EMPathy symposium to feature eminent psychologists

The third annual Spielberger EMPathy Symposium on emotion, motivation and personality will be held at APA?s Annual Convention, Saturday, Aug. 15, 2?3:50 p.m., in the Moscone Center, South Building, Room 309.

APA divisions 3 (Experimental), 8 (Society of Personality and Social Psychology), and 12 (Clinical) will administer the symposium. Three prominent psychologists will exchange clinical and research findings on emotion, motivation and personality. The presenters are:

? John F. Kihlstrom, PhD, who will speak about unconscious mental life in his speech, 'The emotional unconscious.' Kihlstrom?s research on hypnosis has been supported by the National Institute of Mental Health since 1977. His 1987 Science article, 'The cognitive unconscious,' is often credited with reopening the scientific study of unconscious mental life. Kihlstrom is a professor in the department of psychology at University of California?Berkeley and a member of Berkeley?s Institute for Personality and Social Research and Institute for Cognitive Studies. At the National Institute of Mental Health, he has chaired two grant review panels and served along with Gordon H. Bower, PhD, as co-chair of the Task Force on Basic Behavioral Sciences.

? W. Edward Craighead, PhD, psychology professor and director of the clinical program at the University of Colorado?Boulder, is speaking on 'Empathy and mood disorders.' He received his doctorate in psychology from the University of Illinois at Champaign?Urbana in 1970. Craighead has written and edited five books, including a widely used text on cognitive-behavior therapy, and has published extensively on the psychosocial aspects and treatments of depression and manic depression.

From 1970 to 1985, Craighead was a professor and director of the clinical training program in the psychology department at Pennsylvania State University. He became professor and director of the Cognitive-Behavior Therapy Program in the department of psychiatry at Duke University Medical Center in 1985. Five years later, he also became professor and director of the clinical program in the department of psychology at Duke University. In 1995, he moved to the psychology department at the University of Colorado?Boulder, where he is currently a professor and director of the clinical program.

? Richard S. Lazarus, PhD, a substantive contributor to what has been called the 'cognitive revolution' in psychology, is speaking on 'Stress, emotions and coping: epistemology and meta theory.'

Lazarus has been with the psychology department at the University of California?Berkeley since 1957. After establishing the Berkeley Stress and Coping Project, he mounted efforts to generate a comprehensive theoretical framework for psychological stress. He undertook significant programmatic research based on these formulations, pioneering the use of motion picture films to generate stress reactions naturalistically in the laboratory. Later he shifted to field research and a systems theoretical point of view. His theoretical and research efforts contributed substantially to the cognitive revolution in psychology.

Lazarus has published more than 200 scientific articles and 18 textbooks and monographs on personality and clinical psychology. In 1966, he wrote the classic 'Psychological Stress and the Coping Process,' and in 1984, he co-published 'Stress, Appraisal, and Coping,' which continues to have worldwide influence. In 1991, he published 'Emotion and Adaptation,' which presents a cognitive-motivational-relational theory of the emotions.

?Starla Crandall