Resolving the trauma organized system of sexual abuse by confronting the abuser: A focal family therapy approach with a woman who was a childhood victim of sexual abuse

The longer-term emotional and interpersonal effects of sexual abuse in childhood are reviewed and approaches to treatment discussed. The notion of a 'trauma organized system' to account for the long-standing effects of abuse is described. A major potential issue in creating therapeutic change is confronting the abuser, and a case is described where a woman brought her family for therapy when it was feared that the father, who had abused her in childhood, might abuse his grandchildren. A focal family therapy approach was used: this takes into account the traumatic nature of abusive events and their long-term organizing effects on individual and family functioning. The process of therapeutic work is described, including the resolution of traumatic effects by confronting the abusive act.     

Long term course of chronic posttraumatic stress disorder in traffic accident victims: a three-year prospective follow-up study

The purpose of the present study was to gather prospective longitudinal data on the long-term course and outcome of chronic posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The target population for this study was 74 injured traffic accident victims who had been previously followed-up for one year after the trauma. Nineteen of the original 24 PTSD subjects (79%) and 39 of the original 50 Non-PTSD subjects (78%) were available for this study, which took place during the fourth year after the accident. Our results show that 10 (53%) of the 19 patients with PTSD at one-year still suffered from PTSD after another two-year follow-up interval, while 9 recovered from PTSD during this follow-up period. Only 2 of the 39 without PTSD at one year developed delayed onset PTSD. The best predictor of recovery from chronic PTSD was the initial level of posttraumatic reaction immediately after the accident. These results demonstrate that spontaneous recovery from PTSD can occur even among patients who are currently considered chronic. Severity of initial reaction to the trauma appears to be a major risk factor for non-remitting chronic PTSD.     

The associations between insecure attachment,rooming‐in,and postpartum depression: A 2 months’ longitudinal study

Postpartum depression (PPD) is the most common complication of childbearing, and recent studies have attempted to examine risk factors associated with it. The main study hypothesis was that a protective situational factor at a sensitive time period (full rooming‐in postpartum) would moderate the associations between insecure attachment dimensions and PPD. Three hundred twelve women, in either full or partial rooming‐in, participated in a longitudinal study at the maternity ward of a tertiary healthcare center. A Demographic questionnaire and the Experiences in Close Relationships Scale were administered at 1–4 days postpartum, and the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression scale at 2 months postpartum. PPD was significantly associated with both anxious and avoidant attachment dimensions, but not with rooming‐in conditions. In addition, women in partial rooming‐in showed a positive correlation between insecure attachment dimensions and PPD, whereas no such correlation was found for full rooming‐in women. A situational factor such as full rooming‐in, which occurs at a critical time point for the mother–infant relationship, can moderate the association between maternal avoidant or anxious attachment dimensions and the mother's PPD levels. Postpartum practices, such as rooming‐in, can be personalized and thus beneficial in moderating personal risk factors for PPD.     

Maximal and Premaximal Paraconsistency in the Framework of Three-Valued Semantics

Maximality is a desirable property of paraconsistent logics, motivated by the aspiration to tolerate inconsistencies, but at the same time retain from classical logic as much as possible. In this paper we introduce the strongest possible notion of maximal paraconsistency, and investigate it in the context of logics that are based on deterministic or non-deterministic three-valued matrices. We show that all reasonable paraconsistent logics based on three-valued deterministic matrices are maximal in our strong sense. This applies to practically all three-valued paraconsistent logics that have been considered in the literature, including a large family of logics which were developed by da Costa’s school. Then we show that in contrast, paraconsistent logics based on three-valued properly nondeterministic matrices are not maximal, except for a few special cases (which are fully characterized). However, these non-deterministic matrices are useful for representing in a clear and concise way the vast variety of the (deterministic) three-valued maximally paraconsistent matrices. The corresponding weaker notion of maximality, called premaximal paraconsistency, captures the “core” of maximal paraconsistency of all possible paraconsistent determinizations of a non-deterministic matrix, thus representing what is really essential for their maximal paraconsistency.     

Cut-Elimination and Quantification in Canonical Systems

Canonical Propositional Gentzen-type systems are systems which in addition to the standard axioms and structural rules have only pure logical rules with the sub-formula property, in which exactly one occurrence of a connective is introduced in the conclusion, and no other occurrence of any connective is mentioned anywhere else. In this paper we considerably generalize the notion of a “canonical system” to first-order languages and beyond. We extend the Propositional coherence criterion for the non-triviality of such systems to rules with unary quantifiers and show that it remains constructive. Then we provide semantics for such canonical systems using 2-valued non-deterministic matrices extended to languages with quantifiers, and prove that the following properties are equivalent for a canonical system G: (1) G admits Cut-Elimination, (2) G is coherent, and (3) G has a characteristic 2-valued non-deterministic matrix.