The week the couch arrived

Changes in the therapeutic environment can elicit intense and unpredictable responses from patients, who then react to the new elements with their own unique thoughts, fantasies, emotions and behaviours. When the change is very specific, and when it entails implications for the treatment itself, these patient responses can coalesce around more profound experiences of the transference as well as of the countertransference. The author, as a candidate or analyst-in-training, purchased an analytic couch for his office and observed the unfolding of what this new couch meant for existing treatments. Using clinical examples, he describes the three most common patient responses that occurred: rejecting, ambivalent, and embracing. The richly variant ideas and fantasies related to the analytic couch are described, and the couch's history within Freudian and Jungian contexts is reviewed. Personal determinants that could lead to the decision of whether to use a couch as part of analysis are considered from the standpoint of the analyst's preferences and own experience with the couch. The couch is discussed as a signifier of the analytic process with cultural meanings alluding not only to familiar stereotypes, but also to psychological healing and self-development.     

The couch and the chador

The authors present a clinical discussion of the psychic functions of the chador, a veil‐like outer garment worn in public by some Iranian women. Drawing on Anzieu’s theoretical concept of the skin ego, the authors suggest that the chador does not just cover the body; it may also envelop the psyche and function as a second skin for the ego. The maternal function of a holding environment is symbolically displaced on any clothing that ‘hides,’‘covers,’‘veils,’ or ‘dresses’ the body. The skin’s containing functions are extended through sensory and metonymic mediations to clothes, thus providing an imaginary maternal sack for the person. The clinical vignettes presented here suggest that for some Iranian women the chador may work, on one hand, as a second skin ego and a shield against a perceived intrusive world. On the other hand, it may work as a punitive maternal superego, a ‘holding cell’ in a jail that paralyses the separation/individuation process. Operating in the service of the patient’s resistance and defense, the chador may also function as a psychic refuge and a place to hide on the couch.     

The patient's own pillow on the couch

Material is presented from two hypochondriacal patients who insisted on using their own pillows on top of the bolster-pillow on the analyst's couch. A number of important transference fantasies are seen as underlying this unusual resistance to the progress of the analysis. In addition, the analyst's countertransference feelings are described.     

Falling off the couch

The patient's therapeutic regression intensifies certain unconscious meanings of the analytic couch. In addition to representing the analysis or the analyst in general, the couch can represent the unconscious, or it may take on the symbolic significance of the analyst's or mother's arms, lap, breasts, or womb. When the genetic roots of the patient's transference include substantial experiences of disappointment, narcissistic injury, and mistrust, the theme of falling from the couch may emerge as a dream, an association, or even an enactment. This theme usually implies the presence of a deepening but mistrustful transference, based on earlier disappointments by the patient's primary objects. Falling off the couch may be associated with being dropped as an infant, rolling out of bed as a child, birth, miscarriage, castration, death, termination, defending against passive wishes, punishment for sexual or aggressive transgressions, escaping an attack, descending into the unconscious, or wanting to be picked up and comforted.     

A model of visual spatio-temporal memory: The icon revisited

With a minimal set of assumptions resulting from considerations about the perception of temporal structure, we argue for the existence of a spatio-temporal memory established by the mapping of time into simultaneous physical properties. The important point of this model is the distinction between external, physical time and the internal representation of time. An immediate consequence of such a structure is the emergence of properties usually associated with the concept of iconic memory or informational persistence. Some of these properties may hence be regarded as epiphenomena produced by the testing of a spatio-temporal system with tachistoscopic spatial stimuli. The model can explain properties of the immediate memory span, the lack of effect of exposure duration on tachistoscopic report, the partial-report superiority, the decay of iconic memory, and effects of a backward mask. It does not only avoid the incompatibility problems of the frozen-image concept in dynamic vision, but also provides an adequate basis for the processing of time-varying scenes.     

Patient's sleep on the analytic couch

Published reports about sleep on the couch have primarily emphasized its preoedipal (especially oral) determinants and defensive purposes. A detailed case is presented in which sleep became the central symptom of the transference neurosis. The primary determinants of the symptom were from the phallic-oedipal stage of development. Like other symptoms, the sleep symptom was a reliving of earlier experiences and was analyzed primarily through the transference. The analytic data from the case are used to illustrate resistance as an ally in the psychoanalytic process.     

Visual search performance on an lcd monitor: effects of color combination of figure and icon background, shape of icon, and line width of icon border

This study investigated the effects of color combinations for the figure/icon background, icon shape, and line width of the icon border on visual search performance on a liquid crystal display screen. In a circular stimulus array, subjects had to search for a target item which had a diameter of 20 cm and included one target and 19 distractors. Analysis showed that the icon shape significantly affected search performance. The correct response time was significantly shorter for circular icons than for triangular icons, for icon borders with a line width of 3 pixels than for 1 or 2 pixels, and for 2 pixels than for 1 pixel. The color combination also significantly affected the visual search performance: white/yellow, white/blue, black-red, and black/ yellow color combinations for the figure/icon background had shorter correct response times compared to yellow/blue, red/green, yellow/green, and blue/red. However, no effects were found for the line width of the icon border or the icon shape on the error rate. Results have implications for graphics-based design of interfaces, such as for mobile phones, Web sites, and PDAs, as well as complex industrial processes.     

Movies on the couch: The MOVIE model of film therapy

Film therapy, the therapeutic use of movies in psychological therapies, is a growing area of interest to therapists and researchers. This paper discusses the benefits of film therapy and presents a method, the MOVIE model of film therapy, a widely applicable, trauma-informed framework for individual or group therapy, counsellor education and self-help. Film or cinema therapy is a highly accessible and relatable method for many diverse groups. The benefits identified include emotional processing, greater ease of dialogue, increased empathy, interpersonal learning, new perspectives and learning skills. Following the model's reflective steps, clients mindfully observe and voice their emotional and psychological responses to movie-watching; identify how the imagery, characters, themes and story symbolise personal experience; and consider any new possibilities that emerged for their own lives. The model is informed by a practice-focussed review of literature and draws on methods from mindfulness and experiential and narrative therapies. The steps are widely applicable in a range of settings and can be adapted across counselling modalities. Further research to consider the outcomes of using the model, alongside qualitative research on clients' experiences of working this way with film, is recommended.     

Spare the rod and spoil the icon

Short-term visual storage was investigated with a successive field paradigm, so that correct performance depended upon combining visual information from two targets that were never on simultaneously. In the first two experiments, the stimuli consisted of two slides, each containing a 10' red dot on a gray surround, and separated by an interstimulus interval (ISI) from 20 to 400 msec. Subjects had to determine if the dots were vertically or horizontally aligned. In Experiment 1, the stimuli had either no contrast for the rods or no luminance contrast for the cones or high contrast. At short ISIs the cone contrast determined performance, whereas at long ISIs the rod contrast determined performance. In fact, when the dots were invisible to the rods, the task was impossible for long ISIs. In Experiment 2, performance was compared for zero log rod contrast and for small departures from zero. Even a small departure from zero log rod contrast resulted in above-chance performance. In Experiment 3, the stimuli were luminous rectangles and the task was to decide whether or not a 4' spatial gap was present between the two successively presented rectangles. Wavelength, luminance, and ISI were varied under both photopic and scotopic adapting conditions. The result was that the rods performed the task for ISIs of 150 msec or longer under scotopic conditions and under the photopic conditions that we were able to test. The results of the experiments taken together are consistent with the hypothesis that the cone icon is short, whereas the rod icon is robust and long lasting.     

Modeling icon search in ACT-R/PM

As the use of graphical user interfaces expands into new areas, icons are becoming an increasingly important aspect of GUIs. Oddly, little research has been done into the costs and benefits associated with using icons. One aspect of icons, icon borders, has been proposed as a means of adding information to icons. An experiment was conducted in which the potential cost in response time of using simple icon borders was investigated. Two models were then constructed in ACT-R/PM to carry out the same icon search task as in the experiment. The results of the modeling effort indicated an area where the design of the experiment could be improved. A second, ‘improved’ experiment was carried out, the results of which suggest areas for further improvement in the ACT-R/PM models.     

Measuring icon complexity: An automated analysis

Measures of icon designs rely heavily on surveys of the perceptions of population samples. Thus, measuring the extent to which changes in the structure of an icon will alter its perceived complexity can be costly and slow. An automated system capable of producing reliable estimates of perceived complexity could reduce development costs and time. Measures of icon complexity developed by Garcia, Badre, and Stasko (1994) and McDougall, Curry, and de Bruijn (1999) were correlated with six icon properties measured using Matlab (MathWorks, 2001) software, which uses image-processing techniques to measure icon properties. The six icon properties measured were icon foreground, the number of objects in an icon, the number of holes in those objects, and two calculations of icon edges and homogeneity in icon structure. The strongest correlates with human judgments of perceived icon complexity (McDougall et al., 1999) were structural variability (r _s = .65) and edge information (r _s = .64).