The influence of the media on practice in mental health: a bricolage of a single case study

This paper has its genesis in the convergence of two individuals’ interests – one with a long-standing interest in representations of mental health and one with an interest in the use of bricolage as a research approach. These interests converged around the ways in which mental health care practitioners might react to and subsequently reflect on images of mental health they came across in the media. A bricolage was developed relating to newspaper coverage of a homicide carried out by someone with a mental health problem. The bricolage draws on the assumption that practitioners will have immediate reactions to material they come across, take a more considered overview of this material, and subsequently attempt to contextualize this reflection in terms of academic literature. The bricolage as presented mirrors this process for an experienced practitioner. Suggestions are made concerning the use of newspaper reports on mental health, to enable both novice and experienced practitioners to gain vicarious experience through reflection on these reports.     

The collective past,group psychology and personal narrative: Shaping Jewish identity by memoirs of the Holocaust

Through honing its collective memory, especially after the Holocaust, the Jewish community has attempted to sustain its culture, bolster the Jewish identity of its members, and regain a resolute sense that its narrative is again proceeding. To some degree, all these aims are realized by instilling in its members the Jewish modal character structure: a psychological configuration with two contrastable entities. One chronically discomposed self-structure, defining itself as polluted and helpless, trembles with the appalling imagery of historical and imminent community disasters. The other entity believes in its unmatched capacity for reparative, socially beneficial actions. The paradigm of this psychological organization is found in many children of survivors. The memory of a tragic history abides alongside the community's hopes in the Jewish modal personality. The need to set forth and accommodate these two motifs imprints upon the Jewish "national" character many of its distinctive qualities. The designs of the Jewish community for this particularly Jewish twofold personality formation are augmented by the personal revelations of survivors. Therefore, Holocaustic testimonies are invested with a sacred aura. In measure, these recitals of the disaster with their stark images, plus the clashing affects aroused in the reader toward main characters of the narrative, dictate the way Jews define themselves in the world and the way they live. A confluence of being covertly commissioned by the Jewish community joins with the narrators' more idiosyncratic longings. Together they generate a steady stream of Holocaustic accounts. Complementary vectors drive the reader to peruse these records. The results therefrom, intimate knowledge of the disaster, plus the twofold personality motifs stamp many Jews as scions of the Holocaust.     

The influence of figure size and orientation on the magnitude of the horizontal-vertical illusion

Two experiments were performed to examine the effect of display size and figure orientation on the horizontal-vertical illusion. According to the visual field hypothesis of Künnapas (1957a, 1957b) if the relation of the figure components to the surrounding frame is held invariant neither experimental manipulation should exert an appreciable influence. However, both manipulations produced significant effects indicating that the visual field hypothesis is untenable as the primary determinant of the horizontal-vertical illusion. An alternative explanation was discussed.     

Estimation of chance fluctuation under the influence of a representational figure

In order to investigate misconceptions of chance fluctuations, researchers can use the terminology of the random walk. The problem at issue can be elucidated by a graph representing, for instance, a series of coin tossings. One must, however, be careful in using such graphs. It appears that the extent to which people make erroneous predictions also depends on the initial number of changes of sign of the random walk, presented in the instructions as visualisation of the problem.     

Adolescent identity formation: a Swedish study of identity status using the EOM-EIS-II

The aim of this study was to examine ego identity status among Swedish adolescents using the EOM-EIS-II. Identity status scores and distributions were examined for 222 (108 female, 114 male) Swedish high school students. Identity status differences were found between genders. There was a greater likelihood of female adolescents being categorized as moratoriums than were males, and there was a greater likelihood of males being categorized as diffusions than were females. Statistically significant differences were found between genders on the following subscales: moratorium, foreclosure, and diffusion. No statistically significant differences were found between females and males on the identity achievement subscale. To achieve a preliminary construct validation of the results from the EOM-EIS-II, four of the 222 participants were also assessed using Marcia's identity status interview. A fairly good accordance between the interview assessment of identity status and the EOM-EIS-II assessment were found. Interview results showed differences between the interviewers on each subscale (IA, M, F, and D). The same differences were detected on three of four subscales when assessing these individuals' identity statuses using the EOM-EIS-II.     

The Holocaust after 70 years: Holocaust survivors in the United States

Over 70 years, there have been different narratives of the Holocaust survivors coming to the United States. Survivors’ stories begin with an event of major historical significance. Difficulties in conceptualizing historical trauma, along with common distortions and myths about Holocaust survivors and their children are examined. This article proposes that it is impossible to discuss the consequences of extreme suffering without consideration of historical meaning and social context with which they are entwined. The evolution of the social representation of the Holocaust and the contradictions in clinical attributions to survivors and their children with consideration of the future is described. Attributions to survivors and their children with consideration of the future is described.     

Architecture,urban planning and collective identity: Bilbao as a case study

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis - The emergence of a collective identity, a complex social and psychological process, may be linked to a specific place and a particular urban layout....     

The micro-politics of identity formation in the workplace: The case of a knowledge intensive firm

Summary This essay has been by necessity a gloss of a complex look at the relations of power, control, and personal identity construction in a workplace. Features of the nature of the work process combine with social strategies to construct a reproductive self-referential system. Corporate organizations are central institutions in contemporary life; they make developmental decisions for individuals and for society as a whole. While they are in this sense political to the core, we have not done enough to understand how this politics works or to explore its relation to people in a democratic society. Using a phenomenologically-based communication analysis enables a sensitive analysis of the multiple forms of power and domination as they exist in corporate sites. Although I have given only an outline of one case study here, this example suggests that phenomenologically-based projects can show harmful and unwarranted control, and can be a first step to fostering corporate practices that lead to decisions which are less wasteful of resources and more fully accomplish the goals of democratic society.Funding for the research project from which the case study was derived was provided by the Rickart Malmsten Foundation (Sweden).     

The influence of ethnic identity on perceptions of organizational recruitment

This study adapts an information processing perspective and incorporates the construct of ethnic identity (Phinney, 1990) into research on perceptions of one method of organizational recruitment, the use of recruitment brochures. Based on theory in developmental and cross-cultural psychology, we posited ethnic identity moderates the impact of recruitment brochures on recruitment outcomes (i.e., inferences about the organization and job pursuit intentions). Quantitative and qualitative data provided moderate support for this proposition. Regardless of race, individuals with higher levels of ethnic identity made more positive socio-emotional inferences about the nature of work life in an organization (i.e., the organization’s treatment of employees and the relationships among employees) and had greater job pursuit intentions when recruited with a brochure that contained a diversity initiative than when recruited with a brochure without a diversity initiative.     

Psychoanalysis Traumatized: The Legacy of the Holocaust

Psychoanalysis is a survivor of the Holocaust. It was founded and flourished in central European centers that would be destroyed by the Nazis. A core group of refugees who lived through persecution and exile were instrumental in rebuilding their movement on alien shores. They had no opportunity to mourn the loss of their culture or their leader, Freud, whose death was overshadowed by the cataclysmic upheaval around them. Though its trauma has been dissociated, it is represented in psychoanalytic ideas and enacted in institutions within the context of delayed or incomplete mourning. For example, authoritarianism in psychoanalytic institutions will be explored as a reliving of the trauma of both fascism and exile, and not merely typical group psychology. Further evidence of the impact of dissociated trauma includes the astonishing scotoma for actual events in treatment of Holocaust survivors; the extreme privileging of infantile fantasy over reality, and attention to childhood neurosis at the expense of adult catastrophic events.     

The influence of object identity on obstacle avoidance reaching behaviour

When reaching for target objects, we hardly ever collide with other objects located in our working environment. Behavioural studies have demonstrated that the introduction of non-target objects into the workspace alters both spatial and temporal parameters of reaching trajectories. Previous studies have shown the influence of spatial object features (e.g. size and position) on obstacle avoidance movements. However, obstacle identity may also play a role in the preparation of avoidance responses as this allows prediction of possible negative consequences of collision based on recognition of the obstacle. In this study we test this hypothesis by asking participants to reach towards a target as quickly as possible, in the presence of an empty or full glass of water placed about half way between the target and the starting position, at 8 cm either left or right of the virtual midline. While the spatial features of full and empty glasses of water are the same, the consequences of collision are clearly different. Indeed, when there was a high chance of collision, reaching trajectories veered away more from filled than from empty glasses. This shows that the identity of potential obstacles, which allows for estimating the predicted consequences of collision, is taken into account during obstacle avoidance.