Abstracts of 2002 Award Winners' Papers:

Reconceptualizing Tobacco Abuse:
Understanding a Way of Being

Natalie C. Paul, M.A.
Immaculata College

Current tobacco use treatments using traditional cognitive behavioral interventions, established decades ago, are minimally effective despite the recent surge in professional literature incorporating motivational theory and despite composition of treatment guidelines. Such outcomes suggest a need to rethink the underlying psychological processes involved. Unique to each individual is a way of being, a process that reflects how one characteristically perceives, analyses and directs the course of one's life. Examining tobacco abuse from a humanistic and existential perspective seeks to illuminate and treat aspects of this process. This paper proposes an interaction between developmental characteristics, interpretations, judgments, self-searching and integrative processes in order to treat the psychological components to tobacco abuse. An application of this theory and treatment model is provided.