Testimonio,a Bridge Between Psychotherapy and Sociotherapy

The Testimonio, or Testimony, is a therapeutic tool in the treatment of people who have suffered psychological trauma under state terrorism. This article discusses the historical origins and social and clinical applications. The objective realities of the terrorist state are examined in terms of their toxic effects on the community, and the process of Testimony is presented as both a psychotherapeutic clinical method for improving the mental health of the individual, and an act of social and political therapy that makes a significant contribution to community mental health. Using examples drawn from women who are managing an accomodation to political repression, and their exiled sisters who have had to flee for refuge, the article compares the use of Testimony in a public, social setting with its use in the clinical setting. Through this comparison the interactive psychological and political dimensions of the process are observed as critical for the healing of personal and social wounds, and equally effective in both settings.     

Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi,the Royal Alliance,and Jewish Political Theory

This article examines Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi’s views of the realities and myths of the “royal alliance” in medieval and modern Jewish history as a seminal contribution to Jewish political history and theory as well as a revealing entrée into his overall historiographical approach. Elaborating the ideas of his teacher Salo Baron and drawing upon Hannah Arendt’s insights into the relationship between Jews and modern states, Yerushalmi ultimately used his own understanding of Jewish political experience to argue against her indictment of wartime Jewish leaders. For Yerushalmi, Jews’ awareness of their tendencies to forge vertical alliances with the highest authorities served to fortify and console them; he considered these perceptions generally realistic and, though at times tragically blinding, still ultimately anchored in historical experience. This essay situates the royal alliance within Yerushalmi’s broader conceptions of Jewish community, political agency, and domicile as diasporic survival strategies. It also views this concept as part of his post-Holocaust commitment to chart the paradoxes of Jewish hope and to regenerate Jewish hope, both collective and individual. Yerushalmi is often celebrated as a pioneering thinker who contrasted modern critical historiography to traditional collective memory and who explored the individual, existential, psychological, and skeptical dimensions of modern Jewish identity. Yet, this essay suggests, a traditionalist strain may be heard in his profound identification with the Jewish people and his deriving hope from their political and historical experience—in both its continuities and its ruptures.     

"Be the love of god rather than talk about it": ministers study psychology

After World War II, American ministers successfully drew on training in psychology to nurture their spiritual and vocational development. Contrary to what critics of a therapeutic ethos in American culture have asserted, this social history of ministers shows that their adoption of psychological modes of thinking was neither atomizing nor secularizing. Rather, it helped them become better people and better ministers. It nurtured their faith as well as their social connections. Thus, I argue against critics who have feared the civically enervating effects of psychological outlooks in American society.     

Between certainty and uncertainty--observations on psychoanalysis in Russia

'Diversity', the theme of our conference, carries a subversive sub-text in totalitarian societies. This is one of the themes presented as the current revival of psychoanalysis in the more democratic post-Communist Russia is explored. The history of psychoanalysis in Russia is summarized with a focus on its politicization, which led to initial interest in its theory (by way of a misapprehension of its tenets), and then to ultimate suppression of psychoanalytic thinking as an ideology deemed antagonistic to the totalitarian regime. In contrast, features of psychoanalysis and democracy are explored for their mutual affinities. The background of the resourceful new generation of analytic therapists is discussed, especially in regard to their experience of the parallel meanings of the word 'repression' (political, psychological). There is a persistence of some traits in patients and practitioners alike that are referable to past repression, such as the newness of verbal treatments, the inhibition of psychological curiosity, the ambivalent lure of certainty, and the pressure of authoritarian introjects. It is noted that psychoanalysis has its own history of a posture opposed to pluralism and diversity, which deepens the dialogue on the mutual engagement between psychoanalysis and the vicissitudes of its history in Russian culture.     

How contextual and individual characteristics influence psychological needs satisfaction: The critical roles of political skill and political will

This two-study research package investigates the interactive effects of perceptions of organizational politics, political skill, and political will on psychological need satisfaction, which has been shown to predict a number of different important organizational outcomes. Drawing primarily on social/political influence and self-determination theories, we propose that although perceptions of organizational politics (i.e., as an important situational or contextual variable) can demonstrate need-thwarting effects for some, its effects can be need-satisfying for those individuals with high levels of political skill and political will. In Study 1, we analyze a sample of 142 individuals to demonstrate that possessing political skill attenuates the negative effects of perceptions of organizational politics on psychological need satisfaction. In Study 2, we analyze a sample of 420 individuals to demonstrate that respondents with high levels of both political skill and political will experience their highest levels of need satisfaction in highly political environments. Theoretical contributions, limitations and future research directions, and practical implications are discussed.     

From Social to Political Identity: A Critical Examination of Social Identity Theory

Interest in the concept of identity has grown exponentially within both the humanities and social sciences, but the discussion of identity has had less impact than might be expected on the quantitative study of political behavior in general and on political psychology more specifically. One of the approaches that holds the most promise for political psychologists is social identity theory, as reflected in the thinking of Henri Tajfel, John Turner, and colleagues. Although the theory addresses the kinds of problems of interest to political psychologists, it has had limited impact on political psychology because of social identity theorists' disinclination to examine the sources of social identity in a real world complicated by history and culture. In this review, four key issues are examined that hinder the successful application of social identity theory to political phenomena. These key issues are the existence of identity choice, the subjective meaning of identities, gradations in identity strength, and the considerable stability of many social and political identities.     

Levels-of-processing effects in subject-performed tasks

In memory for subject-performed tasks (SPTs), subjects encode a list of simple action phrases (e.g., thumb through a book, knock at the door) by performing these actions during learning. In three experiments, we investigated the size of the levels-of-processing effects in SPTs as compared with those in standard verbal learning tasks (VTs). Subjects under SPT and VT conditions learned lists of action phrases in a surface or a conceptual orienting task. Under both encoding conditions, the subjects recalled fewer items with surface orienting tasks than with conceptual orienting tasks, but the levels-of-processing effects were strongly reduced in the SPT condition. In the SPT condition, items that were encoded in a surface orienting task were still substantially recalled. The items were recalled almost as well as the conceptually encoded items in the VT condition. The distinct reduction of the levels-of-processing effect is caused by the fact that, in SPT encoding even with a verbal surface orienting task, subjects process conceptual information in order to perform the denoted action. We attribute the small conceptual advantage, which remains with SPT despite the conceptual processing for performing, to the fact that items are not as well integrated into memory as they are when conceptual processing is focused on the action component, rather than on the semantic contexts. This lower integration reduces the accessibility of items in the verbal surface task, even with SPT encoding.     

Basque attitude towards political violence: Its correlation with personality variables,other sociopolitical attitudes,and political party vote

The Basque are a strongly nationalistic European people in northern Spain and southern France with an ancient ethnic tradition and a language unrelated to any other known. Their recent history has been overshadowed by a terrorist organization perpetrating political violence within the boundaries of the Basque Country and often beyond its borders within the Spanish state. Research on the Basque, with an emphasis on the comparison of psychological characteristics (studied by the use of an instrument developed for that purpose by the author of this article and another colleague, Jesús Guerra, of the University of the Basque Country), has provided an opportunity to review attitudes towards violence within the general population, analyze different groups constituted according to differences in attitude as well as political party vote, and to compare them with regards to differences in personality. The distribution of these attitudes within the sample population, as well as some hypotheses as to their origins, are presented, discussing their possible relationship to social and psychological variables at work within Basque society. Psychopathological indicators permit an estimation of the degree of abnormality associated with the attitude towards political violence. © 1993 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

When ancestral heritage is a source of discomfort: culture, pre-object relatedness, and self-alienation

The ancestral claims on an individual can evoke mental conflict when they involve separating from an ethnic group whose beliefs and customs are devalued by the dominant culture. However, these claims are engraved on the psyche early in development by caretakers to the level of pre-object relatedness, where contents and affect tones are implicit and may be unavailable for later psychoanalytical interventions. In addition, as the anthropologist Clifford Geertz notes, one's culture of origin precedes the development of psyche and creates its own set of claims that must be renegotiated when one encounters a different domain of cultural symbols, a confrontation that can produce psychological dissonance and self-alienation. In this paper, three cases are examined in which mental conflicts were evoked by attempts at divesting ancestral claims in response to conscious efforts to assimilate into the dominant culture. These patients suffered from separation guilt and unstable self-esteem and reported dream imagery suggesting psychological imbalance. The requirement to carefully delineate the ancestral claims on psyche as well as those contents and affects that may not be accessible to therapeutic intervention is emphasized, and the importance of compromise and acceptance with respect to the psychological demands of the unconscious are considered.     

Living Danger: On Not Knowing What We Know

This paper contextualizes the struggle around the American Psychological Association's ethical standards regarding psychologists' participation in abusive interrogations of detainees by examining the psychological and political meanings of living in a society in which the state assumes the right to torture. To highlight the implications of authoritarian trends in America's post-9/11 political culture, I offer an interdisciplinary psychoanalytic analysis of the extreme social situation of the Argentine Dirty War, in which torture was used by the military government not as a tactic to make detainees talk but as a strategy to silence an entire population. I explore the defense mechanism of disavowal and its use by both perpetrators and victims in ways that contributed to sustaining authoritarian rule in Argentina. I suggest that it is within the legitimate arena of psychoanalysis to consider the psychological meanings of patients' experience in the larger social order. I argue for a psychoanalytic project that does not disavow the centrality of social reality in the formation of subjectivity and for a clinical model that provides a potential space in which the subject can develop a critical psyche able to co-construct a more democratic political as well as personal life.     

Dogmatism, Locus of Control of Reinforcement, Importance of Issues, and Relationships to Political Activity

This study examined the cumulative and interaction effects of dogmatism, I-E, and issue salience on political activity. Indexes of the variables were developed from factor-analytic results based on personal, group, and mail interviews with 212 adults in the Detroit area. The three psychological variables were then dichotomized at the median and related to political activity, utilizing multiple regression and a step-wise interaction procedure. The multiple r was .41 ( p <.01) with issue salience contributing the greatest amount of variance. Comparisons to multiple-regression predictions indicated interaction effects with low-issue importance reducing political activity and high-issue importance increasing political activity. Split-half analyses indicated substantial stability in the findings. A broader conceptualization for relating psychological variables to political activity was discussed.     

Political tolerance and coming to psychological closure following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks: an integrative approach

This study tested hypotheses generated from an integrative model of political tolerance that derived hypotheses from a number of different social psychological theories (e.g., appraisal tendency theory, intergroup emotion theory, and value protection models) to explain political tolerance following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. A national field study (N = 550) found that immediate post attack anger and fear had different implications for political tolerance 4 months later. The effects of anger on political tolerance were mediated through moral outrage and outgroup derogation, whereas the effects of fear on political tolerance were mediated through personal threat, ingroup enhancement, and value affirmation. Value affirmation led to increased political tolerance, whereas moral outrage, outgroup derogation, ingroup enhancement, and personal threat led to decreased political tolerance. Value affirmation, moral outrage, and outgroup derogation also facilitated post-9/11 psychological closure and increased psychological closure led to greater political tolerance.     

心理学研究中人的命运与文化的命运

目的:通过追踪文化研究历史,探究对当今文化心理学研究的启示意义。方法:整理和回顾心理学史上关于文化的研究及文献,并对各阶段的文化研究进行评述。结果:文化在心理学史上经历了坎坷多桀的命运,文化在各阶段的不同遭遇与研究者们对人的本质的认识密切相关。结论:对人的本质的正确理解是当今文化心理学健康发展的前提。     

The ego in diagnosis

This article highlights the salient issues in ego psychological assessment, and offers detailed suggestions on the conduct of such clinical procedures. The article emphasizes the importance of the anamnesis (or detailed, meaningful history), the patient's ego structure, the kind of trauma and its duration, the symptoms presented as well as the dynamic, genetic, and adaptive implications of the patient's symptoms and complaints. The determination of the ego's state is viewed as critical for adequate preparation for therapy and the evolution of the therapeutic relationship.     

No War, No Peace: Northern Ireland after the Agreement

In 1998 a historic agreement, commonly known as the Belfast or Good Friday Agreement, formed the basis of a negotiated settlement for the future of Northern Ireland. Since that time the level of violence in Northern Ireland has reduced but many problematic issues related to governance, sectarianism, and community relations remain on the political agenda and have destabilized the post-peace accord environment. Many of these issues can be viewed as either causes or consequences of the protracted conflict in Northern Ireland. This special issue examines some of these issues from a political psychology perspective. Economic, political, social, and psychological factors that have supported and hindered progress towards peace and stability are considered. While the paramilitary ceasefires have remained intact and certain aspects of life in Northern Ireland have been transformed, the road to peace has been hindered by both political and psychological intransigence. This paper offers an opportunity to reevaluate conceptualisations of conflict and its management in chronic situations, where divisions are deeply embedded within societal structures and relationships, and consider factors that may act as barriers to the development of a lasting peace.     

Music,identity, and musical ethnocentrism of young people in six Asian,Latin American,and Western cultures

Ethnomusicologists and sociologists have extensively discussed the symbolic role of music in the creation, maintenance, and expression of cultural and national identity, while the underlying social psychological processes remain unexplored. We elaborate psychological mechanisms of identity construction and identity expression through culture‐specific music preferences. We propose and test a model linking music preferences to national identity via musical ethnocentrism in six student samples from Brazil, Germany, Hong Kong, Mexico, New Zealand, and the Philippines. In each context, culture‐specific music styles were related to national identity of its listeners and musical ethnocentrism mediated these effects. This paper bridges culture‐specific and universal perspectives on music and identity by examining the underlying psychological processes in Asian, Latin, and Western cultures.     

National Threat and Political Culture: Authoritarianism, Antiauthoritarianism, and the September 11 Attacks

This paper uses published letters to the editor of major U.S. newspapers to investigate the cultural effects of a major national threat: the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. It is based on a hand-coded, stratified random sample of 1,100 letters to the editor published in 17 major papers in the United States (544 pre-September 11, 556 post-September 11). The letters are drawn from a population of 8,101 published letters. Degrees of both authoritarianism and antiauthoritarianism, as well as the general salience of questions of authoritarianism, rose significantly in the post-attack period. The paper suggests that, instead of a simple threat-authoritarianism causal link, authoritarianism and antiauthoritarianism are paired elements of political culture that are invoked together in the face of a national threat.