Cortisol response and psychological distress predict susceptibility to false memories for a trauma film

For eyewitness testimony to be considered reliable, it is important to ensure memory remains accurate following the event. As many testimonies involve traumatic, as opposed to neutral, events, it is important to consider the role of distress in susceptibility to false memories. The aim of this study was to investigate whether cortisol response following a stressor would be associated with susceptibility to false memories. Psychological distress responses were also investigated, specifically, dissociation, intrusions, and avoidance. Participants were allocated to one of three conditions: those who viewed a neutral film (N?=?35), those who viewed a real trauma film (N?=?35), and a trauma “reappraisal” group where participants were told the film was not real (N?=?35). All received misinformation about the film in the form of a narrative. Participants provided saliva samples (to assess cortisol) and completed distress and memory questionnaires. Cortisol response was a significant predictor of the misinformation effect. Dissociation and avoidance were related to confabulations. In conclusion, following a stressor an individual may differ with regard to their psychological response to the event, and also whether they experience a cortisol increase. This may affect whether they are more distressed later on, and also whether they remember the event accurately.     

Dissociation,the true self and the notion of the frozen baby

Abstract

The widespread ‘trauma talk’ that is prevalent in the social sciences, has, in recent years, become increasingly commonplace in psychoanalytic writings, especially in attachment theory and relational psychoanalysis. This paper examines dissociation, a key concept in ‘trauma theory’, in conjunction with the Winnicottian term ‘true self’, in the context of a particular discursive and theoretical combination of the two. This discursive formation is named ‘the frozen baby discourse’, and it is presented and analysed. A critique is offered of the way ‘true self’, understood as a humanistic concept, is often used together with dissociation, in order to create a theoretical construct that is far removed from Winnicottian theory. This paper begins by exploring definitional issues, both around dissociation and ‘true self’. It is subsequently argued that this contemporary usage of ‘true self’ in combination with dissociation has important implications for psychoanalytic practice.     

Optimism and positive body image in women: The mediating role of the feared fat self

We predicted that an expectancy judgment about acquiring a feared fat self and an expectancy judgment about acquiring a hoped-for thin self would mediate dispositional optimism on positive body image. We also predicted that the mediation pathway through the feared self would be significantly stronger than that through the hoped-for self. Participants were 208 female college students who reported their age, height and weight and completed measures of dispositional optimism, the likelihood of acquiring the feared fat and hoped-for thin selves, and positive body image. Statistical analyses revealed that only the perceived likelihood of acquiring the feared fat self mediated dispositional optimism on positive body image. Implications for future research are discussed.     

Self creation and the limitless void of dissociation: the 'as if' personality

The concept of the 'as if' personality has been used variously in analytic literature without having formed part of a clinically based theoretical development over time. The author discusses the bases of her notion of the 'as if' personality, as observed across a number of patients and supervised patients in intensive, long term analytic treatment. In this composite clinical picture, a grouping of elements that form a particular kind of defence of the self is identified in certain patients with an exceptional capacity for creative engagement in the world, surpassing expectations given their background. The picture includes the presence of physical breakdown and illness, as psychic suffering arising from early narcissistic wounding and from a physical, emotional and/or sexual abusive familial environment, was held for too long in bodily memory but not in mind. A distinction is made between the 'as if' personality, the persona and the false self. The 'as if' personality concerns the action of defensive dissociation deriving from very early experiences of internalizing the presence of an absent object, creating the sense of an internal void at the core of the self. At the same time, the self is capable of acts of self creation through a succession of identifications and internalizations with other sources of environmental nourishment, which substitute for, and are constructed around, the original sense of internal emptiness. Thus are restored, but only up to a point, the resources of the originally diminished self. Until these resources have been used up, the self is often able to excel in activities to an exceptional degree. The countertransference is shown to be the means of both useful but often perilously obtained clinical experience and information, supporting the work along the hazardous analytic journey.     

The fear of love: the denial of self in relationship

This paper explores the fear of love and relationship which develops when a child has experienced parents who cannot tolerate emotional separation and so attempt to retain perfect contingency with their infant, long after the infant needs to begin to separate and individuate. The child is a 'self-object' for the parents, who depend on the responses of others, including their own child, to maintain a sense of their own identity. The impact of this demand for 'reverse parenting' on the child's development is explored and clinical work with an adult patient whose history reflects this process is described.     

The ego and the id revisited Freud and Damasio on the body ego/self

Freud's statement in The Ego and the Id (1923) that the ego is first and foremost a bodily ego is well known. This paper tempts to clarify the premises underlying Freud's thesis. Particular attention is paid to Freud's investigation of internal perceptions. Freud argued that internal perceptions are more primordial than perceptions arising externally. In Freud's opinion the roots of the ego, the id, are to be found in body sensations and feelings, but he had to admit that very little was known about these sensations and feelings. Only much later was neuroscience in a position to offer evidence that feelings can be the direct perception of the internal state of the body. Damasio (2010) has recently suggested that the core of the self might be found in what he, like Freud, terms primordial feelings. Not only was Freud able to conceive of the ego as the perception and feeling of our own body but also to conceive of knowing the mental life of another by means of recreating the bodily state of another through imitation.     

Aspects of identity: From the inner-outer metaphor to a tetrapartite model of the self

Abstract

We review a program of research on identity orientations – the relative importance or value that individuals place on various identity attributes when constructing their self-definitions. We first provide a brief history of the development of our measure of identity orientations – the Aspects of Identity Questionnaire (AIQ) – after which we present our tetrapartite model of the self that distinguishes among individual, relational, public, and collective aspects of identity. We then review previous research on how the four identity orientations uniquely influence cognition, emotion, and behavior, and close by highlighting what we see as interesting and important directions for future research.     

情绪与决策：躯体标记假设及其研究新进展

人类的决策被广泛认为是一个理性的和认知主导的过程,因此在决策研究中,任何形式的情绪都被避免。最近,一些神经科学的研究显示,情绪是人类决策中的一部分,它不可以与认知分析过程相分离,并且有些时候,情绪甚至在决策过程中起着重要的作用。躯体标记假设就提供了一个情绪如何影响人们决策的神经解剖和认知的框架,其核心为决策受躯体状态（或标识信号）所影响,躯体状态来源于生物调节过程,包括情绪和情感过程。该文章介绍了何为躯体标记假设,躯体标记假设的实验研究,以及研究中的新进展。     

Contextualized self: when the self runs into social dilemmas

Research on the construction of self and of others has indicated that the way that individuals construe themselves and others exerts an important influence on their cognition, emotion, and even behavior. The present study extends this line of research to mixed-motive situations in which short-term individual and long-term collective interests are at odds. In addition, this study associates the importance of context interdependence, and specifically its interaction with independent self-construal, with an individual's cooperative behavior. We used a priming task to manipulate the level of self-construal and also manipulated the degree of interdependent context by giving participants a chance to assign rewards either to their group members or to themselves alone. The results showed that when participants received interdependent (as opposed to independent) self-construal priming, they consistently contributed highly, regardless of context manipulation. In contrast, those primed with an independent self-construal contributed less in the investment game, but only when placed in a context where group members were encouraged to think about their individual (versus mutual) fate. In this situation they contributed the least to the group in the game. These findings indicate that independent self-construal in a low interdependence context produces the most competitive behavior. The results also showed that how participants felt about their interaction with other group members mediated the effect of context interdependence on cooperative behavior, and possibly that was especially the case for independent self-construal. The results demonstrate that the self can be contextualized and embedded in the social contexts and symbolic systems within which people live.     

Detecting contingency: A key to understanding development of self and social cognition

Abstract:  Detecting contingency between self-produced actions and the consequences plays a crucial role for basic cognitive functions, such as construction of self body-image and tool-use. This paper reviews our recent studies focusing on the temporal aspect of contingency. Three studies concerning the detection of proprioceptive-visual contingency in infants, children and adults are summarized. All of these studies use delayed self-image as a tool to investigate the temporal aspect of contingency detection. Based on the results of these studies and related preceding research, the paper proposes the ubiquity of a contingency detector among the development of self and social interaction.     

Ambiguity and the dialogical self: In search for a dialogical psychology

Abstract

It is intuitively felt that ambiguity plays a crucial role in human beings' everyday life and in psychologists' theoretical and applied work. However, ambiguity remains essentially non-problematised in psychological science since its foundation. This article analyses positivist and social constructionist perspectives on ambiguity in the context of their epistemological and ontological fundamental assumptions. The relational thesis of social constructionism is further analysed and it is argued that it constitutes a “weak thesis” concerning the relational constitution of human beings. In the second part, a dialogical alternative is elaborated. In this perspective, ambiguity is placed in the context of relationship and both are brought to an ontological ground. Therefore, it is argued, ambiguity is a fundamental property of human experience and plays a fundamental role in the constitution of (inter)subjective processes. The impact of this thesis on dialogical perspective on self is elaborated.     

The cross-culturally disordered self: A self-psychological study and treatment

The psychotherapeutic treatment of a young woman whose development was thwarted by patriarchal, sexist, familial, and cultural contexts is presented and discussed. The history, dream material, and symptomotology indicate developmental deficits from which derived a lack of cohesive, individual selfhood as well as narcissistic vulnerabilities manifested by a high propensity for shame. The author posits a view of patriarchy as acculturating women subjectively to experience themselves on an unconscious fantasy level as appendages of men, thus depriving them of genuine and authentic selfhood. This perspective is used as a lens through which this woman's experience in two patriarchal cultures can be empathically understood. The case enables us to examine how the process of acculturation in patriarchal contexts can interfere with women's capacity to develop a strong sense of self and allows us to consider whether and how human development is culturally determined.     

Bodily states of anxiety: the movement from somatic states to thought

My paper attempts to stimulate thought about the relationship between physical and mental 'states of anxiety' by looking at some experiences in the consulting room, particularly at those moments when shifts from predominantly somatic to predominantly psychic forms of representation appeared to be taking place. These experiences are considered in conjunction with some of the ideas of Jung, Fordham, Bion, Winnicott, Meltzer and others relevant to the body-mind question. I conclude with some imaginative speculations.     

A continuing sense of self in the lived experience of dementia

ABSTRACT

Diagnosis with dementia often leads to an overwhelming fear of loss of self, which is assumed in the social discourse about the condition. After my own diagnosis with dementia in 1995, I reflected on this fear from a Christian theological perspective and was nonetheless able to discover a sense of hope. Highlighting what remains in dementia, as seen through the lens of the lived experience, provides a counter-story to the views of outside observers, which have dominated the literature to date. Although people with dementia experience a change in their cognitive sense of self, there are still important aspects of self that remain, which are: a sense of being an embodied self, in relationships with others and with God, and being able to find meaning in the present moment. By demonstrating that people living with dementia have a continuing sense of self, the aim is to prompt improved pastoral care and ministry.     

A Buddhist contribution to the psychoanalytic psychology of self

The author attempts to integrate the concepts of self used in psychoanalytic theory with the understanding of the nature of self as explained within the Buddhist meditative tradition. He divides different concepts of self in psychoanalytic theory into three major levels of consciousness and abstraction: self as experience, representational self and self as system. The representational level is defined as consisting of unconscious organizing structures of interaction: the system level is a hierarchically higher organization of representations, while the experiential level consists of the moment-to-moment flow of consciousness. He argues that for the sake of theoretical clarity these levels should be differentiated in discussions of self. He then describes the Buddhist psychology of self and tries to show how this perspective can enrich psychoanalytic understanding of the experiential self and of narcissism, which in Buddhist language would be described as clinging to (seeking or avoiding) images of self that arise in the mind. Last, he describes a model of therapeutic development using different levels of self and the interrelationship between them, showing how psychoanalytic psychotherapy and Buddhist insight meditation emphasize different levels of self using complementary rather than mutually exclusive methods.     

The mind-brain relationship: the emergent self

This paper explores the mind-brain relationship, using insights from contemporary neuroscience. It seeks to investigate how our brains become who we are, how subjective experience arises. In order to do this some explanation is given of the basic concepts of how the brain produces our subjective mental life. Current neuropsychological and neurobiological understanding of early brain development, memory, emotion and consciousness are explored. There is also an attempt at mapping the mind-brain-self relationship from a uniquely Jungian perspective. Clinical material is included in order to show the relevance of these insights to our work in the consulting room, arguing the value of the affect-regulating, relational aspects of the analytic dyad that forge new neural pathways through emotional connection. Such experience forms the emotional scaffolding necessary for the emergence of reflective function.