When Emotion Goes Wrong: Realizing the Promise of Affective Science

One of the fundamental questions that clinical scientists and practitioners alike must address is when emotions are functional and when they are dysfunctional. Recent advances in affective science have provided new tools with which to address this age-old question. In particular, affective science is teaching us a great deal about both the generation and the regulation of emotion. We argue that it is only by harnessing the insights of contemporary affective science that it will be possible to develop a nuanced taxonomy of emotional disturbances that is grounded in a causal analysis of underlying processes. We illustrate our points by drawing upon our recent studies of depression and discuss several important challenges that lie ahead as we build much-needed bridges between affective and clinical science.

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