The presence of sexuality as Cantus Firmus with Variations

This text is a distillate of many years of activity as a psychoanalyst. The author gives personal reflections on sexuality as it appears in transference and countertransference, in theory and clinically. The phenomena are viewed from the perspective of metaphor, as the author uses, e.g., the music of Franz Schubert as a metaphor for Eros and Thanatos; concepts she sees are metaphors in themselves. The phenomena of ?wild analysis” and guilt are also commented upon.     

Intervening factors in the utilization of social research

In Swedish welfare agencies, it was found that the importance of characteristics of social research for utilization was related to three intervening factors: the context of origin of the research, the functions for the user and the utilization context. These factors seem to explain the difference between competing notions on the importance of scientific sophistication for research utilization. Sune Sunesson is professor and head of the Ph.D. program and the research department of the School of Social Work at Lund University. His main research interests are the sociology of human service organizations and the impact of science on these organizations. Kjell Nilsson, Birgitta Ericson, and Britt-Marie Johansson are Ph.D. candidates in the Department of Sociology of the Lund University.     

PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGICAL REACTIONS TO CIGARETTE SMOKING

Dosage and time effects of cigarette smoking were studied in nine moderate smokers, who participated in a control condition without smoking, and in two experimental conditions, in which they smoked either two weak or two strong cigarettes (nicotine content 1.3 mg/cig. and 2.3 mg/cig., respectively) at the beginning of a 90-min period. The main effects of smoking were to increase adrenaline output, blood pressure, and heart rate, and to decrease skin temperature and hand steadiness, the changes being consistently more pronounced after the larger dose. Peak effects were recorded at the first trial after smoking, whereupon followed a gradual return toward baseline levels which, however, were not reached within the 90-min period.     

ON HOMOGENEITY OF STATES AND TRANSFER IN LEARNING TO CATEGORIZE

Two groups of subjects (A and B) were first trained on samples of states with different homogeneity and then tested on common samples. It was found that B learned faster with the more homogeneous samples of items. This group also performed better in terms of transfer. Both groups did better than the control group (C) on the test series. A fourth group (D) had items which, according to Weber's law, would appear less similar than those of the control group. As was to be expected, C performed better than D. The outcome may be interpreted in terms of categorization. When states leading to the same event become more homogeneous, categorization of the input information is easier, and both learning and transfer facilitated.     

Regional cerebral blood flow and verbal memory after chronic exposure to organic solvents

Regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF; 133Xe-inhalation method) was investigated in 32 industrial workers (age: 51 +/- 9 years) who had been exposed to organic solvents during an average of 24.5 years. The measurements were made at rest and during learning of associated word pairs. The resting flow level was 17% lower than expected for normal subjects of similar age and the activation-induced changes of rCBF during the test lacked the frontal activation normally seen. Significant correlations between age, length of exposure, and rCBF level were found. In order to control for the age factor, results were also calculated from two subgroups of similar age but with very different levels of exposure (13 and 31 years of average exposure). The two groups differed only slightly in resting rCBF. A marked difference was, however, seen during activation, with significant post-central flow increases recorded in the lower-exposed group only. The results indicate the potential of the rCBF method for elucidating functional cortical changes related to neurotoxic effects of organic solvents.     

Latent Semantic Analysis Discriminates Children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) from Children with Typical Language Development

Journal of Psycholinguistic Research - Computer based analyses offer a possibility for objective methods to assess semantic-linguistic quality of narratives at the text level. The aim of the...     

Spiritual care in the last phase of life: a comparison between the Church of Sweden and the Church of Finland

This article deals with the Church of Sweden and the Church of Finland and their spiritual support for parishioners during their end-of-life phase. Support for the dying seemed uncommon in both countries, while most parishes offered support for the bereaved. The Finnish respondents expressed more confidence in their spiritual role than did the Swedes. This may have to do with the role of the churches in their respective countries and the varying geographies of death.     

Illusory form with inducers of opposite contrast polarity: Evidence for multistage integration

The perception of brightness differences in Ehrenstein figures and of illusory contours in phaseshifted line gratings was investigated as a function of the contrast polarity of the inducing elements. We presented either continuous lines or line-like arrangements composed of aligned dashes or dots whose spacing was varied. Ayes/no procedure was used in which naive observers had to decide whether or not they perceived a brightness difference in a given Ehrenstein figure or an illusory contour in a phase-shifted line grating. The results show that brightness differences are perceived to some extent in Ehrenstein figures with inducers of opposite polarity of contrast; however, the percentage ofyes responses was systematically lower and response times were longer than for figures with inducers of the same polarity. Phase-shifted line gratings with lines of opposite polarity of contrast yielded stronger illusory contours and shorter response times than those with lines of the same polarity. When the sign of contrast was not the same within a given line of induction, neither differences in brightness nor illusory contours were perceived. The results suggest that the mechanisms that lead to apparent differences in brightness are more sensitive to input of the same contrast polarity, the mechanisms generating illusory contours more sensitive to input of opposite polarity. The data are discussed in the light of a multistage approach to illusory form perception and some implications for cortical models of illusory contour integration are discussed.