Directions in the Study of Personal-change Endeavors by Clinical and Social Psychologists: An Introduction.- Initiating Changes: Perceptions and Intentions.- Perceptions of Self-initiated Change.- Perceptions of Changes in the Self: The Impact of Life Events and Large Group Awareness Training.- Opting to Change: Students' Informal Self-change Endeavors.- Changing: Process Approaches to Initiation and Maintenance of Changes.- In Search of the Structure of Change.- Lineal and Recursive Perspectives on Change: Describing the Development and Amelioration of Agoraphobia.- Determinants of Relapse in Addictive Behaviors: A Social Learning Approach to Facilitating Maintenance.- Who Succeeds in Losing Weight?.- Negotiating Changes: The Social Groundings of Personal Change.- The Social Constitution of the Persistence of Personal Change: An Ecological Interpretation.- Psychotherapy as a Conversation for Change.- Volitional Personal Change in an Interpersonal Perspective.- Social Comparison and Self Change.- Structural Equation Modeling of Self-initiated Change.

Self Change: Social Psychological and Clinical Perspectives examines cognitive and motivational factors affecting the intention to seek change, processes involved in the initiation and maintenance of change, the role of social networks as facilitators or inhibitors of change, and measurement and assessment of personal change. At any given moment millions of people are contemplating changing various aspects of themselves; a general theory on volitional change is sorely needed. This book, which is of interest to social psychologists, clinical psychologists and psychotherapists, to researchers and practitioners, is a significant contribution to a more thorough understanding of self change.