Mechanics of the animate.

Behavior is treated as basic physics. Dimensions are identified and their transformations from physical specification to axes in behavioral space are suggested. Responses are treated as action patterns arrayed along a continuum of activation energy. Behavior is seen as movement along a trajectory through this behavior space. Incentives or reinforcers are attractors in behavior space, at the centers of basins of lowered potential. Trajectories impinging on such basins may be captured; repeated capture will warp the trajectory toward a geodesic, a process called conditioning. Conditioning is enhanced by contiguity, the proximity between the measured behavior and the incentive at the end of the trajectory, and by contingency, the depth of the trajectory below the average level of the potential energy landscape. Motivation is seen as the potential of an organism for motion under the forces impinging on it. Degree of motivation is characterized by the depth of the potential field, with low motivation corresponding to a flat field and a flat gradient of activation energy. Drives are the forces of incentives propagated through behavior space. Different laws for the attenuation of drive with behavioral distance are discussed, as is the dynamics of action. The basic postulate of behavior mechanics is incentive-tracking in behavior space, the energy for which is provided by decreases in potential. The relation of temporal gradients to response differentiation and temporal discrimination is analyzed. Various two-body problems are sketched to illustrate the application of these ideas to association, choice, scalar timing, self-control, and freedom.     

C. S. Lewis and the Rejection of the Tao

When asking about the worldview and ethics behind such stories as The Chronicles of Narnia, readers should try to understand C.S. Lewis's work in light of the Tao or moral Natural Law. Even though our modern culture affirms a relativism in values, Lewis affirms a non-relativist universal ground for moral judgment. Lewis's theological work, Mere Christianity, provides the clue for this interpretation. Despite the apparent negativity or violence in even some of the most memorable scenes in the Chronicles, the underlying moral is hopeful and positive, reflecting a 'mere Christian' worldview.     

Slips of the analyst.

Understanding the analyst's work and its vicissitudes has been a major focus of recent psychoanalytic writing. This study on slips of the analyst represents an attempt to advance our understanding of analytic work. The slips described support the view that slips reflect not simply contributions from instinctual life, but active work-related goals of the analyst in carrying out the analytic tasks. Countertransference is discussed as reflected in the disturbance of intentionality betrayed by the occurrence of a slip. The essential role of the analyst's understanding his or her own reactions is emphasized.     

W. H. R. Rivers and the war neuroses.

W. H. R. Rivers was the most famous member of the Cambridge Expedition to the Torres Strait. At the time, he was a physician and had an international reputation as a researcher in physiological psychology. The expedition signaled the beginning of his career in social anthropology, but also a long hiatus in his activities in medicine. His clinical interests revived during World War I. As an officer in the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC), Rivers became a leading proponent of "psychological medicine." Today, his war-time psychiatry is remembered mainly in association with his patient, Siegfried Sassoon. This article focuses on his wartime activities, his clinical practices, and his theories concerning the war neuroses and the unconscious. The currently popular view of Rivers as a quasi-Freudian humanist is challenged.     

On the metapsychology of schizophrenia.

The author's point of departure is schizophrenic fragmentation, which has been considered here from a drive-economic and structural point of view, starting from Freud's prestructural conceptions and Jacobson's metapsychological formulations. The view is arrived at in the essay that the central psychological mechanism in the schizophrenic disorder is a drive-energetic decathexis of the basic psychic tissue, or the primal representative matrix, which has far-reaching consequences within the entire psychic organization. The basic psychic tissue corresponds to that area of inner reality which, according to Freud, remains beyond the primal repression and is made up of the first representations of the instinctual drive. The entire psychic organization has then been woven out of this representational tissue, binding drive energies in a preliminary way. According to the view put forward here, schizophrenic fragmentation does not primarily represent a disintegration of the psychic macrostructures or a consequence of the ego's resorting to primitive defences but is a consequence of a drive-energetic crisis at the level of the basic psychic tissue. The disorder manifests itself as the disappearance of inner liveliness and as a diffuse dissociation of the entire representional world, which I have characterized as the disappearance of psychic transparence. Its influences naturally also extend to the realm of the more advanced psychic functions and macrostructures and will invalidate in a radical way the person's drive economy. Reference is made in the article to the possibility that the central task of the primal representative matrix may be the creation of lively connexions and a striving for synthesis throughout the entire psychic organization and that the schizophrenic disorder may be intimately related to the decathexis of this function.     

The Psychodynamic Assumptions of the U.S. Constitution

The U.S. Constitution is a blueprint for the design of a government which reflects the consistent application of an understanding of the emotions and interests driving the political activity of individuals and groups. This understanding is articulated in the writings of key proponents of the Constitution, and clarified by its historical and philosophical context. Their theories are congruent with psychoanalytic perspectives on narcissism, leadership, group dynamics, and the role of transitional space in cultural life. The concept of interests, reformulated in psychoanalytic terms, is a useful addition to our understanding of political behavior.     

Psychoanalysis and the Education of the Child by Gerald H. J. Pearson

A conceptualization is presented which encourages a renewed exploration of the way in which psychiatric patients discuss their medications in the group therapy setting. It is suggested that process-oriented group therapiststend to harbor subtle prejudices which may inhibit examination of this material. If we listen to medication-related discourse more carefully, we find that patients disclose important information about hopes and fears about treatment, self-efficacy, attitudes about control and authority, and other sensitive or disowned parts of experience. The process of interactions about medicines often reveals interpersonal difficulties, particularly around intimacy. Suggestions for intervening more effectively with this type of material are presented. The importance of medication attributions in revealing curative fantasies is discussed.     

Qualifications for Membership in the A.G.P.A.

A model of the development of group therapists is presented. It is proposed that student group therapists proceed through a sequence of stages, each of which is marked by characteristic therapist behavior. During the initial Group shock phase, the student reacts to the novelty of group therapy stimuli with individual therapy or content-oriented approaches. Reappraisal is a period of some therapist inhibition, frustration, or self-doubt. One step behind is a phase characterized by a gradual recognition of the process level of analysis, despite difficulty supplying the interventions autonomously. Using the here-and-now is a period of active intervention about interpersonal phenomena among group members. The techniques for highlighting this material are refined in the Polishing skills phase. The usefulness of models in training is discussed.     

Social psychological contributions to the decade of the brain. Doctrine of multilevel analysis.

The 1990s were declared by Congress to be the "decade of the brain." This declaration is important to all psychologists, not only neuroscientists, because with this declaration come expectations of the cognitive and behavioral sciences generally and because the brain does not exist in isolation but rather is a fundamental component of developing and aging individuals who themselves are mere actors in the larger theater of life. This article examines the importance of a multilevel, integrative approach to the study of mental and behavioral phenomena in the decade of the brain, reviews how this approach highlights the synergistic relationship between theoretical and clinically relevant research, and illustrates how this approach can foster the transition from microtheories to general psychological theories.     

On the nature of dissociation.

Psychoanalysis cannot presently account for the paradoxical nature of dissociation--those states of simultaneous knowing and not knowing in which perceptions are accurate and fully conscious, yet have no credibility to the subject. This paper suggests that dissociation is actually a different way of knowing: the patient constructs self-knowledge only in interaction with another. The subject perceives sensations and states of mind, but relegates to another the job of interpreting this experience. The divided sense of self reflects a division of labor between the subject, who registers sensation, and the other, who names it. Consequently, what the dissociative patient recognizes as "me" is determined by another's interpretation, and the subject knows him- or herself only as he or she is known to another.     

Studies in spatial learning. I. Orientation and the short-cut. 1946.

1. The original rough formulation of the expectancy theory is difficult to distinguish from the alternative stimulus-response doctrines. Part of this difficulty results from the fact that implicit in this rough formulation, is a definition of the matrix "x expects a goal at location L," which makes it equivalent to the matrix "x runs down the practiced path," when certain conditions are fulfilled. Because of this difficulty, we have rejected this definition. 2. We have suggested instead a definition of the matrix "x expects a goal at location L" which makes it equivalent to the matrix "x runs down the path which points directly to the location L," when certain conditions are fulfilled. 3. To determine whether rats will run down such a path, whenever the original path is blocked, we have run 56 female rats in a situation which conformed to these conditions. 4. Thirty-six percent of the rats chose the path which pointed directly towards the location of the goal. The remaining rats were distributed over the other paths in a chance fashion. 5. We have concluded (1) that rats do learn to expect goals in specific locations, (2) that there are important similarities between this behavior and human symbolic behavior, and (3) that these similarities justify our using the word 'expectation' as a name for the disposition to short-cut when the original patch is blocked.     

Apparent mental causation. Sources of the experience of will.

The experience of willing an act arises from interpreting one's thought as the cause of the act. Conscious will is thus experienced as a function of the priority, consistency, and exclusivity of the thought about the action. The thought must occur before the action, be consistent with the action, and not be accompanied by other causes. An experiment illustrating the role of priority found that people can arrive at the mistaken belief that they have intentionally caused an action that in fact they were forced to perform when they are simply led to think about the action just before its occurrence.     

Judging the pleasantness of form-color combinations.

The way people with various degrees of aesthetic expertise integrate form and color information in a pleasantness judgment was investigated in 2 experiments. Participants were asked to assign an overall pleasantness value to combinations of forms and colors. In Experiment 1, the factors manipulated were form and color inside the form. In Experiment 2, they were form and color of the ground. In judging the pleasantness of form-color combinations, participants applied a complex rule in which the weight attributed to one element depends on the value of the other element. When the value of an element is medium (when it is neither liked nor disliked), its weight is lower than when its value is low (when it is disliked). As a result, the weight of the other element is proportionally altered. The data support a nonequal averaging combination rule. Very few differences between experts and nonexperts were observed. This result supports the view that the pleasantness judgments were based largely on automatic reactions.     

The I.T.P.A.: Ballast or bonanza for the school psychologist

The author discusses rationale, reliability, factorial validity, and educational usefulness of the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities. The I.T.P.A. is a serious attempt to identify specific sensory processing abilities. It is assumed that deficits can be remediated and that instruction can be matched to student's strengths and weaknesses. The I.T.P.A. is not a test of psycholinguistics since it does not yield information about the units of natural language. The subtests have good internal consistency and the composite score is reliable over time periods most applicable for instructional planning. Reliability of individual subtests are too low to guide remediation. Factor analytic studies indicate the I.T.P.A. is primarily a measure of verbal intelligence. Remediation directed toward strengths and weaknesses in sensory or perceptual processing has not been effective.     

Validation of the P. D. I. Employment Inventory in a retail chain

Conclusions The Performance Score of the P. D. I. Employment Inventory appears to be a useful predictor of adaptive performance behavior of retail store employees at the non-management level. The findings of Personnel Decisions Inc. would indicate that the test is generalizable to mass merchandising organizations nationwide. Since this is a new test, further research is indicated.     

Type specificity of alcoholism. 1. Introduction and review of the literature

It was the aim of this empirical investigation to find out etiologically effective factors of gamma- and delta-alcoholism and condusions for prognosis and prevention. While for gamma-alcoholics an addicted attitude is typical during misuse, for delta-types it is a disposition in the vegetative-somatic range. The prognosis of delta-addicts after attendance and following intensive care is better than that of gamma-alcoholics. During a research period of 3 years a significant increase of delta-types was observed. This trend is explainable only sociologically by the development of drinking patterns in the direction of permissive-functionally disturbed culture. Hence, prevention is possible only by changing drinking patterns.     

On the concept and consequences of the primal scene.

The concept of the primal scene is in need of redefinition and clarification. The primal scene is not identical with its regressive transformations or later derivatives. Because of the different implications for normal development and for psychopathology, the primal scene as a universal fantasy should be differentiated from the primal scene as real experience. The effects of exposure to the primal scene are considered in relation to the developmental level of the child, other problems in the parent-child relationship, and cultural attitudes.