Poverty,state, and the family: A challenge for family therapy

Much family therapy writing has focused on work with discrete presenting problems in circumscribed clinical practice settings. This paper takes a broader focus of poor families which do not fit easily into the one-hour therapy schedule, in the context of the powerful forces of politics and economics. If the prevailing political attitudes and economic realities are ignored, direct practice with families may fail to meet them at their point of experience. Examples of political views, and therapeutic and research thinking which do not pay attention to these aspects, are used to highlight the author's point of view.     

The transference neurosis in Freud's writings

This paper reviews the evolution of the concept of transference neurosis in Freud's writings. It suggests that the language in which the concept of the transference neurosis is originally expressed by Freud includes an idea of the analyst as aggressively pursuing the analytic cure by waging a solitary battle against the patient's disease. With the representation of the death drive and the larger role accorded to sadism as its external manifestation in Freud's revised drive theory of 1920, the patient becomes the ally; resistance, in the sense of the conservative forces, not disease, in the sense of libidinal conflict, becomes the enemy. It is thus difficult to speak of a transference neurosis in the circumscribed way Freud originally meant it, and he ceased to use the term after 1926 rather than redefine it to fit his broader perspective. In this broader perspective, relative resolution of conflict replaced radical liberation of the patient from disease. That Freud did not redefine the term does not imply that he discarded it, or that we necessarily should. This paper suggests that Freud implied a functional distinction between transference as transforming agent and transference neurosis as result of that transformation. That distinction defines psychoanalytic cure in terms of the understanding of a symbolic transformation which is, through the transference neurosis, reexperienced as part of the psychoanalytic process.     

Evolutionary skepticism

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion -     

The mediating role of anxiety in self-reported somatic complaints of depressed adolescents

This study examined the mediating role of anxiety in the self-reports of somatic complaints in 96 depressed adolescent inpatients. Sixty-four subjects with major depressive episodes and comorbid anxiety disorders (MDE-A) determined from the Diagnostic Interview for Children and Adolescents-Revised (DICA-R) reported significantly more somatic complaints than 32 adolescents having major depressive episodes without comorbid anxiety (MDE). An analysis of covariance demonstrated that, with anxiety symptoms controlled, MDE and MDE-A groups did not differ significantly in somatic complaints. A hierarchical multiple-regression analysis revealed that, with demographic and anxiety symptoms controlled, depressive symptoms did not contribute to the explanation or prediction of somatic complaints. The results suggest that anxious, but not depressive symptoms, are independently associated with somatic complaints. The results are discussed in light of new affective models of psychopathology.     

Experiential correlates of time alone in adolescence1

Seven hundred and fifty-three observations were collected on 25 adolescents at random times during an average week. The observations consisted of self-reports completed in response to an electronic pager. The study was aimed at the question: What is the experience of time alone like for adolescents? The results suggest a complex but consistent relationship: while aloneness is generally a negative experience, those adolescents who spend a moderate amount of time alone (about 30 percent of their waking time) tend to show better overall adjustment than adolescents who are either never alone or spend more than the optimal proportion of time alone. Alienation and average moods showed inverse linear or quadratic relationships with amount of time alone. These results are discussed in terms of the possible psycho-social functions of aloneness at the adolescent stage of the life cycle.     

The relationship of extraversion,neuroticism, and sensation-seeking to questionnaire-derived measures of nervous system properties

Five obliquely rotated factor analyses were performed on items from Eysenck and Eysenck’s (1975) EPQ, Zuckerman’s (1975) Sensation-Seeking Scale, and Strelau’s (1972) temperament inventory (STI), administered to 277 subjects (Ss). The analyses were used to examine the relationships between the personality dimensions E, N, L, P and Sensation-Seeking, which pertain mainly to social situations, attitudes and feelings, and questionnaire-derived measures of nervous system properties, which, while validated on experimental indices of nervous system properties derived from Nebylitsyn’s (1972) model, are expressed as characteristic features of social behavior, work style and activity. Four factors were identified—extraversion/strength of excitation/mobility; self-control of affect/stability/caution; strength of inhibition/verbal control/motor expressiveness/ nonmanipulativeness; and sensation-seeking/nervousness. The results offer support for Eysenck’s claim of some identity between excitatory strength and E, for the reported relationship between E and mobility, and for Eysenck’s conditioning postulate. They also suggest that similar temperamental variables underlie individual differences in both social and occupational/motor activity. Since Strelau’s STI items are validated on experimental indices of nervous system properties, it follows that typological characteristics may be inferred from questionnaire data derived from both behavioral categories.