Eating-Problem Patients' Conceptions of Normality

Three groups of people—anorexic patients, helping professionals, and a control group—filled out the Eating Attitude Test (Garner & Garfinkel, 1979) three times. The control subjects were asked to fill it out honestly for themselves; as they imagined an ordinary person might complete it; and, finally, as they would expect a patient with an eating disorder to fill it out. The anorexic patients were asked to complete it honestly for themselves; as they imagined an ordinary person might fill it out; and, finally, as they would expect to fill it out when fully recovered. The professionals filled out the questionnaires as they imagined the typical patient with eating disorders might; as they imagined the ordinary person might complete it; and as a recovered patient might complete it. The results provided support for some but not all hypotheses, the most central of which was that there would be a difference between how the patients rated the ordinary person and how control subjects (supposedly ordinary people) rated themselves.     

In the spaces between – sustaining creativity in child psychotherapy

This paper gives an account of the developments in the intensive psychotherapy of a seven-year-old boy with global development delay. It also describes the adaptations to technique and the changes in the setting that were required to support the work, which was undertaken in a special school. The importance of the regularity of sessions in helping to establish object constancy; physical and mental boundaries in relation to me/not me; inside and outside is also explored. A central theme of the paper is how close observation can inform the understanding of the emotional states of disabled children, particularly those with little language. The paper draws links between the early communications of mothers and infants and the therapeutic relationship, with reference to music therapy. It describes banging as a form of communication and traces the development of banging into more coherent nursery rhymes arguing that this development is an internalisation of the rhythm of the therapy and of the growing understanding between the child and therapist.     

Linguistically guided anticipatory eye movements in scene viewing

The present study replicated the well-known demonstration by Altmann and Kamide (1999) that listeners make linguistically guided anticipatory eye movements, but used photographs of scenes rather than clip-art arrays as the visual stimuli. When listeners heard a verb for which a particular object in a visual scene was the likely theme, they made earlier looks to this object (e.g., looks to a cake upon hearing The boy will eat …) than when they heard a control verb (The boy will move …). New data analyses assessed whether these anticipatory effects are due to a linguistic effect on the targeting of saccades (i.e., the where parameter of eye movement control), the duration of fixations (i.e., the when parameter), or both. Participants made fewer fixations before reaching the target object when the verb was selectionally restricting (e.g., will eat). However, verb type had no effect on the duration of individual eye fixations. These results suggest an important constraint on the linkage between spoken language processing and eye movement control: Linguistic input may influence only the decision of where to move the eyes, not the decision of when to move them.     

National Differences in Work Attitudes Between the UK and Germany

Abstract

In a comparative study involving approximately 900 UK and German adults, an attempt was made to explore the strength of the relationships between diverse but related work attitudes and to examine national differences in work attitudes, which may be related to economic growth. The UK sample preferred business-oriented occupations, rather than the professions—medicine, social work and teaching—(jobs in which Germans expressed higher interest) and was characterized by higher scores on work ethic, achievement motivation, competitiveness, and achievement/conformity, but lower scores on positive attitudes to savings. No significant difference was observed in terms of financial beliefs (valuation of money) or mastery. Work attitude and occupational interest were intimately interrelated, although the relationship was significantly moderated by gender. Socio-historical economic and political origins of these similarities and differences are discussed, along with the theoretical and methodological implications of these findings.     

Comment upon ‘"Poor girl": a case of active psychosis’: how therapeutic schemas may limit our work

The paper explores the effect of group participation on depressed women's ‘doing depression’ and ‘doing pleasure’ in Finland over three time periods. Quantitative data and qualitative data are analysed. To assess statistically the differences between the time periods, the Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed-ranks z-test is applied to the quantitative data. Coping with emotions through self-focused attention, depressed women are reluctant to initiate instrumental behaviour. They tend to respond to their lives in a ruminative way. Moving towards pleasure rather than depression characterized women's activities as a result of the group process; they learned to embody health, while envisaging hope for the future. Our emphasis on embodiment allows us to consider agency as a contemporary group therapeutic effect as well as to contextualize psychotherapy research within post-modern thinking. While the findings do not provide an indisputable list of the ways women's activities changed over time or all the advantages of group participation, they do suggest areas for future exploration in connection with depressed women's healthy embodiment in a healing group context and advance an understanding of how the experience and duration of depression can be altered if the public and private boundaries of depressed women's embodied routines are broken down and self-isolation is challenged.     

“The object in the mirror of genetic transcendentalism: Lacan’s objet petit a between visibility and invisibility,”

One of the more superficially perplexing features of Lacan’s notion of objet petit a is the fact that he simultaneously characterizes it as both non-specularizable (i.e., incapable of being captured in spatio-temporal representations) and specular (i.e., incarnated in visible avatars). This assignment of the apparently contradictory attributes of visibility and invisibility to object a is a reflection of this object’s strange position at the intersection of transcendental and empirical dimensions. Indeed, this object, which Lacan holds up as his central psychoanalytic discovery, raises important philosophical questions about the transcendental-empirical distinction, arguably short-circuiting in interesting, productive ways this dichotomy and many of its permutations. This article seeks to achieve two aims: one, to clarify how and why Lacan situates object a between the specular and the non-specular; and, two, to extract from the results of this clarification a preliminary sketch of a post-Lacanian transcendentalism that is also thoroughly materialist.     

The Relationship Between Nonclinical Schizotypy and Handedness on Divergent and Convergent Creative Problem-Solving Tasks

Previous research indicated a relationship between hemispherical dominance, the extent of schizotypal tendencies, and creativity. Little research has been conducted to assess the degree of schizotypy in nonclinical samples. The aim of this study was to determine the extent to which measures of multidimensional schizotypy and predominant handedness could predict measures of creativity, as assessed by both divergent and convergent tasks. One hundred and twenty-six participants participated in a quasi-experiment involving tests of predominant handedness, schizotypal tendencies, and divergent and convergent thinking. Results suggest that individuals who scored high on a test for schizotypal tendencies performed better on divergent problem-solving tasks, as opposed to low scoring individuals who performed better on convergent problem-solving tasks. Furthermore, results suggest that there was relationship between handedness on divergent and convergent thinking. There was, however, a relationship between handedness (right hemisphere) on the degree of schizotypal tendencies with left-handed individuals demonstrating greater schizotypal tendencies.     

Work Stressors,Depressive Symptoms,and Hazardous Drinking Among Navy Members Across Deployment

Few studies have attempted to examine how changes in work stressors from predeployment to postdeployment and reintegration may be associated with changes in mental health symptoms and hazardous drinking. The present study examined associations between work stressors, depressive symptoms, and hazardous drinking, and whether depressive symptoms mediated the association between work stressors and hazardous alcohol use or vice versa across deployment (predeployment, postdeployment, and 6-month reintegration). Participants were 101 U.S. Navy members (72 men; mean age = 28.34 years; SD = 5.99 years) assigned to an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer that experienced an 8-month deployment after recent wars in the Middle East. They completed measures that assessed work stressors, depressive symptoms, and alcohol use at each time point (i.e., predeployment, postdeployment, and 6-month reintegration). Using a parallel process latent growth modeling approach, we found a significant indirect effect at postdeployment such that an increase in work stressors contributed to increases in hazardous drinking via increases in depressive symptoms. Specifically, increases in work stressors significantly predicted increases in depressive symptoms, which in turn significantly predicted increases in hazardous drinking from pre- to postdeployment. Our findings garner support for affect regulation models and indicate that work stressors and changes in work stressors and depressive symptoms may be key to hazardous alcohol use among U.S. Navy members experiencing high pace of deployment. Taken together, our results help identify targets for alcohol prevention efforts among current military members.     

Why experiments matter*

Experimentation is traditionally considered a privileged means of confirmation. However, why and how experiments form a better confirmatory source relative to other strategies is unclear, and recent discussions have identified experiments with various modeling strategies on the one hand, and with ‘natural’ experiments on the other hand. We argue that experiments aiming to test theories are best understood as controlled investigations of specimens. ‘Control’ involves repeated, fine-grained causal manipulation of focal properties. This capacity generates rich knowledge of the object investigated. ‘Specimenhood’ involves possessing relevant properties given the investigative target and the hypothesis in question. Specimens are thus representative members of a class of systems, to which a hypothesis refers. It is in virtue of both control and specimenhood that experiments provide powerful confirmatory evidence. This explains the distinctive power of experiments: although modelers exert extensive control, they do not exert this control over specimens; although natural experiments utilize specimens, control is diminished.