The philosophy of cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT): Stoic philosophy as rational and cognitive psychotherapy,by Donald Robertson

Using insights gleaned from the sociology of childhood to challenge prevailing conceptualizations of children as emotionally ‘incomplete’ or ‘immature’ in relation to adults, this study demonstrates the interactive nature of the social order within primary schools and the centrality of emotional learning to children's everyday lives and relationships. Analysis of the qualitative data shows how children recognize the role of emotional learning in sustaining a balanced and ‘healthy’ lifestyle in relation to their self-identity, particularly through the importance of enlisting and sustaining friendships as protection across the public/private divide and the institutional order of school life. Furthermore, the data show that children understand their subordination to adults and the role of ‘emotion work’ in the negotiation of these hierarchical relationships.     

Blood brothers,ugly sisters: School counselling and sibling dynamics1

This article explores the particular relevance of sibling dynamics for counsellors working in schools. School, when viewed as a large ‘lateral’ organisation, both reflects and reactivates sibling dynamics. This thinking about school counselling is based on the ‘whole school’ approach, in which a school counsellor works with staff and students, and with organisational dynamics, seeking to understand the unconscious emotional life of the school system, as well as those within it. The initial sections of the article are concerned both with the place of siblings in psychodynamic theory, and with challenges which sibling dynamics present for a counsellor working in a school context. There follow three linked sections in which the invitation to ‘think sibling’ is illustrated with some clinical examples, drawn from the specific context of a boarding school. All identities have been changed and anonymised to protect confidentiality. The article concludes with a discussion of sibling dynamics in practice, within the context of schools.     

Growth in emotional intelligence. Psychotherapy with a learning disabled girl

This paper describes the once-weekly psychoanalytic psychotherapy of a girl, called Ellie, aged eight at the start of her treatment. Ellie had a learning disability and displayed difficult behaviour at school and at home. In her therapy, Ellie grew in emotional intelligence, more in touch with and able to express her feelings. Her behaviour improved and so did her capacity to learn. In the therapy there were certain limitations to progress and this is discussed in terms of how Ellie's disability affected the basic achievements of emotional development, including a mind with a solid ‘reality ego’, able to contain anxiety, and able to maintain depressive functioning. The importance of parallel parent work, to share observations and understanding of the child's functioning is discussed. Difficulties for both child and parents in dealing with the pain of difference and how this limits emotional intelligence are discussed. The author hopes that this paper will encourage the offering of psychoanalytic psychotherapy to children and young people with learning disabilities, who are significantly more likely to suffer from mental health problems than their peers.     

‘THERE IS A WAR ON! SOMEONE IS GOING TO GET KILLED’

This paper describes the first three years of work providing consultation at the interface between adult mental health and children's services. It suggests that significant numbers of children, living with parents whose mental illness may be ‘severe and enduring’, remain hidden from services. The author applies psychoanalytic theory in an attempt to understand the unconscious factors, for organizations as well as for individuals, which may contribute to making it so difficult for services to work co‐operatively to recognize these children's existence and their emotional needs. She reviews some of the related fields in which the application of psychoanalytic thinking has occurred and also describes the context in which the work takes place. A series of vignettes demonstrate some of the difficulties encountered and the ways in which the presence of a neutral third or ‘other’ can contribute to their resolution. She suggests working relationships between adult's and children's services are profoundly affected by the psychotic processes operating in the minds of these parents and that the consultant acts as a container enabling staff to manage the fragmentation and splitting which would otherwise be inevitable.     

Reader and story,viewer and film: On transference and interpretation2

Two sides in Freud's attitude towards literature and art are presented: Freud the sensitive listener, whose interest in art is a potential springboard for a rich interdisciplinary dialogue; and Freud the conquistador, whose wish for power in ‘invaded’ territories is related to troublesome aspects of ‘pathography’ and ‘applied analysis’. The unique contribution of psychoanalysis may not be discovering objectively the true unconscious content of works of art, but rather enriching the exploration of the potential transitional space evolving between artist, work of art and readers or viewers, enhancing our sensitivity to multiple meanings and complex emotional influences of art. This requires exploring our own subjective experiences of art, which may be described as transferences (when art is mostly perceived as a source of insight) or countertransferences (when artists and their work are basically experienced as troubled patients). Transference (broadly defined) and interpretation tend to intermingle, both in the clinical analytic encounter, and in any reading/viewing of art, be it by laymen, analysts or other scholars. Several examples from the psychoanalytic study of literature and film are given, and three pairs of contrasting interpretations are studied, concerning Kafka's The metamorphosis, Minghella's The English Patient and Polanski's Chinatown.     

气质情绪特性测评工具的编制及其对5831名大中小学生测评中的应用

在气质情绪特性理论框架下,编制《青少年儿童气质情绪特性问卷》,并对小学至大学共5831名学生的气质情绪特性进行调查。结果发现：问卷具有良好的信、效度;各学段女生情绪产生的速度都要快于男生;小、初、高三学段与大学阶段相比,情绪变化速度更快且更外显;本科生比专科生情绪更外显且更易控;文科生比理科生对情绪更敏感、产生强度更强、产生速度更快、变化速度更快且更外显。此研究为深入探索个体的情绪特征,拓展了新视野。     

Emotional interactions and an ethics of care: Caring relations in families affected by HIV and AIDS

In the context of global processes of economic restructuring, the HIV and AIDS epidemic and socio-cultural constructions of care, many women and young people in low-income households have been drawn into caring roles within the family. Drawing on the literature on an ethics of care, emotional geographies and embodiment, this paper examines the emotional dynamics of the caring process in families affected by HIV and AIDS. Based on the perspectives of both ‘caregivers’ and ‘care-receivers’ from research undertaken in Namibia, Tanzania and the UK, we examine the everyday practices of care that women and young people are engaged in and explore how emotions are performed and managed in caring relationships. Our research suggests caregivers play a crucial role in providing emotional support and reassurance to people with HIV, which in turn often affects caregivers' emotional and physical wellbeing. Within environments where emotional expression is restricted and HIV is heavily stigmatised, caregivers and care-receivers seek to regulate their emotions in order to protect family members from the emotional impacts of a chronic, life-limiting illness. However, whilst caregiving and receiving may lead to close emotional connections and a high level of responsiveness, the intensity of intimate caring relationships, isolation and lack of access to adequate resources can cause tensions and contradictory feelings that may be difficult to manage. These conflicts can severely constrain carers' ability to provide the ‘good care’ that integrates the key ethical phases in Tronto's (1993) ideal of the caring process.     

Transcending the caesura: Reverie,dreaming and counter‐dreaming

The author reflects about our capacity to get in touch with primitive, irrepresentable, seemingly unreachable parts of the Self and with the unrepressed unconscious. It is suggested that when the patient's dreaming comes to a halt, or encounters a caesura, the analyst dreams that which the patient cannot. Getting in touch with such primitive mental states and with the origin of the Self is aspired to, not so much for discovering historical truth or recovering unconscious content, as for generating motion between different parts of the psyche. The movement itself is what expands the mind and facilitates psychic growth. Bion's brave and daring notion of ‘caesura’, suggesting a link between mature emotions and thinking and intra‐uterine life, serves as a model for bridging seemingly unbridgeable states of mind. Bion inspires us to ‘dream’ creatively, to let our minds roam freely, stressing the analyst's speculative imagination and intuition often bordering on hallucination. However, being on the seam between conscious and unconscious, dreaming subverts the psychic equilibrium and poses a threat of catastrophe as a result of the confusion it affords between the psychotic and the non‐psychotic parts of the personality. Hence there is a tendency to try and evade it through a more saturated mode of thinking, often relying on external reality. The analyst's dreaming and intuition, perhaps a remnant of intra‐uterine life, is elaborated as means of penetrating and transcending the caesura, thus facilitating patient and analyst to bear unbearable states of mind and the painful awareness of the unknowability of the emotional experience. This is illustrated clinically.     

情绪效价−空间动作隐喻联结对成人和儿童外语情绪词学习的影响

为探究情绪效价与空间动作的隐喻联结如何影响中国成人及学龄前和学龄初期儿童对外语情绪词的学习,要求被试在学习阶段根据情绪效价将新学习的实体外语词卡放在对应空间位置。测试阶段采用二选一迫选任务,记录新词学习的反应时和正确率。结果显示,无论是成人组还是儿童组被试,隐喻一致组在测试阶段中对所学外语词的再认反应时均快于隐喻不一致组和控制组。研究表明,成人和学龄前和学龄初期儿童均存在情绪效价–空间动作隐喻联结的心理表征,并且该联结可以影响成人及学龄前和学龄初期儿童外语情绪词学习效果。     

The construction of emotional experience: State‐related emotional awareness and its application to psychotherapy research and practice

The cognitive–developmental theory of ‘levels of emotional awareness’ (LEA) addresses an individual's capacity to experience and express emotion, a capacity highly relevant to psychotherapy. Previous papers on LEA and psychotherapy addressed the aspect of LEA theory pertaining to the ‘trait’ (i.e. enduring) aspects of an individual's emotional functioning over time. LEA theory also applies to the construction of emotional experience at any given moment, in which levels emerge or disappear in a process of microgenetic construction as a function of arousal and other variables. This state‐related perspective is supported by recent research showing that people vary in their LEA from moment to moment. Momentary changes in LEA correspond to the variations in lived experience that occur in relationships, including the therapy relationship, and provide the context for corrective emotional experiences that promote change. In this paper, the construction of emotional experience at different levels of organisation is discussed separately in relation to clients and therapists. Key phenomena relevant to psychotherapy include the transition from bodily sensations to specific differentiated emotional feelings, the ability to be aware of multiple feelings that may be contradictory or counter‐intuitive, and the appreciation of how complex combinations of feelings may differ in self and other. This perspective adds to the literature on how the integration of emotion and cognition contributes to change in psychotherapy. The clinical and research implications of this perspective are discussed.     

Seeing,mirroring, desiring: The impact of the analyst’s pregnant body on the patient’s body image

The paper explores the impact of the analyst’s pregnant body on the course of two analyses, a young man, and a young woman, specifically focusing on how each patient’s visual perception and affective experience of being with the analyst’s pregnant body affected their own body image and subjective experience of their body. The pre‐verbal or ‘subsymbolic’ material evoked in the analyses contributed to a greater understanding of the patients’ developmental experiences in infancy and adolescence, which had resulted in both carrying a profoundly distorted body image into adulthood. The analyst’s pregnancy offered a therapeutic window in which a shift in the patient’s body image could be initiated. Clinical material is presented in detail with reference to the psychoanalytic literature on the pregnant analyst, and that of the development of the body image, particularly focusing on the role of visual communication and the face. The author proposes a theory of psychic change, drawing on Bucci’s multiple code theory, in which the patients’ unconscious or ‘subsymbolic’ awareness of her pregnancy, which were manifest in their bodily responses, feeling states and dreams, as well as in the analyst s countertransference, could gradually be verbalized and understood within the transference. Thus visual perception, or ‘external seeing’, could gradually become ‘internal seeing’, or insight into unconscious phantasies, leading to a shift in the patients internal object world towards a less persecutory state and more realistic appraisal of their body image.     

Young people's perceptions and experiences of leaving high school early: an exploration

Research suggests it is important for students to feel a sense of belonging to their school. Students who do not belong at school often attempt to satisfy this need through membership in antisocial groups, or they drop out from school altogether. The current study explored the perceptions and experiences of the school context held by young people who have left school early. Twelve young people aged 16–19 years were interviewed on their experiences of school and their wellbeing as a result of leaving school early. Constructionist grounded theory methodology formed the basis of the data analysis. The early leaving process was identified as having three phases; exclusion from school, the transition into workforce and the ‘now’ phase. The results identified factors in the school context that contributed to early student withdrawal. Furthermore, the research has implications for creating a ‘normative narrative’ (Rappaport, 2000 ) in relation to early school leavers. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Head Start Children at Third Grade: Preliminary Special Education Identification and Placement of Children with Emotional, Learning, and Related Disabilities

Although children in Head Start are at risk for emotional or behavioral problems, little is known about their later need for special education. There is evidence that children at risk for emotional disturbance are underidentified or misidentified in other special education categories. We examined special education identification rates for Head Start children at risk for emotional disturbance, learning disabilities, speech or language impairments, and mental retardation as they complete third grade. Two cohorts of 4136 children across 30 sites were followed as part of a larger study on transition. Diagnosis of each child as being at risk for emotional disturbance or related disabilities was made using clinical cut-offs on teacher ratings and individual testing completed in the spring of third grade. Special education eligibility of these children was determined from school records. Only 31.8% of children considered to be at risk, based on research diagnostic criteria, were actually identified by the schools, and fewer than 6% of children at risk for ED were identified in the school category of ED. Comparisons were made between school-identified and nonidentified children in gender, ethnicity, and school variables; and findings were discussed in relation to underidentification or misidentification of children with emotional disturbance.     

小学儿童羞耻情绪理解能力的发展

先通过收集和验证羞耻情境故事和情绪词来编制考察小学儿童羞耻情绪理解能力的测量材料,然后对300名1-6年级小学儿童的羞耻情绪理解能力的发展特点进行测查。结果表明：（1）小学儿童的羞耻情绪理解能力随年级增长而发展,并且在2-3年级有一个快速发展阶段。（2）4种羞耻情境中,小学儿童在公德情境中的羞耻情绪理解能力最高,其次是当众出丑情境和欺骗情境,最低是学习情境。（3）小学儿童的羞耻情绪理解能力无显著性别差异;4种羞耻情境中,只有在公德情境中的羞耻情绪理解能力有显著性别差异,即男生高于女生。     

On fascination and fear of annihilation

In this paper fascination phenomenologically is described as a state of radically being captured by an imposing object. What is left of the impoverished and paralysed subject clings to the exclusive fascinating object. Fascination is the eye of the storm of extreme ambivalence towards an exclusive object: being the only remaining object it is necessary for living in an object world, but at the same time it is threatening to life by absorbing the subject totally. So the subject is sucked in by a yet frightening object. From a metapsychological point of view fascination is understood as the congealed result of excessive projective identification and a strong confusional state connected with it: the subject empties itself so much in the object that it comes to stand for the subject. The fascinating object embodies in a condensed way – as a special form of a bizarre object – split off unconscious threatening material. So fascination is linked to the Kleinian theory of anxiety. Two clinical vignettes illustrate how states of fascination can be understood as an ultimate defence against unconscious menacing material welling up. The hypothesis is developed that fascination points to a revelation of fundamental psychic truth that promptly cramps the subject because the reintegration of it is felt as annihilating. In the vignettes this takes the form of a ‘transformation in hallucinosis’. Fascination is at the same time ‘the moment of truth’ and possibly a serious obstruction of the analytic process. This unconscious truth seems to concern primitive ‘superego violence’. The challenge consists in thawing the frozen fascinating object by linking it to other material.     

Unconscious processes influencing learning

This paper reviews recent experimental evidence on the active involvement of non-conscious processes in human functioning and examines the contribution of this evidence to understanding learning. The experimental concept of 'unconscious processing' is compared to the psychoanalytic notion of the 'unconscious' and some relationships between the two concepts are pointed out. The general idea stemming from experimental research is that, in parallel with what goes on at the conscious level, non-conscious dynamic processes have a very strong impact both in the process and the outcome of learning. Information, which in milliseconds is non-consciously assessed as threatening to the learner's psychological balance, may be disguised or blocked from further processing, therefore affecting the learner's educational competence. The educational material, relationship or atmosphere may provoke non-conscious emotions, attitudes and intentions, which 'inflate' cognition and can affect the individual's current processing of information in various (inhibiting or enhancing) ways. By carefully observing the points where the individual learner is blocked in the 'here and now', the teacher or therapist may deduce useful information on the issues that may unconsciously inhibit learning.     

Recognising the role of emotion in the classroom; an examination of how the psychoanalytic theory of containment influences learning capacity

This paper begins with personal reflections about my work in school which began over forty years ago, outlining how the different roles of teacher and therapeutic practitioner have contributed to my interest in the role of emotion for children’s capacity for learning in the classroom. I suggest that focusing too heavily on achievement risks losing sight of the experience of the individual child and argue that a psychoanalytic framework informs us of the significance of relational aspects of teaching and learning. My aim is to alert educationalists to the complexities of the classroom context, particularly the conscious and unconscious elements at work there. I have chosen to examine containment, as one aspect of the psychoanalytic, developmental framework, as a way of thinking about relational influences in the classroom and the importance of the relational context of learning. These case studies relate to my workplace, an Infant and Nursery school with a high British multi-ethnic population, where I am employed as a teacher/therapeutic practitioner. Two brief child studies are included to illustrate this examination. The first, Hamzah, concerns a young child entering formal learning without the expected relational skills and therefore unable to connect with staff and children in any meaningful way. The second, Isa, demonstrated well developed relational skills but at times found it difficult to manage his feelings when his needs took second place to the requirements of the curriculum.     

When the happy victimizer says sorry: Children's understanding of apology and emotion

Previous research suggests that children gradually understand the mitigating effects of apology on damage to a transgressor's reputation. However, little is known about young children's insights into the central emotional implications of apology. In two studies, children ages 4–9 heard stories about moral transgressions in which the wrongdoers either did or did not apologize. In Study 1, children in the no‐apology condition showed the classic pattern of ‘happy victimizer’ attributions by expecting the wrongdoer to feel good about gains won via transgression. By contrast, in the apology condition, children attributed negative feelings to the transgressor and improved feelings to the victim. In Study 2, these effects were found even when the explicit emotion marker ‘sorry’ was removed from the apology exchange. Thus, young children understand some important emotional functions of apology.     

Young people's emotional geographies of citizenship participation: Spatial and relational insights

The inclusion of more ‘active’ citizenship concepts within citizenship curricula has been a pattern noted in many countries in recent years. Yet, rarely are young people's citizenship identities, and how these are shaped by emotional and relational experiences of being citizens in communities, considered in such curricula. In this paper, I explore the citizenship narratives of young people from two New Zealand high schools and examine how emotions formed a significant aspect of their citizenship perceptions and participation. These emotions were constituted in and through relations and non-relations with other young people at school, as well as with members of their local communities at various inter-locking spatial scales. Focusing on emotional geographies of citizenship participation offered insights into how young people were forming their citizenship identities at the intersection of their geographies of gender, race and class, and how these experiences shaped, motivated and sustained citizenship participation. The study highlights the complexity of young people's emotional experiences in relation to their citizenship identities and participation and the need to understand this affectivity in greater depth, especially within policy contexts.