Predictability in life and in science

It is a significant coincidence that social science tends to assume a universal human need for predictability, and also uses predictive power as the basic criterion of scientific truth. It is claimed here that man's need for predictability often is crossed by a need for uncertainty and chance. Thus it seems doubtful that the methodological canon of predictability can be anchored in the universal usefulness of social predictions. Some important cases of decision‐making seem to be more concerned with the past than with the future. The task of the social sciences cannot be completely separated from philosophical problems, since it is part of a continuous endeavour to clarify the image of man.     

Loss of Information in Estimating Item Parameters in Incomplete Designs

In this paper, the efficiency of conditional maximum likelihood (CML) and marginal maximum likelihood (MML) estimation of the item parameters of the Rasch model in incomplete designs is investigated. The use of the concept of F-information (Eggen, 2000) is generalized to incomplete testing designs. The scaled determinant of the F-information matrix is used as a scalar measure of information contained in a set of item parameters. In this paper, the relation between the normalization of the Rasch model and this determinant is clarified. It is shown that comparing estimation methods with the defined information efficiency is independent of the chosen normalization. The generalization of the method to other models than the Rasch model is discussed. In examples, information comparisons are conducted. It is found that for both CML and MML some information is lost in all incomplete designs compared to complete designs. A general result is that with increasing test booklet length the efficiency of an incomplete design, compared to a complete design, is increasing, as is the efficiency of CML compared to MML. The main difference between CML and MML is seen in the effect of the length of the test booklet. It will be demonstrated that with very small booklets, there is a substantial loss in information (about 35%) with CML estimation, while this loss is only about 10% in MML estimation. However, with increasing test length, the differences between CML and MML quickly disappear.     

Visuospatial processing in memory for word location in writing

Two experiments examined how visuospatial processing engaged during text composition intervenes in memory for word location. Experiment 1 showed that in contrast to participants who performed a spatial task concurrently with composing a text, participants who performed a concurrent visual task recalled fewer word locations after the composition. Consequently, it is hypothesized that writers process the written text in order to visually represent its physical layout, and that this representation is then used when locating words. Experiment 2 tested this hypothesis by comparing a standard composition condition (with the written trace) with a condition in which the written trace was suppressed during composition, and with a condition without written trace and with added visual noise. Memory for word location only decreased with visual noise, indicating that construction of the visual representation of the text does not rely on the written trace but involves visual working memory.     

The self in analysis

This paper develops a theoretical and clinical approach to the self which is non-essentialist and post-modem. Briefly, it offers a framework for theorizing Self based on hermeneutics and psychological constructivism. It then develops a critique of the essentialist Jungian theory of Self in which the Self is frequently described as a human subject with views, intentions and desires of its own. With this is background, a post-modern Jungian framework for Self is advanced, with a brief clinical account of the self in analysis.     

Solution-Focused Therapy in Prison

This is a report on a combined therapy and research project conducted with a seriously criminal population in Swedish prisons and using a Solution-Focused Brief Therapy approach with a focus on networks. Recidivism was significantly lower and less serious among experimental group participants. A case study is included.     

Neighborhood effects in spelling in adults

The participants were asked to spell aloud words for which there were either many orthographically similar words (a dense neighborhood) or few orthographically similar words (a sparse neighborhood). Words with a dense neighborhood were spelled faster and more accurately than were words with a sparse neighborhood. This finding is consistent with the hypothesis of Rapp, Epstein, and Tainturier (2002), that the cognitive spelling system has an interactive architecture incorporating feedback between individual graphemes and orthographic lexeme representations.     

The conflict cycle in the case of an adolescent in crisis

This is an extension of a previous paper describing a conflict cycle in families and therapy consisting of four steps: (1) the dispute; (2) blaming; (3) shame, guilt, or denial; and (4) reparation, reconciliation, or retaliation. The focus is on a single case of a 15-year-old male with a gender identity disorder in addition to a conduct disorder. He is an adopted child living in a small community in the southern United States. Conflict is illustrated from several perspectives in a single interview with the family and over the length of contact over a nine-month period: (1) between the adolescent and parents, (2) between the adolescent and community, (3) between the parents, and (4) between the Good Self and the Bad Self of the adolescent. The thesis is that the conflict cycle is an organizing principle helpful to therapists working with families to make assessments and plan interventions.This paper is an expanded and edited version of a presentation by the senior author in San Diego, California, on November 12, 1988, at the Western States Conference of the American Society of Adolescent Psychiatry.     

Postmodern consciousness in psychotherapy

Modern consciousness is a cultural and historical achievement in the West and a developmental task for each person now. Modern consciousness consists in the emancipation from the power of community, animistic nature and the unconscious. It is connected with neurosis and psychotherapy because it has to do with inner conflicts. But today there is an increasing number of cases which are characterized by dissociation and acting out, without the feeling of conflicts. Consciousness seems to be changing toward a new conception which might be called 'postmodern consciousness'. The essence of postmodern consciousness is shown by interpreting two dreams internally. The first dream from a case of depersonalization indicates that it is not necessary to be entangled with the object. There is a different kind of coniunctio in the mode of seeing. The second dream from a case of dissociative disorder shows a world which has neither traces of pre-modern cosmology-high and low, here and the beyond-nor modern interiority. There is only surface and self-reflection without content. The discussion of dreams suggests that postmodern consciousness is not to be understood as premature and pathological. It is therapeutically important to refine and deepen postmodern consciousness.     

Social class differences in N400 indicate differences in spontaneous trait inference

An emerging literature indicates that dispositional bias in causal attribution of social behavior is weaker for people with working-class (vs. middle-class) backgrounds. However, it is unknown whether this difference is also present in spontaneous forms of trait inference. In the current work, American undergraduates were asked to merely memorize many pairings of a target face and a trait-implying behavior. In a subsequent lexical judgment task, after each face was presented as a fixation, either an implied trait or its antonym was given as a target. As expected, participants with college-educated parents (middle class) showed a strong N400 event-related potential component to the antonym (vs. the implied trait), suggesting spontaneous trait inference during the memorization phase. In contrast, those with high-school-educated parents (working class) showed no such effect. It is important to note that the N400 spontaneous trait inference effect was associated with perceived significance of dispositions in accounting for social behaviors.     

Changes in intertemporal choices in deviant behaviors

Delay discounting is the process of devaluing results that happen in the future. We present a comprehensive literature review of changes on intertemporal choices in deviant behaviors, namely in (a) substance-related and addictive disorders, (b) disruptive, impulse-control, and conduct disorders, and (c) eating disorders. We also present studies focused on differences in demographic characteristics of the populations by gender, age, and education/social class. Delay discounting is presented as a process of studying intertemporal choices, resulting from decades of empirical research. Studies indicate that this process may provide explanation as to why individuals will sometimes choose a smaller reward, available sooner, instead of a larger reward available later. When studying populations with the above-mentioned problems, they tend to exhibit more pronounced discounting functions than control groups. The association between discounting and gender is not clear. The relationship between delay discounting and age is relatively clear, where older individuals discount less markedly than younger individuals. Studies suggest that shallower discounting gradients are associated with higher levels of intelligence and academic success. We emphasize the need for more empirical research on delay discounting, especially in regard to deviant behavior that may be associated with impulse-control disorders.     

Counter-Recognition in Decolonial Struggle

In decolonial struggle, there is an old colonial order that must be forever dismantled, with all its trimmings of unearned privilege, embedded in generations of wealth. There is a new order to be established, with new constellations of links with the global world. It is with this moment of significant social questioning, disruption, and revolution that this paper is concerned. Colonial situations, wherever they occur, affect our social and political lives deeply, and as they penetrate into our therapy rooms, with identities abraded and subjectivities set aslant with new light, it is urgent that we begin to grapple with their challenges to our skills and our theory. This paper addresses three aspects of this. First, the decolonial turn raises significant challenges for relational therapies. Second, far-reaching change to a social order evokes complex layers of trauma, and the ways in which we respond to these requires a reach beyond our own vulnerabilities, our retreat into the old familiar. Finally, the paper looks at the ways in which the writing of both Frantz Fanon and Donald Winnicott theories provide a way of making sense of this challenging clinical terrain.     

Variability in payoff disbursement in coalition formation experiments

Results from 680 plays, gathered in four different 3-person characteristic function game experiments, are summarized to show that there is considerable inter-group variability in payoff disbursement in coalition formation experiments that does not decrease with practice. This Variability is inconsistent with models predicting unique payoff vectors, one for each coalition structure. Data from a 3-person game experiment by Komorita and Kravitz are then employed to test and corroborate a recently proposed model, which predicts a range of payoff vectors in which each point depends on a single parameter interpretable as a standard of fairness.     

Feelings in Literature

In this article it is argued that feelings are all important to the function of literature. In contradiction to music that is concerned with the inwardness of humankind, literature has, because of language, the capacity to create fictional worlds that in many respects are similar to and related to the life world within which we live. One of the most important reasons for our emotional engagement in literature is our empathy with others and our constant imagining and hypothesizing on possible developments in our interactions with them. Hence, we understand and engage ourselves in fictional worlds. It is further claimed and exemplified, how poetic texts are very good at rhetorically engage and manipulate our feelings. Finally, with reference to the important work of Ellen Dissanayake, it is pointed out that the first kind of communication in which we engage, that between mother and infant, is a kind of speech that positively engages the infant in a dialogue with the mother by means of poetic devices.     

Cognitive skills in mathematical problem solving in Grade 3

Background. Research on the relationship between cognitive skills and mathematical problem solving is usually conducted on adults or on participants with acquired deficits associated with brain injury (e.g. Cipolotti, 1995 ; Cohen, Dehaene, & Verstichel, 1994 ; McCloskey, 1992 ). Aims. In these studies we wanted to make a contribution to the field of children's mathematical problem solving. The first aim of this study was to investigate whether mathematical problem solving in children is merely determined by semantic elaboration, as hypothesized in some of the models of adult processing (semantic hypothesis). In addition, we aimed to investigate whether there is a continuum from very good to very poor mathematical problem solving among children with mathematical learning disabilities showing immature cognitive skills (maturational lag hypothesis). Sample. The participants were 376 third graders and 107 second graders. Method. The internal structure of the data was analysed with a principal components analysis. In addition, two MANOVA were conducted to compare children with learning disabilities or problems with age‐matched and performance‐matched subjects. Results. Two components, a semantic and a non‐semantic one, were needed to account for an adequate fit of the dataset. In addition, children with mathematical learning disabilities had less‐developed cognitive skills compared with peers without learning disabilities, but they did not differ from younger children on seven of the nine cognitive skills. Conclusions. This study highlighted that children's mathematical problem solving is not determined by one general component. The picture is more complex, since two mathematics components were found. In addition, although our findings point in the direction of the maturational lag hypothesis it may be important to assess the different cognitive skills and especially assess the number system knowledge, since it seems below average in children with mathematical learning disabilities, compared with the knowledge of younger children with comparable skills in mathematics.     

精神分裂症患者的语音感知

精神分裂症是一种常见的精神疾病, 表现为多方面的症状, 其中, 语言异常是精神分裂症患者认知损伤的核心症状之一。本文关注精神分裂症患者的语音感知, 从音段和超音段两方面简述国内外对精神分裂症患者语音感知开展的行为和神经科学实验, 指出中国应加大对中国精神分裂症患者的汉语语音感知探索。     

Continuing education in humanistic psychology

This article explores the importance of the relationship between a teacher of meditation and his or her student. Mindfulness meditation is receiving a lot of attention in the psychotherapy literature currently. It is generally viewed as a technique that is taught in groups and then practiced individually by clients or participants. What does not appear to be generally understood is that the teaching and learning of meditation is understood in Eastern traditions as intimately related to the relationship that develops between the teacher and student. This, in fact, is very similar to what we are coming to understand about the importance of the therapeutic relationship to the outcome of therapy, regardless of technique or orientation of the therapist. Personal experiences of the author in a relationship with a meditation teacher are compared with those from a psychoanalytic therapy experience. Meditation is construed from this perspective not only as a technique that is learned and practiced but also as an innate human capability that is activated in the context of a very special kind of relationship with a person who has fully unfolded this capacity in his or her own experience.     

Bodies in Dialogue: Empathic Connectedness in the Realm of the Unspeakable

ABSTRACT

This article joins in contemporary psychoanalysis’ ever-expanding conversation about the “something more” than spoken language that has long been privileged in our profession. Specifically, the notion is explored that infant research’s conceptualization of mind as dialogic in origin—that we are prewired from birth to participate in nonverbal, affective communication—is consistent with the position that an embodied, dialogic, co-created, empathic connectedness can evolve with severely traumatized, frozen patients whose experience is not just unformulated but unspeakable. This is illustrated with an in-depth account of a challenging therapeutic journey with a highly intelligent man whose social relatedness hid a world of frozen grief and terror of violation. It was only when the therapist could connect with trauma-generated aspects of herself that had remained frozen, could she find an empathic way of being-with and ultimately understanding her patient’s wordless, frozen world.     

Immersion in the surface1

In order to treat patients with a narcissistic structure showing a rigid shell of defence together with a lack of inner differentiation – insufficient subject/object constitution – one has to deal with a split kind of transference. Their compelling need for distance corresponds to their fragile self‐esteem. They feel threatened by the analysis and the analytic relationship. Because the seeming normality of these patients’ thinking and language is deceptive, a variation of psychoanalytic technique to facilitate the work with them is described and explained in detail. To transform their two‐dimensional ‘inner’ world, which functions in a PS modus, it is helpful to show them, with changing viewpoints step by step, their own manoeuvres, misconceptions and manipulative use of language within the analytic relationship. The gratifying extension of their self‐awareness leads to the introjection of the analyst’s alpha‐function. This makes possible a more distinct separation of subject and object representations and a transformation to a three‐dimensional, oedipally structured world with a strengthened capacity to symbolize. This method of working is grounded in Bion’s theory of thinking. A case vignette illustrates a development of this kind.     

Treatment-resistant depression in late life

Treatment resistance is reported in up to 40% of older patients with major depression. Before labeling an episode of depression as treatment resistant, it is important to ensure that the diagnosis is correct and that the patient has received and adhered to an adequate dose of treatment for an appropriate length of time. It is also important to assess the patient for comorbid physical and psychiatric conditions that can contribute to treatment resistance. In patients who do not experience remission of symptoms with an adequate trial of medication, the following options can be considered: augmenting the antidepressant with a drug that is not primarily an antidepressant, adding a second antidepressant to the first, switching to a different antidepressant medication, or switching to electroconvulsive therapy. This paper reviews the concept of treatment-resistant depression and discusses its assessment and management in the elderly. The author concludes that when a systematic stepped-care approach to treatment is followed, most older patients with major depression will experience remission of symptoms.