Bristol Who’s Who Recognizes Professor Seymour Epstein
Seymour Epstein is a Professor Emeritus in Psychology in the University of Massachusetts Psychology Department. A clinical, personality, and research psychologist; his major interest lies in constructing a unified theory of personality, introducing a new conceptualization of the unconscious mind and constructive thinking as the source of emotional intelligence, stress and coping.
During his tenure, Professor Epstein famously came up with Cognitive-experiential Self Theory (CEST) proposing a dual-process model of perception: an analytical-rational one and an intuitive-experiential one which, operate simultaneously. Seymour Epstein’s book “Cognitive-experiential Theory: An Integrative Theory of Personality.” has recently been published. Outlining CEST, it has received 7 out of 7 rave reviews on amazon.com This book has the potential to revolutionize how we view personality and therefore about how we feel, think, and behave. It was published by Oxford University Press and is suitable for professionals and intelligent ordinary people. It addresses and explains the two operational thinking systems. All higher-order animals construct a working model of their environments with the same experiential system they used to biologically adapt over millions of years of evolution. The experiential system is an automatic learning system that operates without requiring verbal awareness. Humans also uniquely operate with a rational system that provides an alternative route to “truth” by conscious reasoning. Humans did not simply drop their experiential systems when they developed language, as that is not the way evolution operates. They added another adaptive system, the rational system, to the previous experiential system. The experiential system is a mixed blessing for humans because it can bias their conscious, rational thinking, which can cause people to think irrationally. The experiential system influences nearly everything people do. In effect, the experiential system replaces the Freudian maladaptive, indefensible unconscious system with a primarily adaptive led experiential system. A Rational Experiential Inventory (REI) tool was developed to measure the intelligence level for each of the two systems. Research conducted using this tool showed that differentiating intelligence levels were connected with a number of meaningful life outcomes.
After spending 3 years with the Military Service, Seymour earned his bachelor’s degree in Psychology in 1946. This was swiftly followed by master’s degree and PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of Wisconsin in 1953. He then joined the University of Massachusetts where he remained for the rest of his career as a Professor of Psychology and upon retirement, a Professor Emeritus. Throughout his career he published a compendium of over 110 papers. Including recently, “Emotions and psychopathology from the perspective of cognitive-experiential self-theory” (1998), “Some basic issues regarding dual-process theories from the perspective of Cognitive-experiential Self-theory” (1999) and “The interpretation of dreams from the perspective of cognitive-experiential self-theory” (1999). He has won 7 awards and has been honored with various Fellowships and research grants.
Seymour Epstein lives in Massachusetts where he enjoys fly-fishing and writing in his retirement.
Bristol Who’s Who Member Professor Seymour Epstein can be found on the Who’s Who Directory where he is looking forward to networking with you.
