Having a body versus moving your body: How agency structures body-ownership

We investigated how motor agency in the voluntary control of body movement influences body awareness. In the Rubber Hand Illusion (RHI), synchronous tactile stimulation of a rubber hand and the participant's hand leads to a feeling of the rubber hand being incorporated in the participant's own body. One quantifiable behavioural correlate of the illusion is an induced shift in the perceived location of the participant's hand towards the rubber hand. Previous studies showed that the induced changes in body awareness are local and fragmented: the proprioceptive drift is largely restricted to the stimulated finger. In the present study, we investigated whether active and passive movements, rather than tactile stimulation, would lead to similarly fragmented body awareness. Participants watched a projected image of their hand under three conditions: active finger movement, passive finger movement, and tactile stimulation. Visual feedback was either synchronous or asynchronous with respect to stimulation of the hand. A significant overall RHI, defined as greater drifts following synchronous than asynchronous stimulation, was found in all cases. However, the distribution of the RHI across stimulated and non-stimulated fingers depended on the kind of stimulation. Localised proprioceptive drifts, specific to the stimulated finger, were found for tactile and passive stimulation. Conversely, during active movement of a single digit, the proprioceptive drifts were not localised to that digit, but were spread across the whole hand. Whereas a purely proprioceptive sense of body-ownership is local and fragmented, the motor sense of agency integrates distinct body-parts into a coherent, unified awareness of the body.     

The current status of the psychoanalytic theory of instinctual drives. II: The relation of the drive concept to structures, regulatory principles, and objects

There has been and continues to be some degree of failure to recognize the effects of the introduction of the ego-id-superego model on the drive construct. In particular, some of the criticisms of drive theory fail to take cognizance of the structural position of drives. Drives, as an aspect of id, are more clearly separated from behavior conceptually than many discussions imply. Drive energy is a different concept from drive. Especially in the area of the governance of drives by the regulatory principles of mental functioning some improvement in clarity and utility seems possible through the use of different, more sophisticated models. Difficulties in the concept of objects appear to underlie considerable controversy in psychoanalysis today. I have here attempted to clarify the concept of drive objects, as a step in resolving the broader issues.     

The fear of the body in psychotherapy

This paper identifies the fear of attending to and engaging with the patient's body and the therapist's body, regardless of therapeutic orientation, as a topic rarely explored in books and articles but pervasively experienced because of the cultural norms brought to the consulting room. It explores how we might name the constituent parts of this fear and describes how they inter-link. A case study then exemplifies learning about and transforming such fear in both patient and therapist. Finally, the paper offers suggestions of how therapists might increase their awareness and turn this fear into a tool which extends their range of skills.     

The therapist's body

Abstract

War Memoirs, W.R. Bion, ed. Francesca Bion, London: Karnac, 1997, 312 pp., £32.50 hb., £24.95 pb.

Freely Associated: Encounters in Psychoanalysis, ed. Anthony Molino, London: Free Association Books, 1997, 211 pp., £15.95 pb.

The Politics of Attachment, ed. Sebastian Kraemer and Jane Roberts, London: Free Association Books, 1996, 254 pp., £15.95 pb.

Psychotherapy and Society, David Pilgrim, London: Sage, 1997, 176 pp. £37.50 hb., £12.95 pb.

Handbook of Counselling in Organizations, eds. Michael Carroll and Michael Walton, London: Sage, 1997, 358 pp., £47.50 hb., £17.95 pb.

The Future of Counselling and Psychotherapy, ed. Stephen Palmer and Ved Varma, London: Sage, 1997, 208 pp., £37.50 cloth £12.95 pb.

Supervision of Psychotherapy and Counselling: Making a Place to Think, ed. Geraldine Shipton, Buckingham: Open University Press, 1997, 159 pp., £16.99 pb.     

The factor structures of the STEM and the STEU

The factor structures of two recently developed measures of emotional intelligence, the Situational Test of Emotional Understanding and Situational Test of Emotion Management (STEU, STEM; MacCann & Roberts, 2008) were examined. The results did not support a factor structure of either measure’s subscales indicated by the approach used in developing the test items, and examination of the factors obtained using parallel analysis to determine the number of factors to extract did not yield interpretable factors. These findings suggest that only total scale scores should be used for these tests, although the general factor extracted from the items was not strong for either test; further development work on these tests is indicated.     

The semantics of syntactic structures

Over the past 15 years, both linguists and psycholinguists have shown a growing interest in the idea that syntactic structures can carry meanings that are independent of the meanings of specific words. This article considers how this idea relates to traditional notions of compositionality in generative grammar, and examines two modern theories that, although based on different starting assumptions, both readily allow syntactic structures to bear independent meaning. We review work from psycholinguistics suggesting that observation alone is often insufficient to support the efficient learning of word meanings, and that some of the 'slack' left by observation can be picked up by the semantics of the syntactic structures in which words appear. We argue that this convergence between linguistic theory and psycholinguistic experimentation should be no surprise, because language must be learnable.     

The living body in the psychoanalytic experience

Instead of viewing body and psyche as two "substances," the author proposes that they be seen as two ways of experiencing the complex reality of the human being. Clinically, this translates into an exploration of the possibility of including the somatic in the territory of what can be represented--that is, recognizing in somatic and sensory elements and in bodily functions the potential for meaning and language, appreciating their status as precursors of representation. These somatic signals may be detected in a dialogue involving not only the minds of analyst and analysand, but also their bodies. Clinical examples are given involving different bodily functions.     

子团队利弊作用的调节机制

子团队是指在断裂带的作用之下, 团队成员在认同以及信息加工方式等方面的差异而自发形成的小群体, 因子团队广泛存在于团队之中, 因此对其利弊作用的研究受到了越来越多的关注。从子团队利弊作用出发, 即以子团队给团队运转过程带来的积极与消极作用为基础, 来研究调节子团队利弊作用的因素并提出其调节机制。最后提出未来的研究应从动态视角的结合、团队领导的介入、子团队过程的考虑、子团队距离以及社会关系等角度做进一步的探索。     

The relation between body semantics and spatial body representations

The present study addressed the relation between body semantics (i.e. semantic knowledge about the human body) and spatial body representations, by presenting participants with word pairs, one below the other, referring to body parts. The spatial position of the word pairs could be congruent (e.g. EYE / MOUTH) or incongruent (MOUTH / EYE) with respect to the spatial position of the words’ referents. In addition, the spatial distance between the words’ referents was varied, resulting in word pairs referring to body parts that are close (e.g. EYE / MOUTH) or far in space (e.g. EYE / FOOT). A spatial congruency effect was observed when subjects made an iconicity judgment (Experiments 2 and 3) but not when making a semantic relatedness judgment (Experiment 1). In addition, when making a semantic relatedness judgment (Experiment 1) reaction times increased with increased distance between the body parts but when making an iconicity judgment (Experiments 2 and 3) reaction times decreased with increased distance. These findings suggest that the processing of body-semantics results in the activation of a detailed visuo-spatial body representation that is modulated by the specific task requirements. We discuss these new data with respect to theories of embodied cognition and body semantics.     

The body in action

This article is about how to describe an agent’s awareness of her bodily movements when she is aware of executing an action for a reason. Against current orthodoxy, I want to defend the claim that the agent’s experience of moving has an epistemic place in the agent’s awareness of her own intentional action. In “The problem,” I describe why this should be thought to be problematic. In “Motives for denying epistemic role,” I state some of the main motives for denying that bodily awareness has any epistemic role to play in the content of the agent’s awareness of her own action. In “Kinaesthetic awareness and control,” I sketch how I think the experience of moving and the bodily sense of agency or control are best described. On this background, I move on to present, in “Arguments for epistemic role,” three arguments in favour of the claim that normally the experience of moving is epistemically important to one’s awareness of acting intentionally. In the final “Concluding remarks,” I round off by raising some of the worries that motivated the denial of my claim in the first place.

Group-based self-regulation: The effects of regulatory focus

We review a programme of research on responses to group-based feedback—specifically, on how the source, content, and context of feedback intersect to produce individual willingness to accept both criticism and praise and to change one’s actions accordingly. We first explore the conditions under which group-directed criticism is most effective in terms of stimulating willingness to amend group practices. This is followed by the investigation of the effectiveness of different types of group-based praise, and an analysis of the identity-verifying properties of positive feedback. Finally, we consider the effects of feedback delivered simultaneously at group and individual levels, and explore the reciprocal implications of feedback content for source categorisation. Throughout, we focus on the role of identity concerns and group image management in responses to feedback. We discuss how this approach fits with other areas of literature, including research on self-verification and strategic behaviour in intergroup contexts.     

The perceived impact of tax and regulatory changes

People believe that shared events, events that impact everyone to the same degree, will nonetheless impact them more than others. Across four studies we examined whether this impacts people's reactions to proposed changes to tax and regulatory policies. We found that participants thought that tax (Study 1a and 1b) and regulatory (Study 2) changes would have more of an impact on their own lives than on the lives of people in their same financial situation. We then examined whether these findings are the product of a broad focalism bias or its narrower relative, egocentrism. Because we observed the bias both when participants were asked about their own financial situation or that of someone else, the former appears to be the better explanation (Study 3). We discuss the implications of this bias for people's willingness to embrace policy proposals designed to advance the common good.