In The Theater of Confusion: Mourning and Its Consequences for a Four-Year-Old Child

Abstract

Hyrck M. Inner Objects and the Christian Images of God. Int Forum Psychoanal 1997;6:41-43. Stockholm, ISSN 0803-706X.

Religion can be viewed very differently by different individuals. For some people it forms the basis of emotional safety while others regard it as the main obstacle to true humanity. One reason for this wide variance of opinion lies in the different ways that God can be perceived even within the same religious tradition. He can, for example, appear as a cosmic sadist torturing men eternally or as the vicariously suffering Christ sharing and containing the evils of mankins.

These and other images of God are analyzed by a systematic psychoanalytic instrument constructed upon the object relations theory. It describes five inner objects created by different partial drives or aspects of these drives. The inner objects are regarded as unconscious phantasies in the Kleinian sense. Five corresponding analoguous emotional images of God are abstracted from the Christian tradition.     

Effect of Depressive Symptoms and Sex on the Relationship Between Loneliness and Cigarette Dependence: A Moderated Mediation

Loneliness is a subjective and emotionally unpleasant experience of perceiving insufficient social relationships. Previous research has revealed that loneliness constitutes a psychosocial risk factor for depression, and is also related to unhealthy behaviors such as smoking. This study aims to examine the relation between loneliness, depression, and cigarette dependence, and to explore the role of sex in this relationship. A total sample of 275 adult treatment-seeking daily smokers (Mage = 45.3; 61.5% females) was used. Our results showed a significant correlation between higher scores of loneliness, depressive symptoms, and cigarette dependence. In addition, mediation analysis showed a significant indirect effect of loneliness on cigarette dependence, via depressive symptoms. Regarding the effect of sex, we found that this variable significantly moderated the relationship between depressive symptoms and cigarette dependence. Results of this study extend previous literature by showing that, in treatment seeking smokers, loneliness is a significant predictor of depressive symptoms, and through this relation, it predicts cigarette dependence. Additionally, sex was a significant moderator of this relation. These findings have several clinical implications, and also contribute to the understanding of cigarette dependence, which is a well-known barrier for smoking cessation.     

Measuring trust in teams: Development and validation of a multifaceted measure of formative and reflective indicators of team trust

This article describes the development and validation of a multidimensional instrument designed to measure trust within teams. Trust is conceptualized as a latent variable resulting from distinct but related (formative) indicators, i.e., propensity to trust and perceived trustworthiness, which lead to (reflective) indicators, i.e., behaviours cooperation and monitoring between team members. The instrument was tested in two different samples. The first sample included 98 hospital professionals (14 teams) and provided data for the exploratory factor analysis of this instrument (Study 1). The second sample included responses from 112 teams (395 individuals) from three social-care institutions and was used to apply confirmatory factor analysis (Study 2). Data attesting to the underlying factor structure, internal homogeneity, construct validity, and consensual power of agreement within teams and discriminant power across teams of the instrument are presented. The final 21-item, four-factor version of this measure demonstrates good psychometric properties, with acceptable levels of reliability and validity. We conclude that the scales form a parsimonious, valid, and efficient instrument to assess trust in teams. Potential applications of this measure in research and practice are described and the implications of these findings for future research are discussed.     

The global precedence effect is not affected in inhibition of return

This study assessed whether inhibitory processes occurring in IOR affect perceptual processing of hierarchically organised stimuli. Experiment 1 used a global/local task that presented stimuli to the left or the right side. Results showed a global task advantage and a larger interference in the local than in the global task—the global precedence effect (GPE). These effects were larger than in previous studies using centrally presented stimuli, which suggests a greater involvement of low spatial frequency analysis with peripheral than with central stimuli. Experiment 2 combined the global/local task with IOR. Results replicated those of Experiment 1 but there was no interaction with stimulus location. That is, the GPE was not affected in IOR. Thus, we conclude that the GPE and inhibitory processing occurring in IOR are subserved by different mechanisms.     

Differences Between Young and Old University Students on a Lexical Decision Task: Evidence Through an Ex-Gaussian Approach

This work compared two common variants of a lexical decision task (LDT) through two different analysis procedures: first, the classical ANOVA method, and second, by fitting the data to an ex-Gaussian distribution function. Two groups of participants (old and young university students) had to perform, blocks of go/no-go and yes/no tasks. Reaction times and error rates were much lower in the go/no-go task than in the yes/no task. Changes in the ex-Gaussian parameter related to attention were found with word frequency but not with the type of LDT tasks. These findings suggest that word frequency shows an attentional cost that is independent of age.     

Behaviour variability and the Situated Focus Theory of Power

Power often affects judgement and behaviour differently in different contexts. The present chapter proposes the Situated Focus Theory of Power in an attempt to explain the greater variability in the behaviour and judgements of powerful compared to powerless individuals. It is proposed that power increases attunement to the situation by means of selective attention and processing flexibility. Factors that drive cognition such as motivation (e.g., needs, goals, expectancies), inner experiences (e.g., feelings, ease of retrieval), as well as properties of the environment (e.g., affordances), guide more unequivocally the responses of powerful compared to powerless individuals. Powerful individuals process more extensively information that is relevant compared to information that is irrelevant to these factors, whereas powerless individuals attend more equally to different types of information. These differences in processing focus affect content-free aspects of behaviour. Specifically, power promotes readiness to act, prioritisation, and behaviour variability across situations.     

Be water: Direct and indirect relations between perceived emotional intelligence and subjective well‐being

Trait emotional intelligence (TEI) has been shown to have predictive capacity for certain dimensions of adaptation, such as life satisfaction and affectivity. The Trait Meta Mood Scale (TMMS), based on the EI ability model, has been shown to have predictive capacity for subjective well‐being through its three factors (attention, clarity, and emotional repair), but little is known about the mediating role played by these dimensions, both among themselves and in relation to other variables. The aim of the present study was to analyse the direct and indirect relationships between the TMMS factors and subjective well‐being dimensions, using structural equation modelling, also including self‐efficacy in the model as a mediator of these relationships. Attention was found to have a negative effect on subjective well‐being, which was inhibited when clarity and repair were included as mediators. Self‐efficacy played a major role since it increased the positive effect of clarity and repair on subjective well‐being. This study provides evidence of the advantage of using the TMMS factors separately and of studying their mediational role in order to better understand the processes underlying the manner in which TEI influences subjective well‐being.     

Dynamics of team cognition and team adaptation: Introduction to the special issue

Although cognitions are known to play a major role in team adaptation, the cognitive dynamics underlying a team’s responsiveness are poorly understood. The studies brought together in this special issue break new ground in this area. In this introductory article, we offer a brief summary of the research field, provide an overview of the contributions, and suggest directions for future research.