Panel: What could be Jungian about Human Rights work?

The question of whether Jungian analysts should move beyond the consulting room to engage with mental health issues that pertain to the collective is the focus of this paper. Two narratives are presented: one from the view point of a psychiatrist in Occupied Palestine, the other from the conflicted situation which faces an Israeli analyst. Despite the strong ambivalence that is experienced on both sides, there is a willingness to meet and to take a standpoint without necessarily coming to a resolution. A third position is offered by describing experiences from the South African perspective. The African notion of Ubuntu is offered as a moral entry point that states that community goes beyond one's own; from this point of view, Jungian analysts can do no other than to act.     

Modelling relations between sensory processing, speech perception, orthographic and phonological ability, and literacy achievement

The general magnocellular theory postulates that dyslexia is the consequence of a multimodal deficit in the processing of transient and dynamic stimuli. In the auditory modality, this deficit has been hypothesized to interfere with accurate speech perception, and subsequently disrupt the development of phonological and later reading and spelling skills. In the visual modality, an analogous problem might interfere with literacy development by affecting orthographic skills. In this prospective longitudinal study, we tested dynamic auditory and visual processing, speech-in-noise perception, phonological ability and orthographic ability in 62 five-year-old preschool children. Predictive relations towards first grade reading and spelling measures were explored and the validity of the global magnocellular model was evaluated using causal path analysis. In particular, we demonstrated that dynamic auditory processing was related to speech perception, which itself was related to phonological awareness. Similarly, dynamic visual processing was related to orthographic ability. Subsequently, phonological awareness, orthographic ability and verbal short-term memory were unique predictors of reading and spelling development.     

Keep an eye on your hands: on the role of visual mechanisms in processing of haptic space

The present paper reviews research on a haptic orientation processing. Central is a task in which a test bar has to be set parallel to a reference bar at another location. Introducing a delay between inspecting the reference bar and setting the test bar leads to a surprising improvement. Moreover, offering visual background information also elevates performance. Interestingly, (congenitally) blind individuals do not or to a weaker extent show the improvement with time, while in parallel to this, they appear to benefit less from spatial imagery processing. Together this strongly points to an important role for visual processing mechanisms in the perception of haptic inputs.     

Look what I have felt: unidentified haptic line drawings are identified after sketching

This study examined the influences of semantic characteristics of objects in real-world scenes on allocation of attention as reflected in eye movement measures. Stimuli consisted of full-color photographic scenes, and within each scene, the semantic salience of two target objects was manipulated while the objects' perceptual salience was kept constant. One of the target objects was either inconsistent or consistent with the scene category. In addition, the second target object was either smoking-related or neutral. Two groups of college students, namely current cigarette smokers (N=18) and non-smokers (N=19), viewed each scene for 10s while their eye movements were recorded. While both groups showed preferential allocation of attention to inconsistent objects, smokers also selectively attended to smoking-related objects. Theoretical implications of the results are discussed.     

The smell of cooperativeness: Do human body odours advertise cooperative behaviours?

Several physical features influence the perception of how cooperative a potential partner is. While previous work focused on face and voice, it remains unknown whether body odours influence judgements of cooperativeness and if odour-based judgements are accurate. Here, we first collected axillary odours of cooperative and uncooperative male donors through a public good game and used them as olfactory stimuli in a series of tasks examining whether and how they influence cooperative decision-making in an incentivized economic game and ratings of cooperativeness. Our results show that having access to the donor's body odours provided a strategic advantage to women during economic decisions (but not to men): with age, women were more likely to cooperate with cooperative men and to avoid interacting with uncooperative men. Ratings of cooperativeness were nonetheless unrelated to the donors’ actual cooperativeness. Finally, while men with masculine and intense body odours were judged less cooperative, we found no evidence that donors’ actual cooperativeness was associated with less masculine or less intense body odour. Overall, our findings suggest that, as faces and voices, body odours influence perceived cooperativeness and might be used accurately and in a non-aware manner as olfactory cues of cooperativeness, at least by women.     

Shape from shading from images rendered with various surface types and light fields

Shape constancy is referred to as the tendency for the perceived shape of an object to remain unchanged even under changed viewing and illumination conditions. We investigated, in two experiments, whether shape constancy would hold for images of 3-D solid objects defined by shading only, whose renderings differed in terms of surface material type (bi-directional reflectance distribution functions), light field, light direction, shape, and specularity. Observers were presented with the image of a sphere or an ellipsoid and required to set perceived orientation and cross-section profile on designated points of the image. Results showed that shape judgments varied with all the aforementioned variables except specularity. Shape estimates were more precise with specular than asperity scattering surfaces, collimated than hemispherical diffuse lighting conditions, lower than higher elevations, spherical than ellipsoidal shapes, but not different between surfaces having differing specularity. These results suggest that shape judgments are made largely on the basis of the overall intensity distribution of shading, and that the portions of intensity distribution that are due to nonstructural variables such as surface material type or light field are not excluded in the process of shape estimation, as if being due to structural components. It is concluded that little constancy is expected in the perception of shape from shading.     

Effects of context on a visual 3-D pointing task

We examined the effects of egocentric and contextual references on a 3-D exocentric pointing task. Large systematic deviations were found for the slant (angle in the horizontal plane). For most observers, the deviations were smaller when the veridical pointing direction was parallel to a wall. For some observers the size of the deviations was also dependent on whether the veridical pointing direction was frontoparallel or not. For the tilt (angle in the vertical plane), the deviations were smaller and less systematic. Hence, although observers show comparable systematic deviations, the way in which the presence of structure in an environment is used for judging positions of objects is observer-dependent.     

The visual light field

Human observers are sensitive to the '(physical) light field' in the sense that they have expectations of how a given object would appear if it were introduced in the scene in front of them at some arbitrary location. Thus the 'visual light field' is defined even in the 'empty space' between objects. In that sense the light field is akin to visual space considered as a 'container'. The visual light field at any given point can be measured in psychophysical experiments through the introduction of a suitable 'gauge object' at that position and letting the observer adjust the appearance of that gauge object (eg through suitable computer rendering) so as to produce a 'visual fit' into the scene. The parameters of the rendering will then be considered as the measurement result. We introduced white spheres as gauge objects at various locations in stereoscopically presented photographic scenes. We measured the direction ('direction of the light'), diffuseness ('quality of the light' as used by photographers and interior decorators), and intensity of the light field. We used three very different scenes, with very different physical light fields. The images were geometrically and photometrically calibrated, so we were in a position to correlate the observations with the physical 'ground truth'. We report that human observers are quite sensitive to various parameters of the physical light field and generally arrive at close to veridical settings, although a number of comparatively minor systematic deviations from veridicality can be noted. We conclude that the visual light field is an entity whose existence is at least as well defined as that of visual space, despite the fact that the visual light field hardly appears as prominently in vision science as it does in the visual arts.     

Comparison of treatment seeking compulsive buyers in Germany and the United States

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this pilot study was to compare a German (Bavaria) and an American (North Dakota) sample of women suffering from compulsive buying. METHOD: Thirty-eight German and 39 American female compulsive buyers were screened with the Compulsive Buying Scale (CBS), and the Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale-Shopping Version (Y-BOCS-SV) prior to entering a group treatment study. Psychiatric co-morbidity was assessed with the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis I disorders (SCID). RESULTS: There were no statistically significant differences between the German sample and the American sample with regard to age (mean 43.7 and 45 years, respectively), and with regard to the scores on the CBS and the Y-BOCS-SV. A high lifetime co-morbidity rate with Axis I disorders, especially mood disorders, anxiety disorders, substance use disorders, OCD, and binge eating disorder was detected in both samples. Almost all participants met criteria for at least one lifetime Axis I disorder. However, German compulsive buyers showed significantly higher current prevalence rates of any affective disorder, and higher current and lifetime prevalence rates of any anxiety disorder and somatoform disorder. In addition, German compulsive buyers were significantly more likely to have more than one Axis I disorder. CONCLUSION: The groups did not differ with regard to age and with regard to the severity of compulsive buying and showed a high co-morbidity with Axis I disorders. However, the German compulsive buying sample presented with significantly more psychiatric co-morbidity compared to the American sample. Further research is needed to provide a better understanding of this disorder in general and cross-culturally.     

Psychotherapeutenausbildung aus Sicht der Absolventen

Background

A survey was performed to assess the current situation in education and to identify critical issues 10 years after the inception of the psychotherapy act in Germany.

Methods

In August 2008 all non-medical psychotherapists who had graduated since 2002 according the psychotherapy act were invited to take part in the survey and a total of 863 persons participated. The answers from 666 could be evaluated corresponding to a participation rate of 20%.

Results

A total of 57.6% of the graduates had completed a full-time training and approximately 50% of the graduates had completed the training within the allotted time. In the majority of cases evaluation occurred only for the theoretical courses. During the practical work (PT I) 36.8% of the graduates did not receive any salary or remuneration, 82% had their own field of activity and of these 38% treated patients without the presence of qualified tutor.

Conclusions

The training often lasts longer than intended, the financial situation in the PT I is exceptionally critical and in clear contrast to the field of activity in this section of training. Further detailed results will be presented and discussed.