Spelunking as a manifestation of a counterclaustrophobia

Material is presented from the case history of a patient whose interest in spelunking (cave exploration) was found to be an unconscious expression of a type of counterclaustrophobia. Both oedipal and preoedipal determinants of the claustrophobic anxieties are delineated. Of particular note in this instance is the testicular element in the genesis of the patient's claustrophobia. His confusion of the movements of his testicles into his inguinal canals during childhood defecation with the movements of the feces themselves lent an special intensity to his fear of being flushed away from the mother by an expulsive anal birth from the claustrum. Childhood anxiety aroused when his testicles would become trapped in the inguinal canals was an important forerunner of the adult fear of being trapped in confined spaces. A counterphobic element of the spelunking per se was his enjoyment in hanging suspended by a rope in caves. In this manner, he was able to act out (by virtue of his body-testicle equation) his identification with, and control over, the disappearing testicles in the setting of a claustrophilic union with the mother.     

The non-occurrence of a stimulus as a signal

Two groups of rats were rewarded for pressing a panel following a varying number of bar presses; a signal following the bar press indicated whether or not a panel press would be rewarded if made before the next bar press. For one group the signal indicating reward was a flash of light, for the other it was the non-occurrence of the flash (in the latter case the flash thus signalled non-reward). The first group learned to withold panel presses except when reward was signalled, but the second group did not. This result is related to the “feature positive effect” of Jenkins and Sainsbury (1970), in which pigeons failed to withold pecks at a negative stimulus display when it was the same as the positive display except for the addition of a distinctive feature.     

The impact of a stillbirth on a marriage

The crippling consequences on family life of the failure to mourn a stillbirth adequately are demonstrated in a vulnerable couple. They were helped by brief, planned, focal, conjoint marital psychotherapy which is described.     

Memories of a 'decision-map': Recall of a real-life decision

First-year students in college who had participated in a study of college-decision-making 8 to 20 months earlier were asked to recall the criteria they had used and the alternatives they had considered in making the decision. They were also asked to describe the criteria they thought, in retrospect, that they ought to have used, and to rate their satisfaction with the decision-making process and its outcome. Two hundred and seven of the original 322 participants responded to a follow-up questionnaire through the mail. Participants recalled about half of the criteria they originally reported using, and about two-thirds of the schools they originally reported considering. Their recall of criteria was affected by their current view of teh criteria they should have used, providing a replication for previous findings. No gender or academic ability effects were found. Somewhat surprisingly, given existing literature, recall was unaffected by emotional responses to the decision, either those reported during the decision-making process or those reported retrospectively. Overall, the pattern of results suggests that memory is affected by a decision-maker's current cognitive framework of the decision, specifically, their retrospective view of how they ought to have made the decision. Moreover, memory is far from perfect, even for stimuli that the decision-maker generated her- or himself, and to which presumably, they gave significant amounts of thought.