Action knowledge,acknowledgment, and interpretive action in work with Holocaust survivors

Survivors withhold disclosure of suffering when their terror is unwitnessed and when their expectation of disbelief or disregard obfuscates the reality of persecution. Knowledge itself then becomes traumatized, losing the power to inform and mobilize action. Survivors become habituated to suffering in a manner that subverts meaning, dampens vitality as well as pain, and arrests empathic connectedness. The dearth of transferential cues in such depleted existences leaves analysts in doubt as to whether they have been unintrusive or unavailable to these patients. Restoring survivors' sense of being witnessed requires interpretive actions that acknowledge the suffering that survivors have lost the will and means to make known or even represent. Such interventions draw on analysts' own projective identifications and use of the self, counterposing the will to live against the resignation to unwitnessed terror.     

Remote Odor Memory in Alzheimer's Disease: Deficits as Measured by Familiarity

Deficit in olfaction and remote nonolfactory memory in Alzheimer's disease (AD) motivated the present study of remote memory for odors and faces, operationally defined as rated familiarity, in patients with AD and controls. Uncommon engineering symbols were rated for familiarity to ensure task comprehension. Results showed that patients with AD rate odors, but not faces, as significantly less familiar than do controls, which is indicative of deficit in remote odor memory. Follow-up testing 1 year later again showed this result. Poor odor-detection sensitivity in patients, with AD, but lack of significant correspondence between sensitivity and familiarity, suggests an existing but limited effect of sensitivity on familiarity. The findings provide further evidence that olfaction may be a useful modality for early identification of AD.     

The impact of an emotional self-management skills course on psychosocial functioning and autonomic recovery to stress in middle school children

Unmanaged emotional reactions to stress not only lead to behavior problems in young people but also create physiological conditions that inhibit learning and potentially increase the risk of disease later in life. For these reasons, the integration of emotional self-management skills training programs has become an increased priority in some schools. In this study, middle school students enrolled in a course in emotional competence skills learned techniques designed to intercept stressful responses during emotionally challenging situations. Behavioral outcomes were assessed using the Achievement Inventory Measure and autonomic function was measured by heart rate variability (HRV) analysis during and after a stressful interview. Following the program, students exhibited significant improvements in areas including stress and anger management, risky behavior, work management and focus, and relationships with family, peers and teachers. These improvements were sustained over the following six months. Students using the skills taught in the course to recover from acute emotional stress were also able to positively modulate their physiological stress responses. As compared to a control group, trained students demonstrated significantly increased HRV and more rhythmic, sine wave-like heart rhythm patterns during recovery. This response pattern reflects increased parasympathetic activity, heart rhythm coherence, and entrainment of other biological oscillatory systems to the primary heart rhythm frequency. Increased physiological coherence is associated with improved cognitive performance, emotional balance, mental clarity and health outcomes. These physiological shifts could promote the sustained psychological and behavioral improvements associated with the use of emotional management skills. It is suggested that learning emotional competence skills in childhood establishes healthier physiological response patterns which can benefit learning and long-term health. Results provide support for the integration in school curricula of courses designed to teach effective self-management skills to children.     

The Effect of Mood and Social Outlook on Hypothetical Juridic Decisions1

Data are reported for a laboratory experiment which examines both the impact of information about remote social events on judgments of defendants' guilt or innocence in two court cases and the roles of cognitive and affective elements in mediating these judgments. Subjects were exposed to one of four pretested news bulletins which covaried cognitive factors (positive or negative social information) and affective ones (positive or negative mood stimuli). In accord with previous findings, the results indicate that social information and the changes in social outlook that it caused were of primary importance in altering subjects' judgments about defendants. Subjects who heard positive social information in radio newscasts were more lenient in their judgments of defendants than were those who heard negative social information. Additional findings pertaining to the mediators of this effect suggest that positive mood amplified the impact of social information whatever its direction, while negative mood attenuated it.     

Family therapy approach to incapacitating migraine

A nine-year-old boy who suffered from intractable migraine was referred for psychiatric consultation and treatment after failing to respond to congeries of medications and diets, notwithstanding thorough investigations by neurologists, pediatricians, and other specialists. The decision for a family systems treatment approach resulted in the following defined objectives: (1) to investigate triggers for the headaches and to see if these could be reduced and/or eliminated, (2) to see if therapy would help the boy stay in school, (3) to examine, and if possible, change family rules of interaction and transaction, (4) to allow for more fun within the family (5) to allow for ventilation without retribution, and (6) to clarify the mother's role as a significant contributor to the family's interactions, shifting the focus from the father as the sole generator of family tension. The principal therapeutic tools which proved efficacious involved the following: (1) scrutiny of the maternal and paternal histories, and (2) analysis of triangulations within the family system, leading to (3) the formulation of therapeutic strategies, and (4) specific task assignments. A major intervention by the therapist was the specific strategy to have the family examine the rules of transaction which were in the metapsychological sense unarticulated.     

The mind‐body relationship in Pāli Buddhism: A philosophical investigation

The Suttas indicate physical conditions for success in meditation, and also acceptance of a not‐Self life‐principle (primarily viññana) which is (usually) dependent on the mortal physical body. In the Abhidhamma and commentaries, the physical acts on the mental through the senses and through the ‘basis’ for mind‐organ and mind‐consciousness, which came to be seen as the ‘heart‐basis’. Mind acts on the body through two ‘intimations’: fleeting modulations in the primary physical elements. Various forms of rūpa are also said to originate dependent on citta and other types of rūpa. Meditation makes possible the development of a ‘mind‐made body’ and control over physical elements through psychic powers. The formless rebirths and the state of cessation are anomalous states of mind‐without‐body, or body‐without‐mind, with the latter presenting the problem of how mental phenomena can arise after being completely absent. Does this twin‐category process pluralism avoid the problems of substance‐dualism?     

Type A behavior and processing of social conflict information

Research suggests that the Type A pattern as assessed by the Jenkins Activity Survey (JAS) involves a number of stress-engendering cognitive/social responses. To identify potential responses responsible for social stress, the study tested the relationship between JAS Type A behavior and several cognitive/social variables relevant to assertiveness situations. Male undergraduates completed two measures of cognitive complexity and rated the reasonableness of another's request. Also, subjects were evaluated for positive content (i.e., consideration of the other) in role-played assertion responses. Type A behavior correlated with lower differentiation when sorting aspects of an assertion situation, lower integrative complexity when thinking about conflict topics, and less inclusion of consideration content.     

A study of paranormal belief, magical ideation as an index of schizotypy and cognitive style

This study examined the proposal that the association between paranormal belief and magical ideation may be mediated by distinctive cognitive styles for schizotypes as compared to believers in the paranormal. Schizotypes were found to differ from an atypical group of believers in the paranormal and to resemble schizophrenics in terms of cognitive style. Believers expressed a cognitive style reliant on notions of personal responsibility while schizotypes emphasised the role of randomness. Believers differed from schizotypes on more deviant aspects of schizotypy measures yet unexpectedly these groups did not differ on specific facets of paranormal belief. It is tentatively proposed that for some people certain paranormal beliefs represent a cognitive ‘defence’ against acceptance of the uncertainty of life events, while for others paranormal belief may be indicative of psychopathology.     

The predictive power of combined neuropsychological measures for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in children.

The present study explores the predictive power of seven neuropsychological assessment tools used in combination in classifying children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Twenty-one ADHD boys and 22 community control children participated. Group differences were significant on the continuous performance test only; however, battery analysis did increase overall predictive power, which was moderate. This study highlights the difficulty in identifying consistent mean differences on tests of frontal/executive functioning across studies, as well as the need to assess the predictive validity of these tests in classifying children with ADHD. The study suggests that these tests may provide greater predictive validity when used in combination. Inconsistencies in the literature are discussed, with consideration of research methodology, the heterogeneity of the ADHD population, and comorbid diagnoses.     

Standardization and decomposition of rates: Useful analytic techniques for behavior and health studies

Standardization and decomposition are widely used analytic techniques in population studies for adjusting the impact of compositional factors on rates. This study demonstrates the application of these methods to behavior and health studies. Bootstrapping is used to estimate standard errors of the component effects and to conduct significance tests for them. The authors have developed a Windows-based computer program that is demonstrated in the study for standardization and decomposition analysis by using empirical data on HIV seropositivity rates in two injection-drug-using populations in the northeastern United States.