Emotion Regulation

Central concepts discussed in this volume that are related to health include: coping styles and aggression, alexithymia, emotional intelligence, emotional expression and depression, emotional expression and anxiety disorders, in addition to the emotional competence in children. Emotions: basic products of human functioning, intimately involved in physical health, they have been alternately embraced and ignored by generations of researchers and practitioners. Emotion Regulation offers a much-needed corrective to the conventional clinical wisdom, updating the knowledge base on emotions—specifically their expression and inhibition—as they affect stress, health, and well-being. An international team of researchers from a variety of fields sort out conflicting affect/health theories, and provide the latest findings on inter- and intrapersonal functions of emotions while acknowledging the role of individual variables. The book covers conceptual, developmental, and clinical issues and balances core topics with emerging areas of interest, including: Non-expression of emotion in the affective disorders, and innovative approaches to treatment. Five types of alexithymia, and their relationships to health problems. Aggression as maladaptive coping. Emotional suppression in eating disorders. Children’s somatic complaints: an emotional-competence perspective. Attachment perspectives on adult crying. Emotional intelligence: is it really intelligence, and can it really be assessed? Clinical applications of the writing disclosure paradigm. This wealth of insights makes Emotion Regulation a practice-enhancing work of particular interest to clinical and health psychologists, neuropsychologists, and psychiatrists working in medical settings. The book is comprehensive enough to be a useful postgraduate text for these and related fields.