The Role of Enactments

In this paper the author discusses the multiple ways in which enactments emerge in the course of an analysis. She presents several clinical examples in which enactments were used to further the analytic process as well as an example in which the work of the analysis was temporarily stalled following an enactment.     

Retroactive adjustment of perceived time

Accurately timing acoustic events in dynamic scenes is fundamental to scene analysis. To detect events in busy scenes, listeners must often identify a change in the pattern of ongoing fluctuation, resulting in many ubiquitous events being detected later than when they occurred. This raises the question of how delayed detection time affects the manner in which such events are perceived relative to other events in the environment.To model these situations, we use sequences of tone-pips with a time–frequency pattern that changes from regular to random (‘REG–RAND’) or vice versa (‘RAND–REG’). REG–RAND transitions are detected rapidly, but the emergence of regularity cannot be established immediately, and thus RAND–REG transitions take significantly longer to detect. Using a temporal order judgment task, and a light-flash as a temporal marker, we demonstrate that listeners do not perceive the onset of RAND–REG transitions at the point of detection (∼530 ms post transition), but automatically re-adjust their estimate ∼300 ms closer to the nominal transition.These results demonstrate that the auditory system possesses mechanisms that survey the proximal history of an ongoing stimulus and automatically adjust perception to compensate for prolonged detection time, allowing listeners to build meaningful representations of the environment.     

Couples' Experience of Enactments and Softening in Marital Therapy 1

Abstract

Beginning therapists are not prepared to deal with the complexity that families bring to the therapeutic setting and have a reductionistic approach to understanding what is occurring in a family. In order to move beyond a simplified approach, therapists with the assistance of a supervisor have the power to leave the security of their own being and can learn to take risks. This paper explores the development of a “therapeutic story” with the goal of assisting the beginning therapist in approaches that can be utilized to incorporate all available resources that will help to empower a family to change.     

Wasted and Bombed: Clinical Enactments of a Changing Relationship to the Earth

Are changes in the relationship to the natural environment expressed in our psyches? I explore that question in this paper. Carefully considering clinical material of some young adults suggests that aspects of obliterative drinking and dissociative materialism may be enactments of a changing relationship between people and their ecosystems. Psychoanalysis, anthropology, and human geography support the idea that the psychological object field expands far beyond the parental relationship and that this expanded field can also importantly affect psychological behavior. Three cases are examined through a lens that recognizes similarities between the commoditization of natural resources and wasteful behavioral enactments.     

Retroactive raising of a sensory threshold by a contralateral stimulus

In an experiment designed to extend Howarth and Treisman's recent observations on the lowering of the visual and auditory threshold produced by a warning stimulus, it has been found that the threshold to electrical stimulation of one forearm is raised by a similar stimulus on the other forearm. As in the earlier experiments the “warning” was effective if it came 100 millisec. before or after the threshold stimulus. The effect increased with increasing warning strength over the range of five near-threshold strengths used.

These results appear to be inconsistent with the explanation previously proposed to account for the retroactive lowering of threshold. This suggested that the warning was acting simply as a marker, reducing the subject's uncertainty as to when the stimulus was coming. The fact that the rise in threshold was also induced retroactively shows that some interaction must be occurring in the central processes concerned in perception, and that it cannot be explained in terms of attenuation of the afferent volley.     

Retroactive effects of irrelevant speech on serial recall from short-term memory

The authors report 5 serial-recall experiments. In 4 of the 5 experiments, they show that irrelevant sound (IS) has a retroactive effect on material already in memory. In Experiment 1, IS presented during a filled retention interval had a reliable effect on list recall. Four further experiments, 3 of which used retroactive IS, showed that IS continued to-have an effect on recall following a long, filled retention interval. Articulatory suppression during visual input was found to abolish the long-lasting, retroactive effect of IS, supporting the idea that IS affects the phonological-loop component of short-term memory. IS also, therefore, seems to affect a longer term memory system with which the loop interacts.     

Retroactive inhibition as a function of the locus of categorized response sets

The effects which list-level taxonomic attributes should have upon retroactive inhibition (RI) producing mechanisms in both response-set interference theory (Postman & Stark, 1969) and Petrich’s (1975) retrieval model are discussed. A test of the theories was performed by manipulating the presence (1) or absence (0) of categorized response sets in both original learning (OL) and interpolated learning IIL), and comparing their predictions concerning the relative degree of RI expected in the four conditions (0-0, 0-1, 1-0, 1-1). In line with Petrich’s predictions, OL categorization significantly reduced RI, IL categorization significantly increased RI, and 0-1 produced significantly greater RI than 1-0. Moreover, the obtained ranking of the means for the experimental groups in degree of RI (0–1>0-0>1-0 ? 1-1) was in close agreement with the ranking predicted by Petrich’s (1975) model. The results provide support for Petrich’s (1975) retrieval model and pose explanatory problems for response-set interference theory (Postman & Stark, 1969).     

Retroactive inhibition as a function of similarity of meaning in free-recall learning

Summary Retroactive inhibition in free-recall learning was measured under six degrees of meaningful similarity: zero, low, low-medium, medium, medium-high, and high. For each degree of similarity, an experimental and a control group of 20 Ss each learned a list of 20 unrelated adjectives through three cycles of alternate study and unpaced free recall. Immediately thereafter, the experimental group learned a second list of 20 adjectives, while the control group rested. Finally, a single recall trial was administered to both groups to measure first-list retention. The results have revealed a relationship which is at variance with the relationships observed in both serial and paired-associate learning but conforms to the curvilinear function earlier formulated by Skaggs and Robinson. Fresh arguments are offered in defence of the Skaggs-Robinson hypothesis.     

For an indeterministic ethics. The emptiness of the rule in dubio pro vita and life cessation decisions

It is generally claimed that there exist exceptional circumstances when taking human life may be approved and when such actions may be justified on moral grounds. Precise guidelines in the medical field for making such decisions concerning patients who are terminally ill or have irreparable injuries incompatible with a bearable life, are difficult to establish. Recommendations that take the particular logical form of a rule, such as "in dubio pro vita", "when in doubt favour life") have been suggested and in some countries incorporated into legal texts (Germany). We claim here that such a rule is of no value since it is open-ended and always allows for doubt, and a decision to employ measures that would support human life could always be argued to be a valid choice. Preservation of this rule could be encouraged, but giving it the force of law may put physicians at risk, as they may be challenged for choosing to terminate life in otherwise ethically and medically uncontroversial circumstances.     

Coping with disappointing outcomes: Retroactive pessimism and motivated inhibition of counterfactuals

Having failed to achieve a desired goal, people may use retroactive pessimism as a defense mechanism, concluding that chances of success were not too good to begin with. To make this judgment, one must block counterfactual alternatives suggesting that success was, in fact, quite likely. Facing a bitter disappointment, the perceiver is highly motivated to inhibit upward counterfactuals, thus increasing the perceived inevitability of failure and finding solace in the acceptance of inescapable fate. Two experiments explored the hypothesized link between counterfactuals inhibition and retroactive pessimism. In the first experiment, it was found that participants experiencing grave disappointment, following a near miss, judged their chances of achieving their goal less favorably, compared to participants who had missed their goal by far. An analysis on participants’ counterfactual judgments suggested that this effect was mediated by participants’ perceptions of counterfactual events. The second experiment demonstrated that retroactive pessimism and counterfactual inhibition seem to be unique to situations in which the negative outcome resulted from uncontrollable rather than controllable events, thus corroborating the functional characterization of counterfactual thinking as well as the link between retroactive pessimism and disappointment.     

The Problem of Evil and the Problem of God

Books reviewed: D. Z. Phillips, The Problem of Evil and the Problem of God (London: SCM Press, 2004). xxiii + 280 , price £19.99 pb.
Reviewed by Patrick Sherry, Lancaster University
Religious Studies Department
Lancaster University
Lancaster LA1 4YG