A reappraisal of the Emma episode and the specimen dream

Schur's (1966, 1972) speculations that the "specimen dream" exculpates Fliess rather than Freud and that Freud was unaware of this are challenged. Schur's assertion that Freud was not aware of "current conflict" when writing The Interpretation of Dreams is countered with the previously unpublished "Completion of the Analysis" of the dream of "Running up the Stairs," which illustrates Freud's withholding of "current conflict" from his published associations. The view is advanced that Freud's and Fliess's treatment of Emma Eckstein might have been an important element in Freud's self-analysis because it was a repetition of his childhood conflicts. The identities of Emma Eckstein (operated on by Fliess) and Anna Hammerschlag Lichtheim, together with the previously unnoticed, published exchange between Abraham and Freud, are used to add further insight into Freud's interpretation of the dream. In addition, new material concerning Freud's father's terminal illness, beginning in July, 1985, casts further light on the specimen dream as well as others. It is argued that concerns about Martha Freud's sixth pregnancy and wishes for improved contraception were important determinants of the dream and part of the undisclosed associations. It is also argued that rivalrous elements of the associations are elaborated in the later non vixit dream.     

The unconscious ego-ideal and analytic group psychotherapy

The theoretical position of this paper is that the essential character of the ego-ideal, a part of superego functioning, is unconscious, universal, and functions automatically. Precursors to superego development and ego-ideal formation begin at early preoedipal levels, and derivations in adult behavior contain primitive aspects. Ego-ideal is perfectionistic and impossible to obey;therefore, projection of this phenomenon as well as its activity leads to disappoinment, anger, anxiety, depression and despair. Pseudomoral injunctions frequently rationalize and disguise early primitive aspects of unconscious superego development and ego-ideal formation. These points are illustrated by clinical material, showing the therapeutic action in the group which leads to a modification of this critical, self-defeating aspect of adult functioning.Copyright, 1987, Washington Square Institute for Psychotherapy and Mental Health, which published this paper in No. 14 of the Group Psychotherapy Monograph Series, after the paper had been presented at the Fourteenth Annual Conference of the Group Psychotherapy Department, and presented by invitation at the ninth congress of the International Association of Group Psychotherapy, Zagreb, Yugoslavia, August 1986.Dr. Edwards was formerly an Associate Supervisor and Faculty Member in the Group Department at the Postgraduate Center for Mental Health.     

Conscious and unconscious processes: the effects of motivation

The process-dissociation procedure has been used in a variety of experimental contexts to assess the contributions of conscious and unconscious processes to task performance. To evaluate whether motivation affects estimates of conscious and unconscious processes, participants were given incentives to follow inclusion and exclusion instructions in a perception task and a memory task. Relative to a control condition in which no performance incentives were given, the results for the perception task indicated that incentives increased the participants' ability to exclude previously presented information, which in turn both increased the estimate of conscious processes and decreased the estimate of unconscious processes. However, the results also indicated that incentives did not influence estimates of conscious or unconscious processes in the memory task. The findings suggest that the process-dissociation procedure is relatively immune to influences of motivation when used with a memory task, but that caution should be exercised when the process-dissociation is used with a perception task.     

A process-dissociation examination of the cognitive processes underlying unconscious thought

Conscious and unconscious thought have been previously found to differentially impact decision-making quality. However, little research has directly measured the processes underlying these modes of thinking. We propose that both thinking modes are characterized by rule-based and intuitive processing. In two experiments, we used the Process Dissociation Procedure to independently measure these cognitive processes. We tested three competing hypotheses: (a) conscious thinking evokes both increased rule-based and decreased intuitive processing compared to unconscious thinking; (b) conscious and unconscious thinking evoke similar levels of intuitive processing but conscious thinking enhances rule-based processing; and (c) conscious and unconscious thinking evoke similar levels of rule-based processing but unconscious thinking enhances intuitive processing. Experiment 1 used base-rate and law-of-large-numbers decision-making problems, whereas Experiment 2 used decision-making problems similar to the “apartment” problem that is often used in unconscious thought studies. In both experiments we found support for hypothesis (b).     

A critical reappraisal of the evidence for unconscious abstraction of deterministic rules in complex experimental situations

In a recent experiment (Lewicki et al., 1988) subjects were submitted to a four-choice RT paradigm for 3600 trials. On each of the successive logical blocks of five trials, the first two locations of the target were randomly distributed, and the last three locations were determined by complex rules. Although subjects were unable to verbalize the actual nature of the manipulation, performance on the last trials of each block improved at a faster rate and was better overall than performance on the first trials. In addition, subsequent rules changes on 480 additional trials only affected performance on the last three trials of each block. The present paper demonstrates that contrary to Lewicki et al's assertions this performance pattern requires neither acquisition of tacit knowledge of the composition rules, nor partitioning by the subjects of the sequence into logical blocks of five trials. Rather, the results can be accounted for by the relative frequency of a few simple sequences of target locations. Moreover, this alternative explanation alone correctly anticipates some striking features of fine-grained performance (Lewicki et al., 1988). The discussion focuses on methodological implications of these findings for investigation of unconscious learning, and speculates on what and how people learn when they encounter a complex and structured situation.     

Last night I had the strangest dream: Varieties of rational thought processes in dream reports

From the neurophysiological perspective, thinking in dreaming and the quality of dream thought have been considered hallucinatory, bizarre, illogical, improbable, or even impossible. This empirical phenomenological research concentrates on testing whether dream thought can be defined as rational in the sense of an intervening mental process between sensory perception and the creation of meaning, leading to a conclusion or to taking action. From 10 individual dream journals of male participants aged 22–59 years and female participants aged 25–49 years, we delimited four dreams per journal and randomly selected five thought units from each dream for scoring. The units provided a base for testing a hypothesis that the thought processes of dream construction are rational. The results support the hypothesis and demonstrate that eight fundamental rational thought processes can be applied to the dreaming process.     

The helping process in group therapy: A review and discussion

The essential activity of group therapy consists of members taking an interest in each other by asking questions, showing concern, and conveying understanding. When members have not done this it has often been taken as a sign of resistance. A review of the research on helping suggests that there are four social factors that affect assistance giving in groups: 1) ambiguity-often people fail to give help because they are uncertain about who should give it, what should be done, and how it should be done; 2) often help is not given because of the way in which problems are presented; 3) the social comparisons that individuals make affect help-giving; and 4) there are costs associated with providing assistance. This discussion suggests that leaders can facilitate interaction among group members as teachers who clarify and as indirect helpers who redirect concerns back to group members.     

Inpatient child and adolescent therapy groups: Boundary maintenance and group function

Inpatient therapy groups are described as subsystems of the social systems that comprise hospital units. System theory concepts are used to illustrate how clear group boundaries are essential for the effective functioning of inpatient therapy groups. Milieu dependency dynamics are viewed as a major source of resistance to group boundary formation in psychiatric institutions for children and adolescents.     

The GROOP effect: groups mimic group actions

Research on perception–action links has focused on an interpersonal level, demonstrating effects of observing individual actions on performance. The present study investigated perception–action matching at an inter-group level. Pairs of participants responded to hand movements that were performed by two individuals who used one hand each or they responded to hand movements performed by an individual who used both hands. Apart from the difference in the number of observed agents, the observed hand movements were identical. If co-actors form action plans that specify the actions to be performed jointly, then participants should have a stronger tendency to mimic group actions than individual actions. Confirming this prediction, the results showed larger mimicry effects when groups responded to group actions than when groups responded to otherwise identical individual actions. This suggests that representations of joint tasks modulate automatic perception–action links and facilitate mimicry at an inter-group level.     

Regressive research: The pitfalls of post hoc data selection in the study of unconscious mental processes

Many studies of unconscious processing involve comparing a performance measure (e.g., some assessment of perception or memory) with an awareness measure (such as a verbal report or a forced-choice response) taken either concurrently or separately. Unconscious processing is inferred when above-chance performance is combined with null awareness. Often, however, aggregate awareness is better than chance, and data analysis therefore employs a form of extreme group analysis focusing post hoc on participants, trials, or items where awareness is absent or at chance. The pitfalls of this analytic approach are described with particular reference to recent research on implicit learning and subliminal perception. Because of regression to the mean, the approach can mislead researchers into erroneous conclusions concerning unconscious influences on behavior. Recommendations are made about future use of post hoc selection in research on unconscious cognition.