[Motivation and emotional disorders. A cognitive science approach. I: Principles, classification and diagnosis]

There are no generally accepted classification schemes for motivational and emotional disorders. One of the reasons is the difficulty in isolating motivational and emotional disorders from complex behaviors. Therefore, terms which characterize certain behaviors globally, such as clinical syndromes, are preferred in the clinical literature. Another, related reason is that within clinical psychology and the psychology of emotions are treated as two entirely separate fields with hardly any mutual influence. A third reason lies in the diversities of theories and schools of thought where the psychology of emotions as well as clinical psychology are concerned, thus, schemes, based on a general framework which is grounded in research in "Cognitiver Science" and general psychology, were developed which enable the comprehensive classification of motivational and emotional disorders, irrespective of individual therapeutic schools of thought or emotion-theoretic orientations. From the classification schemes, diagnostic criteria can be derived. This is the topic of Part I. In Part II it is demonstrated how these schemas can be applied to the comparison of different therapeutic schools with respect to theories of motivational and emotional disorders. Moreover, it is shown, how these ideas can be used to derive strategies for therapeutic interventions.