Cognitive-Experiential Self-Theory of Personality

This chapter includes material from several other chapters and articles as well as new information. Cognitive-experiential self-theory 2 p. 3. Cognitive-experiential self-theory 3 Cognitive-experiential self-theory (CEST) is a broadly integrative theory of personality that is compatible with a variety of other theories, including psychodynamic theories, learning theories, phenomenological self-theories, and modern cognitive scientific views on information processing. CEST achieves its integrative power primarily through three assumptions. The first is that people process information by two independent, interactive conceptual systems, a preconscious " experiential system " and a conscious " rational system ". By introducing a new view of the unconscious in the form of an experiential system, CEST is able to explain almost everything that psychoanalysis can and much that it can not, and it is able to do so in a scientifically much more defensible manner. The second assumption is that the experiential system is emotionally driven. This assumption permits CEST to integrate the passionate tooth-and-phallus unconscious of psychoanalysis with the " kinder, gentler " affect-free unconscious of cognitive science (Epstein, 1994). The third assumption is that four basic needs, each of which is assumed in other theories to be the one most fundamental need, are equally important according to CEST. In this chapter, I review the basic assumptions of CEST, summarize the research conducted to test the theory, and note the implications of the theory for research and psychotherapy. TWO INFORMATION PROCESSING SYSTEMS According to CEST, humans operate by two fundamental information-processing systems, a rational system and an experiential system. The two systems operate in parallel and are interactive. CEST has nothing new to say about the rational system, other than to emphasize the degree to which it is influenced by the experiential system. CEST does have a great deal to say about the experiential system. In effect, CEST introduces a new system of unconscious processing in the experiential system that is a substitute for the unconscious system in psychoanalysis. Although, like Cognitive-experiential self-theory 4 psychoanalysis, CEST emphasizes the unconscious, it differs from psychoanalysis in its conception of how the unconscious operates. Before proceeding further, it should be noted that the word " rational " as used in the rational system refers to a set of analytical principles and has no implications with respect to the reasonableness of the behavior, which is an alternative meaning of the word. It is assumed in CEST that everyone, like it or …