Case consultation: Mary Catherine.

A case of the attempted suicide of a 66-year-old female is presented. Comment based on the chapters in this volume is presented. Specific topics of demographics, psychiatric-psychological, object relations, the attempt, and concluding comments provide an idiographic illustration of suicidal behavior in an older adult.     

Female CGG knock-in mice modeling the fragile X premutation are impaired on a skilled forelimb reaching task

The fragile X premutation is a tandem CGG trinucleotide repeat expansion in the fragile X mental retardation 1 (FMR1) gene between 55 and 200 repeats in length. A CGG knock-in (CGG KI) mouse has been developed that models the neuropathology and cognitive deficits reported in fragile X premutation carriers. Previous studies have demonstrated that CGG KI mice have spatiotemporal information processing deficits and impaired visuomotor function that worsen with increasing CGG repeat length. Since skilled forelimb reaching requires integration of information from the visual and motor systems, skilled reaching performance could identify potential visuomotor dysfunction in CGG KI mice. To characterize motor deficits associated with the fragile X premutation, 6 month old female CGG KI mice heterozygous for trinucleotide repeats ranging from 70-200 CGG in length were tested for their ability to learn a skilled forelimb reaching task. The results demonstrate that female CGG KI mice show deficits for learning a skilled forelimb reaching task compared to wildtype littermates, and that these deficits worsen with increasing CGG repeat lengths.     

Secondary psychopathy,but not primary psychopathy,is associated with risky decision-making in noninstitutionalized young adults

Although risky decision-making has been posited to contribute to the maladaptive behavior of individuals with psychopathic tendencies, the performance of psychopathic groups on a common task of risky decision-making, the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT; Bechara, Damasio, Damasio, & Anderson, 1994), has been equivocal. Different aspects of psychopathy (personality traits, antisocial deviance) and/or moderating variables may help to explain these inconsistent findings. In a sample of college students (N = 129, age 18–27), we examined the relationship between primary and secondary psychopathic features and IGT performance. A measure of impulsivity was included to investigate its potential as a moderator. In a joint model including main effects and interactions between primary psychopathy, secondary psychopathy and impulsivity, only secondary psychopathy was significantly related to risky IGT performance, and this effect was not moderated by the other variables. This finding supports the growing literature suggesting that secondary psychopathy is a better predictor of decision-making problems than the primary psychopathic personality traits of lack of empathy and remorselessness.     

Disordered Eating in Women's Gymnastics: Perspectives of Athletes,Coaches, Parents,and Judges

This study examined the knowledge base and perspectives of current and retired gymnasts, parents, coaches and judges with respect to disordered eating in gymnasts. Surveys were designed for this study and included open-ended questions, Likert scales, and checklists. The results indicated that various discrepancies existed between the groups' reports. For example, the retired gymnasts reported more eating disorders and negative views of their experiences than did the current gymnasts. The coaches attributed the use of unhealthy weight control practices to other coaches but not to themselves. Gymnasts who received disparaging comments about their bodies or instructions to lose weight had significantly more disordered eating patterns than those who had not received such comments. The importance of one's social environment on eating and weight control practices is emphasized. Every group recommended further education about nutrition, adolescent development, body image, and psychological well-being. Limitations and future recommendations are addressed.     

A Plea for a Measure of Cautious Optimism: Reply to Book Reviews

The author responds to four reviews of his book Impossible Training. He describes how the book came into being, discusses his attitude to the Freud—Ferenczi and Klein—Winnicott debates, and raises the dangers of rigid views as to what is truly psychoanalytic and what is truly relational. The global scene of psychoanalytic training today is discussed. It is suggested that critiques do have an impact on psychoanalytic education and that in spite of its flaws and inner contradictions, this education raised generations of sophisticated thinkers and sensitive clinicians.     

Something there is that doesn't love a wall

The history of the stormy love affair between psychoanalysts and literature is explored, with an emphasis on their basic affinity and on the animosity created by analysts’ reductionistic tendencies. Past studies of the dynamics of Robert Frost's emotional world and poetry are reviewed in this context. Ogden's sensitive reading of Frost's poems is portrayed as an example of the potentially mutual egalitarian encounter allowed by newer trends in psychoanalytic theory.     

Differentiation of Personality Types Among Opiate Addicts

A wide range of studies indicate that although sociopathic characteristics are predominant in opiate addiction, depressive and psychotic features are also frequently observed. To test the hypothesis that there are really three types of individuals who become addicted to opiates (rather than a single, predominant personality style), fifty-three opiate addicts were given the Loevinger Sentence Completion Test, the Bellak Ego Functions interview, and the Rorschach. Variables derived from these three procedures were submitted to cluster and discriminant function analyses. Three groups of addicts were identified-those primarily with impaired interpersonal relationships and affective lability (42%), those primarily characterized by thought disorder and impaired ego functioning (30%), and a group with diminished ideational and verbal activity (28%). Comparison of the assessment of these three groups with independently defined normal, neurotic, and schizophrenic samples provided support for three opiate-addicted personality types, each respectively characterized as character disordered, borderline psychotic, arid depressed. Although there seems to be a predominance of character-disordered individuals who become addicted to opiates, the data indicate several additional types of opiate addicts with different types of psychopathology who may require different approaches to management and treatment.     

Introduction to Group-Analytic Psychotherapy by S. H. Foulkes

This article will explore special leader issues that emerge in psychodynamically oriented therapy groups with adult children of alcoholics. Particular focus will be on countertransference feelings that get stirred up in group leaders and techniques for dealing with some of these special dilemmas. Specific issues include (a) assumption of sameness between the therapist and the patient (the therapist assuming that he or she “understands” because of having also grown up in an alcoholic family); (b) the “will to restore,” which may be destructive when the therapist, whose own self-esteem is dependent on the patient's progress in therapy, forces a “rush to recovery” on the patient; (c) other personal issues in the life of the therapist that may also resonate with experiences of the patient; (d) “countertransference goodness and availability” as it affects therapists' abilities to set reasonable limits on their patients, as well as reasonable expectations for themselves; and (e) special issues regarding therapist transparency and self-disclosure.     

Escaping the recent past: Which stimulus dimensions influence proactive interference?

Proactive interference occurs when information from the past disrupts current processing and is a major source of confusion and errors in short-term memory (STM; Wickens, Born, & Allen, Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 2:440–445, 1963). The present investigation examines potential boundary conditions for interference, testing the hypothesis that potential competitors must be similar along task-relevant dimensions to influence proactive interference effects. We manipulated both the type of task being completed (Experiments 1, 2, and 3) and dimensions of similarity irrelevant to the current task (Experiments 4 and 5) to determine how the recent presentation of a probe item would affect the speed with which participants could reject that item. Experiments 1, 2, and 3 contrasted STM judgments, which require temporal information, with semantic and perceptual judgments, for which temporal information is irrelevant. In Experiments 4 and 5, task-irrelevant information (perceptual similarity) was manipulated within the recent probes task. We found that interference from past items affected STM task performance but did not affect performance in semantic or perceptual judgment tasks. Conversely, similarity along a nominally irrelevant perceptual dimension did not affect the magnitude of interference in STM tasks. Results are consistent with the view that items in STM are represented by noisy codes consisting of multiple dimensions and that interference occurs when items are similar to each other and, thus, compete along the dimensions relevant to target selection.