The development of the Telic Dominance Scale

The development of a 42-item measure of a number of personality features derived from the theory of psychological reversals is reported. These personality features are (a) the extent to which a person is serious-minded, (b) the extent to which a person plans ahead and organizes himself in the pursuit of goals, and (c) the extent to which a person seeks to avoid arousal. These features together are seen to constitute a personality trait which is described as telic dominance. Data concerning the test-retest reliability, criterion-related and construct validity of the Telic Dominance Scale are presented, together with the scale and scoring key.     

THE SYMBOLIC BODY AND THE SYMBOLIC SYMPTOM

The differential analysis of the symbolic expression and of the symbolic symptom enlightens the relation between body, language and symbol. The displacement and condensation, which explain the symptom, involve a bodily perception of a symbolic nature. Consequently, Freud tends to interpret the symbol according to the symptom formation, as opposed to J. Lacan, who equates displacement with metonymy, and condensation with metaphor. The author, in analyzing the similarities and differences, interprets the symptom as a desymbolization, which presupposes a presymbolic perception, which phenomenology has thematized. However, it is language which structures this perception as symbolic, and which introduces the symbolic finality; which the psychological dynamisms do not have by their own selves.     

Dimensions of counseling for career development

Counseling practice has not reflected current thinking about career development and career process. Four types of career counseling are described: Type 1, a traditional vocational counseling approach which helps the client with a specific decision; Type 2, which is concerned with teaching decision-making skills; Type 3, which views career development as a process rather than an end-point toward which all decisions lead; and Type 4, which focuses on creating in the individual the ability to utilize his own strengths to achieve self-determined objectives and to influence the nature of future opportunities.     

A non‐utilitarian approach to punishment

Although the view that punishment is to be justified on utilitarian grounds has obvious appeal, an examination of utilitarianism reveals that, consistently and accurately interpreted, it dictates unjust punishments which are unacceptable to the common moral consciousness. In this rule‐utilitarianism is no more satisfactory than is act‐utilitarianism. Although the production of the greatest good, or the greatest happiness, of the greatest number is obviously a relevant consideration when determining which punishments may properly be inflicted, the question as to which punishment is just is a distinct and more basic question and one which must be answered before we can determine which punishments are morally permissible. That a retributivist theory, which is a particular application of a general principle of justice, can account more satisfactorily for our notion of justice in punishment is a positive reason in its support.     

Dysfonctionnement de l'environnement et travail en réseau : approche clinique d'un lien social

Resting against an research-action which related to six districts known as “sensitive” and touched approximately 400 professionals and 500 parents, this text consolidates the report of a dysfunction in the relations between the professionals and the professionals and the parents. It clarifies the idea of a genesis of the passage to the act and conduits at the risk which would be nourished of this dysfunction. A setting in network, which places work on the level of the processes will intra, inter psychic and interpersonal which took part in the emergence of the problems and with the failure of the solutions which were proposed to them, could constitute an alternative to this dysfunction. This text gives a report on the strong moments of the work of development by which the parents and the professionals within the framework of this setting in network pass and whose result could be a protected environment, more stable even indestructible.     

Judging Covers

Cover versions form a loose but identifiable category of tracks and performances. We distinguish four kinds of covers and argue that they mark important differences in the modes of evaluation that are possible or appropriate for each: mimic covers, which aim merely to echo the canonical track; rendition covers, which change the sound of the canonical track; transformative covers, which diverge so much as to instantiate a distinct, albeit derivative song; and referential covers, which not only instantiate a distinct song, but for which the new song is in part about the original song. In order to allow for the very possibility of transformative and referential covers, we argue that a cover is characterized by relation to a canonical track rather than merely by being a new instance of a song that had been recorded previously.     

The Development of the Telic Dominance Scale

The development of a 42-item measure of a number of personality features derived from the theory of psychological reversals is reported. These personality features are (a) the extent to which a person is serious-minded, (b) the extent to which a person plans ahead and organizes himself in the pursuit of goals, and (c) the extent to which a person seeks to avoid arousal. These features together are seen to constitute a personality trait which is described as telic dominance. Data concerning the test-retest reliability, criterion-related and construct validity of the Telic Dominance Scale are presented, together with the scale and scoring key.     

Attention et jugement temporel

The role of attention in human’s duration judgment processes is analyzed. Empirical evidences which indicate that a dissociation exists between prospective and retrospective duration judgments are presented. Attention is directly involved in prospective duration judgments processes. Attentional-based models, which can explain prospective duration judgments are presented together with empirical evidences which validate the general attentional model on the levels of both regular cognitive processes and high level executive-control processes. Waiting is presented as a natural situation during which prospective duration judgment processes are evoked. The attentional model is used for explaining why a duration spent waiting seems to pass slowly, in contrast to a situation to which one is interested in a book or a movie and in which time flies fast.     

‘IF EACH COULD BE HOUSED IN SEPARATE IDENTITIES…’. THERAPY AS CONVERSATION WITH CONTRADICTORY PARTS OF THE SELF

Recent advances in neuroscience provide compelling evidence of the significance of our embodiment for our psychic life, and the extent to which subjectivity is both a social and a psychological phenomenon. In thinking about the experiential sense of living in an explicitly female body, I suggest that the connotations of disgust with which menstruation is associated cannot fail to affect women's core sense of identity and subjectivity. As gendered blood, to no small degree separating and defining women, the way that it is consciously and unconsciously represented contributes to the way that difference is experienced by every female. We cannot fail, in part, to become what we are attributed to be.

In this paper I have tried to think about the ways in which psychoanalysis appears to mirror a cultural avoidance, which in part it helps to promote, whereby menstruation represents the concealed nature of female sexuality, in contrast to which the phallus continually signifies itself. When acknowledged at all, menstruation is seen as a loss, an incontinence, or an absence (of babies) – a symbol of waste and a break in productivity. I have considered ways in which, and reasons why, images of blood and women can be seen as a sign pointing to a reality against which other variables are measured. Within this paradigm I have attempted to consider ways in which menstruation can be considered to be a metaphor for women's symbolic and real absence, marginalization, fragile status, inarticulacy and misrepresentation.     

From the numinous to the sacred

Abstract :  Jung took the idea of the 'numinous' from Rudolf Otto's book Das Heilige (E.T. The Idea of the Holy ) and made it central to his understanding of religion. However, as Lucy Huskinson has recently pointed out, this involves a misreading of Otto's work in which we have to look beyond the numinous (which is the non-rational factor in religion) towards the 'holy' which, like a symbol, holds the rational and non-rational aspects of religious experience together in a personally transformative way. This understanding of the spiritual and psychological journey is supported by case material in which a numinous experience, arising in the context of intensive analytical psychotherapy, proved to be but the first step in a process which led, through a period of mourning, towards the development of the patient's capacity to symbolize. In the light of this, the author suggests that the sacred is to be found in the capacity for a certain quality of symbolic relatedness—to self and other—which may or may not be attended by numinous experience.     

DEFINISSEURS CULTURELS ET REPERES INDIVIDUELS: LE RAPPORT AU CORPS CHEZ LES PERSONNES AGEES

In ageing the relationship to the body refers to the way in which old age is defined in our representational systems. This defining process intervenes on a social and individual level. The individual relationship to ageing is influenced by the way in which our society prefers a spatial or corporeal definition of old age to a temporal one and by the way in which it assigns a certain position to the individual on the ageing scale. In reference to this defining process different conceptions regarding the relationship between corporeity and ageing appear. Drawing on a survey of the literature and an exploratory interview conducted among elderly, three types of corporeity are disclosed. First, the diagnosed corporeity, which is also defined by the medical system in chronic illness terms, reflects our fear of the irreversibility and the deterioration which we associate with this stage of life. Second, the imagined and projected corporeity of the elderly by which they themselves react to their devalorised image offered by society. Third, the lived and acted corporeity in which the corporeal signs reflect the social, relational, and behavioral space. In these different domains the concept of strategy seems appropriate to learn how the aged copes, at the margins, with his/her life conditions which are very difficult as well in a material, social as symbolic sense.     

The Conception of a Person as a Series of Mental Events

It is argued that those who accept the psychological criterion of personal identity, such as Parfit and Shoemaker, should accept what I call the 'series' view of a person, according to which a person is a unified aggregate of mental events and states. As well as defending this view against objections, I argue that it allows the psychological theorist to avoid the two lives objection which the 'animalist' theorists have raised against it, an objection which causes great difficulties for the conception of a person that most psychological theorists favour, the constitution view. It is also argued that the series view allows that people can body swap and teleport, which the constitution view–which takes a person to be a physical object (but a distinct physical object from the human being)–has great trouble with.     

Imaginary bodies and worlds

In this paper I distil a concept of the imaginary with which to make good the claim that our mode of embodied subjectivity is an imaginary embodiment in an imaginary world. The concept of the imaginary employed is not one in which imaginary worlds are contrasted with the real, but one in which imagination is a condition of there being a real for us. The images and forms in terms of which our imagined bodies and worlds are constituted carry, in an interdependent way, cognition and affects. Imagined configurations have a resilience which makes their displacement more than a matter of appealing to considerations of truth or falsity. It involves encounters with alternative imagined configurations which can be recognized as making both cognitive and affective sense.     

The Chinese duet: the Tao of resistance

This paper discusses the elements of a family intervention which draws on some concepts of Tao philosophy, such as polarity and returning. The polarity is that of the complimentary opposites yin and yang, and the returning is the cyclical returning and balance that is to be found in nature and its systems, which contain both a tendency towards stability and towards change. The balanced use ofjiin andjiang, when confronted by a system that is stuck off-balance, develops into a debate similar to the 'Greek Chorus'. This is then followed up by a confusing letter which leaves members of the family with a set of reframes and tasks from which they can create a response to their difficulty.     

Memory for positive,negative and neutral events in younger and older adults: Does emotion influence binding in event memory?

When remembering an event, it is important to remember both the features of the event (e.g., a person and an action) and the connections among features (e.g., who performed which action). Emotion often enhances memory for stimulus features, but the relationship between emotion and the binding of features in memory is unclear. Younger and older adults attempted to remember events in which a person performed a negative, positive or neutral action. Memory for the action was enhanced by emotion, but emotion did not enhance the ability of participants to remember which person performed which action. Older adults were more likely than younger adults to make binding errors in which they incorrectly remembered a familiar actor performing a familiar action that had actually been performed by someone else, and this age-related associative deficit was found for both neutral and emotional actions. Emotion not only increased correct recognition of old events for older and younger adults but also increased false recognition of events in which a familiar actor performed a familiar action that had been performed by someone else. Thus, although emotion may enhance memory for the features of an event, it does not increase the accuracy of remembering who performed which action.     

Constructing bridges and systemic connections: In brief dynamic therapy

The author outlines how the conceptual framework which underpins cyclical psychodynamics, a branch of relational psychoanalysis, provides an opportunity for a coherent integration of constructivist CBT principles and techniques and family systems theory within a model of brief dynamic therapy. Drawing upon Wachtel’s articulation of a more flexible notion of the internal world and one in which current interpersonal patterns are seen to shape the psyche and internal conflicts, the author goes on to identify ways in which attending to a client’s behaviour and the ways in which affective experience is expressed interpersonally can open the way to an integration of therapeutic features from constructivist CBT and family systems theory. The contribution that coaching a client in the ways in which they behave interpersonally in the context of both family and workplace relationships can make to therapeutic effectiveness is explored. These themes are illustrated with a case study.     

An analysis of the structure of justification of ethical decisions in medical intervention

The most important distinction in value theory is the subjective-objective distinction which determines the epistemological status of value judgments about medical intervention. Ethical decisions in medical intervention presuppose one of three structures of justification — namely, an inductive approach, a deductive approach which can be either consequentialist or non-consequentialist, and a uniquely ethical approach. Inductivism and deductivism have been discussed extensively in the literature and are only briefly described here. The uniquely ethical approach which presupposes value objectivism is analyzed in detail. This method involves a purely ethical inference which moves from facts to values directly with an emphasis on reason which involves a non-logical justification (as opposed to illogical). It involves the use of natural practical arguments which have an imperative conclusion but no imperative premise and exhibit a value-requiredness between two states of affairs.     

Ethics,Alterity, and Psychotherapy: A Levinasian Perspective

Current psychologies of religion reflect the modernist context in which they are situated. Religion is reduced to what is researchable, generalizable, individual and “thin.” This essay suggests that a psychology of religion which takes seriously the implications of Emmanuel Levinas’s emphasis on ethics and the alterity of the Other would result in a different model of psychotherapy. Levinas’s view of the Other as the trace of the transcendent radically changes our understanding of the client within the therapeutic relationship. Levinas begins with ethics and so healing would be, by implication, an ethical enterprise. In a highly secularized, individualized, objectivized culture, a therapy which recognizes the sacred, which models how to view the Other as transcendent, and which does not presume to know, is a gift to the client.     

Receiving slaps,receiving words. The violence of separation in a public service time limited psychotherapy group for adolescents

The authors propose a reflection on a time-limited psychoanalytic group for children, adolescents and families, run in a public service. Some patients in the group give accounts of violent relationships and traumatic experiences. The accounts of violent, interpersonal and intrapsychic relationships influence the group’s capacity of thinking, which leads to difficulties in the processing of symbolic aspects. The fundamental question is that of whether it is possible to work in a time-limited, institutional, psychoanalytical framework, in which psychotherapists have to attempt to give meaning to experiences which take place in a repetitive present, in a space/time in which the prospect of a conclusion appears to be inconceivable. By means of a clinical example, and with particular emphasis on the first sessions and the dream brought up by a patient who has been a victim of domestic violence, the authors discuss the possibility of modifying, chiefly from within, the feeling of the immutability of early psychic material, which is itself intrinsically violent.