An Operational Model for a Therapeutic Community

A comparison of peer led and professionally led support groups for caregivers of frail older persons living in the community demonstrates that both types of groups are effective. Findings reveal that it was the opportunity to ventilate pent-up feelings and emotions, the validation of caregiving experiences, the affirmation of coping abilities, the encouragement for continuing to provide care and cope with the situation, the exploration of alternative care-giving arrangments, the mutual support, and the mutual sharing of information about community resources and coping strategies that appeared to be the most helpful therapeutic ingredients of both types of groups. The greater attention to problem solving work and the learning of specific coping skills in the professionally led groups was not reflected in differential outcomes in the two support group conditions.     

Theories and Methodologies in Acculturation Psychology: The Emergence of a Scientific Revolution?

Acculturation can be understood as the continuous meeting of different cultural elements. This phenomenon has increased globally due to advancements in technology, economy and globalization. The development of a psychological study of acculturation has been a complex process with great challenges. This new discipline within cross-cultural psychology has expanded with a great number of articles in psychological journals and subsequently increased in significance within cross-cultural psychology. The acculturation psychological theory of multilinear bidimensionality with its quantitative methodology has been the predominant framework. However, critiques have challenged this paradigm and suggested the emergence of a new paradigm founded on a cultural psychological approach. In this review, the different conceptions and methodologies within acculturation psychology are assessed and suggestions for future research using mixed-methods are presented.     

Impossible worlds and logical omniscience: an impossibility result

In this paper, I investigate whether we can use a world-involving framework to model the epistemic states of non-ideal agents. The standard possible-world framework falters in this respect because of a commitment to logical omniscience. A familiar attempt to overcome this problem centers around the use of impossible worlds where the truths of logic can be false. As we shall see, if we admit impossible worlds where “anything goes” in modal space, it is easy to model extremely non-ideal agents that are incapable of performing even the most elementary logical deductions. A much harder, and considerably less investigated challenge is to ensure that the resulting modal space can also be used to model moderately ideal agents that are not logically omniscient but nevertheless logically competent. Intuitively, while such agents may fail to rule out subtly impossible worlds that verify complex logical falsehoods, they are nevertheless able to rule out blatantly impossible worlds that verify obvious logical falsehoods. To model moderately ideal agents, I argue, the job is to construct a modal space that contains only possible and non-trivially impossible worlds where it is not the case that “anything goes”. But I prove that it is impossible to develop an impossible-world framework that can do this job and that satisfies certain standard conditions. Effectively, I show that attempts to model moderately ideal agents in a world-involving framework collapse to modeling either logical omniscient agents, or extremely non-ideal agents.     

Reasons for (prior) belief in Bayesian epistemology

Bayesian epistemology tells us with great precision how we should move from prior to posterior beliefs in light of new evidence or information, but says little about where our prior beliefs come from. It offers few resources to describe some prior beliefs as rational or well-justified, and others as irrational or unreasonable. A different strand of epistemology takes the central epistemological question to be not how to change one’s beliefs in light of new evidence, but what reasons justify a given set of beliefs in the first place. We offer an account of rational belief formation that closes some of the gap between Bayesianism and its reason-based alternative, formalizing the idea that an agent can have reasons for his or her (prior) beliefs, in addition to evidence or information in the ordinary Bayesian sense. Our analysis of reasons for belief is part of a larger programme of research on the role of reasons in rational agency (Dietrich and List, Nous, 2012a, in press; Int J Game Theory, 2012b, in press).     

Bibliography of Walter Burkert

Geoffrey Hartman (ed.), Bitburg in Moral and Political Perspective. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1986.

Haneda Nobuo (translator) December Fan. The Buddhist Essays of Manshi Kiyozawa. Kyoto, Higashi Honganji Publication Department, 1984, 98 pp.     

Exposed: phallic protections,shame and damaged parental objects 1

Using ideas derived from Dana Birksted-Breen (‘Phallus, penis and mental space’, International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 77: 649–57, 1996), this article explores the clinical experience with ‘Tommy’, a young boy who suffered multiple traumas and neglect. Birksted-Breen describes a phallic state of mind, which, amongst other things, serves to repudiate the potential for a creative link between internal parental objects and a capacity for thinking. In order to survive psychically, Tommy frequently turned to a phallic state of mind. The deficits in his internal and external objects meant that helpful parental qualities, linked with the development of psychic bisexuality, were not available for introjection and identification. The paper suggests a link between Tommy's employment of phallic (and at times perverse) ways of thinking, related to his intrusive attempts to expose and humiliate his psychotherapist, and to an experience of shame associated with inadequate internal objects. The serious compromise to the development of a creative psychic bisexuality in the patient is reflected in the countertransference strain on the psychotherapist's own internal couple.     

Peirce's Search for a Graphical Modal Logic (Propositional Part)

This paper deals with modality in Peirce's existential graphs, as expressed in his gamma and tinctured systems. We aim at showing that there were two philosophically motivated decisions of Peirce's that, in the end, hindered him from producing a modern, conclusive system of modal logic. Finally, we propose emendations and modifications to Peirce's modal graphical tinctured systems and to their underlying ideas that will produce modern modal systems.     

Intelligence is differentially related to neural effort in the task-positive and the task-negative brain network

Previous studies on individual differences in intelligence and brain activation during cognitive processing focused on brain regions where activation increases with task demands (task-positive network, TPN). Our study additionally considers brain regions where activation decreases with task demands (task-negative network, TNN) and compares effects of intelligence on neural effort in the TPN and the TNN. In a sample of 52 healthy subjects, functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to determine changes in neural effort associated with the processing of a working memory task. The task comprised three conditions of increasing difficulty: (a) maintenance, (b) manipulation, and (c) updating of a four-letter memory set. Neural effort was defined as signal increase in the TPN and signal decrease in the TNN, respectively. In both functional networks, TPN and TNN, neural effort increased with task difficulty. However, intelligence, as assessed with Raven's Matrices, was differentially associated with neural effort in the TPN and TNN. In the TPN, we observed a positive association, while we observed a negative association in the TNN. In terms of neural efficiency (i.e., task performance in relation to neural effort expended on task processing), more intelligent subjects (as compared to less intelligent subjects) displayed lower neural efficiency in the TPN, while they displayed higher neural efficiency in the TNN. The results illustrate the importance of differentiating between TPN and TNN when interpreting correlations between intelligence and fMRI measures of brain activation. Importantly, this implies the risk of misinterpreting whole brain correlations when ignoring the functional differences between TPN and TNN.