Examining the Panic Attack Specifier in Social Anxiety Disorder

Panic attacks (PAs) are characterized by overwhelming surges of fear and discomfort and are one of the most frequently occurring symptoms in psychiatric populations. The most recent version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (i.e. DSM-5) allows for a panic attack (PA) specifier for all disorders, including social anxiety disorder (SAD). However, there is little research examining differences between individuals diagnosed with SAD with the PA specifier versus individuals diagnosed with SAD without the PA specifier. The current study examined social anxiety, mood, anxiety, and anxiety sensitivity social concerns, a risk factor for social anxiety in SAD-diagnosed individuals without (N = 52) and with (N = 14) the PA specifier. The groups differed only in somatic symptoms of anxiety. Result of the current study provides preliminary evidence that the presence of the PA specifier in social anxiety does not result in elevated levels of comorbidity or a more severe presentation of social anxiety.     

The PMS Illusion: Social Cognition Maintains Social Construction

This article reports the results of a preliminary study of ways that self-serving biases contribute to the maintenance of the cultural stereotype of the premenstrual woman. Self-serving biases such as illusory optimism and the false uniqueness effect lead individuals to believe that they are better than average and less likely to have negative experiences. Thus, even though individual women’s premenstrual symptoms are mild to moderate, they accept the stereotype because they believe that other women’s symptoms are worse than their own. Participants were 92 undergraduate women from two small colleges in southern New England. They completed measures of optimism, locus of control, and premenstrual symptoms and answered a series of questions about the incidence of PMS. Participants showed a significant tendency to believe that other women’s premenstrual symptoms are worse than their own. In addition, women who were high in optimism were significantly less likely to believe that they could be diagnosed with PMS, and they had significantly lower scores on the pain and behavior change subscales of the Menstrual Distress Questionnaire than did those low in optimism.     

电影《传染病》对消除社会恐慌与道德危机的启示

社会恐慌与道德危机是疾病传播所产生的两个重要社会效应。《传染病》虽是一部虚构电影作品,但其中对于疾病与恐慌以及私利与道德冷漠的严肃探讨,能够为现实提供警醒和反思借鉴。从疾病传染到恐慌的社会性传播,从社会恐慌到道德危机的产生,恐慌事实上成为了疾病传染与道德危机之间的一个关键反思节点。因疾病而引发的社会恐慌虽然源自知识领域,但其社会效应却作用于道德领域,因此,疾病恐慌的消除既有赖于知识的进步,也依赖于信息的公开。

     

Oedipus again: a critical study of Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter

In this paper the Oedipus complex is reexamined through a film, The Night of the Hunter. Study reveals a concealed fairy tale structure, a structure that, when presented against a mythic backdrop, is ideal for presenting a certain kind of oedipal situation, that of a vulnerable damaged father and couple (indeed, couples), revealing a skewed oedipal situation. The film, produced in 1954 and looked at forty years later in the context of psychoanalytic writings of the last decade (Bergmann, Feldman, Herman, Simon), provides a matrix with which to reexamine a fundamental psychoanalytic concept, the Oedipus complex. It is the mutual enrichment of art and psychoanalysis that this paper addresses.     

Retrieving the Missing Fourth: The Night Sea Journey of a Marion Woodman Intensive

This article provides an account of the author’s “night sea” experience within the container of a Marion Woodman BodySoul Rhythms? workshop and an exploration of it using the writings of C. G. Jung, Marion Woodman, Marie-Louise von Franz, Barbara Hannah, and Edward Edinger.     

The Self as Social Construction

The paper begins with the articulation of key assumptions central to contemporary constructionist scholarship. This is followed by an analysis of the issues in the social construction of the self. To this end several major lines of inquiry along with their socio-political implications are brought into focus. Finally, an alternative to traditional conceptions of self, one that emerges distinctly from social constructionist theory is presented.     

The Social Construction of Human Kinds

Social construction theorists face a certain challenge to the effect that they confuse the epistemic and the metaphysical: surely our conceptions of something are influenced by social practices, but that doesn't show that the nature of the thing in question is so influenced. In this paper I take up this challenge and offer a general framework to support the claim that a human kind is socially constructed, when this is understood as a metaphysical claim and as a part of a social constructionist debunking project. I give reasons for thinking that a conferralist framework is better equipped to capture the social constructionist intuition than rival accounts of social properties, such as a constitution account and a response‐dependence account, and that this framework helps to diagnose what is at stake in the debate between the social constructionists and their opponents. The conferralist framework offered here should be welcomed by social constructionists looking for firm foundations for their claims, and for anyone else interested in the debate over the social construction of human kinds.     

Dysfunctional beliefs in panic disorder: The Panic Belief Inventory

The Panic Belief Inventory (PBI) was developed to assess beliefs that increase the likelihood of catastrophic reactions to physical and emotional experiences in panic disorder. In the first stage of scale development, 197 panic disorder patients completed the PBI and standard self-report inventories of psychiatric symptomatology. An exploratory factor analysis yielded a 4-factor solution from which a 35-item instrument with 4 scales was constructed. The shortened measure and its scales had good internal consistency and convergent validity and moderate discriminant validity. Subsequently, 22 panic disorder patients who received cognitive therapy completed the PBI and other self-report inventories of dysfunctional cognitions at intake, 4 weeks, 8 weeks, termination, and several follow-up intervals. Results indicated that the PBI decreased significantly across treatment, with the largest decline occurring between intake and 4 weeks into treatment. The PBI correlated more strongly with dysfunctional cognitions associated with anxiety than dysfunctional cognitions associated with depression. These results provide preliminary evidence that the PBI has adequate psychometric characteristics, is useful to assess change in dysfunctional beliefs during treatment, and has the potential to advance cognitive theories of panic.     

地方神明建构脉络之解读——以陈靖姑信仰为中心

陈靖姑信仰是闽、台、浙等地区重要的民间信仰之一,其形象的形成与建构涵盖了非常丰富的历史与文化内涵.通过对文献的解读,我们认识到陈靖姑信仰既是多面相的,又具有正统性的特征,这是其复杂建构过程的反映.在地方神明建构脉络中,国家与地方常常是共谋的关系,陈靖姑信仰固然是多样性的地方文化不断衍生的产物,但同时不可避免地刻上了国家文化一统性的印记.     

From Social Construction to Relational Construction: Practices from the Edge

In this paper, I talk about Ken Gergen??s influence in the communication discipline. Beginning with his ground-breaking publications in the 1970??s (Gergen 1973, 1978), we see him challenging the taken for granted separation of theory and practice, scholar and practitioner. One of Ken??s many contributions?Cregardless of disciplinary domain?Chas been the nurturing of forms of practice being developed by creative and innovative practitioners and young scholars alike. There are several key resources that are woven throughout Ken??s work that have continued to inspire and influence practitioners working in mental health, healthcare, organizations, schools, communities, and peace building endeavors. The most central of these resources include (1) centering relational processes which, in turn, generate the expansion of (2) collaborative, participatory practices that embrace alternative worldviews through a (3) a reflexive stance. Ken has challenged himself and all of us to stay on the edge because it is on the edge that new relational possibilities can be created. He has invited us to embrace the edge as the place of great comfort; comfort in knowing that there will always be possibilities for forging new ways of making meaning together.     

Making a Difference: The Social Ecology of Social Transformation

A multidisciplinary and multilevel framework for social transformation is proposed, encompassing four foundational goals: capacity-building, group empowerment, relational community-building, and culture-challenge. Intervention approaches related to each goal are presented at the setting, geographic community, and societal levels. Four exemplars of social transformation work are then discussed: the Accelerated Schools Project, Meyerhoff Program, ManKind Project, and women's movement. These examples illustrate the synergistic relationship among the four transformational goals, within and across levels of analysis, which is at the heart of the social transformation process. The paper concludes with three challenges to guide our efforts as we enter the new century: (1) to move social transformation to the center of our consciousness as a field; (2) to articulate jointly with allied disciplines, organizations, and citizen groups an encompassing, multidisciplinary, and multilevel framework for social transformation; and (3) to do the above with heart, soul, and humility.     

Panic as a form of foreclosed experience

Following a discussion of panic states and their relationship to psychosomatic illness and related disorders, the author presents an extended clinical vignette in which he initially viewed the patient's intense anxiety as a manifestation of repressed conflict and, accordingly, used verbal interpretations as the principal mode of intervention. After this approach did not prove effective, the analyst began to make use of nonverbal interventions consistent with his emerging understanding of the patient's distress as a manifestation of the foreclosure (de M'Uzan 2003) and relegation to the body of undreamable experience (Bion 1962).     

The Dark Night of Hope

This essay discusses the nature of hope and despair, and the difficulties of responding to the aged who have nothing left .. to hope for. Based in pan on the writings of Gabriel Marcel, it suggests that one can hope when reasons for doing so are insufficient or lacking. It characterizes this kind of hope, absolute or unconditional hope, as a mystery, and suggests that to respond to the failing aged we must put aside efforts to find reasons to hope in order to participate in its mystery. The essay challenges the idea that hope is a private, isolated act of the will and insists that it always occurs between persons.     

The Psychophysiology of Orthostatic Panic in Cambodian Refugees Attending a Psychiatric Clinic

Orthostatically triggered panic was examined in female Cambodian refugees. Heart rate, blood pressure (BP), panic, and dizziness responses were assessed during orthostatic challenge in three diagnostic groups: orthostatic panic without comorbid posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), orthostatic panic with PTSD, and other mental disorders without orthostatic panic or PTSD. During orthostatic challenge, the panic group without PTSD showed a significant drop, whereas the group with other mental disorders showed an increase in systolic BP. The group with panic and PTSD showed a blunted systolic BP response during orthostasis that fell between the responses of the other groups. Catastrophic, culturally specific cognitions present during orthostatic challenge were significantly correlated with the amount of reported panic upon standing. Some patients recalled previous traumatic events during the orthostatic challenge. The findings suggest that orthostatically induced panic attacks in Cambodian refugees are generated by an interaction of orthostasis physiology, catastrophic cognitions, and trauma associations.     

Social Categorization and the Influence of Drug Involvement on Drug Attitude Structures: Implications for Assessing Drug Use and Tolerance in the Workplace1

Theories of social categorization were used to generate hypotheses concerning the impact of drug involvement on the attitudes and knowledge structures that people use in making drug-related judgments. Data indicated that greater drug exposure tended to foster more complex knowledge structures for drugs and drug users as revealed by subjects’ perceptions of drug users, tolerance for drug use, and perceptions of drug seriousness. Basically, high drug involvement in terms of personal alcohol use and associating with illicit drug users was related to greater individuation of drug user types. Therefore, high-involved subjects, relative to low-involved individuals, were better able to discriminate between different drug user subtypes and drug user subtypes were more important to high-involved subjects when responding to drug-related survey items.     

山神夜巡

一部<封神演义>,既是演义,与真实历史就相去甚远,人死后封神就更是无稽之谈.<辞海>云:"假商周之争,自写幻想,侈谈神怪,十九虚造".岂料人间以此为据,历代都曾出现过造神运动,延续至今民间尚有一定市场,说来也挺可笑?我从祖宗那里接受的教育是,阴世与阳世一模一样,是动物都具有灵魂,而且各自又有各自的领属范围,统统受制于各自的神.人死后作鬼受制于阎王爷;动物死后,兽魂受制于山神爷.民间传说,夜里山神爷爷偕同巡山老母要出来巡视,发现作恶的兽类就地降伏.我是不信这一套的,可巧让我给碰上了这似乎象山神爷巡视的事情.