The role of network therapy in the treatment of relational disorders: Cults and folie a deux

This article discusses the successful outcome of a network intervention in a case of cult-involvement andfolie a deux. The intervention, specifically designed to help a family in which one member had become involved with an individual who claimed to be the Messiah—an involvement that entailed the exclusion and alienation of all other family members—used a team of network specialists and consisted of a pre-network planning meeting, the network meeting itself which included approximately 70 persons over four hours, and several follow-up meetings with network subgroups.     

What's in a therapist's name?

For some years there has been interest in and research on the psychological and sociological influences of names. Little attention has been given to the influence of the names given to mental health professionals. The author describes some of the influence his own name has had on his personal and professional development as well as some of the effects names have had on students and colleagues. A rationale for the exploration of therapists' and clients' names is provided.Except for the name of the author and the names of his family members and those of public figures, all other names used in this article are pseudonyms designed to maintain anonymity and preserve individuals' privacy.     

The language of feelings

The acquisition of a language of feelings is similar to the acquisition of other language and can be conceptualized within a Piagetian framework. The acquisition of this language of feelings is subject to certain pitfalls that are reflective of various emotional problems. The linguistic poverty for affect that is concomitant with being unable to label feelings points to the need for parents and therapists to be involved in helping the child or patient develop an affective schema. The development of a differentiated, accurate, and flexible language of emotion to both express personal feelings and evoke responses in others is a schematic gift which parents provide. We find that when parents have not provided this, a reparative language developmental task is part of a psychotherapy. A grasp of the interplay of the concepts ofassimilation andaccommodation in Piaget (1952) appears essential to encouraging a healthy language of feelings. Related concepts drawn from Schacter (1965), Laing (1967), Krystal (1979), Kelly (1955) and Malerstein and Ahern (1979) are interwoven in a Piagetian structure for a language of feelings.     

Training mildly retarded individuals to control their anger through the use of cognitive-behavior therapy techniques

Four mildly retarded adults with chronic anger problems were treated with a cognitive-behavioral approach similar to stress-inoculation training. The treatment techniques included a simplified version of rational-emotive therapy (RET), coping self-statements, relaxation training, biofeedback, coping imagery, behavioral rehearsal, and assertiveness training. The treatment techniques varied in each case so as to meet the needs of the individual clients. The emphasis was on the development of self-control as opposed to control through external contingencies, such as rewards and punishments. There were decreases in the frequency of anger outbursts in all four clients. Violent behavior, such as hitting and kicking others, and destruction of property, was totally eliminated. In addition, the clients reported decreases in anxiety and stress-related symptoms. Although experimental research is needed in this area, these preliminary findings suggest that at least some mildly retarded individuals can be taught self-control through a cognitive-behavioral approach.     

Impulsivity, caffeine, and proofreading: a test of the Easterbrook hypothesis

Easterbrook's (1959) suggestion that arousal is inversely related to the range of cue utilization has been frequently cited as an explanation for the curvilinear relationship between arousal and performance. There is very little empirical support for this position, however. As a test of the Easterbrook hypothesis, 60 undergraduates who varied in their impulsivity level were given caffeine or placebo and then asked to proofread several passages. Estimates of sensitivity were calculated using signal detection techniques. It was predicted that high arousal would reduce sensitivity to interword errors, which require a broad range of cue utilization, but that the observed levels of arousal would not affect sensitivity to intraword errors, which require a minimal range of cue utilization. A significant crossover interaction between impulsivity and drug for interword errors indicated that caffeine increased the error detection rate of the (less aroused) more impulsive subjects but lowered the error detection rate of the (more aroused) less impulsive subjects. The results of this study support the suggestion that arousal has direct effects on the capacity for simultaneous information processing, independent of its effects on performance speed.     

Effects of prior knowledge on memory for new information

Three experiments examined the effects of prior knowledge on the learning and retention of new information. Subjects learned varying amounts of prior knowledge about individuals referred to by first name/last name combinations. In the first two experiments, subjects more rapidly learned new information about individuals for whom they were given prior knowledge, retrieved this information more slowly, and showed smaller interference (fan) effects. This complex of results is predicted by a spreading activation model in which we assume subjects try to integrate the prior knowledge with the new information in a network fashion. The third experiment, in addition to including conditions of prior vs. no prior experimental knowledge, included well-known names like Ted Kennedy, about which subjects have a great deal of preexperimental prior knowledge. The relationships between conditions of experimental prior knowledge and no prior knowledge obtained in Experiments 1 and 2 were replicated, but the well-known names did not behave simply like the extreme of experimental prior knowledge. In particular, subjects showed the fastest verification of new facts learned about the well-known names, rather than the slowest, as predicted from the spreading activation network model.     

Process, not representation: reply to Radvansky (1999).

The size of fan effects is determined by processes at retrieval, not by whether or not information is represented as situations. Evidence contradicts G. A. Radvansky's (1999) claim that time to retrieve information from a situation does not depend on the number of elements in the situation. Moreover, Radvansky's principles for ascribing situational models to experiments appear to be post hoc ways of redescribing the data. On the other hand, the evidence does support the Adaptive Control of Thought--Rational (ACT-R) assumption that participants can adjust their attentional weightings and so produce differential fan effects. Moreover, the ACT-R theory of the fan effect is consistent with many other findings.     

Form and content: looking at visual features of television.

Television viewing at home by 50 individuals in 5 age groups (2-, 5-, 8-, 12-year-olds, and adults) was recorded on 1-s time-lapse videotapes over 10-day periods. Coding was based on 5-min point samples. Analysis examined looking at the TV screen in relation to the visual presence of the features cuts, movement, animation, man, woman, child, and nonhuman; content features were child vs. adult programming and overt purposeful character behavior. Cuts, movement, and overt purposeful character behavior were positively related to looking independent of child vs. adult programming. Associations with looking for the remaining features depended on the viewer's age or sex or type of content within which they occurred.