Book excerpt: This text critically reviews the literature on attention and emotion, and offers an integrative cognitive attentional model of the development and maintenance of emotional disorders. It highlights the similarities and differences between disorders and offers specific new treatment implications. The book contains numerous summary sections so that readers less familiar with the cognitive literature can follow the main issues without being overwhelmed. The central aims of this work are: to review critically models of attention and their application to attentional processes in emotional disorders; To develop an integrative theoretical framework and model for conceptualizing attentional processes associated with the aetiology and maintenance of emotional stress reactions; and to discuss the implications for clinical practice of attentional theories of emotional dysfunction.