A Handbook of Hospital Psychiatry by Louis Linn

Abstract

Violence in Israeli society has in recent years become more prevalent. Our Social and Welfare Services have been receiving more reports of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse within families and within Israeli society at large. In an attempt to address this problem, the authors selected eight girls, 14 to 15 years of age, to participate in a group to explore egalitarian relationships, with the goal of reducing the likelihood that members will enter a violent relationship. The group was part of a preventive intervention program for girls who were identified as being at high risk.

The participants met for a 12-session psychoeducational therapy group to discuss a range of different topics associated with egalitarian relationships and violence, from both theoretical and practical perspectives. After having completed the program, participants generally reported a high level of satisfaction. The girls mostly responded that participating in the group greatly enhanced their knowledge about egalitarian, non-abusive relationships, as well as their personal awareness of the implications of violent behavior.     

Rule-governed activity vs. rule-creating activity

Questioning the usual understanding of Native American religions as supernaturalistic, this study re-examines the ritual system of the Yaqui people of Arizona. First, it evaluates assumptions about the nature of religion—including God, grace, and prayer—which inform the ethnographical interpretation of Yaqui religion. Second, it reconstructs the Yaqui cosmological system and relates their complex cosmos to the traditional religious actors, the Deer Dancer and the Pascola clowns. Third it examines the master symbol, Sewa or Flower, to demonstrate that Yaqui religious logic does not correspond to the grace theory of Catholicism. Fourth, it demonstrates that flower embodies a causal system in which all religious actors, human and transcendent beings alike, achieve ritual efficacy in mutual, reciprocal acts of witnessing. Finally, the essay observes that ‘conversion’ fails to make sense of Yaqui syncretism for two related reasons. In the first place, the Yaqui neither rejected the world nor embraced a monotheism which assigns a privileged, vertical superiority to God. In the second, the Yaqui applied traditional insights deriving from the most basic realm of myth to reach an understanding that Jesus and Deer are alike powerful innocents who sacrifice themselves so that others might live. In all these ways, the essay demonstrates that the concept of the supernatural fails to explain either the traditional or the Christian sides of Yaqui religion and suggests that the same may be true for other Native American religions as well.     

The time of activity

This essay analyzes the time of human activity. It begins by discussing how most accounts of action treat the time of action as succession, using Donald Davidson's account of action as illustration. It then argues that an adequate account of action and its determinants, one able to elucidate the ``indeterminacy of action,' requires an alternative conception of action time. The remainder of the essay constructs a propitious account of the time and determination of action. It does so by critically drawing on Henri Bergson's notion of duration and Martin Heidegger's notion of the teleological dimensionality (past, present, and future) of existence. Whereas Bergson provides valuable insights into the continuity of activity, Heidegger illuminates the determination of action. Combining their insights yields an account of the time of activity that supplements succession with a nonsuccessive temporality: the time of activity is an overlapping continuum of action performances each of which is structured as coming towards an end starting from a motivating state of affairs. The essay concludes with brief thoughts on what justifies calling the nonsuccessive dimensionality of existence a kind of time.     

Dynamics of mental activity

Motivated by neuronal modeling, our development of the mathematical foundations of consciousness in [W. Miranker, G. Zuckerman, Mathematical Foundations of Consciousness, J. Appl. Logic (2009)] (M-Z) was characterized by an axiomatic theory for consciousness operators that acted on the collection of all sets. Consciousness itself was modeled as emanating from the action of such operators on the labeled decoration of a graph, the latter set theoretic construct given the characterization of experience. Since mental activity (conscious and unconscious) is a time dependent process, we herein develop a discrete time dependent version of the theory. Specification of the relevant mental dynamics illuminates and expands the development of the mathematical framework in (M-Z) upon which our study of consciousness rests. This framework is an abstraction of neural net modeling.We review the Aczel theory for decorating labeled graphs, in particular that theory's application to the (M-Z) foundations. The relevant neuronal modeling concepts and terminology are also reviewed. A number of examples are presented. Then an extension of our considerations from graphs to multigraphs is made, since the latter represent a more accurate model of neuronal circuit connectivity. The dynamics are crafted for non-well-founded constructs by development of a hierarchy of systems, starting with the McCulloch–Pitts neuronal voltage input–output relations and building to a dynamics for the cognitive notions of memes and themata; these latter corresponding to aspects of decorations of labeled graphs associated with neural networks. We conclude with a summary and discussion of the semantics of the cognitive features of our development: memes, themata, qualia, consciousness operators, awareness field.     

Attraction toward physical activity as a moderator of socio-cognitive predictors of physical activity

Previous research highlighted gaps between socio-cognitive factors (e.g., intentions, social norms) and physical activity (PA) participation. Recently, researchers have asserted that considering affective processes may help bridge this gap. Leveraging the affective-reflective theory of physical inactivity and exercise, this study examined whether individuals’ attraction toward PA moderated the relationship between PA intentions and behaviors, and the relationship between social norms and PA intentions. Analysis of online survey data (N_T1 = 582; N_T2 = 327) provided evidence that social norms more strongly predicted PA intentions under conditions of lower attraction to PA. However, the results differed depending on how intentions were measured: Moderation was found for intention strength as the outcome, but no moderation was found for decisional intention as the outcome. The intentions-behavior relationship, despite nonsignificant interaction terms, showed patterns of positive moderation based on changes in simple slopes: Intentions more strongly predicted PA behavior at time 2 under conditions of higher attraction to PA. The findings align with recent theorizing that emphasizes the role of affect-related determinants when understanding and promoting PA. Practically, these results suggest that intervention strategies should differ according to the individuals’ current levels of attraction toward PA.     

Reinforcing value of physical activity as a determinant of child activity level.

This study examined whether the relative reinforcing value of physical activity (RRVPA) measured in the laboratory predicted physical activity measured in the natural environment in 32 6-11-year-old children. RRVPA correlated with physical activity level (r = .42, p < .05), and contributed to the prediction of physical activity level along with child obesity. RRVPA was related to the number of moderate to vigorous physical activity exercise bouts (r = .35, p < .05), not to the duration of those bouts. These results suggest that RRVPA is a determinant of child physical activity level, and that it may be naturally more reinforcing for children to engage in multiple, short exercise bouts than fewer, more extended bouts.     

Conditioned activity and the interaction of amphetamine experience with morphine's activity effects

This experiment assessed the transfer effect of Pavlovian conditioning with d-amphetamine sulfate (1 mg/kg) on morphine's activity effects. Prior experience with amphetamine resulted in higher levels of activity when challenged with morphine (10 and 20 mg/kg). This interactive effect of amphetamine, however, was present only in those animals who had experienced amphetamine paired with the activity test situation. Animals who had received equivalent doses of amphetamine unpaired with the testing environment did not differ from drug-naive control animals. Analysis of predrug activity levels revealed a conditioned activity response in paired animals compared to the controls. These findings suggest that the response interaction between drug conditioned responses and drug unconditioned responses is an important determinant of cross-drug effects between drugs of different pharmacological classes.     

Differentiation of adolescent activity participation

The sex typing or lack of it among 133 adolescent activities was investigated. Twenty-seven percent (32) of the activities on an Adolescent Activity Questionnaire showed very clear participation differences for male and female adolescents (11 to 18 years old). The initial two factors extracted in a principal components factor analysis were easily interpreted as feminine and masculine activities. Discriminant function analysis of 15 items from the first three factors yielded an 8-item function on the basis of which every sample member was correctly classified as male or female. Masculine activities included more sports-related activities and activities dealing with mechanics and building, whereas feminine activities were domestic in nature and included more sedentary activities (e.g., reading, writing in diaries).