Pamela Schaffler, Jerome L. Singer, Charles H. Stinson, and Sandra L. Tunis.

Psychodynamics and Cognition outlines ways that methods and ideas from cognitive and information science can be used to reformulate psychoanalytic concepts and to test them outside the psychoanalytic situation. Based on a 1984 conference sponsored by the Health Program of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, this book presents a series of papers by distinguished scholars in psychoanalysis, cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and linguistics.