Energy and psychical pain

Several relationships between energy and psychical pain are developed in this paper. These concepts are a-structural and existential in spirit, although developed in the framework of some analytic formulations on personality. A key concept developed is that the nature of psychical pain is determined, in part, by the manner in which the state of psychical energy associated with the pain departs from a given healthy ideal.     

Parents' teaching strategies with their children: The effects of parental and child status variables

The intent of the study was to examine the effects of parental (mother and father) and child (gender and communicative status) status variables on the teaching strategies used by parents in a paper-folding task. The linguistic and nonverbal strategies of 120 parent-child groupings were analyzed during paper-folding tasks. Parents' strategies were coded according cognitive demand and directiveness. Results indicated that strategies varied as a function of children's communicative status. Parents were less directive and more demanding of nonhandicapped children compared to handicapped children. Parents' strategies seemed to be determined by children's ability to sustain discourse. Results are discussed in terms of Vygotsky's notion of the zone of proximal development.This research was partially supported by a grant from the U.S. Office of Education, Office of Special Education (Grant No. G007902000) to I. Sigel and A. McGillicuddy-DeLisi at Educational Testing Service, Princeton, and from the Biomedical Research Support Grant Program, Division of Research Resources, N.I.H. (Grant No. BRSG 507RR07025-17) to the first two authors. We acknowledge the helpful comments of two anonymous reviewers.     

Interventions with care givers of dementia patients: comparison of two approaches

We compared the effect of two approaches, family counseling and support groups, for relieving the stress and burden experienced by care givers of dementia patients. Both treatments are designed to implement features of a stress-management model that have been identified in prior research with this population: providing information about the patient's disease and its effects on behavior, teaching behavioral problem solving for managing difficult behavior, and identifying potential support for care givers. Subjects were primary care givers of dementia patients living in the community; they included husbands, wives, daughters, and other relatives. Although subjects in the treatment groups made significant gains over time, they did not differ from wait-list subjects who showed similar improvements. One-year follow-up interviews indicated that gains made during the treatment period were maintained.     

Automaticity and the capture of attention by a peripheral display change

The proposal that peripheral visual changes (cues) tend to summon attention automatically was tested by studying the effect of peripheral cueing on simple detection latency. Delay between cue onset and target onset, the contingent relationship between cue location and target location, and instructions to subjects were manipulated. Results showed that a peripheral display change could capture attention even when the target was far more likely to appear at an uncued location. When subjects were explicitly informed that targets were likely to appear away from the cued location they were able to suppress this effect, but were unable completely to reverse it by rapidly orienting attention towards the uncued side. Hence the process appears to be automatic in the sense that it occurs unless there are explicit instructions to the contrary. With explicit instructions the processing operation can be suppressed, but not completely reversed. This work was supported by the U.K. Admiralty Research Establishment (Research Agreement No. 53482).     

Performance differences following exposure to predictable and unpredictable noncontingent outcomes in high and low achievers

Two experiments are described in which subjects rated as high or low in achievement motivation were exposed to uncontrollable outcomes on a cognitive task. Effects on subsequent performance on a different cognitive task were shown to depend on level of achievement motivation, on whether the uncontrollable outcomes were predictable or unpredictable, and on whether the uncontrollable outcomes were positive or negative. These findings have important theoretical implications which are discussed.     

Successful psychotherapy

This paper develops an existential explanation for the position that different psychotherapeutic modalities enjoy comparable success rates. The explanation provides necessary and sufficient conditions for a successful outcome, related to the actualization level of both client and therapist, and is shown to imply equal theoretical probability of success across modalities.     

When left hands touch: shadow vows and Jung’s quaternity

Is there a connection between the exchange of vows and the fighting and suffering of couples that are unique to the institution of marriage? This essay introduces the concept of Shadow Vows, the unacknowledged assumptions, agreements, and obligations each partner brings to the relationship, which the authors believe are often responsible for longstanding marital discord and strife. The authors ground the existence of shadow vows in Jung’s quaternity, alchemy, typology, archetypal theory, and depth approaches to couple therapy. The essay concludes with a list of themes indicative of shadow vow enactments in clinical work with couples.     

Time-stamping computer events to report .1-msec accuracy of events in the Micro Experimental Laboratory

A critical problem in most real-time programming tasks is the verification that timing of the presented displays and recorded events occur at the expected times. It is often difficult for psychologists to verify critical timing because of the lack of costly specialized tools and technicians to measure events with millisecond accuracy. Algorithms utilized in a new Time Audit mechanism, added to the Micro Experimental Laboratory, are described. This new mechanism involves the recording and time stamping of all input and output events with 0.1-msec accuracy. This allows the experimenter to determine the initiation, duration, and termination of each event and also makes it possible to relate these events to the synchronization of the screen refresh cycle. A customized user interface provides a time log and event-tracing feature that enables nonprogrammers to determine the duration of command execution to the .1-msec level, allowing rapid, precise assessment of program execution. The resulting time log provides a detailed specification of the experimental events for debugging and a permanent record of the experimental procedure.