Louis Sander and Contemporary Psychoanalysis: Nonlinear Dynamic Systems,Developmental Research,Clinical Process and the Search for Core Principles

ABSTRACT

Louis Sander’s cutting-edge approach drew on infant observation research; nonlinear dynamic systems theories; and current biology, physics, and other hard sciences. From this vantage point, he rethought the psychoanalytic approach to psychic structure, motivation, and therapeutic action. He opened a window for a broad and inclusive relational metapsychology of the highest order, updating Freud’s project of linking psychoanalysis with scientific paradigms. Sander emphasized the dynamic relationships between elements in systems, innovating in both method and content. This article offers an account of Sander’s broad and deep integration of psychoanalysis and developmental research.     

Empathic forecasting: How do we predict other people's feelings?

When making affective forecasts, people commit the impact bias. They overestimate the impact an emotional event has on their affective experience. In three studies we show that people also commit the impact bias when making empathic forecasts, affective forecasts for someone else. They overestimate the impact an emotional event has on someone else's affective experience (Study 1), they do so for friends and strangers (Study 2), and they do so when other sources of information are available (Study 3). Empathic forecasting accuracy, the correlation between one person's empathic forecast and another person's actual affective experience, was lower than between-person forecasting correspondence, the correlation between one person's empathic forecast and another person's affective forecast. Empathic forecasts do not capture other people's actual experience very well but are similar to what other people forecast for themselves. This may enhance understanding between people.     

A Most Complex Paradox: Rethinking the Individual

ABSTRACT

Inspired by the work of Louis Sander (2008), this article explores the paradox of the developing individual who is at once singular and self-regulating, as well as systems-embedded and systems-property organized. Relying on a background of intersubjective systems theory, relational theory, and psychoanalytic complexity theory, examining this paradox reveals a deeper understanding of the evolving person and, indeed, what it means to be an individual. It also posits that a substantial developmental step includes one’s capacity to tolerate two affectively discrepant dimensions of experience—that of being personal, singular, isolated, and agentic, and that of being intensely contextualized and relentlessly embedded in larger complex systems that determine much of one’s life situatedness.     

When does commitment backfire: Linking employee continuance commitment to silence behavior

IntroductionExtant studies on organizational commitment emphasize affective organizational commitment and consequently ignore the unique role of continuance organizational commitment. To determine whether high continuance commitment is beneficial, we employed conservation of resources theory to explore how continuance commitment leads to emotional exhaustion and silent behavior.ObjectiveThis study examines the mediating effect of emotional exhaustion on the relationship between continuance commitment and silence behavior, and the moderating role of age.MethodWe recruited 157 employees in China to complete a three-wave survey measuring continuance commitment, emotional exhaustion and silence behavior, respectively.ResultsOur results show that continuance commitment is positively related to emotional exhaustion and, in turn, triggers more silent behavior, especially for those old employees; the indirect effect is more significant.ConclusionAlthough employers intend to keep human resources, this study indicates that continuance commitment may bring negative consequences. Moreover, old age will magnify the effect of continuance commitment on emotional exhaustion and further strengthen silence behavior.     

Animated Bodies in Immunological Practices: Craftsmanship,Embodied Knowledge,Emotions and Attitudes Toward Animals

Taking up the body turn in sociology, this paper discusses scientific practices as embodied action from the perspective of Husserl’s phenomenological theory of the “Body”. Based on ethnographic data on a biology laboratory it will discuss the importance of the scientist’s Body for the performance of scientific activities. Successful researchers have to be skilled workers using their embodied knowledge for the process of tinkering towards the material transformation of their objects for data production. The researcher’s body then is an instrument of measuring as well as a kind of archive of knowing. Their body becomes a disciplined instrument which has its own place and function inside the laboratory. Furthermore, the appresentational apperception of Bodies (Husserl) is being discussed as a basis for the emotional and ethical concerns towards laboratory-animals. Attitudes towards animals in the laboratory setting (as well as elsewhere) are highly emotional. Nevertheless, following the literature of the sociology of the body, those emotional reactions still follow certain cultural patterns which themselves can be understood as embodied ways of knowing “right” or “wrong”. Besides as an instrument, the scientist’s body can also be understood as a resource of emotional attachment towards animals. It is an instrument for performing transformation as well as one for caring.     

Hume on the Problem of Other Minds

Hume is not often cited as a philosopher who posited a solution to the Problem of Other Minds. He instead seems to assume the belief in other minds in his moral philosophy without justification. However, Hume needs to explain how we experience and respond to others’ affections, and hence generate moral sentiments, given how central the latter are to his moral theory. Two recent interpretations of Hume’s solution to the Problem are the Wittgensteinian Interpretation, and the Simulation Theory Interpretation. Both focus on the concept of sympathy as a solution to the Problem, claiming that, for Hume, sympathy produces the belief in other minds. This paper critically examines these two interpretations and offers an alternative called ‘the Analogical Argument Interpretation’, which reconstructs Hume’s version of an analogical argument carried out not by our rational faculty of mind but by custom and imagination. On this interpretation, Hume does not think that sympathy generates the belief in other minds, but rather, sympathy presupposes that belief.     

The Minds of God(s) and Humans: Differences in Mind Perception in Fiji and North America

Previous research suggests that how people conceive of minds depends on the culture in which they live, both in determining how they interact with other human minds and how they infer the unseen minds of gods. We use exploratory factor analysis to compare how people from different societies with distinct models of human minds and different religious traditions perceive the minds of humans and gods. In two North American samples (American adults, N = 186; Canadian students, N = 202), we replicated a previously found two‐factor agency/experience structure for both human and divine minds, but in Fijian samples (Indigenous iTaukei Fijians, N = 77; Fijians of Indian descent, N = 214; total N = 679) we found a three‐factor structure, with the additional containing items related to social relationships. Further, Fijians’ responses revealed a different three‐factor structure for human minds and gods’ minds. We used these factors as dimensions in the conception of minds to predict (a) expectations about human and divine tendencies towards punishment and reward; and (b) conception of gods as more embodied (an extension of experience) or more able to know people's thoughts (an extension of agency). We found variation in how these factors predict conceptions of agents across groups, indicating further theory is needed to explain how culturally generated concepts of mind lead to other sorts of social inferences. We conclude that mind perception is shaped by culturally defined social expectations and recommend further work in different cultural contexts to examine the interplay between culture and social cognition.     

The Problem of Other Minds

This paper reimagines the traditional problem of other minds. On a Cartesian view, the problem involves humans’ inability to perceive other persons’ minds. Similarly, Gilbert Ryle claims that we cannot directly access another’s mind. The paper’s rethinking of the problem of other minds moves beyond these questions of perceptibility and accessibility. It asks whether there are certain groups of people whose minds are systematically misinterpreted, or even denied mentality. It argues that there are. This claim builds off recent work in philosophy and social psychology on epistemic injustice and the role of social categories in mental state attribution. The paper proposes the Problem of the Other’s Mind: the phenomenon of a (relatively) socially privileged person’s inability or lack of desire to understand the mind of a (relatively) socially underprivileged person.     

Emotions and emotional communication in infants

Important advances have recently been made in studying emotions in infants and the nature of emotional communication between infants and adults. Infant emotions and emotional communications are far more organized than previously thought. Infants display a variety of discrete affective expressions that are appropriate to the nature of events and their context. They also appreciate the emotional meaning of the affective displays of caretakers. The emotional expressions of the infant and the caretaker function to allow them to mutually regulate their interactions. Indeed, it appears that a major determinant of children's development is related to the operation of this communication system. Positive development may be associated with the experience of coordinated interactions characterized by frequent reparations of interactive errors and the transformation of negative affect into positive affect, whereas negative development appears to be associated with sustained periods of interactive failure and negative affect.     

Towards cultural psychology of affective processes: Semiotic regulation of dynamic fields

Abstract

The newly emerging interdisciplinary area of cultural psychology has largely addressed issues of conduct and cognition. A semiotic perspective is assumed here to investigate phenomena of affective self-regulation through signs. The phenomena of affect are presented as quasi-structured affective fields, which undergo differentiation through semiotic mediators (signs). The system of semiotic mediators is dynamic, self- constructive, and temporarily hierarchical. The function of the affective fields is that of orienting the person towards the immediate anticipated future. Semiotic regulation leads to the construction of hierarchical—yet temporary—structures of signs that constrain the experience. The crucial aspect of such regulation is the establishment of meta-level of operatory signs related to affective fields—for quick expansion of sign construction and for demolishing certain categories of signs. This dynamic guarantees the adaptability of the human psychological system, as signs allow for flexible expansion as well as limitations for subjective experiencing and action possibilities, in a given context. The new semiotic turn in psychology re-unites the concerns about the dynamic sides of behaving, feeling, and being through the focus on regulatory processes of the “stream of consciousness”.     

The impact of emotional labor on work-family outcomes

Theory and research on emotional labor at work is applied to the study of the work-family interface to explore how emotional experiences in both the work and the family domain relate to the experience of work-family conflict and work-family enrichment, and ultimately attitudinal and health outcomes. Emotional intelligence is also examined as a moderator of the relationship between emotional labor and affective responses to work and family life. A model focusing on emotional experiences in the both the work and family domains is proposed and tested using path analysis. Results indicate that emotional labor in both the work and family domains relate to affective responses to each respective domain, which in turn relates to work-family conflict and work-family enrichment. In turn, consistent with previous research work-family conflict relates to domain-specific satisfaction (job, life) and health outcomes (burnout, depression). Partial support was found for the proposed moderating effect of emotional intelligence.     

Comparative Perspectives on Solutions for the Problem of Other Minds

This paper aims to establish a dialogue between contemporary research on the problem of other minds and classical Chinese philosophical theories. It first explores the idea, inspired by the recent discovery of the mirror neuron mechanism, that a direct exchange of experience may occur between the observer and the observed. Next, it analyzes the ways in which the ancient Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi and Confucian thinkers reflected on the problem of other minds, which are quite similar to the idea inspired by the latest research on mirror neurons. In these thinkers’ views, knowledge of other minds is the result of mental activity and what it provides is, to a large extent, something related not to epistemology but rather to a situational understanding of other minds from the perspective of value theory. The author points out that this solution takes two aspects, humans’ innate nature and human experience, into consideration simultaneously. In terms of humans’ innate nature, the body of a human being is a body that represents the unity of man and nature, and it has something in common with the natural world, which lays a foundation for the perception of other minds. In terms of human experience, human beings have such actual needs as emotions, pursuits, and desires, and their behaviors need to conform to certain norms. It is in a body of this kind that the mind of human beings can be formed and enjoy the potential to develop. Effective interpersonal communication can thus be achieved.     

Affective flexibility and generalized anxiety disorder: valence-specific shifting difficulties

ABSTRACT

Background: Growing evidence suggests that generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is associated with poor affective flexibility, defined as the ability to switch between emotional aspects and non-emotional aspects of a situation. However, it is unclear whether affective inflexibility is valence-specific in GAD.

Methods: Participants with GAD (n?=?21) and non-clinical control participants (n?=?28) were tested on an Affective Switching Task during which participants were asked to categorize pictures either by the valence or by the number of humans present in the pictures.

Results: Individuals with GAD, but not healthy controls, exhibited greater difficulty shifting from emotional aspects of negative material compared to emotional aspects of positive material and shifting to the emotional aspects of positive material compared to emotional aspects of negative material.

Conclusions: These findings suggest that GAD is associated with valence-specific affective flexibility biases. The relevance of the findings and directions for future research are discussed.     

How Emotions do not Provide Reasons to Act

If emotions provide reasons for action through their intentional content, as is often argued, where does this leave the role of the affective element of an emotion? Can it be more than a motivator and have significant bearing of its own on our emotional actions, as actions done for reasons? One way it can is through reinforcing other reasons that we might have, as Greenspan (2011) argues. Central to Greenspan’s account is the claim that the affective discomfort of an emotion, as a fact about the agent’s state of being, provides an additional normative reason to act to alleviate the state. This, I argue, is not correct, nor is it the best way to understand emotions as reason-reinforcers. In this paper, I thus do two things: I provide an examination of how and why the affect of emotion could provide reasons to act to alleviate it and I propose that the real way emotions reinforce reasons is through the way they orient our attention onto things that matter, registering them as salient.     

Inferring the Mental Processes of Other Minds

Abstract

In 4 experiments, the authors examined how several variables influence the quality and quantity of information that people use to make judgments about other people. The results showed that when possible, participants consistently responded appropriately to variables that influenced information that they used to make inferences about other minds. The results also suggested that under circumstances with no opportunity to contrast behavior in different situations, people might not be sensitive to the quality and quantity of information present. The authors interpreted results to mean that under most circumstances, people make inferences in a way that efficiently uses information about the causes of behavior.     

Poor emotion regulation ability mediates the link between depressive symptoms and affective bipolarity

People's relationship between positive and negative affect varies on a continuum from relatively independent to bipolar opposites, with stronger bipolar opposition being termed affective bipolarity. Experiencing more depressive symptoms is associated with increased bipolarity, but the processes underlying this relation are not yet understood. Here, we sought to replicate this link, and to examine the role of two potential mediating mechanisms: emotion regulation ability, and trait brooding. Drawing from the Dynamic Model of Affect, we hypothesised that (a) a poor ability to regulate negative emotion, and (b) the tendency to brood over one's depressed feelings would predict stronger affective bipolarity, and mediate the relationship between depressive symptoms and affective bipolarity. To measure affective bipolarity, we calculated within-person affect correlations using two weeks of experience sampling data from a community sample (n?=?100). Mediation analyses indicated that baseline assessments of an inability to regulate negative emotions in general, but not brooding specifically, mediated the relation between depressive symptoms and affective bipolarity. These findings highlight an initial mechanism through which depressive symptoms are associated with lower emotional complexity and flexibility.     

Rethinking Other Minds: Wittgenstein and Levinas on Expression

One reason why the problem of other minds keeps cropping up in modern philosophy is that we seem to have conflicting intuitions about our access to the mental lives of others. On the one hand, we are inclined to think that it is wrong to claim, like Cartesian dualists must, that the minds of others are essentially inaccessible to direct experience. But on the other hand we feel that it is equally wrong to claim, like the behaviorists, that the mental lives of others are completely accessible to an outside spectator. This paper attempts to address the problem of the accessibility of other minds while staying faithful to both these intuitions. Central to this undertaking is the idea that we express our mental lives in our bodily behavior. With a firm grasp of the notion of expression, as it is developed in the writings of Wittgenstein and Levinas, we can understand how other minds can be directly perceivable and yet retain a certain inaccessibility. The key is to emphasize the difference between the expressive appearance of a human being and the way an object appears in perception.     

Why and when cognitive job insecurity relates to affective job insecurity? A three-study exploration of negative rumination and the tendency to negative gossip

ABSTRACT

The job insecurity literature distinguishes between cognitive job insecurity and affective job insecurity where cognitive job insecurity reflects perceptions regarding the likelihood of total job loss or job features loss and affective job insecurity refers to emotional reactions to that potential loss. Indeed, affective job insecurity is demonstrated to be an affective reaction to cognitive job insecurity. However, the relationship between cognitive job insecurity and affective job insecurity may be neither direct nor unconditional. Drawing from cognitive appraisal theory, this research takes a nuanced approach to exploring the mediating role of negative work rumination and the moderating role of the tendency to negative gossip in the relationship between cognitive job insecurity and affective job insecurity. We examined our hypotheses using three time-lagged survey studies with employees recruited from the U.S. and China. These studies found that negative work rumination mediated the relation between cognitive job insecurity and affective job insecurity (Studies 1–3) and the tendency to negative gossip attenuated the positive relation between cognitive job insecurity and affective job insecurity (Studies 1 and 2). Thus, this research advances the job insecurity literature by identifying a mediator and a moderator in the process of how employees may experience job insecurity.     

Preserved re-experience of discrete emotions: Amnesia and executive function

Amnesic patients can re-experience emotions elicited by forgotten events, suggesting that brain systems for episodic and emotional memory are independent. However, the range of such emotional memories remains under-investigated (most studies employing just positive–negative emotion dyads), and executive function may also play a role in the re-experience of emotions. This is the first investigation of the intensity of the emotional re-experience of a range of discrete emotions (anger, fear, sadness, and happiness) for a group of amnesic patients. Twenty Korsakoff syndrome (KS) patients and 20 neurologically normal controls listened to four novel emotional vignettes selectively eliciting the four basic emotions. Emotional experience was measured using pen-and-paper Visual Analogue Mood Scales and episodic memory using verbal recollections. After 30 min, the recollection of stories was severely impaired for the patient group, but the emotional re-experience was no different from that of controls. Notably, there was no relationship between episodic recall and the intensity of the four emotions, such that even profoundly amnesic patients reported moderate levels of the target emotion. Exploratory analyses revealed negative correlations between the intensity of basic emotions and executive functions (e.g., cognitive flexibility and response inhibition) for controls but not patients. The results suggest that discrete emotions can be re-experienced independently of episodic memory, and that the re-experience of certain discrete emotions appears to be dampened by executive control. KS patients with absent or mild cognitive symptoms should benefit from emotion-regulation interventions aimed at reducing the recognized affective burden associated with their episodic memory deficit.     

Shades of Joy: Patterns of Appraisal Differentiating Pleasant Emotions

Abstract

Pleasant experience appears to be less emotionally differentiated than unpleasant experience. For instance, theories of emotion typically posit the existence of six or seven unpleasant emotions but often posit only one or two pleasant emotions. The present study is an attempt to systematically examine the differentiation of pleasant emotional experience. Subjects were asked to recall pleasant experiences that were associated with particular situational appraisals—appraisals of effort, agency, and certainty were systematically manipulated—and to describe their appraisals and emotions during these experiences. The results indicated that positive emotions, and their associated appraisals, are somewhat less differentiated than negative emotions, but nonetheless provided evidence of considerable differentiation among six pleasantly toned emotions (interest, hope/confidence, challenge, tranquillity, playfulness, and love). Each of these latter emotions was experienced differentially across the appraisal conditions, and was characterised by a distinct pattern of appraisal.