Conflicting emotions: The connection between affective perspective taking and theory of mind

The relation between theory of mind and affective perspective taking was examined in a study with 42 three‐ to five‐year‐olds. Children completed tasks measuring affective perspective taking, theory of mind, and receptive language abilities. Significant positive correlations existed between overall affective perspective taking and theory of mind performance, independent of age and language. The relation between theory of mind and affective perspective taking was strongest for those scenarios in which there was a conflict between the child and the friend's emotional responses. These findings indicate that the abilities to understand conflicting emotions and to understand false beliefs are related aspects of social development.     

二语情绪概念理解中的空间隐喻

采用空间启动范式考察二语情绪概念理解中是否激活空间信息, 即是否存在空间隐喻。实验1探讨单通道二语情绪概念理解中的空间隐喻, 实验2则探讨跨通道二语情绪概念理解中的空间隐喻。实验1中让32名母语为汉语的汉-英双语者先看一个英文情绪词, 接着进行视觉空间位置判断, 最后再让被试判断之前呈现的情绪词是积极词还是消极词。实验2中40名母语为汉语的汉-英双语者完成跟实验1类似的任务, 不同之处为英文情绪词以听觉形式呈现。两个实验的结果表明, 跨语言和跨通道的情绪词的空间隐喻受到空间位置方向的影响。垂直位置方向上, 二语情绪词在单通道和跨通道中都表现出了空间隐喻; 水平位置方向上, 二语情绪词没有表现出空间隐喻。该结果说明了情绪概念的空间隐喻会受到个体经验的影响, 进一步支持了知觉符号理论。     

Loss as a lifelong regenerative learning process

The predisposition to internalize death and loss of crucial attachment objects, subjectively, as a physical attack on the body, is commonly acknowledged in the field of human psychological behaviour (Freud 1915; Parkes 1972). This view is held, essentially, according to psychoanalytic principles of the functioning of the mental processes, to advance the concept of mind and body sensations as psychical consequences, or affects , of loss trauma. It does not, nevertheless, preclude wider social and cultural factors from adding to our understanding of how and why we react to loss in deeply individual ways. In the affective domain of human experience, the relationship between emotional pain and learning may not strike an immediate connection, since emotions are assumed to be subjective psychological affects of the psyche, while learning involves cognitive processes associated with developed responses to external stimuli. From a psychoanalytic perspective, however, it is possible to conceptualize the interconnecting of mind and body ‘states’ associated with pain, through the channelling and regulation of psychic tension in the ego. Importantly, the channelling of impulses into mind and body ‘ideas’ suggests a dynamic process capable of activating the human potential for emotional development and learning through the ego's capacity for adaptation to external change. We can speak, therefore, of affective learning as an integrated regenerative counterpart to emotional devel When death and major life changes are followed by corresponding feelings of loss, the human propensity to search for, and the lost object is generally viewed by therapists to be a normal part of grieving, however paradoxical the demands for integrating thoughts and irrational actions might feel. This illustrates the of a grief process that ultimately demands a degree of emotional development in enabling us to tolerate high levels of anxiety, there is disparity between the inner world of feeling and external reality. In psychodynamic grief work, the therapeutic principle of through' the deeper, inner layers of loss and mourning creates one such model for developing emotional learning and insight. It within this framework that the client can begin to understand his irrational motives, and be freed from the related feelings of alienation in his inner world.

The aim of this paper is to examine the concept of loss and learning in a wider context to include lifelong processes of and growth, which may be a cause for grief. It raises the significance of personal meaning(s) we attach to loss, links this theme to the aetiology of separation anxiety, loss and mourning from a psychoanalytic perspective.     

The Construct and Measurement of Peace of Mind

Previous studies have shown that Asian American or Chinese individuals value low-arousal positive affect and a harmonious state of happiness more than European Americans do. However, the affective component of subjective well-being has mostly been defined as the presence of positive affect and the absence of negative affect. This definition emphasizes the importance of hedonic pleasure but fails to include the affect valued in Chinese culture. The present study developed the construct of peace of mind to describe the affective well-being valued in Chinese culture. Peace of mind was defined as an internal state of peacefulness and harmony. To develop a measure to assess peace of mind, three studies were conducted. Study 1 developed the Peace of Mind Scale (PoM), Study 2 established its validity as an affective well-being measure, and Study 3 found that individuals from Chinese cultures score higher on this scale than those from Western cultures. The results indicate that the PoM has good reliability and validity for measuring affective well-being. The cross-cultural validation also found that Taiwanese individuals scored higher on the PoM than European Americans, which provides further evidence of good construct validity of the PoM.     

AN INTRODUCTION TO PANSPIRITISM: AN ALTERNATIVE TO MATERIALISM AND PANPSYCHISM

This article is an introduction to a philosophical approach termed “panspiritism.” The fundamental principles of this approach are summarized, with discussion of how it links to earlier (mainly Eastern) philosophical perspectives, how it differs from panpsychism and its relationship to idealism and theism. Issues such as the relationship between mind and matter, the relationship between the mind and the brain, and the emergence of mind are discussed from a “panspiritist” perspective. There is a discussion of how panspiritism relates to mystical experiences. The article concludes by suggesting that this approach can help to elucidate a wide range of phenomena that appear anomalous or problematic from a materialist point of view.     

Bimodal classification of aggression: affective defense and predatory attack

The development of a refined classification scheme for the categorization of human aggression is a key to improved diagnosis and treatment. The principal thesis of this review is that much of animal and human aggression contains affective or predatory characteristics. Affective defense, as defined in both the human and animal literatures, is an aggressive response based on the presence of elements of either fear and/or threat, which may be real or perceived. Predatory attack has been understudied relative to affective defense, and consists of a purposeful and goal-directed attack with absence of sympathetic arousal. In this review, we argue that a variety of classification schemes reported in both the animal and human literature could be relabeled as affective defense and predatory attack. The significance of this approach is that it: (1) links animal and human research; (2) can lead to new lines of investigation in humans; and (3) may provide the impetus for new treatment studies.     

Affect and the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis1

In connection with controversial IJP articles by Stern et al. and Fonagy on the interpretation of the repressed and the recovery of past memories, the author maintains that the affect that is inherent in positive transference is at the heart of therapeutic action. Points of view put forward in the controversy (based on neurobiological knowledge) are related to Freudian metapsychology, as well as to their precursors whose scope was necessarily limited by a lack of access to more recent scientific discoveries. The author demonstrates metapsychological elements of therapeutic action inherent in the intersubjective relationship, especially identification, manifested in introjection and empathy. He describes cognitive development as spontaneously blossoming from the affective nucleus, and he explains the neuroscientic bases of this step forward. The classic (interpretative) psychoanalytic method makes up the cognitive superstructure necessary for the organisation of the mind that has sprung from the affective substructure. As a primary factor in psychic change, interpretation is limited in effectiveness to pathologies arising from the verbal phase, related to explicit memories, with no effect in the pre‐verbal phase where implicit memories are to be found. Interpretation the method used to the exclusion of all others for a century is only partial; when used in isolation it does not meet the demands of modern broad‐spectrum psychoanalysis, as the clinical material presented illustrates.     

What is the relationship between ideas in the human mind and ideas in the mind of God for Spinoza?

The relation between ideas in the human mind and ideas in the mind of God in Spinoza is problematic because it is often expressed in obscure language and because Spinoza seems to be making puzzling and contradictory statements about it. I try to eliminate the problem by going from the idea that God has of himself to his idea of the essence and existence of the human mind and the human body. I then go from the idea of the essence of the human mind to the idea of the essence of other things, including God.     

Supervisory mentoring and employee affective commitment and turnover: The critical role of contextual factors

Past research has largely ignored the role of contextual factors in the relationships between supervisory mentoring and individual and organizational outcomes. In order to fill this void, we investigate how job scope and career and development opportunities, two critical contextual factors, moderate the supervisory mentoring-affective commitment-turnover links. Integrating social exchange theory with insights from situational approaches to leadership, we hypothesized that (a) job scope would interact with supervisory mentoring in predicting affective commitment and (b) career and development opportunities would interact with affective commitment in predicting turnover such that the conditional effects of supervisory mentoring on turnover would be stronger at high levels of these contextual moderators. Results of a study conducted with a sample of 228 business alumni, using 15-month voluntary turnover as outcome, supported our predictions. We discuss the implications of these findings for mentoring research and practice.     

Some Contributions of Empirical Infant Research to Adult Psychoanalysis: What Have We Learned? How Can We Apply It?

The direct links among early development, a model of the mind, and the content of the transference are challenged from two vantage points—empirical infant research and motivational systems theory. A discussion of these contributions and of their application in two case vignettes suggests a new view of therapeutic change—a view involving (a) recognition of the coconstruction of the analytic relationship, (b) contributions of self- and interactive regulations, of their disruption and repair, and of heightened affective moments to the ongoing analyst-patient interchange, (c) emphasis on the analyst's recognition of the patient's communications as developmental strivings, (d) tracking of sequences of disruption and repair, and (e) dialectic between repetition and transformation. These various interactions develop in a patient new expectations of being understood, of being understandable, and of participating in a dialogue that does not, for example, require bolstering the other or sacrificing oneself to the other. These new expectations lead to new themes as well as to the transformation of old themes that organize experience.     

Metaphors of a bodily mind

Patients' metaphors in analysis may allow access to ineffable experiences. This is understandable, since the mind is a bodily mind, and language is a fully embodied function of this mind. That is, both are dependent for their existence upon the physical body. The ontogenic accumulation of perceived sensory impressions and affective processes far exceeds what can be put into words. Research in cognitive psychology suggests that the active mind functions in such a manner that later perceptions are organized by means of earlier ones. However, since the mind can know only its own representations, it inhabits two ever unknown realms: the external world itself, and the domain of internal unconscious processes that sustain the mind's functions. As a result, the world and the self we know are constructed by the mediation of our bodies. In language also, the active mode by which we perceive, process, and feel makes our understanding of words dependent on previous experience. The fact that the limbic system is activated immediately in the moment of processing experience means that all modalities of representation include an affective valuation.This inevitable processing of information through the mediation of affectively valued bodily perceptions gives the metaphorical function-the human capacity to organize experience and life in metaphoric ways-the ability to create linguistic metaphors that can capture and express otherwise inexpressible psychic experiences. This manner of understanding metaphor has implications for psychoanalytic technique.     

Age effects on different components of theory of mind

The effects of aging on the cognitive and affective dimensions of theory of mind (ToM), and on the latter’s links with other cognitive processes, such as information processing speed, executive functions and episodic memory, are still unclear. We therefore investigated these effects in young (n = 25), middle-aged (n = 20) and older adults (n = 25), using separate subjective and objective assessment tasks. Furthermore, a novel composite task probed participants’ abilities to infer both cognitive and affective mental states in an interpersonal context. Although age affected the objective ToM tests, results revealed a direct aging effect on the second-order ToM, but an indirect one on the first-order cognitive ToM, mediated mainly by age-related declines in executive functions. This study supports the notion of an age-related distinction between subjective and objective assessments of ToM, and confirms that ToM is a complex mental ability with several characteristics reliant to some extent on executive processes.     

A role for affect in the link between episodic simulation and prosociality

Prospection and prosociality are hallmarks of our species. Little is known, however, about how our ability to imagine or simulate specific future events contributes to our capacity for prosociality. Here, we investigated this relationship, revealing how the affective response that arises from a simulated prosocial event motivates a willingness to help a person in need. Across two experiments, people reported being more willing to help in specific situations after simulating future helping events that elicited positive (versus negative or neutral) affect. Positive affect increased engagement of theory of mind for the person in need, which in turn informed prosocial responses. Moreover, the subjective experience of scene imagery and theory of mind systematically couple together depending on the affective valence of future simulations, providing new insight into how affective valence guides a prosocial function of episodic simulation.     

Links Among Cognitive Empathy,Theory of Mind,and Affective Perspective Taking by Young Children

The authors investigated the development of the affective, cognitive, and behavioral components of empathy in preschoolers, specifically examining how cognitive empathy is linked to theory of mind and affective perspective taking. Participants were 158 children aged 4–6 years. They listened to narratives and then answered questions about the protagonists' emotions. The affective component was probed with the question, “How do you feel seeing the little girl/boy?”; the cognitive component with the question, “Why do you feel [emotion shared with the character]?”; and the behavioral one with the question, “What would you do if you were next to the little boy/girl [experiencing an emotional scenario]?” Results revealed a developmental sequence in the self-focused attribution of cognitive empathy, and a trend toward a developmental sequence for behavioral empathy, which underwent a slight linear increase between 4 and 6 years old. Affective empathy remained stable. More interestingly, they showed that cognitive empathy is linked to both theory of mind and affective perspective taking.     

Social interaction and cognitive growth: An examination through the role‐taking skills of deaf and hearing children

Recent research using theory‐of‐mind tasks has rekindled interest in the possibility that social interaction makes a significant contribution to cognitive development. It is proposed here that this contribution may be most pronounced with phenomena that, like belief or affective states, are internal and abstract. A more modest contribution is envisaged with phenomena that are overt and perceptible. The proposal is explored via comparison of deaf and hearing children's ability to engage in affective and perceptual role‐taking, since the aspects of social interaction that have been implicated in cognitive development are known to be problematic for deaf children. Therefore, the proposal of more marked consequences for internal and abstract phenomena leads to the hypothesis that deaf children should lag behind hearing children on affective role‐taking, while showing little or no difference on perceptual role‐taking. The hypothesis was tested in two studies, one involving 10 deaf children and 10 hearing children aged 6.94– 8.93 years and the other involving 25 deaf children and 20 hearing children aged 5.08– 11.58 years. In both studies, affective role‐taking was examined using a task developed from Chandler (1973), while perceptual role‐taking was examined via an extension of Hughes and Donaldson's (1979) hiding task. The results provide consistent support for the hypothesis, and patterns of correlation between age, affective performance and perceptual performance give clues to the relevant developmental mechanisms.     

The Spacious Mind: Using Archetypes for Transformation Towards Wisdom

The spacious mind model combines Hindu and Buddhist philosophy on spiritual maturity with the Jungian view on psychological maturity to delineate how archetypal work can spur the development of wisdom. Both psychological and spiritual development defuse the ego's hold on reality to create a spacious mind that has contact with the spiritual Self. To explain such a transformation, this article discusses 5 parts of the mind: the ego, the conscious, the unconscious, the archetype, and the Self. The innovative features here are an integrated view of spiritual and psychological development, and the insight that archetypal work can be a mechanism for growth in both domains, because an archetype resides in the energetic plane with the Self and in the conscious mind with the ego.     

Affective incoherence: when affective concepts and embodied reactions clash

In five studies, the authors examined the effects on cognitive performance of coherence and incoherence between conceptual and experiential sources of affective information. The studies crossed the priming of happy and sad concepts with affective experiences. In different experiments, these included approach or avoidance actions, happy or sad feelings, and happy or sad expressive behaviors. In all studies, coherence between affective concepts and affective experiences led to better recall of a story than did affective incoherence. The authors suggest that the experience of such experiential affective cues serves as evidence of the appropriateness of affective concepts that come to mind. The results suggest that affective coherence has epistemic benefits and that incoherence is costly in terms of cognitive performance.     

The case for neuropsychoanalysis: Why a dialogue with neuroscience is necessary but not sufficient for psychoanalysis

Recent advances in the cognitive, affective and social neurosciences have enabled these fields to study aspects of the mind that are central to psychoanalysis. These developments raise a number of possibilities for psychoanalysis. Can it engage the neurosciences in a productive and mutually enriching dialogue without compromising its own integrity and unique perspective? While many analysts welcome interdisciplinary exchanges with the neurosciences, termed neuropsychoanalysis, some have voiced concerns about their potentially deleterious effects on psychoanalytic theory and practice. In this paper we outline the development and aims of neuropsychoanalysis, and consider its reception in psychoanalysis and in the neurosciences. We then discuss some of the concerns raised within psychoanalysis, with particular emphasis on the epistemological foundations of neuropsychoanalysis. While this paper does not attempt to fully address the clinical applications of neuropsychoanalysis, we offer and discuss a brief case illustration in order to demonstrate that neuroscientific research findings can be used to enrich our models of the mind in ways that, in turn, may influence how analysts work with their patients. We will conclude that neuropsychoanalysis is grounded in the history of psychoanalysis, that it is part of the psychoanalytic worldview, and that it is necessary, albeit not sufficient, for the future viability of psychoanalysis.