Bruno Klopfer: a Rorschach pioneer

Bruno Klopfer is perhaps best known for his pioneering work on the Rorschach Inkblot Test. His efforts in developing and popularizing projective techniques were to have a profound impact on the development of psychological personality testing. In fact, prior to the introduction of Exner's comprehensive Rorschach scoring system, the Klopfer scoring system was the most popular among practicing clinicians (Exner & Exner, 1972, p. 13). Professionals in clinical psychology and psychiatry are certainly very indebted to Bruno Klopfer.     

Becoming a father: a psychoanalytic perspective on the forgotten parent

This article has presented a psychoanalytic perspective on the process of becoming a father. It began with a discussion of the neglect of the father during pregnancy and briefly considered evidence as to the unique contributions made by fathers of the newborn. Nine psychodynamically based wishes emerging throughout the developmental process were next proposed to embody the male's motivation to become a father. The final section examined seven specific phases of expectant fatherhood, from getting ready through parturition.     

The fate of being forgotten: Information that is initially forgotten is judged as less important

Is forgotten information deemed less important than remembered information? The present study examined potential biases regarding the importance of information that was initially forgotten. In Experiment 1 participants studied words paired with varying point values that denoted their importance and were encouraged to recall higher value words. Participants recalled more high-value words on an initial test. However, on a later cued recall test for the values, initially forgotten words were rated as less valuable than remembered words. Experiment 2 used a similar procedure with the exception that participants rated the importance of traits when evaluating a significant other (e.g., honest, intelligent). Participants were more likely to recall highly valued traits but regarded forgotten traits as less valuable than remembered traits. These results suggest that a forgetting bias exists: If information is initially forgotten, it is later deemed as less important.     

Franklin Delano Roosevelt: A Famous Patient

Franklin Delano Roosevelt is arguably one of the greatest of American Presidents. His encounter with the polio that crippled him at an early age and its transformative impact upon him are here discussed with particular reference to his relationship with his physician, Dr. George Draper. This transformation liberated energy in Roosevelt to lead and to show empathy for others in ways that both challenged the political and social status quo in the USA as well as helped save the world from the threat of Fascism in World War II. This essay seeks to demonstrate how an investigation of the life and struggles of this famous patient is one avenue for relating the study of the humanities to medical education. An earlier version of this paper was presented as the Heberden Lecture in the History of Medicine at the New York Academy of Medicine in 2012.     

Social Innovation: Ten Cases From Benjamin Franklin

ABSTRACT: Students of creativity have examined innovation in the arts, sciences, and engineering. Social innovation, the generation and implementation of new ideas about social relationships and social organization, has received less attention. This effort uses a case study approach, drawing from the historic record provided by Benjamin Franklin, to formulate some initial hypotheses about the strategies and tactics used to generate and implement social innovations. It was found that Franklin identified problems based on practical need, analyzed causes carefully, generated contextually appropriate low-cost implementation strategies, and built the support needed for demonstration projects. The implications of these strategies and tactics for innovation in modern organizations are discussed.     

The forgotten individual: diagrammatic reasoning in mathematics

Parallelism has been drawn between modes of representation and problem-sloving processes: Diagrams are more useful for brainstorming while symbolic representation is more welcomed in a formal proof. The paper gets to the root of this clear-cut dualistic picture and argues that the strength of diagrammatic reasoning in the brainstorming process does not have to be abandoned at the stage of proof, but instead should be appreciated and could be preserved in mathematical proofs.     

Socioeconomic status, a forgotten variable in lateralization development

Socioeconomic status (SES), a variable combining income, education, and occupation, is correlated with a variety of social health outcomes including school dropout rates, early parenthood, delinquency, and mental illness. Several studies conducted in the 1970s and 1980s largely failed to report a relationship between SES and hemispheric asymmetry as measured by lateral differences in dichotic listening, tactile dot enumeration, and visual emotion and word recognition. However, none of the studies used asymmetry measures correcting for both ceiling and floor effects in accuracy, raising the question of whether lower and higher SES groups were comparable. Here the published data are reanalyzed using a laterality coefficient that corrects for such effects. The results are consistent across studies in revealing reduced lateralization in lower SES groups. Developmentally, this finding is consistent with either maturation delay or reduced functional specialization, or both. Suggestions are made for further research that include the use of behavioral asymmetry measures to screen tasks for structural and functional brain imaging.     

Retention beyond the threshold: Test-enhanced relearning of forgotten information

The effect of repeated testing on delayed relearning of paired associates was investigated. Participants learned two lists of Lithuanian-Dutch word pairs until reaching the criterion of one correct recall from long-term memory. In one condition, items subsequently received three post-retrieval study trials and in the other condition items received three post-retrieval test trials. Participants returned one week later for delayed recall and relearning. Post-retrieval test trials resulted in better delayed recall performance than post-retrieval study trials. Moreover, we found that the items that were repeatedly studied or tested one week prior to relearning were relearned faster than a new set of similar (not previously presented) items. Most importantly, items were relearned faster when they had previously been learned under conditions of post-retrieval testing than items learned under conditions of post-retrieval study. Taken together, the results indicate that the benefits of repeated testing are not just limited to conscious recall on a delayed test. Repeated testing during initial learning is also a very effective strategy to enhance delayed relearning.     

Contributions to the history of psychology: LXXIV. Edith Banfield Jackson: a pioneer in psychoanalysis

Edith Jackson, recipient of one of Sigmund Freud's coveted rings, served him well as an ambassador for psychoanalysis. As a child psychiatrist for 25 years at the Yale School of Medicine, she developed the rooming-in plan which allowed parents and newborns to be together from birth. With Anna Freud and Dorothy Burlingham, she opened the Jackson Nursery, a precursor of American daycare centers. Among the most important people in developing the field of child psychology, Edith was one of the early psychologists who recognized the importance of satisfying the emotional as well as the physical needs of the newborn.