Ten Spectral Assessments of the Cognitive Processing Capacities of Mental Illness Patients one can Use in Online Engagements

Trying to deal functionally and effectively -- as well as compassionately and appropriately -- on a face-to-face basis with anyone suffering from anxiety, depression, manic obsession, "righteous rage," compulsivity, delusionality, dissociation or any other manifestation of mental illness is difficult enough. Trying to do that with those one can neither see nor hear online is far more challenging. But -- it seems to me after more than a decade of so-doing -- there are familiar concepts one can keep in mind (and "pull from the scholastic shelf") to assist therein.

I've attempted here to organize each of the ten concepts in terms of spectra (or continua) from "higher" and more reality-tolerant to "lower" and more defense-mechanism-engaging.

I am by NO means suggesting that the list of ten is complete or that engagement thereof will be foolproof. (I know better than that from repeated experience.) But it may provide a platform for further development as well as a starting point for those who try to deal with such as the survivors of severe levels of each of six main types of child abuse and the behavioral upshots of the Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder induced thereby.

1) Jean Piaget's "sensorimotor, pre-operational, concrete and formal operational" stages (to which I and others have proposed a stage of "magical thinking" or "fantasy operational" in between pre-operational and concrete operational).

2) Erik Erikson's functional "trust, autonomy, initiative, competence, identity, intimacy, generativity and integrity" vs. dysfunctional dis-trust, helpless dependency, inertia, incompetence (with shame), mystification, disengagement, sloth and disintegration.

3) Lawrence Kohlberg's three levels or moral development (each of which have two stages).

4) Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's five stages of grief-processing.

5) Prochaska's & DiClemente's five stages of therapeutic recovery (slightly modified at stage three).

6) John Locke's, David Hume's, Albert Ellis's, Aaron Beck's, Jiddu Krishnamurti's (and other "cognitivists") largely belief-conditioned, -indoctrinated, -instructed, -habituated, -normalized and -bound vs. largely empirical, looking-to-see, listening-to-hear, feeling-to-sense, un-bound, "what just is" orientations. (The logical fallacies are common indicators of belief-binding. Can appraisal or evaluation strictly according to introjected belief ever be as accurate as appraisal or evaluation that is built at least partially on direct perception?) 

7) Sigmund Freud's "functional reality-testing" vs. "delusionally psychotic" orientations, which indicates perceptual -- rather than merely cognitive -- distortion.

8) Louis Cozzolino's, Iain McGilchrist's, et al's largely right-hemispheric, more emotional vs. largely left-hemispheric and more intellectual dominance. (McGilchrist's The Master and His Emissary was vital reading on "right > left > right again" inter-hemispheric functionality for me in this regard.)

9) Immanuel Kant's, Theodore Adorno's, Robert Altemeyer's and Jiddu Krishnamurti's largely rational-empirical "intuitive" vs. largely "direction-following" and often irrational dependence upon external authority.

10) Martin Seligman's "permanence, pervasiveness & personalization" vs. "here & now-ness" and "ego detachment." 

References

Theodor Adorno, Daniel Levinson, et al: The Authoritarian Personality: Studies in Prejudice; orig. pub, 1950, New York: W. W. Norton, 1993.

Altemeyer, R.: The Authoritarian Specter, Boston: Harvard University Press, 1996.

Altemeyer, R.: The Authoritarians, Charleston, SC: Lulu, 2006. 

Beck, A.: Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders, New York: Penguin-Meridian, 1976.

Beck, A.; Freeman, A.: Cognitive Theory of the Personality Disorders, New York: Guilford Press, 1990.

Beck, A.; Wright, F.; Newman, C.; Liese, B.: Cognitive Therapy of Substance Abuse, New York: The Guilford Press, 1993.  

Beck, A.: Prisoners Of Hate: The Cognitive Basis of Anger, Hostility, and Violence, New York: Harper-Collins, 1999. 

Cozzolino, L.: The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy: Building and Rebuilding the Human Brain, New York: W. W. Norton, 2002. 

Ellis, A.; Harper, R.: A Guide to Rational Living, North Hollywood, CA: Melvin Powers, 1961.

Ellis, A.; Becker, I.: A Guide to Personal Happiness, North Hollywood, CA: Melvin Powers, 1982.

Ellis, A.; Dryden, W.: The Practice of Rational Emotive Therapy, New York: Springer Publishing Company, 1987.

Ellis, A.: Overcoming Destructive Beliefs, Feelings, and Behaviors: New Directions for Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, New York: Promethius Books, 2001. 

Erikson, E.: Childhood and Society, New York: W. W. Norton, 1950, 1967, 1993.

Erikson, E.: Identity and the Life Cycle, New York: W. W. Norton, 1959, 1980.

Erikson, E.: The Problem of Ego Identity, in Stein, M., et al: Identity and Anxiety, Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1960.

Freud, S.: An Outline of Psychoanalysis, London: Hogarth Press and Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1938.

Hume, D.: A Treatise of Human Nature, L.A. Selby-Bigge (ed.), London, UK: Oxford University Press, 1975.

Kant, I.: Critique of Pure Reason, Paul Guyer & Allen W. Wood, trans. & ed., London: Cambridge U, Press, 1999.

Kohlberg, L.: The Psychology of Moral Development: The Nature and Validity of Moral Stages, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1984.

Krishnamurti, J.; Huxley, A.: The First & Last Freedom, San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, (1954) 1975.

Krishnamurti, J.: As One Is: To Free the Mind from All Conditioning, Prescott AZ: Hohm Press, (1955) 2007.

Krishnamurti, J.; Luytens, M.: Freedom from the Known, San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1969.

Krishnamurti, J.: Truth and Actuality, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1978. 

Locke, J.: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Alexander Campbell Fraser, ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1894.

McGilchrist, I.: The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, Cambridge, MA: Yale U. Press, 2011.

Piaget, J.: The Origins of Intelligence in Children, New York: International University Press, 1936, 1952.

Prochaska, J.; DiClemente, C.: Transtheoretical therapy: Toward a more integrative model of change, in Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice, Vol. 19, No. 3, 1982. 

Seligman, M.: Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life, New York: Knopf, 1990.