Dreams, conscience, and memory

The interpretation of certain dreams, as opposed to the direct examination of behavior, makes it possible to explore the conscience of the dreamer, detect hidden sources of guilt, and interpret them with less likelihood of arousing intractable resistance. Through the recovery of memories and the establishment of an intimate familiarity with one's personal history, it becomes possible to resolve problems of "neurotic" guilt, based ultimately on distortions of repressed childhood memories. The resolution of these conflicts allows a greater role for the operation of "appropriate" guilt, based on genuine transgressions, and the establishment of a more mature ethical structure.     

The association of childhood trauma with perceptions of self and the partner in adult romantic relationships

In this study, the association of childhood trauma with perceptions of self and the partner was explored. Using a large sample of more than 5,400 couples who completed the RELATE inventory, couples in which neither partner experienced childhood physical abuse were compared on personality and communication scales with couples where only the female experienced abuse, only the male experienced abuse, and both partners experienced abuse. The primary question of interest was to evaluate whether childhood trauma was associated with selection effects of romantic partners, perceptual effects of partners, or reciprocal negativity with partners. The evidence from the analysis of variance and path analysis indicates that trauma is more likely to be associated with perceptual effects than selection effects. Individuals who were traumatized rated both themselves and their partners as more neurotic and conflictual, even when controlling for overall levels of relationship satisfaction. However, the partners of traumatized persons do not consider themselves more neurotic or conflictual than partners in relationships where neither partner was abused.     

Some developmental antecedents of psychopathology

The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) was administered to 64 young adults whose mothers had participated 17 years earlier in the Sears, Maccoby, and Levin interview study of childrearing A permissive home atmosphere in childhood appears to be related to neurotic (including hypochondriacal) and psychotic disturbances in female young adults, while a cold home atmosphere is related to psychopathological disorders in young adult males Also for young adult males there tends to be an association between an excessively warm-nonpunitive home atmosphere in childhood and the development of strong anxiety and psychotic disturbances Phobic and psychotic disorders tend to have emerged from a cold-punitive home atmosphere for males For females a warm-punitive or permissive-punitive home atmosphere appears to be related to neurotic disturbances and the paranoid reaction These findings were examined with and without K scale corrections with no significant differences in results     

The diagnosis of borderline disorders: criteria and their empirical evaluation

Until now "Borderline-Syndrom" is a controversial diagnosis especially because of many uncertainties to determine the definition. In our examination various discrimination analyses were realised on a sampling of 62 patients (32 neurotic and 30 Borderline-Patients) and 47 variables in order to get various selective combinations of variables. Useful as a screening to separate neurotic and Borderline-Patients seems to be a combination of the items "often changing partnership", "homosexually episodes" and "incrimination/disciplinary punishment" with an error rate of 6.5 per cent.     

ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE

A report from Istanbul "aiming to prove to what extent the neurotic and schizoid forms of personality defects are due to familial conflicts." Sample was 50 normals and 50 mental patients 30 of whom were neurotic and 30 schizoid. The research method was psychotherapy and/or narcosis. Parents of mental patients are reported to be "a real problem" and certain factors relating to the parent-child intervention are discussed.     

Effects on an adult of incest in childhood: a case report

Recognition of the widespread incidence of overt incest in childhood has significantly increased in recent years. The described long-term effects range from severe psychopathology and behavioral disorder to mild and subtle manifestations. The interplay of the child's sexual developmental processes and intrapsychic fantasies with the overtly incestuous behaviors adds complexity to the understanding of longterm effects. In this case presentation successful analysis revealed previously repressed extensive father-daughter incest resulting in typically autoplastic neurotic symptomatology and character formation. Effects on ego development and function were traced, and an attempt was made to develop recognition of cues suggestive of past overt incest. The case suggests that many additional factors contribute to the final long-term effects of overt incest in childhood.     

Between psychology and pedagogy: "moral orthopedics" and case studies of children in fin-de-siècle French medicine

In the latter decades of the 19th century, European physicians debated a controversial practice that mixed placebos with suggestion therapy to treat children diagnosed with neurotic disorders and behavioral problems. Designed to optimize suggestibility in juvenile patients, this "moral orthopedics" offered parents and therapists the message that children could be saved from becoming victims of their own personalities, of familial neuroses, or even of public health problems. Case studies, published in medical journals and books, circulated accounts of innovative strategies to treat childhood hysteria and to change habits that were considered destructive. Moral orthopedics actualized the insight that suggestibility could be therapeutically productive for juvenile subjects. However, because its adherents sought to manipulate patients' behavior and health by influencing unconscious thought, moral orthopedics provoked questions of expertise and disciplinary propriety among domains of medicine, law, and philosophy. This article reconstructs the controversy surrounding moral orthopedics by examining case studies. I argue that adherents of moral orthopedics did overcome philosophical objections raised against the method, and that they did so through what physician Edgar B6rillon referred to as "education of the will."     

The HEXACO–60: A Short Measure of the Major Dimensions of Personality

According to Jung anima and animus are functions, themselves largely unconscious, mediating between the ego and the deeper unconscious. Their manifestations in projection (also in dream, myth, etc.) are called the soul image. The soul image and the functions which it represents usually have sexual characteristics contrary to those of the conscious personality and are compensatory and complementary thereto.

Kinaesthetic responses in the Rorschach test are generally regarded as carriers of projections from the unconscious. Therefore, when personality imbalance and increased liability to projection occur as in neurosis, the proportion of contrasexual Ms should be larger in neurotic than in normal groups. Using four groups containing each 100 adult subjects: healthy women, neurotic women, healthy men and neurotic men, the hypothesis was tested and confirmed, affording some confirmation to Jungian theory.     

Existential and psychopathological evaluation of group psychotherapy of neurotic and psychotic patients

General problems in researching group psychotherapy are reviewed, especially for those with similar theoretical and methodological approaches. The sample consisted of 100 subjects, 26 of whom were neurotic and 24 of whom were psychotic. They were treated in small groups, headed by the author (the experimental group). An equal number and the same categories of patient attended control psychiatric sessions (the control group). All subjects were tested twice. With three instruments: the semantic differential (with twelve existential categories, five general therapy, and three ego psychology categories), the Kotchen test, and MMPI (midiform). A discriminative analysis of tests and the repeated test data, statistically significant, revealed experiential changes in existential categories, such as "Freedom," "Sex," and "Love" amongst psychotics; and in the case of both psychotic and neurotic patients, treated in groups and compared with the controls, such categories as "Understanding among people." With the help of MMPI, a statistically significant reduction of hysteria in neurotic subjects was established, as well as the preventive effects of group psychotherapy regarding the emergence of psychopathy in psychotic patients. Correlation calculations indicated a greater discrimination in the perception of changes using existential categories in the experiencing of psychotic and depressive patients. Finally, the results obtained are discussed from the viewpoints of clinical experience, results obtained in similar research studies, and unanswered questions resulting from such research.     

Fact and fantasy in the seduction theory: a historical review

This article surveys Freud's various versions of the seduction theory, from 1896 to 1933. It is concluded that the seduction theory had never been based on the patients' direct statements and conscious recall of seduction by the father in early childhood--unlike what Freud was to state much later (1933). This early seduction was mostly reconstructed by Freud from the patient's verbal material and behavior in treatment (including memories of sexual experiences from later childhood) which he interpreted as disguised and incomplete "reproductions" and reenactments of the original seduction trauma. Further, the external trauma was never meant to account by itself for the later neurotic symptoms. The "delayed action" of its unconscious memory, producing the repression of an event from the time of puberty, was a necessary part of the process. Thus internal psychic transformations and conflicts, anticipating Freud's later emphasis on fantasy and psychic reality, were already an intrinsic part of the seduction etiology of 1896. It is also noted that the father played no central role in the original theory as presented in 1896; it is only in the letters to Fliess that the father emerged as the prime seducer. The implications of this clarification of the seduction theory for the understanding of the changes and continuity in the development of Freud's theories are highlighted; their relevance to ongoing issues in psychoanalysis about the role of external trauma, fantasy, and reconstruction are briefly examined.     

From the archaic matrix of the oedipus complex to the fully developed oedipus complex. Theoretical perspective in relation to clinical experience and technique

The opposition between the "archaic matrix of the oedipus complex" and the fully developed oedipus complex leads the author to compare two distinct types of patients: those who do not conform to the neurotic model (patients who probably witnessed and were the victims of disintegration of the family and the effacement of the father's image) and the neurotic patient for whom Freud's discovery was intended. The consequences of differences of organization specific to each type of patient are numerous. This study restricts itself to examining the different mode of interpretation in each case, although the choice of this does not depend solely upon the analyst, since interpretation is the product of the encounter between patient and analyst.     

How to live with a neurotic man

If women are to live in a mated relationship with a male they have little choice but to live with a fairly neurotic one. This article shows them why and how men are usually neurotic, how to deal with their own neurotic demands about mating, how to help a man be less neurotic than he usually is, and how to live fairly happily with a neurotic man.     

Decreased empathic sensitivity for distressed infants in neurotic adults: The mediating role of remembered parental rejection

The primary purpose of the present research was to determine whether negative reactions to infant distress in neurotic adults are mediated by representations of same sex parental rejection. Participants were 308 adult males and females who completed questionnaires assessing their personality and their representations of their parents’ care-giving from childhood. Participants also reported their own empathic reactions toward emotionally distressed and non-distressed infants. The present findings revealed that neuroticism significantly predicted a greater recall of parental rejection which, in turn, predicted decreased empathy ratings for distressed infants. In addition, recollections of father rejection mediated the relation between neuroticism and empathy in men, while recollections of maternal rejection mediated the relation between these variables in women.     

The Predictive Power of Horney’s Psychoanalytic Approach: An Empirical Study

This study investigated the construct validity of a measure of Karen Horneys (1945) psychoanalytic theory that postulated three neurotic trends: compliant, aggressive, and detached. Her theory was operationalized by the Horney-Coolidge Type Indicator (HCTI). One hundred seventy-two adults completed the HCTI and the short form of the Coolidge Axis II Inventory, a measure of the three DSM-IV personality disorder clusters. Multiple regression and canonical correlation analyses revealed significant and differential patterns of the three HCTI dimensions with the three clusters. Because Paris (1994) has noted that Horneys neurotic trends may today be conceived of as personality disorders, one implication of the present findings is that Horneys dynamic theory can be valid and useful in the general understanding of personality disorders from a cluster perspective.     

Revisiting Jung's concept of innate sensitiveness

Jung suggested that innate sensitiveness predisposes some individuals to be particularly affected by negative childhood experiences, so that later, when under pressure to adapt to some challenge, they retreat into infantile fantasies based on those experiences and become neurotic. Recent research by the author and others is reviewed to support Jung's theory of sensitiveness as a distinctly thorough conscious and unconscious reflection on experiences. Indeed, this probably innate tendency is found in about twenty percent of humans, and, in a sense, in most species, in that about this percentage will evidence a strategy of thoroughly processing information before taking action, while the majority depend on efficient, rapid motor activity. Given this thorough processing, sensitive individuals readily detect subtleties-including whatever is distressing or threatening. Hence, as Jung observed, given the same degree of stress in childhood as non-sensitive individuals, sensitive persons will develop more depression, anxiety, and shyness. Without undue stress, they evidence no more of these difficulties than the non-sensitive-or even less, being unusually aware of supportive as well as negative cues from caregivers. Given this interaction, one treatment task is to distinguish the effects of such childhood difficulties from what does not need treatment, which are the typical effects of the trait itself on an adult without a troubled developmental history.     

Goethe, Kant, Locke, Villaume knew our technic of individual therapy

John Locke (1632-1704) and Villaume (1746-1825) were already familiar with the method with which we, in our "individual therapy", treat neurotic patients. The question whether conditional reflexes and the elimination of their effects play an essential part in the procedure must be denied.     

Childhood and adult behavior disorder: Some experimental comparisons

Seventy-six children with diagnoses of behavior disorder were tested with a motor conditional reflex test and a word association test. Essentially no differences were found when test performance was compared with that of 142 normal controls. When the diagnoses were divided into neuroses, adjustment reaction of childhood, and personality disorder, none of these subgroups showed any distinctive difference. Experimental differences between clinically excitatory and inhibitory types could not be established. The Russian reports about abnormal basic Pavlovian parameters could not be confirmed. In adult behavior disorder marked disturbances of functions are found. It is suggested that the worse prognosis in adult neurotic conditions is related to such pathophysiological factors as passive inhibition, weakness of active inhibition, inertness and complex structures with pathological excitation and inertia.     

Proof of complex theories regarding conflicts, neuroses and their therapy, exemplified by Mjasiscew's theory of relations

Most psycho-dynamic theories emphasize the role of intra-personal conflicts in the aetiology and therapy of neurotic disorders, but very few can be empirically tested. The social psychological and psychodynamic "pathogenetic" theory of the "Leningrad School" of psychotherapy according to Mjasiscew (Lauterbach, 1984) maintains that conflicts between a person's relations with his social, material and cultural environment may be the cause of his neurosis. This theory is used to demonstrate that psychodynamic hypotheses about the role of intra-personal conflicts can be empirically tested with the help of "tests of conflict" (Lauterbach, 1987).     

Hysterical syndromes in a population of ambulatory neuropsychiatric patients in northwest Ethiopia. Phenomenology, psychosocial and sociocultural background

Among 1240 first-time patients in the out-patient department of Gondar College of Medicas Sciences during the period September 1985-Juli 1986, there was, be European standards, an astonishingly high percentage of hysterical symptoms: 12.5% of all cases, 33.5% of all neurotic cases, with markedly "classic" symptomatology. These hysterical behavior patterns were interpreted as being, in the main, special problem solution mechanisms with secondary acquisition of illness under rapidly changing social conditions.     

FACTOR ANALYSIS OF A NEUROTICISM INVENTORY

The Lidvall neuroticism inventory is comprised of 25 questions referring to symptoms presumed to be connected with manifest neurotic anxiety. It was presented to 377 persons, an unscreened group with respect to neurotic symptoms, and a factor analysis with rotation to simple structure was performed.—Four factors could be identified: (1) manifest neurotic anxiety, (2) neurotic difficulties in interpersonal relations, (3) neurasthenic symptoms and (4) obsessive-compulsive symptoms. The factor scales were correlated with Neuroticism and Extraversion in MPI. Neuroticism was shown to be a heterogeneous factor. The correlation between Factor (2) and Extraversion was high.