There is More to Negation than Modality

There is a relatively recent trend in treating negation as a modal operator. One such reason is that doing so provides a uniform semantics for the negations of a wide variety of logics and arguably speaks to a longstanding challenge of Quine put to non-classical logics. One might be tempted to draw the conclusion that negation is a modal operator, a claim Francesco Berto (Mind, 124(495), 761–793, 2015) defends at length in a recent paper. According to one such modal account, the negation of a sentence is true at a world x just in case all the worlds at which the sentence is true are incompatible with x. Incompatibility is taken to be the key notion in the account, and what minimal properties a negation has comes down to which minimal conditions incompatibility satisfies. Our aims in this paper are twofold. First, we wish to point out problems for the modal account that make us question its tenability on a fundamental level. Second, in its place we propose an alternative, non-modal, account of negation as a contradictory-forming operator that we argue is superior to, and more natural than, the modal account.     

The Hospital Room as Uncanny: Psychoanalytic Observations and Recommendations for Pastors and Chaplains

This essay in applied psychoanalysis is written for the field of pastoral psychology, and it also has obvious affinities with the medical humanities. The author uses Freud’s (The uncanny. In J. Strachey (Ed. and Trans.), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 17, pp. 217–256). Vintage, London, 1919/2001) “The Uncanny” to question the concept of homelike hospital rooms. Instead of making patients feel more comfortable, the authors believes that these rooms could, in some cases, actually increase the anxiety of patients. The author uses Helena Michie’s personal story of her experience of touring a birthing suite to support this argument, as well as some poetry by Billy Collins. The author, however, does not stop with identifying a problem, as he also suggests that pastors and chaplains, when they provide care for their patients, should help them identify and use their own transitional and transformational objects. These objects, of course, will be highly idiosyncratic, and it is precisely this kind of attention—attention to the idiosyncrasies of individuals—that pastors and chaplains should be giving to those in their care. While there is a growing literature on D. W. Winnicott, who coined the term “transitional object,” and Christopher Bollas, who gave us the term “transformational object,” in medical and pastoral circles, the author suggests that attention to and the endorsement of the use of transitional and transformational objects should become a part of hospital policy, if only in chaplaincy handbooks, so as to recognize what many individuals are already doing.     

精神分析主要概念的经验实证状况

100多年来,精神分析理论所阐述的观念已渗透到心理学、文学、艺术和文化等广泛领域。尽管精神分析享有广泛声誉,但直到最近,它才得到经验实证的支持。通过对支持精神分析理论（无意识、驱力、防御机制、客体关系、恋母情结）和心理动力治疗（移情、反移情、解释、阻抗）几个主要概念的信度和效度的经验实证研究进行了回顾,也探讨了这些实证研究对心理治疗以及心理学未来的影响。     

Robert Waska: The Total Transference and The Complete Counter-Transference: The Kleinian Psychoanalytic Approach with More Disturbed Patients

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis -     

Even More About Exercise Imagery: A Grounded Theory of Exercise Imagery

Abstract

It is hypothesized that perceived team performance in competition can be analyzed in terms of event expectancy (expected, unexpected event), direction of lead (one's own team, opposing team) and momentum (positive, negative). These three variables determine “game standings”. The purpose of this study was to investigate the perceived relative contribution of these variables to extreme psychological arousal states (crisis, noncrisis). Forty-five elite team handball experts responded to a questionnaire in which they were asked to estimate the occurrence probability of all possible “game standings” under crisis and noncrisis conditions, according to the Bayesian approach. An ANOVA procedure revealed that under the crisis condition, negative momentum, unexpected event, and lead by opposing team were rated as more probable, whereas positive momentum, expected event, and lead of one's own team were judged to more likely occur under the noncrisis condition. Moreover, the athlete's psychological stale (Crisis, noncrisis) was judged to be more strongly related to momentum than to event expectancy and direction of lead. The results are discussed in reference to concepts such as self-efficacy and psychological performance crisis in competition.     

More Things in Heaven and Earth: Sharing the Psychoanalytic Understanding of Religion

Links between current religious status and both childhood play style and adult personality (Five-Factor Model) were explored in a Canadian undergraduate sample. The lifelong religious reported being less open to experience, but more agreeable and conscientious, relative to apostates (who left their childhood faith for no faith), switchers (who migrated to a different faith), converts (who adopted faith since childhood), and the lifelong nonreligious. Relative to the two lifelong groups, apostates and switchers—and, to a lesser extent, converts—reported stronger interest and engrossment in pretend play involving props, peer collaborators, and/or imaginary characters, as well as less interest in organized sports. A childhood predilection for pretend play may function as a marker of greater ability and willingness to consider the implications of experiencing the self in different roles in an “as if” world. In turn, this predisposition may eventuate in a significant ideological shift in response to unmet cognitive and/or emotional needs, consistent with current understandings of religious change.     

The Impact of Theory on Psychological Testing: How Psychoanalytic Theory Makes Diagnostic Testing More Enjoyable and Rewarding

The psychometric properties of three scales of alexithymia were examined in a sample of 187 female undergraduates. The Shalling Sifneos Personality State (SSPS) and the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality inventory (MMPI) Alexithymia scale had little internal consistency. The scored archetypal test with nine elements (SAT) had very low interrater reliability. As predicted, the three measures were not significantly related to one another and the SSPS had a more clearly defined factor structure than the MMPI scale. The MMPI and SSPS scales were differentially related to measures of symptomatology but were similarly related to extraversion, absorption, and SAT scores. Of the three scales, the SSPS appeared to have the highest content validity. The results suggest that alexithymia is not a unitary construct and that its reification as such may be premature.     

The Meaning of Empirically Supported Treatment Research for Psychoanalytic and Other Long-Term Therapies

Two ways of evaluating the implications of empirically supported treatment research for psychoanalysis and other long-term therapies are considered. The first involves the comparison of the relative benefits of various psychotherapies; the second involves the comparison of short-term and long-term psychotherapies. The major findings are that (a) each of the different types of psychological treatments shows benefits, (b) the amount of benefits from each type of therapy shows mainly nonsignificant differences, (c) these nonsignificant differences are especially evident when the researcher's therapeutic allegiance is taken into account, (d) both short-term and long-term treatments show some positive benefits for some patients, and (e) there is a tendency for longer treatments to show more lasting benefits. The main gap in research studies consists of a lack of comparative studies of psychoanalysis versus other treatments. This review highlights the virtue of “methodological pluralism,” which means here applying to the same data a variety of methods for comparing psychotherapies with one another and for comparing long-term and short-term psychotherapies.     

My Mug Is Valuable,But My Partner's Is Even More So: Economic Decisions for Close Others

In three experiments, we investigated how people make economic decisions for close others. Participants performed an imaginary valuation task for objects of theirs, a close other, and a stranger. Replicating the endowment effect, people valued their objects more than a stranger's. Of interest, participants valued a close other's objects more than their own. Further experiments showed that the inflated values for a close other's objects were not due to social desirability or task demands. These results convey the importance of considering for whom an economic decision is being made, as people respond differently for themselves, close others, and strangers.     

手术室患者安全现状剖析与应对策略

手术室是高风险的医疗场所,手术室患者安全已成为医院患者安全管理的重中之重,尤其在广大患者对健康要求日益增加、维权意识逐步提高的今天,手术室患者安全再次被提到新的高度.本文从我国手术室患者安全的现状出发,深入剖析了影响手术室患者安全的相关因素,找出了适合手术室患者安全管理的应对策略,最后对影响手术室患者安全的深层次问题进行了必要的思考.     

A Research Note: Happiness by Age is More Complex than U-Shaped

Happiness varies with age, but there is no general agreement regarding the feature of the variation. Many studies have found that it is U-shaped such that there is a minimum between approximately 40 and 50 years of age. The result largely depends on the control variables used in the happiness modeling. Some authors do not even allow the use of any control variables, but the conventional theory of U-shaped studies stipulates the inclusion of such controls that essentially influence the basic living conditions of people. In this study, we do not strictly follow earlier findings but estimate our age-shape with different versions of them, using the data of 28 or 30 European countries. We also estimate a model without proper controls. This does not give any minimum age and thus supports some studies. Moreover, using any or all of our three controls some type of U-shape is found in most countries. Our U-shapes are not as simple as conventional research suggests. Minimum happiness can occur either below 40 years, or much above 50 years. A special feature is that the U-shape phenomenon holds better for males than for females. We also estimated models to see what happens after the minimum age happiness. In the case of gender models, the turning points for males are substantially lower than for females. This means that the old-age happiness of males stops to increase approximately at 70 years but more than 10 years later for females.     

The Less is More: The 17-Item Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory

In this article the goal was the examination of the factorial structure of a short, Hungarian version of Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory (ZTPI; Zimbardo and Boyd Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(6), 1271–1288, 1999) in a sample of 1370 participants, comparing alternative factor structures through confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). According to the results the short, 17 item version of ZTPI includes the original five factors and has appropriate model fit indices. Furthermore, it is reliable in terms of internal consistency and temporal stability. In the light of previous ZTPI validations with severe shortcomings, the present results might encourage radical shortening of the original ZTPI scale.     

The search for evidence: Psychoanalytic practice and the male imaginary

In this paper, I will attempt to discuss the future of psychoanalytic practice in the wake of the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence’s (NICE) embrace of ‘evidence’-based practice. In 2005, NICE, whose task is to regulate the provision of health care across the National Health Service, adopted positivistic evidence-based protocols as the sole proof of the effectiveness of psychotherapy. Despite the success over the past 40?years of psychoanalytic and humanistic therapies in primary care and psychotherapy departments of psychiatric hospitals, NICE insists on restricting therapy, to those who can claim effectiveness as a result of using the data from client questionnaires commonly described as ‘outcome measures’ and it has gone on to promoting new modalities many of which have been imported from the States. As a consequence, most of the provision of psychotherapy in the public sector currently, whether as part of the National Health Service or the voluntary sector, has embraced evidence-based practice’ and many training organisations are promoting it, which will, in time, have an effect on private practice. I use some of the threads of the work of the feminist psychoanalyst Irigaray and others to understand this turn to positivistic science and how it can be understood as an instance of the retrenchment of the ‘male imaginary’ and a re-installation of the values of detachment and mastery. I query whether there are some problems within current theory, practice and institutionalisation which interfere with the emergence of a more progressive psychoanalytic practice.     

The American Psychoanalytic Association: a decade of change

The American Psychoanalytic Association in the last decade has undergone the most extensive organizational changes in its history. Efforts at inclusion, outreach, and democratization have halted a decline in candidates, active members, and cultural influence and led to a vibrant, growing organization, as new professional groups have gradually been included in the association's training programs. The goal of increasing training opportunities for minority candidates has only partially been achieved. A recent effort to offer affiliate status to psychotherapists and students has begun, though with modest results. Alliances with otherpsychoanalytic groups have led to creation of the Psychoanalytic Consortium and steady progress toward external accreditation of institutes and licensure of psychoanalysts. In the interest of unification there is a need to develop pathways of affiliation and membership for independent institutes and societies that desire to join the association. Democracy has in large measure already been enhanced at the national level. Deliberations are now transparent, and an invigorated Executive Committee willingly shares power with the Executive Council. Candidates now are deeply involved in the governance of Board and Council and their committees. But only when all members and candidates enjoy full voting rights and all members are able to serve as officers and Executive Councilors will the decades-long effort to democratize the association be concluded.