Representations, Schemas, and Living-in-the-World

Abstract

Responding to Kenneth Frank’s paper on therapeutic action, the present paper focuses especially on Frank’s emphasis on emotion schemas as a central therapeutic target across the spectrum of approaches. While strongly agreeing with the value and importance of the emotion schema concept as a unifying foundation for understanding therapeutic action, this paper highlights the differences between primarily one-person versions of the concept and conceptualizations of emotion schemas more rooted in contextual, two-person, and bidirectional interactive models. In elaborating on this distinction, the paper addresses as well as differences between a primarily representational psychology and one focused on living-in-the-world.