Abstract
The most useful and productive concepts in psychopathology are often the ones we understand the least well. This has always been true of such concepts as stress, resilience, and protective factors, and it is no less true of the expressed emotion (EE) construct, a relatively recent addition to the list. Operationally, EE is a measure of the extent to which the relative of a psychiatric patient talks about the patient in a critical, hostile, or emotionally overinvolved way during a semistructured clinical interview. Although the precise nature of the EE construct is not well understood, it is widely believed to reflect an underlying critical and/or negative attitude of the family member toward the patient that expresses itself in daily interactions. Empirical support for this assumption is provided by the results of several laboratory-based studies showing that high levels of EE are associated with more negative patient-relative interactions (Hahlweg et al., 1989; Hooley, 1986; Hooley, 1990; Hooley & Hahlweg, 1986; Kuipers, Sturgeon, Berkowitz, & Leff, 1983; Miklowitz, Goldstein, Falloon, & Doane, 1984; Mueser et al., 1993; Strachan, Leff, Goldstein, Doane, & Burtt, 1986).
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Hooley, J.M., Rosen, L.R., Richters, J.E. (1995). Expressed Emotion: Toward Clarification of a Critical Construct. In: Miller, G.A. (eds) The Behavioral High-Risk Paradigm in Psychopathology. Series in Psychopathology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-4234-5_3
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