A Matter of Life and Death: Understanding Continuing Bonds and Post-traumatic Growth When Young Adults Experience the Loss of a Close Friend

Young adults establish networks of friends for companionship, support, assistance, and resource exchange. Friends have been found to play an essential role in promoting young adults’ health and well-being. Yet, relatively little is known about how young adults cope with the death of a close friend. Studies of grief and bereavement in adulthood focus primarily on the death of a family member. In the present qualitative study, we examined the narrative accounts of 20 young adults (ages 21–34) to describe the prevalence and nature of continuing bonds and post-traumatic growth experiences in coping with the death of a close friend. Participants completed semi-structured interviews in which they described the circumstances of their friend’s death, the nature of their friendship, whether and how they continued their relationship with their deceased friend, and the impact of their friend’s death in their everyday lives. Overall, young adults articulated ways that they continued their relationship with the deceased friend that included personal communication, personal change, and homage activities. Post-traumatic growth experiences as a result of their friend’s death included behavioral changes and personal changes in outlook. The narratives of all participants reflected their simultaneous experience of continuing relationship ties with the deceased and a sense of personal growth as a result of their friend’s death. We report areas of overlap and distinctions between expressions of continuing bonds and post-traumatic growth in the lived experience of young adults coping with the loss of a friend. Implications of findings for future research are discussed.     

How clinical trials really work rethinking research ethics

Despite prevalent concerns about the ethical conduct of clinical trials, little is known about the day-to-day work of trials and the ethical challenges arising in them. This paper reports on a study designed to fill this gap and demonstrates a need to refine the oversight system for trials to reflect an understanding of this day-to-day work. It also illuminates ethical challenges that cannot be addressed by the oversight system and so necessitate a rethinking of the ethics of clinical trials.     

J scale models for preference behavior

Three models for preference behavior are developed within the framework of Coombs' theory of data, an absolute difference model, a ratio model, and a two-stage model. Each of these models describes a mechanism by which unilateral preferences may be determined on a unidimensionalJ scale. Differential implications of the models for response latencies are derived, and some early data employing an application of the unfolding technique are presented in support of the two-stage model.Based upon portions of the author's doctoral dissertation, University of Michigan, 1962. This research was supported in part by NSF Grant No. G5820 to Professor C. H. Coombs. The writer also wishes to thank Professor William Hays, who served as committee chairman and offered considerable support and assistance.     

A Field Guide to Cinetherapy: On Celluloid Psychoanalysis and Its Practitioners

This paper addresses the strange bedfellowship between psychoanalysis and cinema since the century's turn. Its specific focus is the idiosyncratic psychoanalysis/psychotherapy practised in mainstream cinema and television. Cinetherapists have consistently fallen into one of three categories: Dr. Dippy, a focus of derision, weirder than his patients; Dr. Evil, Hollywood's psychiatric version of the mad, bad scientist; and the unfailingly benevolent, self-sacrificing Dr. Wonderful. The prevalence of these stereotypes has waxed and waned according to shifting cultural circumstances. The study concludes with reflections on the possible impact, deleterious or otherwise, of distorted filmic images of the impossible profession.     

Gender-typical responses to sexual and emotional infidelity as a function of mortality salience induced self-esteem striving

The authors propose that gender-differentiated patterns of jealousy in response to sexual and emotional infidelity are engendered by the differential impact of each event on self-esteem for men and women. Study 1 demonstrated that men derive relatively more self-esteem from their sex lives, whereas women's self-esteem is more contingent on romantic commitment. Based on terror management theory, it is predicted that if gender-differentiated responses to infidelity are motivated by gender-specific contingencies for self-esteem, they should be intensified following reminders of mortality. In Study 2, mortality salience (MS) increased distress in response to sexual infidelity for men and emotional infidelity for women. Study 3 demonstrated that following MS, men who place high value on sex in romantic relationships exhibited greater distress in response to sexual infidelity, but low-ex-value men's distress was attenuated. The authors discuss the implications for evolutionary and self-esteem-based accounts of jealousy as well as possible integration of these perspectives.     

Mechanisms and the current state of deep brain stimulation in neuropsychiatry

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is established as a therapy for movement disorders, and it is an investigational treatment in other neurologic conditions. DBS precisely targets neuroanatomical targets deep within the brain that are proposed to be centrally involved in the pathophysiology of some neuropsychiatric illnesses. DBS is nonablative, offering the advantages of reversibility and adjustability. This might permit therapeutic effectiveness to be enhanced or side effects to be minimized. Preclinical and clinical studies have shown effects of DBS locally, at the stimulation target, and at a distance, via actions on fibers of passage or across synapses. Although its mechanisms of action are not fully elucidated, several effects have been proposed to underlie the therapeutic effects of DBS in movement disorders, and potentially in other conditions as well. The mechanisms of action of DBS are the focus of active investigation in a number of clinical and preclinical laboratories. As in severe movement disorders, DBS may offer a degree of hope for patients with intractable neuropsychiatric illness. It is already clear that research intended to realize this potential will require a very considerable commitment of resources, energy, and time across disciplines including psychiatry, neurosurgery neurology, neuropsychology, bioengineering, and bioethics. These investigations should proceed cautiously.     

College women with eating disorders: self-regulation,life satisfaction,and positive/negative affect

The authors examined the self-regulatory strategies and subjective well-being of students recently diagnosed with eating disorders, at-risk students, and individuals without eating disorders. Fifty-six college students were individually interviewed regarding their use of self-regulatory strategies to lose and maintain their weight; they also completed the Extended Satisfaction with Life Scale (V. C. Alfonzo, D. B. Allison, D. E. Rader, & B. S. Gorman, 1996) and the Positive and Negative Affect Scale (D. Watson, L. A. Clarck, & A. Tellegen, 1988). As hypothesized, students with eating disorders reported more self-regulated strategies for managing their weight, a lower level of life satisfaction, and higher levels of negative affect than did at-risk students or individuals with normal weights. At-risk students reported higher levels of self-regulation and negative affect than did the students with normal weights. These findings may be useful for parents and health practitioners providing care to college students, who must be made aware of the signs and symptoms of these disorders.     

Tales from the Crypt: On the Role of Death in Life

An existential psychodynamic theory is presented based on Ernest Becker's claim that self-esteem and cultural worldviews function to ameliorate the anxiety associated with the uniquely human awareness of vulnerability and mortality. Psychological equanimity is hypothesized to require (1) a shared set of beliefs about reality that imbues the universe with stability, meaning, and permanence; (2) standards by which individuals can judge themselves to be of value; and (3) promises of safety and the transcendence of death to those who meet the standards of value. An empirical research program in support of this theory is then described, and the personal and interpersonal implications of these ideas are briefly considered.     

From Wishing to Intending: Differences in Salience of Positive versus Negative Consequences

ABSTRACT Goal ratings by 345 subjects in seven data samples supported a functional distinction between two types of positive incentive value, one based on approaching positive affect (positive-based value or PBV), the other on avoiding negative affect (negative-based value or NBV). Ratings of PBV were more related to ratings of earlier action-phases of motivation (“wishing”), whereas ratings of NBV tended to be more related to factors entailed in later action-phases (“urgency/priority” and “intention”). These findings and previous ones are consistent with the proposal that this distinction parallels distinctions in Maslow's motivation theory. If the parallel is accepted, the findings support predictions from Maslow's theory. Results also indicate that purportedly unidimensional rating scales of motivation can reflect more than one underlying attribute.