Alienation as a determinant of symptom formation: Self-regulation of affect and integrative competence

Abstract

Alienation as a potential cause of psychological disorders has been neglected in experimental research. The concept of alienation has been restricted to phenomenological approaches to personality. Even modem empirical attempts to investigate alienation-related phenomena are not based on functional accounts of underlying processes (e.g., Deci & Ryan, 2000). It is argued that alienation can be (1) operationalized to analyze its antecedents and consequences, (2) decomposed into two separable forms of alienation (manifest and latent alienation), (3) and related to functional mechanisms in the context of a neurobiologically informed theory of personality systems interactions (PSI theory). Results from experiments studying antecedents and consequences of alienation are described.