On presence in the psychoanalytic relation

This paper discusses presence in the psychoanalytic relation, the analysand’s and the analyst’s. Clinical situations with different qualities of presence will be considered focusing on what kind of interplay between analysand and analyst they may lead to. As examples, I have chosen three different clinical situations: In the first there is an interplay between the analysand’s free associations and the analyst’s ‘evenly suspended attention’. In connection with this I will discuss Bion’s concepts of ‘reverie’ and of ‘O’. In the second there is where the interaction is characterised by what Meltzer calls ‘geographical confusion’. In the third there is a ‘transference delusion’ in the psychoanalysis of breakdown as Winnicott describes it.     

Daily Work Stress and Relationship Satisfaction: Detachment Affects Romantic Couples’ Interactions Quality

Psychologically detaching from work in the private setting is crucial to recover from work stress and promotes well-being. Moreover, broad evidence documents negative effects of stress on relationship quality. However, the interpersonal consequences of detachment have barely been studied. We seek to investigate, in daily life, whether and how detachment affects the interaction quality with the romantic partner. We propose that stress impedes detaching from work, and that detachment in turn, promotes individuals’ ability to engage in positive interactions at home, which increases individual and relational well-being. In a first experience sampling study, involving 106 dual-earner couples with young children, detachment mediated the association between work stress and not only the stressed individual’s, but also their partner’s relationship quality. However, positive (affectionate) behaviors did not play a significant role in this process. In a second experience sampling study, involving 53 dual-earner couples with preschool children, detachment was associated with more affectionate interactions, which in turn, predicted lower actor, but not partner evening strain. These results suggest that detachment from work not only affects the working individual’s, but also their close partner’s the perception of their interactions, showing that detachment plays an important mediating role in the stress spillover and crossover process. This emphasizes the relevance of addressing interpersonal processes in the association between detachment and well-being.     

Opening closed minds: the combined effects of intergroup contact and need for closure on prejudice

Five studies tested whether need for closure (NFC) moderates the relation between intergroup contact and prejudice toward immigrants. The results consistently showed that intergroup contact was more strongly associated with reduced levels of prejudice among people high in NFC compared to people low in NFC. Studies 1 (N = 138 students) and 2 (N = 294 adults) demonstrated this moderator effect on subtle, modern, and blatant racism. Study 2 also replicated the moderator effect for extended contact. An experimental field study (Study 3; N = 60 students) provided evidence of the causal direction of the moderator effect. Finally, Studies 4 (N = 125 students) and 5 (N = 135 adults) identified intergroup anxiety as the mediator through which the moderator effect influences modern and blatant racism as well as hostile tendencies toward immigrants. The role of motivated cognition in the relation between intergroup contact and prejudice is discussed.     

A biologically based model for recognition of 2-D occluded patterns

In this work, we present a biologically inspired model for recognition of occluded patterns. The general architecture of the model is based on the two visual information processing pathways of the human visual system, i.e. the ventral and the dorsal pathways. The proposed hierarchically structured model consists of three parallel processing channels. The main channel learns invariant representations of the input patterns and is responsible for pattern recognition task. But, it is limited to process one pattern at a time. The direct channel represents the biologically based direct connection from the lower to the higher processing level in the human visual cortex. It computes rapid top-down pattern-specific cues to modulate processing in the other two channels. The spatial channel mimics the dorsal pathway of the visual cortex. It generates a combined saliency map of the input patterns and, later, segments the part of the map representing the occluded pattern. This segmentation process is based on our hypothesis that the dorsal pathway, in addition to encoding spatial properties, encodes the shape representations of the patterns as well. The lateral interaction between the main and the spatial channels at appropriate processing levels and top-down, pattern-specific modulation of the these two channels by the direct channel strengthen the locations and features representing the occluded pattern. Consequently, occluded patterns become focus of attention in the ventral channel and also the pattern selected for further processing along this channel for final recognition.     

“Food for Memory”: Pictorial Food-Related Memory Bias and the Role of Thought Suppression in High and Low Restrained Eaters

The Psychological Record - Building on cognitive theory, the present study is the first to test whether high restrained eaters show an immediate and delayed memory bias for pictorial food cues and...     

Positive Effects of Imagery on Police Officers' Shooting Performance under Threat

We investigated the effects of imagery on police officers' shooting performance under threat. To this end, 66 officers executed a realistic shooting exercise against an opponent that initially did not shoot back with painful coloured‐soap cartridges (low‐threat condition) followed by a condition in which he did [high‐threat (HT) condition]. In between conditions, participants performed an imagery intervention: one group imagined ‘successful shot execution’ and one imagined ‘successful shot execution under threat, including the accompanying emotions’; a control group received no imagery intervention. Although for the control group shot accuracy was significantly lower in the HT condition than under low‐threat conditions, both imagery groups were able to maintain their shot accuracy in the HT condition, despite increased levels of anxiety. It is concluded that focusing on successful shot execution is pivotal, whereas adding emotional statements does not seem to have an additional positive effect. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Was sagen „objektive“ Messverfahren über Sexualstraftäter?

A great deal of effort has been made to use so-called objective measurements in men convicted of child sexual abuse in recent years. The aim of using these procedures is to measure sexual preference for children more effectively while being less vulnerable for deception and to add information to subjective reports. In this paper it was investigated why research activities in this area have increased and what so-called “objective” measurements can reveal about sexual offenders. This article will discuss possible pros and cons of the use of such procedures for forensic court reports or in the context of therapy in a forensic setting.     

Application of the Copenhagen Soccer Test in high-level women players – locomotor activities,physiological response and sprint performance

We evaluated the physiological response, sprint performance and technical ability in various phases of the Copenhagen Soccer Test for Women (CSTw) and investigated whether the locomotor activities of the CSTw were comparable to competitive match-play (CM). Physiological measurements and physical/technical assessments were performed during CSTw for eleven Norwegian high-level women soccer players. The activity pattern during CSTw and CM was monitored using the ZXY tracking system. No differences were observed between CSTw and CM with regards to total distance covered (10093 ± 94 and 9674 ± 191 m), high intensity running (1278 ± 67 and 1193 ± 115 m) or sprinting (422 ± 55 and 372 ± 46 m) (p > .05). During CSTw, average HR was 85 ± 2%HRmax with 35 ± 2% playing time >90%HRmax. Blood lactate increased (p < .05) from 1.4 ± 0.3 mM at rest to an average of 4.7 ± 0.5 mM during CSTw, with no changes during the test. Blood glucose was 5.4 ± 0.3 mM at rest and remained unaltered during CSTw. Sprint performance (2 × 20 m) decreased (p < .05) by 3% during CSTw (8.19 ± 0.06–8.47 ± 0.10 s). In conclusion, the locomotor activities during CSTw were comparable to that of high-level competitive match-play. The physiological demands of the CSTw were high, with no changes in heart rate, blood lactate or technical performance during the test, but a lowered sprint performance towards the end of the test.     

Freedom,emotion, and self‐subsistence

A set of basic static predicates, ‘in itself, ‘existing through itself, ‘free’, and others are taken to be (at least) extensionally equivalent, and some consequences are drawn in Parts A and ? of the paper. Part C introduces adequate causation and adequate conceiving as extensionally equivalent. The dynamism or activism of Spinoza is reflected in the reconstruction by equating action with causing, passion (passive emotion) with being caused. The relation between conceiving (understanding) and causing is narrowed down by introducing grasping (λαμβ?νω) as a basic epistemological term. Part D, ‘The road to freedom through active emotion’, introduces a system of grading with respect to the distinctions introduced in the foregoing, including ‘being in itself, ‘freedom’, etc. Active emotions are seen to represent transitions to a higher degree of freedom, the stronger and more active ones being the more conducive to rapid increase in degree of freedom. Elementary parts of the calculus of predicates are used in order to facilitate the survey of conceptual relations and to prove some theorems.