The present study had two purposes: 1) to examine the relationship between tendency to experience obsessional intrusive thoughts and tendency to worry; 2) to replicate and extend earlier findings (Purdon and Clark, 1993, 1994) on appraisal and thought suppression strategies in the persistence and control of obsessional intrusive thoughts. A sample of 160 college students were administered the Revised Obsessional Intrusions Inventory (ROII), the Penn State Worry Questionnaire (PSWQ), the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), and the White Bear Suppression Inventory (WBSI). The ROII total score had minimal association with worry, trait thought suppression, or depressive symptoms, thereby supporting the distinctiveness of obsessional intrusive thoughts. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses revealed that cognitive appraisal, especially worries that the intrusion might come true in real life, accounted for a significant amount of variance in thought frequency and controllability. Thought suppression strategies accounted for substantially less variance in both frequency and control of intrusive thoughts. The results are discussed in terms of their support for Rachman's (1993) and Salkovskis' (1985, 1989) theories regarding the role of personal responsibility in the persistence of obsession-like intrusive thoughts.

A measure of everyday risk-taking, the Everyday Risk Inventory (ERI), was developed to assess avoidance of potentially harmful ordinary activities, and some of its psychometric properties were studied. The hypothesis that outpatients with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) would score lower than non-patients on this and other measures of risk-taking was tested. The ERI showed good internal consistency and excellent test-retest reliability. It successfully differentiated OCD patients from non-clinical subjects. Consistent with research on sensation seeking, both age and gender were related to ERI scores, with older subjects and females showing greater risk avoidance. The ERI correlated moderately strongly with other measures of risk-taking and showed, as expected, a less strong negative association with measures of responsibility and value orthodoxy. Preliminary findings indicate that the ERI is a useful instrument for assessing non-pleasurable ordinary risk-taking. Findings are discussed in relation to possible dimensions of risk-taking in existing research on decision-making and the need for research on other patient populations.

A history of sexual abuse is reported by a large proportion of women with psychological disorders. Cognitive approaches to therapy for this group aim to change the dysfunctional cognitions that are associated with abusive experiences, but often lack a clear model of the psychological processes that might be involved. This study examines the relationship between the overt cognitive correlates of sexual abuse (self-denigratory beliefs) and the covert correlates (information-processing bias). Women with psychological disorders who reported a history of sexual abuse had greater levels of self-denigratory beliefs and of information-processing bias than women who had a history of abuse but had no psychological disorder. The difference in overt self-denigratory cognitions was partly explained by the clinical women's higher level of covert information-processing bias. The information-processing bias appears to reflect a specific schema, which involves beliefs about the individual having been “contaminated” by the abusive experience. Therapeutic implications are discussed, including targets for treatment and evaluation. Further research is needed, to allow these cognitive correlates to be understood in relation to different psychological syndromes and symptoms.

In recent years, there has been considerable debate about how accurately people remember emotionally significant information. Early studies concerned with “flashbulb memories” claimed that emotional memories are accurate and persistent. However, recent studies indicate that flashbulb memories are subject to deterioration over time. This finding fits with the idea that individuals who have experienced a traumatic event do not retain all the details of the trauma equally well. Instead, they have relatively good memory for central detail information and relatively poor memory for peripheral details of the traumatic situation. Using self-report data of a normal, healthy sample, Christianson and Loftus (1990) found evidence for this idea. The current study is an attempt to replicate Christianson and Loftus' finding in a normal student population (N = 106). Subjects were asked to describe their most traumatic situation. They rated the vividness of the memory, the intensity of emotion at the time of the trauma and at the time of recall, the amount of reliving, and the amount of central and peripheral detail information remembered. Results indicate that subjects who reported strong emotion at the time of the trauma remembered significantly more central detail information than subjects with relatively low past emotionality ratings. However, no differences in the amount of peripheral detail information remembered were found.

Therapeutic management of obsessional ideas without compulsions is considered to be a rather difficult clinical problem. This report discusses the case of a 24-year old lady with a nine year history of recurrent Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder which most recently presented with a year-long obsessional rumination concerning her superstitious personal responsibility for the accidental death of her cousin. Repeated audio-taped listening to the cognitively restructured content of her obsession resulted both in a rapid elimination of her ruminations and the alleviation of her depressive and general psychopathology.

A number of single case reports have made impressive claims for the efficacy of “eye movement desensitization” (EMD) in the treatment of traumatic memories. Many of these case reports claim that EMD reduces the unpleasant feelings associated with traumatic images. However, at present, there are no published controlled studies that provide evidence for these claims. The present experiment investigated whether EMD inhibits emotional responding during retrieval of aversive information. Normal Ss (N=40) were exposed to an aversive slide. During a next stage, half of the Ss underwent EMD while they rehearsed the slide information, whereas the other half underwent a control procedure (i.e., finger tapping) while rehearsing slide information. Before and after EMD or control intervention, heart rate and self-report data were obtained while Ss retrieved and visualized the aversive slide. No evidence was found to suggest that EMD inhibits emotional reactivity more than does finger tapping.

This paper describes the problems of a dyadic relationship, that of co-authors, and the behaviours that contribute to breakdown. From this a checklist of behaviours is drawn up, to be used to investigate the “at risk” behaviours of potential co-authors.*

Thank you for submitting this interesting paper to Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy. I enclose two reviewers' comments. I have a third reviewer's comments, but intend to withhold this from you for reasons which I cannot specify. All referees are extremely eminent in their field, and you should therefore consider their comments very carefully, obeying without question. Bearing in mind that I also am eminent in this field, I have some additional comments for your consideration.