\'Ber\ing' it all

Revealing ourselves in a psychotherapy group, as well as bearing witness to what others reveal, encourages trust among group members and increases our ability to access knowledge, our feelings, our intuitions, and our imaginations. The author, a trainee in a postgraduate group psychotherapy program, describes some of her initial experiences as a group member in a process group and as a group leader. Bearing the experience of being bare in a psychotherapy group, as a member or as a leader, is no easy task. The various meanings of bare and bear as it relates to group participation are explored in this paper through the analysis of the author's dream and through other personal and professional anecdotes.     

Some thoughts between body and mind in the light of Wilma Bucci's multiple code theory

The author proposes the usefulness of Wilma Bucci's Multiple Code Theory in clarifying some controversial issues in psychoanalytically inspired psychosomatics. Definition of a dialectic among different entities may appear difficult in an unitarian view of the organism, where body and mind are seen as having no kind of intrinsic existence, which may be differentiated from the organism as a whole, but as two categories having to do with the perspective of the observer. This aporia may find a solution in a redefinition of the body-mind relationship as that between symbolic systems and the subsymbolic system, both of which may be viewed as mind or as body depending on the point of observation. Similarly, somatic pathology, if we accept an unitary paradigm, need no longer be viewed as due to an influence of 'mind' on 'body': a definition of pathology as linked to a disconnection between different systems, as found in Bucci's theory, is proposed as a possible solution. Emergence of somatic symptoms, however, besides being witness to disconnection, may be seen as the subsymbolic first expression of an item of content, an attempt at reconnection, as already proposed, in a way, by Winnicott in 1949. This attempt has much better opportunities to succeed when it finds an adequate container, as in analysis. A clinical situation of this kind is presented.     

Love and expansion of the self: The state of the model

The self-expansion model of love developed out of a confluence of research on attraction and arousal, Eastern psychology, motivation theory, and the social psychology of personal relationships. The model treats love (the desire for a relationship with a particular other) as arising from a desire to expand the self by including that other in the self, as well as by associating expansion with that particular other. First, the model is described, including its function as a source of heuristically important metaphors for common human experiences of love and its unique focus in relation to other approaches to love. The remainder of the article examines its application, including supporting research, to predictors of falling in love, motivations for unrequited love, consequences of falling in love, love as including each other in each other's self, and how love changes (and how it can be maintained) in long-term relationships. The conclusion examines current trends in which the model serves as both a very general integration of useful perspectives and as a set of precise mini-theories.     

Deconstructing the construct: A network perspective on psychological phenomena

In psychological measurement, two interpretations of measurement systems have been developed: the reflective interpretation, in which the measured attribute is conceptualized as the common cause of the observables, and the formative interpretation, in which the measured attribute is seen as the common effect of the observables. We advocate a third interpretation, in which attributes are conceptualized as systems of causally coupled (observable) variables. In such a view, a construct like ’depression’ is not seen as a latent variable that underlies symptoms like ’lack of sleep’ or ’fatigue’, and neither as a composite constructed out of these symptoms, but as a system of causal relations between the symptoms themselves (e.g., lack of sleep → fatigue, etc.). We discuss methodological strategies to investigate such systems as well as theoretical consequences that bear on the question in which sense such a construct could be interpreted as real.     

Compulsive "helpfulness": or, how I learned to stop working so hard and love the group

Compulsive helpfulness, an anxiety-laden need by the therapist to feel helpful, akin to the notion of rescuing others, is a potential pitfall in developing an effective psychotherapy group. It can be regarded variously: (1) as a reaction formation against feelings of boredom and frustration stimulated by such phenomena as group resistance or the enactment of inauthentic relationships in the group; (2) as a therapist style driven by a transferential reaction to be regarded as competent and worthy; (3) as an induced countertransference enactment tied to group members' frustration and passivity about their own interpersonal inadequacies; (4) and as a manic defense against despair over the feeling that one's loving has not done any good. In this essay, the author explores his struggle to identify and come to terms with compulsive helpfulness as a dominant theme in the early stages of his tenure as leader of a psychotherapy group.     

Safe driving and road-crossing tasks: A particular case of successful transfer of learning

The current study examines whether crucial safe driving skills are associated with safe road-crossing skills as pedestrians. The main research question was whether skills that are acquired from the point of view of a driver are associated with the skills of pedestrians in different platforms or settings. Furthermore, the study examines whether task performance on one platform (driving) primes an operator for task performance on another (road-crossing as a pedestrian) or vice versa. Sixty people took part in this study and completed a demographic questionnaire, a Driving Behavior Questionnaire, a Pedestrian Behavior Scale and two computerized tests – a Hazard Perception Test for Drivers and a Hazard Perception Test for Pedestrians.We found that the better the participants detect hazards on the road as drivers, the better they detect hazards as pedestrians as well, and that most of the participants’ self-reported values regarding their driving and their road-crossing as pedestrians are correlated. The study revealed an association between years of seniority in driving and the number of driving hours per week, and some behavioral variables as pedestrians – meaning that exposure to the road as a driver may be related to safer behavior as a pedestrian.     

Mizpah of Benjamin

In this article I discuss the question of how to speak of the body in theology after Friedrich Nietzsche's critique of Christianity as nihilistic. A purely theoretical and a-historic approach, such as could be found in much doctrinal theology as well as philosophy after Descartes, runs the risk of objectifying the body through its representations of it. The phenomenological approach to embodiment would instead help theology to avoid treating the body as a thing and instead as a communicative and expressive medium for relationships with divinity as well as other human beings. A critical theological somatology after Nietzsche would have to speak of the body through genealogical accounts of the traces of the body in biblical and theological texts as well as in religious practices such as prayer, liturgy and hymns with the aim of correlating this theological tradition with the articulations and configurations of embodiment today.     

The Ideal of Harmony in Ancient Chinese and Greek Philosophy

This article offers a study of the early formation and development of the ideal of harmony in ancient Chinese philosophy and ancient Greek philosophy. It shows that, unlike the Pythagorean notion of harmony, which is primarily based on a linear progressive model with a pre-set order, the ancient Chinese concept of harmony is best understood as a comprehensive process of harmonization. It encompasses spatial as well as temporal dimensions, metaphysical as well as moral and aesthetical dimensions. It is a fundamentally open notion in the sense that it does not aim to conform to any pre-set order. This broader, richer, and more liberal understanding of harmony has had a profound influence on Chinese culture as whole in its long history.     

Self as verb and the metaphor of dance: An explanation of the self discovery experience within a constructivist framework

The concept of self discovery within a constructivist framework is difficult to explain given the central assumption of constructivism that self is a created construct rather than an entity to be discovered. Two problems are identified as impediments to constructivist accounts of the self discovery experience: first, their failure to adequately account for the embodied experience of self, and second, the difficulties inherent in using self as a noun to express a process.
It is proposed that if self is considered as a verb, as the action of a body-subject, the verbal contortionism of referring to self as a process in a language that places self as an entity may be overcome. The notion of self as verb places the individual firmly in the role of active embodied participant in the experience of self. The metaphor of "self'" as "dance" is explored to emphasize the materiality of the human animal that is argued to be central to the experience of self discovery.     

Premenstrual Syndrome as Scientific and Cultural Artifact

Premenstrual Syndrome (PMS) has been defined in a variety of scientific and cultural ways over the years, but there is no consistent or agreed upon definition. For some women, the public legitimization of PMS and its symptoms as a real and natural part of the female body have led to a positive sense of vindication. However, a more negative image of PMS as something that controls women once a month, that makes them "crazy" and subject to their hormones, is much more pervasive in our contemporary Western culture. In this essay, the author explores the various definitions: PMS as a medical condition, as a social scientific and feminist issue, as an explanation for women's behavior and moods in the popular culture, and, finally, as something bought or sold in a market. The author shows how PMS is real because, if for no other reason, various people in different situations choose to define it as such.     

Reactions of college recruiters to interviewee sex and self-presentation style

College recruiters evaluated the qualifications and employability of either a male or a female applicant for a supervisory position. Half the recruiters in the experiment viewed a videotape of the candidate presenting himself or herself in a passive manner. The other half of the recruiters viewed a moderately aggressive interviewee. Contrary to the hypotheses, the moderately aggressive female was rated as favorably as the moderately aggressive male and the passive male was rated as negatively as the passive female. Although recruiters were as willing to hire a moderately aggressive male as they were the moderately aggressive female, they perceived the female's overall qualifications and her experience/training as superior to that of the male's.     

Interrogating Integration, Dissenting Dis-integration: Multiplicity as a Positive Metaphor in Therapy and Theology

The term “integration” has long been used as a metaphor for psychological health and wholeness, and a therapeutic goal. It is counterposed to related conceptions of pathology, such as “disintegration,” “fragmentation” and “splitting.” Christian theology has similarly framed salvation as “at-onement” vs. sin as alienation. Contemporary psychologies have begun to contest the hegemony of the “One,” leading to a number of paradigms of health that do not privilege “integration” as the primary model (e.g., feminist, postmodern, and relational-psychoanalytic). The seeds of a positive view of multiplicity already exist in earlier psychoanalytic models. This paper will argue for valuing multiplicity in psychotherapy as a way of conceptualizing both health and a goal of treatment. Re: pastoral psychotherapy in particular, multiplicity will be shown to have fruitful parallels in a constructive Trinitarian theology of multiplicity of God as a framework for interrogating “integration,” and claiming “dis-integration” as psycho-spiritual dissent and creativity.     

Revealing the Difference: Between Conflict Mediation and Law Enforcement—Living and Working Together as a Conceptual and Methodological Turning Point to Activate Transformation in a Juvenile Criminal Mediation Service

This article aims at proposing the construct of living and working together in organizations as an interpretation and tool proposed in a Juvenile Criminal Mediation Service, in order to highlight how important it was as a turning point in activating the working group's reflexive function as far as their sense of belonging, otherness, culture of diversity, and work subject matter are concerned and start an important transformation process in the very service delivery. Our proposal finds its roots in a follow-up experience regarding the aforementioned service, which has been taking place for almost three years. It was structured in three different phases: a research phase evaluating process and results of the activity that was carried out; a phase of monitoring the mediation practice; a research-action phase in a clinical perspective on the working group's operating mode. The leverage of living and working together in organizations is specifically proposed as far as this last working phase is concerned, lasting approximately ten months.     

Adrenoleukodystrophy. Clinical-pathologic case history and literature review]

This article presents the clinical and pathological history of a 10-year-old boy with adrenoleukodystrophy as well as a tabular survey of 17 additional cases of which the necropsy records were published in the literature. So far as the case of adrenoleukodystrophy directly observed by the authors themselves is concerned, commencement of the disease was in the seventh year of life, with symptoms of Addison's disease and diffuse inflammatory cerebral sclerosis being observed at about the same time. The cerebral disease manifested itself as a progressive pseudobulbar and pyramidal tract symptomatology and as a progressive cerebral psychosyndrome reminiscent of an endocrinal psychosyndrome. Morphologically, the adrenoleukodystrophy was characterized by severe dystrophy of the cortex of the suprarenal gland and the brain are considered the points of action of a still unknown noxa.e suprarenal gland as well as by extensive sudanophilic processes of decomposition in the cerebromedullary substance, putamen, pallidum, and thalamus. Striated cells and cytoplasmic filamentous inclusions observed in the brain and suprarenal glands in a number of cases reported in the literature were not found by the present authors. The cortex of th     

Technology and the civil epistemology of democracy

In analogy with Rousseau's concept of ‘civil religion’ as a system of ‘positive dogmas’, ‘without which’, as he observed, ‘a man cannot be a good citizen’, this paper advances the concept of ‘civil epistemology’ as the positive dogmas without which the agents of government actions cannot be held accountable by democratic citizens. The civil epistemology of democracy shapes the citizen's views on the nature of political reality, on how the facts of political reality can be known and by whom. Modern liberal democratic politics assumes that the exercise of political power can be manifest in a visible domain of publicly accessible facts. It rests on the Enlightenment faith in the powers of light and visibility to demystify political power, render political actors more exposed and therefore more honestly accountable and enlist the sense of sight as a vehicle of universal political participation. It is, in this context, that technology has come to play such an important symbolic role in the construction of the particular democratic genre of public action as a political spectacle. Democratic civil epistemology, and technology ‐ in the widest sense of the word ‐ as the prototype of action which can be observed in the field of visual perception, uphold the democratic conception of politics as a view. Together they define political actors as visible performers, journalists as observers (who translate actual seeing into virtual seeing) and the citizens as witnesses.     

Medicine as a trade

The doctor-patient relationship is usually seen and accepted as a giving-taking association, in which the doctor is a giver and the patient is a taker. The paper challenges such a one-way relationship, and stresses the patient as a giver and the doctor as a receiver. The patient is described as a source for the emotional development of the doctor, and as a source of knowledge. He is also a source for what could be called ‘life experience’. By serving as a source for these three elements, the patient is also seen as a source for reward. There is a danger of under-utilisation of this reward by the doctor, when (1) he is engaged only in giving, (2) he wilfully obstructs the channel of information, and (3) he feels ‘saturation’ called by the doctor ‘experience’. This under-utilisation will ultimately lead to ‘medical parasitism’. This parasitism is seldom recognised by the patient, because the arrest of development of a doctor is usually hardly noticed, and this will lead to neglect of the patient, so that the ‘trade’ between doctor and patient becomes unfair, as the long-term investment which the patient has placed in the doctor, does not pay off any longer.     

Social representations of history,cultural values,and willingness to fight in a war: A collective‐level analysis in 40 nations

This study explores at the national level beliefs about world history and their relationship with cultural values and attitudes towards a national war. A country‐level analysis of university samples from 40 nations involving 7279 students showed that beliefs about history as a superior plan, as social progress, and lawful processes were positively associated with lower human development, and materialistic and power distance values, as well as with willingness to fight in a future national war. Further, beliefs about history as a superior plan, as social progress, and as lawful process were positively related with a stronger disposition to fight, even after controlling for cultural values and human development. Results are discussed in the framework of conceptualizing social representations of history as part of national political cultures.     

Intracerebral source generators characterizing concentrative meditation

Previous researchers have studied meditation practices as a means to understand consciousness as well as altered states of consciousness. Various meditation techniques, such as Transcendental Meditation (TM) and Qigong, have been explored with source localization tools; however, the concentrative meditation technique has yet to be fully studied in this manner. The current study demonstrates findings, which outline differential activation in a self-referential default network during meditation in participants who espouse themselves as regular concentrative meditation practitioners, as well as comparisons with a control group practicing a modified version of the relaxation response. The results are compared with other putative experimental findings employing other meditation techniques, and the findings outlined in the current study are discussed with respect to changes in perceptual awareness often reported by meditators.     

Decision-making and the framing effect in a foreign and native language

Recent research using scenarios such as the Asian disease problem has demonstrated a “foreign-language effect”, whereby the framing effect (tendency to be risk-averse in a gain frame and risk seeking in a loss frame) is not (or not as) apparent in the foreign language as the native language. The aim of the current study was to further investigate decision-making and the framing effect in a native language, Thai and a foreign language, English, using the Asian disease/Financial crisis problem (Study 1) and a novel financial decision-making task (Study 2). Results from Study 1 confirmed previous findings as a foreign-language effect emerged. In contrast, in Study 2, a framing effect emerged in both the native and foreign languages of the Thai participants. These contradictory results point to language factors as well as emotional and cognitive demands of the task contributing to the occurrence of the foreign-language effect.