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INTEGRATING CBT & HYPNOSIS

have a greater capacity than language for attracting and retrieving emotionally laden associations. Individuals predisposed to depression tend to focus on negative thoughts and images. Schultz (1978, 1984, 2003), Starker and Singer (1975), and Traynor (1974) have provided evidence that with increasing levels of depression, depressives tend to change the contents of their imagination to negative fantasies, and consequently are unable to redirect their thinking and imagery from their current problems and negative life-concerns. Such subjectivity or emotional involvement can lead to loss of control over the intensity of emotional imagery (Horowitz, 1972) or to the dissociation of affect (Bower, 1981). In other words, the circular feedback cycle between cognition and affect repeats itself almost like a computer recycling through an infinite loop (Schultz, 1978) as the depression worsens, thus validating the depressive reality in the form of self-affirmations or posthypnotic suggestions. Neisser (1967) views such narrowing down and distortion of the environment by a few repetitive behaviors and self-attributions as characteristic of psychopathology (that is, there is an absence of reality testing). The CDMD model also attaches importance to both conscious and nonconscious information processing. Although we are capable of rational operations, most judgments are highly influenced by what is availableparticularly vivid informationin current memory at the time (Kahneman, Slovic, & Tversky, 1982). Since depressives are preoccupied with negative self-schemas (Dobson, 1986), their judgments are likely to be biased, leading to the maintenance of syncretic cognition. Syncretic cognition involves the fusion of various sources of informationvisceral, postural, sensory, and mnemonicforming an undifferentiated experiential matrix (Safer & Leventhal, 1977) that reinforces the validation of the depressives reality both mentally and physically. Furthermore, judgements and emotions can be influenced by nonconscious cognitive processes (e.g., Williams, Watts, MacLeod, & Mathews, 1997). Shevrin and Dickman (1980), after reviewing the research evidence for nonconscious processes, concluded that no psychological model of human experience could ignore the concept of unconscious psychological processes. Work on selective attention (Posner, 1973; Sternberg, 1975) suggests that conscious psychological processes are influenced by the initial phase of cognitive activity that occurs outside of awareness. Research on subliminal perception (Shevrin, 1978) reveals that the