Treatment of families in conflict: Recurrent themes in literature and clinical practice

This article undertakes to demonstrate, through works of great literature throughout the ages, that our best writers have always understood the primacy and linkages between individual growth, character and destiny, and the context of the various living systems that impinge upon each individual, the primary context being the family of origin. Beginning with the immortal classic, theSophoclean Trilogy, which inspired Freud's use of the major character's name in these three dramas, Oedipus has been used to explain the psychological complex which Freud regarded as universal. The author in this article finds a rather different point of view borne out by these same dramas, as well as in the other literary works cited. It is the discovery that the identified patient is not Oedipus, but his natural and adoptive families.This often-quoted classic in family therapy literature is slightly revised and reprinted, with permission, fromNew Directions in Mental Health, NY: Grune & Stratton, 1968.     

Developing a System for Processing Health Data of Children Using Digitalized Toys: Ethical and Privacy Concerns for the Internet of Things Paradigm

EDUCERE (Ubiquitous Detection Ecosystem to Care and Early Stimulation for Children with Developmental Disorders) is a government funded research and development project. EDUCERE objectives are to investigate, develop, and evaluate innovative solutions for society to detect changes in psychomotor development through the natural interaction of children with toys and everyday objects, and perform stimulation and early attention activities in real environments such as home and school. In the EDUCERE project, an ethical impact assessment is carried out linked to a minors’ data protection rights. Using a specific methodology, the project has achieved some promising results. These include use of a prototype of smart toys to detect development difficulties in children. In addition, privacy protection measures which take into account the security concerns of health data, have been proposed and applied. This latter security framework could be useful in other Internet of Things related projects. It consists of legal and technical measures. Special attention has been placed in the transformation of bulk data such as acceleration and jitter of toys into health data when patterns of atypical development are found. The article describes the different security profiles in which users are classified.     

EMPATHY AND THE EVOLUTION OF COMPASSION: FROM DEEP HISTORY TO INFUSED VIRTUE

This article poses a challenge to contemporary theories in psychology that portray empathy as a negative force in the moral life. Instead, drawing on alternative psychological and philosophical literature, especially Martha Nussbaum, I argue that empathy is related to the virtue of compassion and therefore crucial for moral action. Evidence for evolutionary anthropological accounts of compassion in early hominins provides additional arguments for its positive value in deep human history. I discuss this work alongside Thomistic notions of practical wisdom, compassion, misericordia, and the importance of reason in the moral life. The tension between “bottom up” accounts of empathy and that according to a theological interpretation of “infused” virtues also needs to be addressed. From a secular perspective, infused virtue is a projection of the ideal moral life, but from a theological perspective, it is a way of understanding how human capacities through the action of grace can reach beyond what seem to be the limits of psychological moral identity.     

Verifying environmental relationships

In two experiments, subjects first learned the locations of objects in a 21 x 21 ft room and then were timed as they verified, from memory, statements about the spatial relationships of the objects to certain features (e.g., the outside walls, the center of the room, subdividing partitions). The statements were of the form “X is (not) close to (far from) F” in Experiment 1 and “X is farther from (closer to) F than Y is” in Experiment 2, where X and Y are specific objects and F is a feature. While some of the latencies varied directly with the magnitudes of the distances between objects and features named in the sentences, there were several instances in which sentences associated with equivalent distances led to different latencies or sentences associated with different distances led to equivalent latencies. The possible cognitive operations underlying the latency pattern are discussed.     

Resilience: enhancing well-being through the positive cognitive triad

The present study tested whether the relationships among resilience, life satisfaction, and depression could be explained by positive views toward the self, the world, and the future (positive cognitive triad). Structural equation modeling and mediation analyses were conducted based on 1,419 college students in Hong Kong. The model of positive cognitive triad as mediator between resilience and well-being fit the data (comparative fit index = .94, Tucker-Lewis index = .93, root-mean-square error of approximation = .08). Findings showed resilience to be significantly related to positive cognitions about the self, the world, and the future. Individuals who had higher level of resilience held significantly more positive cognitions and reported significantly higher levels of life satisfaction and lower levels of depression. The utility of the positive cognitive triad as the mechanism through which resilience enhances well-being was supported. Applications in cultivating resilience and positive cognitions in counseling services are discussed.     

Maintaining global coherence in reading: The role of sentence boundaries

In four experiments, we examined the reinstatement of backgrounded information in locally coherent passages, investigating the influence of syntactic boundaries, such as periods, on the time course of this process. In Experiment 1, using a line-by-line reading paradigm, readers were delayed in noticing a contradiction on a target line when the sentence continued onto a posttarget line. Consistent with this, in Experiments 2A and 2B, the results of a recognition probe demonstrated that relevant concepts from long-term memory were not integrated immediately unless the contradiction was followed by a period. Experiment 3 demonstrated that sentence boundaries are sufficient to facilitate the integration of related background information but are not necessary; additional time served the same purpose. Consistent with a memory-based text-processing framework, it appears that the reactivation of related information is initiated automatically but that an integration stage is influenced by such factors as syntactic boundaries.     

Vasopressin response to osmotic and hemodynamic stress: neurotransmitter involvement

Osmotic and hemodynamic stress are the two primary regulators of vasopressin (VP) release from the posterior pituitary. The pathways providing information about plasma osmolality and blood pressure or blood volume are distinct and utilize different chemical neurotransmitters. Osmotic regulation of VP release is dependent upon afferents from the lamina terminalis region. Glutamate is an important transmitter in this system and angiotensinergic afferents from this region to the VP neurons modulate responses to osmotic challenges. Hemodynamic information is transmitted to the VP neurons via multisynaptic pathways from the brainstem with the A1 catecholamine neurons of the ventrolateral medulla providing the final link for information about decreases in blood pressure and volume. Several neurotransmitters and neuropeptides are expressed in the A1 neurons including norepinephrine (NE), ATP, neuropeptide Y, and substance P. The impact of co-release of these agents on VP release is reviewed and the potential physiological significance is discussed.