Sigmund Freud and James Putnam: Friendship as a Form of Sublimation

This article focuses on Freud’s lectures at Clark University in 1909 and the correspondence that followed from Freud’s visit to America with the Boston neurologist James Jackson Putnam. Particular emphasis is given to the concept of sublimation, specifically to Putnam’s desire to make sublimation a goal of psychoanalysis and his view that sublimations should reflect the individual’s recognition of the interests of the community or desire for an ideal community. Against Putnam, we endorse Freud’s view that sublimation should not be a goal of psychoanalysis. However, we support Putnam’s emphasis on the social value of sublimations, but in a more limited sense than he proposes in his correspondence with Freud. We suggest that the correspondence between Putnam and Freud reflects the very fact that the lifting of sexual repressions makes possible the development of male friendships. Thus, we view the correspondence between Freud and Putnam as an instance of sublimation, and suggest that the friendship that this correspondence reflected and nurtured is an example of the ideal community to which we humans aspire but which often remains elusive and unrealized.     

Personality Characteristics Associated with Persistent ADHD in Late Adolescence

This study focused on the personality characteristics associated with Attention-deficit/Hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in a longitudinal sample of youth, with a particular focus on differences between those with and without persisting ADHD symptoms. Participants with ADHD (n = 90) were initially evaluated when they were 7–11 years old, and re-assessed at 16–22 years of age. Matched control subjects (n = 80) were recruited at the time of the follow-up evaluation. At follow-up, the Kiddie-SADS-PL, a semi-structured psychiatric interview, and the NEO-PI, a self-report personality inventory, were administered. Data were analyzed using multivariate analyses of variance (MANOVA). Results indicate that childhood ADHD is associated with lower scores on the NEO Conscientiousness subscale in adolescents/young adults—irrespective of the degree of ADHD persistence. In contrast, ratings of Neuroticism and Agreeableness appear to be more closely linked to adolescent status; those with persisting symptoms only exhibited increased Neuroticism and decreased Agreeableness. These results suggest that ADHD, and the degree to which symptoms persist into adolescence, may be closely linked to personality structure.     

The Hospital Room as Uncanny: Psychoanalytic Observations and Recommendations for Pastors and Chaplains

This essay in applied psychoanalysis is written for the field of pastoral psychology, and it also has obvious affinities with the medical humanities. The author uses Freud’s (The uncanny. In J. Strachey (Ed. and Trans.), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 17, pp. 217–256). Vintage, London, 1919/2001) “The Uncanny” to question the concept of homelike hospital rooms. Instead of making patients feel more comfortable, the authors believes that these rooms could, in some cases, actually increase the anxiety of patients. The author uses Helena Michie’s personal story of her experience of touring a birthing suite to support this argument, as well as some poetry by Billy Collins. The author, however, does not stop with identifying a problem, as he also suggests that pastors and chaplains, when they provide care for their patients, should help them identify and use their own transitional and transformational objects. These objects, of course, will be highly idiosyncratic, and it is precisely this kind of attention—attention to the idiosyncrasies of individuals—that pastors and chaplains should be giving to those in their care. While there is a growing literature on D. W. Winnicott, who coined the term “transitional object,” and Christopher Bollas, who gave us the term “transformational object,” in medical and pastoral circles, the author suggests that attention to and the endorsement of the use of transitional and transformational objects should become a part of hospital policy, if only in chaplaincy handbooks, so as to recognize what many individuals are already doing.     

Methuselah and Company: A Case of Male Envy of Female Longevity

The Bible says that Methuselah, a direct descendent of Seth, the third born son of Adam and Eve, lived to the ripe old age of 969 years. On the assumption that this is a gross exaggeration, we asked ourselves why the writer (or writers) of the book of Genesis felt a need to exaggerate his age? On the basis of evidence that women live longer than men because they bear children and engage in maternal activities toward their offspring, we argue that the exaggerated ages of men in the Bible are a case of male envy of women because women have a longer life expectancy than men do. We suggest that this is an issue that is no less relevant to gender relations today. We propose that one way that men may deal with their envy of women is to assume the role of the “good-enough mother,” and that if this does not have the desired results, there is always humor.     

Comparison of measured and estimated cognitive ability in older adolescents with and without ADHD

Premorbid intellectual function estimation is a crucial part of patient evaluation following a traumatic brain injury (TBI), especially in individuals with ADHD who are at higher risk for TBI compared to their non-ADHD peers. This study investigates the value of using regression-based estimates of intelligence for concurrently predicting measured intelligence in a sample of older adolescents with and without a childhood history of ADHD. Correlations between measured and estimated intelligence are highly significant in the full sample and in the individual groups. Adding reading performance to the regression equation increases the accounted-for variance in both groups. Results indicate that regression equations based on demographic characteristics constitute a valid method for estimating premorbid functioning in adolescents with ADHD and that they can play an essential role in the assessment of individuals with ADHD who sustain TBI, especially when measures of word reading are used to augment demographic estimates.     

The discrimination of patient-generated and randomly generated MMPIs

A discriminant analysis was applied to 34 randomly generated and 34 patient-generated Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) profiles. The discriminant was able to differentiate the two sets at greater than 97% accuracy. A cross validation based on derived unstandardized canonical discriminant functions was carried out on an additional 10 random and 10 patient MMPIs. It attained 95% accuracy. Eight experienced clinical psychologists attained less than 70% accuracy--six of the eight did no better than chance. The importance of including actuarial data in validity judgments was discussed.     

The effect of subliminal oedipal and competitive stimulation on dart throwing: another miss

Silverman and his associates have reported that subliminal presentation of oedipally relevant competitive stimuli can modify dart-throwing performance in male subjects. This study replicated their paradigm, but also examined the effects on performance of nonoedipal competitive stimuli. Our results failed to support Silverman's. Both types of subliminally presented competitive stimuli failed to have any systematic effect on dart-throwing performance.     

The Homosexual Tendencies of King James: Should this Matter to Bible Readers Today?

The question whether King James, who commissioned the translation of the Bible into English in 1604, had homosexual tendencies has been under discussion in recent years. We review the arguments presented against this view and conclude that they are largely circular and ad hominem. We then consider the evidence presented by those who argue for this view, including the emotional distance between King James and his wife; his intense affection for three men in the course of his life; contemporary criticism of his public expressions of affection toward two of these men; and contemporary allegations that his reluctance to commit England to war was due to his “effeminate” nature. We discuss his family history and his relationship to one man in particular and conclude that the argument he had homosexual tendencies is compelling. We then take up the associations that his own contemporaries made between homosexual behavior, effeminacy, pacifism, and the scholar, and present our view that in authorizing the translation of the Bible into English, he provided a scholarly model for male cooperation that was inherently superior to the martial model of male enterprise advocated by his opponents. We also suggest that his authorization of a new translation of the Bible was psycho-dynamically related to his loss of his mother in infancy and to his guilt for having failed to come to her aid when she requested his help. Finally, we make a case in behalf of the King James Version of the Bible on the grounds that it functions as a cultural selfobject (Kohut), due mainly to its maternal associations; that King James’s favorite Bible verse was Matthew 5:9—“Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God”; and that James had homosexual tendencies.     

Callous-Unemotional Traits in Individuals Receiving Accommodations in University

Research with antisocial individuals suggests that callous-unemotional (CU) traits, a dimension of psychopathy, consistently predict severe antisocial behaviours and correlate with deficits in recognizing negative emotions, especially fearful facial expressions. However, the generalizability of these findings to non-antisocial populations remains uncertain and largely unexplored. This small, exploratory study aimed to extend this research by measuring CU traits and facial emotion recognition in university students with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), learning disabilities, other psychiatric disorders, and comparison participants with physical/sensory disabilities. As the clinical groups can exhibit deficits in emotion recognition, this study sought to shed light on the candidacy of CU traits as a factor in emotion recognition. Results suggested that individuals in the diagnostic groups possess similar levels of CU traits to the comparison group and that the relationship between CU traits and emotion recognition deficits previously seen in antisocial populations is not present in this sample. Contrary to the hypothesis, those in the diagnostic groups displayed similar levels of accuracy on an emotion recognition task as the comparison group. Recommendations are made for future research to use more specific and representative diagnostic populations to further assess the relationships between CU traits and emotion recognition in non-antisocial populations.