The role of “real”; experience in psychopathology and treatment

In contrast to classical psychoanalytic theory, Weiss (1986, 1990) has proposed that a person works, from infancy onward, to understand his reality and to adapt to it. In doing so, the person constructs, by inference from experience, a system of conscious and unconscious beliefs about his or her reality. These beliefs organize personality; some of them are pathogenic in that they lead to the development and maintenance of psychopathology. The patient works in therapy to change pathogenic beliefs and may use experiences with the therapist to disconfirm them and make progress.