The Psychodynamics of Torture

In this paper I consider some of the issues raised by the way the American Psychological Association has dealt with the participation of psychologists in interrogations at Guantanamo Bay. I set forth some of my experience, and what I feel I learned, from trying to convince the Council of Representatives of the American Psychological Association to support a moratorium on the participation of psychologists in interrogations of detainees at centers where due process is systematically denied. The paper was written before the Council of Representatives voted down the idea of a moratorium, with a coda describing the outcome.     

The Effect of Self-Observation on Children's Problem Solving

The effects of self-observation on children's problem solving were investigated. Children (N = 124) aged 6-8 years attempted to solve the 3-disc Tower of Hanoi problem. After pretesting, children were grouped into those who (a) practiced solving the problem independently, (b) received instruction on the most efficient solution, (c) observed a videotape recording of their previous attempt, and (d) served as a control. Subsequently, children were immediately tested on the 3-disc problem and a more difficult 4-disc problem. They were tested again 1 week later. Performance was most improved for children in the practice and video conditions on the 4-disc problem. Improvements were maintained over the 1-week interval. Unique characteristics of video self-observation are discussed.     

The Psychodynamics of the Patient's Active Episodes

The phenomenon of the patient as active change agent is a critically important, but new and understudied one. This paper attempts to explore and to illustrate with clinical examples the psychodynamic foundations of the patient's activity. The concept of an active episode on the part of the patient is introduced and defined. The paper illustrates the ways that active episodes of self-change on the part of the patient can determine the outcome of psychoanalytic therapy.     

The Interplay of Individual Psychodynamics and the Female Experience

No abstract available for this article.     

内省的心理学新探─—自我观察与心理调适

本文对内省作为一种心理学的基本方法作了历史回顾。作者还把内省看作人的某种个性倾向或心理特征尝试进行实证研究。调查结果表明,内省在被试看来,是自我概念形成与发展所必不可少的。结果还使作者确信,对内省联系个体心理与行为的调适作实证研究,不仅可行,而且有益。     

试析欧文·雅洛姆的存在精神动力学理论

该理论以终极关怀的觉察→焦虑→防御机制这一基本动力结构为核心,深入探讨了死亡、自由、存在孤独和无意义这四个终极关怀的心理病理学价值,以移除个体成长的障碍为目标,以注重此时此地作为核心策略,高度重视治疗关系在治疗中的作用,对存在心理治疗理论的发展做出了贡献,具有一定的借鉴价值。     

Selling Sanity Through Gender: The Psychodynamics of Psychotropic Advertising

This paper provides a brief visual history of the ways women patients, and specifically women patients whose marital status is identified in conjunction with their “illness,” have been constructed as abnormal in the images of advertisements designed to promote psychotropic medications to an audience of psychiatrists. The advertisements I discuss come from the two largest circulation American psychiatric journals, The American Journal of Psychiatry and Archives of General Psychiatry, between the years 1964 and 2001. I use the ads to focus on two concomitant narratives. On one hand, I show how the advertisements situate the rise of “wonder drugs” in the context of an era described as the “golden age of psychopharmacology,” during which time drug treatments helped revolutionize the diagnosis and treatment of anxiety, depression, and other outpatient mental illnesses in the United States. On the other hand, the advertisements also illustrate the ways in which these new scientific treatments could not function free of the culture in which they were given meaning. In the space between drug and wonder drug, or between medication and metaphor, the images thus hint at the ways psychotropic treatments became imbricated with the same gendered assumptions at play in an American popular culture intimately concerned with connecting “normal” and “heteronormal” when it came to defining the role of women in “civilization.”