Immigration: going home or going to pieces

Immigration may constitute a family crisis. Because of its lengthy duration, this crisis may be an unrecognized factor in the problem which brings patients into therapy. The immigration crisis may bring an individual into renewed contact with past unresolved emotional issues. It also affects the structure, hierarchies, and values of the family as a system. The therapist who relates only to presenting symptoms and ignores the context of the immigration crisis may lose credibility with patients and miss important therapeutic opportunities. Case studies are given to illustrate the statement.     

How a crisis mindset activates implicit knowledge and brings it into awareness: The role of attentional switch cost

In this study, we relied on the attentional switch cost to ascertain whether a crisis mindset can activate and momentarily bring related implicit knowledge into awareness. We found that the attentional switch cost was higher in a crisis mindset condition than in a common mindset condition in which non-crisis-related stimuli were being attended to (Experiment 1). However, the attentional switch cost was lower in the crisis mindset condition when crisis-related stimuli were being attended to (Experiment 2A), and the reduced cost was not attributable to the complexity of the stimuli (Experiment 2B). A link emerged in the crisis mindset condition between the attentional switch cost and related implicit knowledge (Experiment 3A and 3B). Potential confounding factors were adequately controlled (see the Appendix). In conclusion, the results offer insight into the pivotal role of a crisis mindset. This finding delineates an alternative pathway in which implicit knowledge can be activated and brought into working memory once an event is perceived and interpreted as a crisis.     

青少年个体心理危机的生成机制及影响因素

心理危机是一种失调的心理状态。青少年由于生理、心理发展的不平衡及生活事件的影响,容易产生各类心理危机,如不能及时发现并实施帮助,会增加心理障碍与疾病的发病率。因此,需要在探索青少年心理危机生成机制的基础上,对寻求专业心理咨询与治疗的青少年开展各项心理功能和特征的调查研究。调查结果显示,情绪不稳定的人格特征、情绪指向的应对方式等内在特质以及生活事件、童年受虐待的经历以及家庭环境等外在因素,是青少年心理危机的重要预测因素,焦虑情绪则可作为危机的重要预警指标。这些结果可帮助了解危机发生的机制和影响危机发生的因素,为青少年危机的预警和干预提供理论基础。     

Evaluation of Crisis Intervention Programs and Personnel: A Summary and Critique*

ABSTRACT: Many of the suicide prevention centers that developed throughout the country during the last decade have evolved into general crisis intervention services. At the same time, they have stimulated the development of a wide variety of agencies that utilize nonprofessional volunteers who, primarily through telephone contact, provide helping services to people in crisis. This paper presents a critique of three particular problem areas relating to the use of volunteer personnel, along with a summary of research aimed at providing new technologies for their solution. Methods have been developed for rating on-the-job performance of crisis intervention workers, based upon criteria that are thought to have general application to crisis intervention centers. Efforts to describe personality characteristics of volunteers are reported, along with suggestions for the direction of additional investigations. Finally, the issue of assessing the outcome of crisis intervention cases is summarized. A four-phase conceptualization of the crisis intervention process is proposed, and appropriate measures of outcome at each point in the process are suggested. The overall significance of this type of research is discussed in terms of the need for standards by which to evaluate crisis intervention services.     

Value Crisis: Affective Organization of Personal Meanings

The focus of this article is on the specific affective organization of the self in a value crisis. Whereas the self is conceptualized as an organized system of personal meanings, a value crisis is defined as a disorganization of this system. Personal meanings were investigated using a self-confrontation method that is sensitive to the affective properties of personal meanings and their organization into a composite whole. Three groups of students were compared, one high, one medium, and one low in value crisis. Results indicate that the high crisis group had a lower level of intensity of affect referring to self-enhancement, a lower intensity level of affect referring to contact and union with the other, and a lower level of positive affect in comparison with the other groups. In addition, negative meanings were more generalizing in the self of subjects in crisis, whereas positive meanings were more generalizing in the self system of those not in crisis. Moreover, people in crisis showed more discontinuity between their past and future than those not in crisis. Special emphasis was placed on the specific affective organization of subjects in crisis. Two idiographic case studies were presented to illustrate meaningful exceptions to the rule. It was concluded that value crisis is an “in-between state” involving the risk of disorganization of the self, but at the same time including opportunities for innovative self-development.     

External and internal reality: The impact of the current socio‐economic crisis on the analytic dyad

This paper addresses the impact of the current economic crisis on the psychic functioning of the patient and the analyst, their relationship and collaboration. This intrusion of ‘external reality’ is multidimensional, and thus with multiple meanings. The critical role of the economic factor brings various dimensions of money into play, such as self‐preservation, power as well as aspects of psychosexual development. In addition, the crisis involves symbolic loss of basic ideals such as honesty and social responsibility. Patient and analyst are affected in similar and different ways in their respective roles as well as according to the specific intrapsychic functioning of each. Moreover, unique characteristics of the crisis often create a crisis in the analysis. In order to avoid deformation of the analytic relationship, the analytic dyad must examine and work through the multiple meanings of the crisis as well as the meaning of the impact of the crisis on the analytic relationship for both patient and analyst. This complex transference‐ countertransference interplay poses specific challenges to the analyst. After discussion of these issues, clinical material is presented that demonstrates how they appear in analytic practice today.     

Drifting Here and There But Going Nowhere: the Case of Migrants from Turkey in Milan in the Era of Global Economic Crisis

This paper argues that migration is becoming a protracted situation for the significant part of migrants in parallel to the deepening world economic crisis. Migrants keep drifting from one place to another in the face of future uncertainties. The paper analyses the protracted feature of migration, which is becoming increasingly salient through a new conceptualization, and links it with the world economic crisis and capital accumulation processes. The argument is supported by the data obtained from a field research implemented in Milan, Italy, in 2013 on migrants from Turkey. The Italian economy went into deep recession in 2009 when it was overlapped by a worldwide economic crisis. This situation led migrant workers to lose their jobs. Hence, self-employment of some Turkish migrants was directly related to the deepening economic crisis. Not only comparatively new Turkish migrants but also migrants who spent some years in Milan cannot see a secure future in there and think of migrating yet again.     

A Study of the Benefit of Social and Religious Support on Church Members During Times of Crisis

A majority of Americans participate in religious services and identify themselves as members of a faith community. Understanding the role that religion plays in people's lives is essential to developing a comprehensive model of social support during times of crisis. The purpose of the current study was to identify the resources of social support that are helpful for church members during times of crisis. Although research on the impact of social support has identified several types of support—and the function of such support—to people undergoing difficult times, researchers have not looked at the impact of religious beliefs and participation in religious communities on social support to any significant extent. The current study collected questionnaire data from 23 members of one congregation who experienced a personal crisis. Analysis of the data shows that religious beliefs and the support provided by the religious community were seen as extremely helpful in times of crisis. Implications for incorporating people's religious beliefs and participation in religious communities into future investigations of social support are discussed.     

The Brief Family Distress Scale: A Measure of Crisis in Caregivers of Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Parents of individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) often experience stressors associated with caring for their child. These stressors can cause considerable distress for families, which at times can develop into full blown crisis, and it is important that professionals be able to quickly identify when families are approaching or are in crisis to respond appropriately. The current study presents an initial attempt at measuring the subjective experience of crisis in 164 caregivers of people with ASD through a single item instrument, the Brief Family Distress Scale. The BFDS was negatively correlated with helpful coping mechanisms (family hardiness, and parent empowerment), and positive adjustment (caregiver quality of life and positive parenting experiences), and positively correlated with known stressors (severity of aggressive behavior, negative life events) and problematic coping and outcomes (caregiver burden, worry, mental health problems). As expected, caregivers at Marked levels of distress (approaching or in crisis) were significantly different from caregivers at lower levels of distress in nearly all of the dependent variables. Having a quick way of measuring where families are in terms of distress and crisis can be helpful for researchers and clinicians alike.     

Static depiction of movement

A number of pictorial devices were compared in order to assess their relative effectiveness in depicting events. Effectiveness, as measured by a rating task, did not seem to be a function of the classification of a device as natural or metaphorical. Rather, it depended on whether a given device highlighted a distinctive aspect of a particular event (running, jumping, or moving), or simply modified the event. This observation was buttressed by the existence in a forced-choice task of a category boundary for depictions of running (pictures with a certain device were seen as running, those without it were not) but not for moving or jumping. Even preschool children displayed some understanding of metaphorical devices. They chose figures with those devices as running faster than the experimental standard. Results are discussed in the context of Kennedy's characterization of pictorial metaphors and Gibson's framework for understanding the relationship between pictorial and environmental information.     

Le clinicien face à la crise hystérique : enjeux théoricocliniques de l'épreuve du féminin

Hysterical crisis shows unexpected hallucinations and delirium happening into hysterical structure. Although subject of many psycho-analytical works, hysterical crisis is always matter of debate. That kind of crisis happens when hysterical women and their lover have fallen out. Analysing the case of madam M., we will propose a reflexion about the real raison of those love-affairs to reconsider hysteria in relation to feminity. We will propose a new conception of feminine climax in connection with hallucinations and delirium happening into hysteria. We will debate about position of psycho-clinician, precisely the transference-using face to hysterical subject in state of emergency. Finally, we will propose to think over singularity of subjective structure using the supply concept.     

Ideology, Social Ethos, and the Financial Crisis

The crisis of 2008?C2009 has been viewed primarily as a financial one, which has spilled over into the economy more generally. I want to argue that there is a much deeper crisis, of which the present one is a result. The deeper crisis is political: more specifically, it is a crisis in the ideology and social ethos of the American people. I refer to what has happened to the thinking of United States citizens since the Second World War, and the dangers that that transformation entails for world peace and cooperation??let alone the creation of an economic regime in which deep financial crises do not occur. Short of a change in the ideology of a many of its citizens, I do not believe the United States can succeed in preventing a repeat performance, perhaps many encores, which become increasingly severe.     

心理学危机的实质与解决方案

人们曾在不同层面上讨论心理学的危机,而这种对危机认识的偏离本身又进一步加强了学科本身的分裂。在总结前人对危机认识的基础上,通过分析表明,心理学危机是心理学学科发展中自我同一性危机的表现,其实质在于心理学学科同一性的缺乏,而根源来自于心理学建立之初的理论基础。因此,心理学危机的解决有待于其学科同一性的确立,心理学学科的发展则有待于其学科同一性的展开。     

A Mimetic Reading of the Passover

The use of sacrificial animal blood in the Hebrew Bible has generated much discussion. While various scholars have attempted to explain the significance of these blood rites, each of these attempts has proved problematic. The current paper employs mimetic theory to develop a more robust and plausible model for exploring biblical animal sacrifice. Using the Passover ritual as a model, I develop a model of sacrificial blood rites as pantomimes of mimetic violence. These pantomimes re-create a violent yet transformative crisis from the community's collective memory. Such rituals allow the community to enter into and re-experience the cleansing violence of a mimetic crisis, albeit in a more controlled manner. Through these pantomimes, the community attempts to appease the primitive sacred's blood lust and re-discover the divine blessing secured through the original crisis. This model may prove helpful when applied to more opaque examples of biblical blood manipulation.     

Le psychologue face au Covid-19 : enquête exploratoire sur les pratiques en distanciel

The context of the health crisis has led psychologists working in institutions or in private practice to adapt their working methods to the constraints of confinement, in particular by resorting to distance learning. This exploratory survey aims at documenting this evolution of practices, in collaboration with COVID 19. An online survey was conducted among practitioners, resulting in 397 responses. The questions concerned the use of telepsychology (time, activity), before, during and after the crisis period. While the use of telepsychology was infrequent before the crisis, almost three-quarters of the psychologists used it during the crisis, and slightly less than half thought they would use it afterwards. The amount of time devoted to these practices depends on the tasks and the status of the psychologist. It is more important for administrative tasks and meetings than for treatment, and more often envisaged by freelance psychologists than by employees. Beyond the general findings, taking into account the status and the field of activity allows a picture of the evolutions in progress.     

Ethnic Differences in Children’s Entry into Public Mental Health Care via Emergency Mental Health Services

For children and youth making a mental health crisis visit, we investigated ethnic disparities in whether the children and youth were currently in treatment or whether this crisis visit was an entry or reentry point into mental health treatment. We gathered Medicaid claims for mental health services provided to 20,110 public-sector clients ages 17 and younger and divided them into foster care and non-foster care subsamples. We then employed logistic regression to analyze our data with sociodemographic and clinical controls. Among children and youth who were not placed in foster care, African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans were significantly less likely than Caucasians to have received mental health care during the three months preceding a crisis visit. Disparities among children and youth in foster care were not statistically significant. Ethnic minority children and youth were more likely than Caucasians to use emergency care as an entry or reentry point into the mental health treatment, thereby exhibiting a crisis-oriented pattern of care.     

Subjective Well-Being in Adolescence: The Role of Self-Control,Social Support,Age, Gender,and Familial Crisis

Focusing on adolescents’ subjective well-being, the present study comprised three parts. The first examined the role of two coping mechanisms, self-control and social support, in predicting subjective well-being. The second related to the role of age and gender in predicting adolescents’ subjective well-being. The third raised the question of whether exposure to familial crisis would predict adolescents’ subjective well-being and whether self-control and social support would moderate the link between crisis and adolescents’ subjective well-being. Participants included 380 adolescents ages 13–17 years (M = 15.32, SD = .98; 194 boys, 176 girls, 10 unspecified), from six integrative junior-high and high schools in central Israel. All schools served a heterogeneous Jewish student population. Based on responses to a questionnaire identifying adolescents who reported experiencing a severe life crisis during the last year (e.g., severe illness in family, parent death or separation/divorce), the sample was divided into two groups: exposure to familial crisis (n = 96) and no exposure to familial crisis (n = 284). Outcomes revealed that both self-control and social support predicted adolescents’ subjective well-being. As expected, older adolescents presented lower levels of subjective well-being than younger ones. In contrast to the hypothesis, gender did not predict subjective well-being. Although exposure to crisis did not predict higher negative affect or lower positive affect, an interaction emerged between self-control and crisis in predicting positive affect. Thus, among adolescents who experienced crisis, better self-control skills predicted higher levels of positive affect.     

Think crisis–think female: Further evidence

Many studies have demonstrated that interpersonally oriented leadership abilities such as being empathetic, supporting work relationships, or explicitly stating an interest in helping others are particularly relevant in crisis contexts. Since these leadership abilities coincide with stereotypically feminine roles and traits, it has been proposed that a “think crisis–think female” association may exist (Ryan, Haslam, Hersby, & Bongiorno, 2011). In a field study (N = 301 workers and managers) we examined this association and identified two relevant factors that may hinder the acceptance of female leaders and stereotypically feminine characteristics in crisis management: instrumental (male) leadership role models and sexist attitudes. In doing so, we provide new insights into the “think crisis–think female” relationship and illustrate the potential implications of this occurrence for gender studies and for research into work and organizational psychology.     

“One Size Fits All”: An Existential-Constructivist Perspective on the Crisis Intervention Approach with Suicidal Individuals

The empirical data on the relationship between suicide and suicide attempts are interpreted as suggesting that the contemporary assessment and intervention approaches to suicidal individuals are, by and large, ineffective. In support of our argument, we focus on the crisis intervention model as one example and suggest that the crisis intervention approach to responding to suicidal individuals is at best, ineffective and, at worst, can be viewed as exacerbating suicidal risk through its distancing, marginalizing, and stigmatizing effects. Additionally, we hypothesize that the mechanics of the crisis intervention model contribute to the societal message that a meaning and contextual-based discussion of suicidality is taboo and that this message tends to continue into more long-term psychotherapeutic approaches. Along these lines, we present an alternative to the crisis intervention model grounded in an existential-constructivist theory of suicidal behavior and the principles of therapeutic and feminist assessment philosophies as an heuristic intended to stimulate the development of new and innovative approaches to working with suicidal individuals.     

Behandlungskrisen ambulanter Psychotherapien aus der Sicht einer Krisenstation

The purpose of the following study is to identify characteristics of the clinical treatment of patients who came into a crisis during an out-patient psychotherapy and were admitted to a crisis intervention ward. Most of the patients particularly reacted to a disruption of the treatment process as a result of conflicts in their relationship with their therapists. By means of a psychodynamic short diagnostics these conflicts were elucidated although they were often hidden and had to be traced back to their origins in the therapeutic relationship. Moreover, the authors describe their therapeutic focus on the conflict-solution-oriented short-term psychotherapy of the disruption of the therapeutic bond between patient and therapist which leads to a fixation of the setting. The in-patient crisis intervention aims at preparing the patients to continue the out-patient psychotherapy.