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.     

Falling Man: encounters with catastrophic change

The assault on the twin towers thrust Americans into an encounter with catastrophic change. Previously protected by the illusion of security fed by our relative imperviousness to others' points of view, we are harshly awakened to our defensive blindness. This rupture helps us see the particular beyond the seeming universality, locating culture as a variable frame defining meanings through the narratives that hold complexities of human experience in conceptual space. Don DeLillo's Falling Man offers a reading of catastrophe as a forced encounter with fallibility, breaking apart illusions of sameness and difference, towards integration of what trauma excludes from awareness.     

Falling revenues of violence

Juvenile Violence in a Winner‐Loser Culture, by Oliver James London: Free Association Books, 1995, 171 pages, £15.95.     

Acceptance of a price discount: the role of the semantic relatedness between purchases and the comparative price format

Two studies are reported where people are asked to accept or not a price reduction on a target product. In the high (low) relative saving version, the regular price of the target product is low (high). In both versions, the absolute value of the price reduction is the same as well as the total of regular prices of planned purchases. As first reported by Tversky and Kahneman ( 1981 ), findings show that the majority of people accept the price discount in the high‐relative saving version whereas the minority do it in the low one. In Study 1, findings show that the previous preference reversal disappears when planned purchases are strongly related. Also, a previously unreported preference reversal is found. The majority of people accept the price discount when the products are weakly related whereas the minority accept when the products are strongly related. In Study 2, findings show that the classic preference reversal disappears as a function of the comparative price format. Also, another previously unreported preference reversal is found. When the offered price reduction relates to a low‐priced product, people are more inclined to accept it with a control than a minimal comparative price format. Findings reported in Studies 1 and 2 are interpreted in terms of mental accounting shifts. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Falling in Love as a Therapeutic Moment-Therapy as a Moment of Falling in Love

The author compares falling in love in ordinary life with falling in love in therapy. This way, he offers a wider understanding of these phenomena, regarding in particular to transferring processes. The result is a model, inside the frame of reference of Gestalt Therapy, to work through the positive sources of falling in love process-in ordinary life and in therapy. Among other things, he means by that: (1) an understanding of the links between one's original family and partner's choice and (2) a new perspective of the alternatives of behavior the person has now (in the resolution phase of falling in love), in comparison with his/her experience in his/her original family.     

Great Expectations: The Negative Consequences of Falling Short1

The present study shows conditions under which a positive stereotypic belief–Asians are good in mathematics–can have negative consequences. Participants graded a poorly performed mathematical assignment that they believed was the work of an Asian or a White target person. Under no accuracy instructions, participants who spent less time grading (unmotivated participants) assigned fewer points to the Asian than the White target. There was no difference in assignment of points to the Asian or the White target when participants were given accuracy instructions or spent more time grading (motivated participants). The findings suggest that group members may experience negative consequences when they fall short of “great expectations” stemming from a positive stereotypic belief about their group.     

Falling From Grace: Understanding an Ethical Sanctioning Experience

Although an ethical sanction is viewed as an incredibly stressful event for professional counselors, the experience of being sanctioned is not well known. This article provides an overview of the sanctioning process, a discussion of professional silence, and a case example of a sanctioning experience for a counselor. The sanctioning experience is described in a 3‐stage response sequence and is illustrated with journal entries from a sanctioned counselor. Response interventions for each stage are suggested, and implications for the counseling profession are offered.     

Concerning the Rumored Falling to Earth of 'Time's Arrow'

In this article I suggest that at least three crucial questions have been largely overlooked in recent research on the psychology of religion: First, is the field currently placing too much emphasis on the effects of religion on physical and mental health? Second, could negative emotions associated with religion lead to adaptive outcomes in some situations? Finally, should we begin to devote greater attention to specific religious beliefs or doctrines? Attention to issues such as these may help to increase the impact of research on the psychology of religion.     

斯人已去 道风长存——缅怀兰州志公道观住持陈涵谷道长

兰州红泥沟志公道观住持、全真教龙门派第二十四代玄裔、著名道医陈涵谷道长.于1999年夏历八月二十三日在西固柳沟大坪,无疾无苦,端坐而逝,享年八十六岁.今已过数年,而陈道长言谈笑语音容宛在.念及老人家谈<易>说道、讲医论武之情,如在昨日.而今却驾鹤西游,人去楼空,广陵散绝,悲哉!     

Falling on sensitive ears: constraints on bilingual lexical activation

Abstract— Spoken word recognition is characterized by multiple activation of sound patterns that are consistent with the acoustic-phonetic input. Recently, an extreme form of multiple activation was observed: Bilingual listeners activated words from both languages that were consistent with the input. We explored the degree to which bilingual multiple activation may be constrained by fine-grained acoustic-phonetic information. Ina head-mounted eyetracking experiment, we presented Spanish-English bilinguals with spoken Spanish words having word-initial stop consonants with either English- or Spanish-appropriate voice onset times. Participants fixated interlingual distractors(nontarget pictures whose English names shared a phonological similarity with the Spanish targets) more frequently than control distractors when the target words contained English-appropriate voice onset times. These results demonstrate that fine-grained acoustic-phonetic information and a precise match between input and representation are criticalfor parallel activation of two languages.     

The China Puzzle: Falling Happiness in a Rising Economy

Over the 1990–2000 decade happiness in China plummeted despite massive improvement in material living standards. This finding contradicts the notion that income growth at low living standards leads to gains, not losses, in happiness. We explain this puzzle by drawing on a specific version of relative deprivation theory, the concept of “frustrated achievers.” Our major finding is that income inequality in China became increasingly skewed towards the upper income strata, so that related to the average income the financial position of most Chinese worsened. Consequently, financial dissatisfaction rose and became an increasingly important factor in depressing happiness. Other negative feelings emerging with rapid transitions, such as anomie and disaffection, show a less depressive effect on Chinese happiness. We conclude with some speculations about the applicability of our findings to transition economies in general.