Human dignity and technology: A study and commentary∗

Several contradictory definitions were provided for evolution. It was viewed as progress or as local adaptation, as widening or as exploiting of transformation perspectives, as emergence of non‐historical patterns or as history of Life.

The conflicting views of evolution can be reconciled by taking the rival terms as different moments, or phases, of a single process. The first phase is form creation, the second is form selection. Progress and adaptation, widening and reduction of perspectives, emergence and history orderly mark the two successive phases.

Dynamic Structuralism and Darwinism differ in the preferential emphasis they put, respectively, in the first or in the second phase. According to structuralists, mere history does not depict a process: nothing can happen outside a frame, without a grid of meanings. A chance event, a non‐intelligible event is not a fact. A set of generative principles, of rules of form, is required both to produce evolution and to make it understandable.

By entrusting innovation to chance the Darwinian historical view is essentially pessimistic. Any small step forward can only be achieved at a price of innumerable sacrifices, and only the very few survive. In the dynamic structuralist view, forms (e.g. the mild “splash” by D'Arcy Thompson) emerge spontaneously and immediately, with no need of countless failures. They express concealed potentialities, explore the varied inventory of Nature, and do not result from the meaningless trouble of history.     

How to play the flute: A commentary on Dreyfus's “Intelligence without representation”

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences -     

Disambiguating conscious and unconscious influences: do exclusion paradigms demonstrate unconscious perception?

Does exclusion failure--responding with previously presented words despite instructions to avoid doing so--demonstrate unconscious influences? This article examines exclusion-based evidence for unconscious perception. I propose an alternative signal detection theory (SDT) framework that can account for exclusion failure and ostensibly convergent qualitative differences without positing additional unconscious perceptual mechanisms. In the proposed SDT model, exclusion failure is a criterion artifact, similar to classic SDT-based critiques of subjective threshold approaches. However, it is suggested that exclusion approaches do demonstrate that response strategies are applied only to above-criterion stimuli and thereby illustrate important qualitative differences between two conscious processes: phenomenal awareness itself and higher-order (i.e., metacognitive) decision processes.     

Appearance-related commentary, body image, and self-esteem: Does the distress associated with the commentary matter?

Research that has examined the association between appearance-based commentary and body image has generally focused on the frequency of occurrence of the commentary, not the subjective rating of the distress associated with the feedback. The current study examined both frequency and distress (effect) components of commentary in a sample of 246 undergraduate female students aged 18–25. Significant correlations were found between both frequency and effect dimensions of commentary and measures of body image disturbance and self-esteem. The utility of both frequency and effect variables in predicting body image disturbance and self-esteem was demonstrated in regression analyses. Implications of the findings for broadening the assessment of appearance-based commentary to include both dimensions of the construct are discussed.     

The octopus and the child—Another perspective on American culture: A commentary on Stearns

Stearns argues that, in the twentieth century, American parents increasingly treated their children as frail and vulnerable. But the parental protectiveness that he describes is only one part of the story. Some American parents did hover over their children; others ignored, neglected, or abused them. Some did shore up their suspect self-esteem; others trusted in their strength and sturdiness and even demanded a new toughness and competitiveness. American culture is more complicated and contested than Stearns allows.     

A critical commentary on follow-up studies and “desistance” theories about transgender and gender-nonconforming children

ABSTRACT

Background: It has been widely suggested that over 80% of transgender children will come to identify as cisgender (i.e., desist) as they mature, with the assumption that for this 80%, the trans identity was a temporary “phase.” This statistic is used as the scientific rationale for discouraging social transition for pre-pubertal children. This article is a critical commentary on the limitations of this research and a caution against using these studies to develop care recommendations for gender-nonconforming children.

Methods: A critical review methodology is employed to systematically interpret four frequently-cited studies that sought to document identity outcomes for gender-nonconforming children (often referred to as “desistance” research).

Results: Methodological, theoretical, ethical, and interpretive concerns regarding four “desistance” studies are presented. The authors clarify the historical and clinical contexts within which these studies were conducted to deconstruct assumptions in interpretations of the results. The discussion makes distinctions between the specific evidence provided by these studies versus the assumptions that have shaped recommendations for care. The affirmative model is presented as a way to move away from the question of, “How should children's gender identities develop over time?” toward a more useful question: “How should children best be supported as their gender identity develops?”

Conclusion: The tethering of childhood gender diversity to the framework of “desistance” or “persistence” has stifled advancements in our understanding of children's gender in all its complexity. These follow-up studies fall short in helping us understand what children need. As work begins on the 8th version of the Standards of Care by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, we call for a more inclusive conceptual framework that takes children's voices seriously. Listening to children's experiences will enable a more comprehensive understanding of the needs of gender-nonconforming children and provide guidance to scientific and lay communities.     

Unresolved problems with the “I”, the “A”, and the “T”: A logical and psychometric critique of the Implicit Association Test (IAT)

The Implicit Association Test (IAT) had already gained the status of a prominent assessment procedure before its psychometric properties and underlying task structure were understood. The present critique addresses five major problems that arise when the IAT is used for diagnostic inferences: (1) the asymmetry of causal and diagnostic inferences; (2) the viability of the underlying association model; (3) the lack of a testable model underlying IAT-based inferences; (4) the difficulties of interpreting difference scores; and (5) the susceptibility of the IAT to deliberate faking and strategic processing. Based on a theoretical reflection of these issues, and a comprehensive survey of published IAT studies, it is concluded that a number of uncontrolled factors can produce (or reduce) significant IAT scores independently of the personality attribute that is supposed to be captured by the IAT procedure.     

Combining the roles of “Priest” and “physician”: A clinical case

In antiquity the healing role was usually performed by one person-a priest-physician. This also applied to hypnotism. As science emerged, eventually the roles of physician and priest were separated and performed by different persons. In the present case the roles of priest and physician were again united, resulting in significant improvement for the patient. Previously the separated roles had been ineffective.Edward M. Scott, Ph.D., a licensed psychologist in private practice, is Professor of Medical Psychology, University of Oregon Health Sciences Center, Portland, and Clinical Manager of the Alcohol Treatment and Training Center, Department of Human Resources, Oregon State Mental Health Division. He is an Associate Editor of theInternational Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, the author of three books, and co-editor (with his wife Kathy) of a fourth book, and the author of 39 published articles.     

Costs and benefits of cultural value mismatch in the globalising era: A commentary on the special issue “cross-cultural value mismatch: A by-product of migration and population diversity around the world” (IJP,December, 2018)

In this commentary, the author first seeks to counterbalance the current focus on the cost of cultural value mismatch by calling attention to ample evidence in the literature that value mismatch can produce cultural adaptation and resilience in the long run, besides promoting cultural innovations and individual creativity. Second, we propose three factors that differentiate the benefits from the costs of cultural value mismatch. Personal orientation towards integrating heritage and host culture, accurate perception of cultural value differences, and supportive multicultural environments are associated with benefits. In contrast, dichotomous orientation towards one or the other culture, exaggeration of value differences between heritage and host culture, and assimilationist social environments are associated with costs. Third, our analysis of the decoupling between cultural values and ecological niches in the special issue led to observation of bidirectionality in cultural value mismatch: Whereas most articles in the Special Issue focus on the cross-cultural value mismatch that occurs when people move from a more rural, low-resource, less technological ecology into a more urban, high-resource, more technological ecology, we were able to document the effects of value mismatch when movement occurs in the opposite direction.     

Are “implicit” attitudes unconscious?

A widespread assumption in recent research on attitudes is that self-reported (explicit) evaluations reflect conscious attitudes, whereas indirectly assessed (implicit) evaluations reflect unconscious attitudes. The present article reviews the available evidence regarding unconscious features of indirectly assessed "implicit" attitudes. Distinguishing between three different aspects of attitudes, we conclude that (a) people sometimes lack conscious awareness of the origin of their attitudes, but that lack of source awareness is not a distinguishing feature of indirectly assessed versus self-reported attitudes, (b) there is no evidence that people lack conscious awareness of indirectly assessed attitudes per se, and (c) there is evidence showing that, under some conditions, indirectly assessed (but not self-reported) attitudes influence other psychological processes outside of conscious awareness. Implications for the concept of "implicit attitudes" are discussed.     

Countertransference: Our new royal road to the unconscious?

In this paper I am tracing the history of countertransference and how it has informed the current debate about self‐disclosure as a pivotal instrument of analytic work. Now that the analyst's “subjective factor”; has been understood as a central influence on the analysand and as a vital source of information about the analysand's intrapsychic life, I argue that certain currents in the relational school of psychoanalysis confuse the analyst's subjectivity with his personality. While becoming more “real”; with a patient may enliven a stale analytic dialogue, it ought not be confused with, or take the place of, an analysis of unconscious desires and phantasies. I claim that a two‐person psychology can exist only within a tripartite structure in which the analyst does not lose sight of his complex function of being the carrier, observer, and conveyor of the unconscious currents holding both participants in check.     

Conflicting interests and the creation of a “third space”; reply to commentary

This paper addresses how to be an available and responsive therapist to a controlling and narcissistically vulnerable young girl. It presents an overview of the treatment relationship and specific vignettes from sessions. The paper describes an impasse that posed a quandary: how to find a balance between staying in control of the treatment while being responsive to the kind of object the child needs the therapist to be—being empathic without being intrusive—and meeting her aggression without getting into a power struggle. The author discusses how asserting her subjectivity by playfully role-playing aspects of the patient, by spontaneously using humor, and by surviving her destructiveness allows the treatment to move forward. Trial and error, reflection on practice, and informed intuition contributed to the author's understanding of the child and of the transference. Various theoretical perspectives influenced the work.     

Recognition and lexical decision without detection: unconscious perception?

Stimulus detection and concurrent measures of stimulus recognition were compared to establish whether perception occurs in the absence of detection. The target stimuli were familiar words (Experiments 1 and 2), nonwords (Experiment 3), or both words and nonwords (Experiment 4). On each trial, either a stimulus or a blank field was presented. Ss first decided whether a stimulus had been presented and then made either a forced-choice recognition decision (Experiments 1, 2, and 3) or a lexical decision (Experiment 4). Both words and nonwords were recognized and discriminated following correct detections (i.e., hits). However, in the absence of stimulus detection (i.e., misses), only words were recognized or discriminated. These qualitatively different patterns of results following hits and misses for words and nonwords suggest that stimulus detection may provide an adequate measure of conscious awareness.