From General Laws To Singularities

This article comprises several sections. The first is devoted to an explanation of a number of notions stemming from work by Ilya Prigogine and others on open systems far from equilibrium. As a result of this work, I have been able to stand back from the traditional approach employed in family therapy, that of open systems at equilibrium (the theory of Ludwig von Bertalanffy). The second section describes a clinical example based on elements close to Prigogine's theories. In the third part I develop an approach that--although continuing to draw on Prigogine's work--is much more closely linked to the research I have carried out with Félix Guattari over recent years. In this part I attempt to study a level that, in my view, has too often been left outside the field of inquiry: that of couplings between "singularities" of members of the family system and the therapist. A clinical case is presented in which this "semiotic" level, as Guattari terms it, is used together with that of the "intrinsic rules" of the system. Finally, I propose a few avenues of inquiry and research on the basis of the concepts presented.     

Older adolescent females' knowledge of child development norms

This study, the first of three designed to investigate different age groups' knowledge of developmental norms of children, focused on older adolescent female university students. Data were collected from 280 midwestern university students through a questionnaire consisting of 16 items focusing on physical and social development of children from birth to three years of age. Results showed that knowledge of normal development was both over- and underestimated regardless of age of student or year in school. These findings are discussed within the context of the importance of knowledge of developmental norms for future parents.     

Pursuing and distancing: the construct and its measurement

Although the concept of interpersonal pursuing and distancing has been introduced and used clinically, the lack of a reliable and valid measure has deterred its more formal investigation and relevance to personality theory. The Pursuing-Distancing (P-D) Scale, a 92-item measure of the behavioral expression of these characteristics, was developed. Evidence for internal consistency as well as internal support of construct validity is presented and discussed. An 80-item revised scale is available from the authors and is currently being evaluated in a variety of external validation settings.     

Response to two presentations of the Sentence Completion Test of ego development

This was a study of the differences among individuals on their performance on oral and written versions of the Washington University Sentence Completion Test of ego development. The study included 192 subjects from three age groups: College age, community residents, and retired people. No oral versus written differences were found in scores. Gender was the only factor to exhibit a consistently significant effect on Sentence Completion Test score differences.     

Rorschach content interpretation in post-traumatic stress disorders: a reply to Carr

In traumatized patients, Rorschach responses draw from a variety of sources, including the traumatic event itself, past and current experiences, and internal fantasy. As complex and highly condensed mental constructions, these responses often serve to reveal the meaning of the trauma in terms of the patient's prevailing personality conflicts. In many cases, this meaning may be hidden in the response's distortion of or elaboration on images drawn from the actual event.     

Components of reward in social dilemmas

A social dilemma (Dawes, 1980) may be defined as a situation in which a collection of individuals is faced with a conflict between maximizing selfish interests and maximizing collective interests. The dilemma is based on the fact that if all choose to maximize selfish interests, all are worse off than if all choose to maximize collective interests. In a decomposed social dilemma (Pruitt, 1967), the outcomes are divided into two components: one component is based on one's own choice and the second component is based on the choices made by the others. Using 3-person decomposed games, two types of incentives were contrasted: a positive incentive (bonus) for cooperative choices and a negative incentive (penalty) for noncooperative choices. Two experiments were conducted using male college students. The results of both experiments showed that the positive incentive evoked a higher level of cooperation than the negative incentive. The results are discussed in terms of nonadditive utility components, Pruitt's motivational interpretation, and Kelley and Thibaut's (1978) theory of interdependence.