Setting out the Basic Evaluative Dimensions (BED) Framework

Abstract The central claim in this chapter is that the concept of emotional disorder is meta-evaluative, and thus that judgements of emotional disorder are opaque. This claim is established by means of the ‘Basic Evaluative Dimension’ (BED) analytical framework presented in this chapter. In slightly more detail: the chapter identifies five basic evaluative dimensions along which we appraise our emotional experiences (these are the rationality or otherwise of our emotional responses, the valence quality of our emotional experiences, their existential significance, as well as the roles they play in agential efficacy and interpersonal functioning), and it shows that the judgement of emotional disorder is always rooted in the negative appraisal we make of an emotional experience along one or more of these basic evaluative dimensions. This judgement is constrained and counterweighed by any positive appraisal made of the emotional experience, again along one or more of these basic evaluative dimensions. In this way, the judgement of emotional disorder is a meta-evaluative judgement that signifies a negotiation (either implicitly or explicitly) between the various appraisals made of an emotional experience along these more basic dimensions of evaluation.