How Do We Acquire Moral Knowledge? Is Knowing Our Duty Ever Passive? – Two Questions for Martin Sticker

Martin Sticker's discussion of the common moral agent contains much that I find insightful, true and significant. As a response to his paper, I focus on two important issues that nevertheless separate us: (1) Sticker claims that knowing our duty can be mere passive awareness and that it indeed is passive as awareness of the special status of humanity. I deny that knowing our duty is ever passive. (2) He further claims that the common universalization test is the paradigmatic way active agents acquire moral knowledge. I argue that Sticker appears to construe universalization as a formal test that presupposes no moral knowledge and that so construed the test cannot serve for acquiring moral knowledge.     

Object specificity and personal relevance in long-term visual remembering

The personal relevance of an object is multi-faceted, each facet being capable of contributing to the effects on object memory attributed to personal relevance. An object's status as an individual object (object specificity), rather than just a category of object, is one such facet and its impact on the long-term visual remembering of everyday objects is assessed in two experiments. Images and drawings were produced under generic (e.g., “Please draw a bed”) and personal exemplar (e.g., “Please draw your bed”) instructions, and participants indicated the degree to which the image on which their drawing was based was of a specific object or a generic object. Object specificity induced a sense of time and place for a remembered object, the most recent encounter with the object being most salient. Other aspects of personal relevance collectively facilitated the retrieval of an object's category-irrelevant features (thereby increasing the vividness of the object image), the other objects with which it was seen, and a more general episodic sense of place. Against a broader theoretical perspective, it is proposed that visual episodic memory and visual knowledge are primary sources of information for specific personally relevant objects and generic objects, respectively.     

Synthesis of theories through parametrisation of laws

The paper presents an example of unified theory bearing interest from both a historical and systematic point of view. The example is chosen from evolutionary population genetics (neo-Darwinian synthetic theory). It exhibits various aspects of theoretical change in science that have been shown in Part I (Geiger, 1988) to be characteristic of syntheses of theories.     

Reasoning with conditionals: Does every counterexample count? It’s frequency that counts

A series of experiments investigated what determines people's degree of belief in conditionals and their readiness to draw inferences from them. Information on the frequency of exceptions to conditional rules was contrasted with information about the number of different disabling conditions causing these exceptions. Experiments 1 and 2, using conditionals with arbitrary contents, revealed a strong effect of frequency information and no effect of disabling information. Experiment 3 established that, in the absence of frequency information, the disabling condition information used in Experiments 1 and 2 affected belief in the conditionals and inference acceptance, as has been found in many previous studies (Byrne, 1989; DeNeys, Schaeken, & d'Ydewalle, 2003b). Experiment 4 extended the results of Experiments 1 and 2 to everyday conditionals. The results show that belief in a conditional, and the confidence in inferences subsequently drawn from it, both depend on the subjective conditional probability of the consequent given the antecedent. This probability is estimated from the relative frequency of exceptions regardless of what causes them.     

The relationship between DSM-IV cluster B personality disorders and psychopathy according to Hare's criteria: clarification and resolution of previous contradictions

This study examines the relationship between DSM-cluster B personality disorders (PDs) and psychopaths according to Hare's criteria as detected by the Psychopathy Checklist (PCL:SV) in 299 violent offenders. To clarify some contradictions among several previous studies on this issue, individual cluster B PDs were looked at alone, excluding any cases of comorbidity with other PDs of this cluster. We found highly significant relationships between antisocial and borderline PD and Factor II of the PCL and a highly significant correlation between narcissistic PD and Factor I of the PCL. These results were to be expected from the theoretical basis of the development of the PCL and provide a contribution to the construct validity of the PCL, which until now has not been validated on such a large sample in Germany.     

The association between body image and smoking cessation among individuals living with HIV/AIDS

Lower smoking cessation rates are associated with body image concerns in the general population. This relationship is particularly important to study in individuals living with HIV/AIDS due to alarmingly high smoking rates and considerable bodily changes experienced with HIV disease progression and treatment. The association between body image and smoking cessation rates was examined among individuals living with HIV/AIDS participating in a smoking cessation intervention. Body image concerns were significantly associated with depression, anxiety, stress, and social support, all variables known to affect cessation rates. However, reduced quit rates were found among individuals reporting elevated and low levels of body image concerns at the end of treatment. These findings suggest a unique relationship between smoking and body image among individuals living with HIV/AIDS. Further research is needed to examine these effects and whether moderate levels of body image concerns in this population reflect realistic body perceptions associated with positive mental health.     

Male Hysteria: Imagining a Case Through the Lens of Contextual and Clinical Change

ABSTRACT

Male hysteria in this article is viewed as a historical, developmental, theoretical, and clinical area of study. The article highlights the importance of contextualizing various views of male hysteria, and follows its ongoing struggle for recognition and legitimacy. Emphasis is placed on the importance of a contextually-nuanced clinical stance with the primary focus being the therapist’s listening perspective. The article describes shifts in my thinking and treatment of male hysteria over the past four decades. Conceptual shifts regarding treatment roughly parallel in time with the advances taking place in the broader field of psychoanalysis, and these shifts are illustrated in the case material provided.     

Development of category formation for faces differing by age in 9‐ to 12‐month‐olds: An effect of experience with infant faces

We examined category formation for faces differing in age in 9‐ and 12‐month‐olds, and the influence of exposure to infant faces on such ability. Infants were familiarized with adult or infant faces, and then tested with a novel exemplar from the familiarized category paired with a novel exemplar from a novel category (Experiment 1). Both age groups formed discrete categories of adult and infant faces, but exposure to infant faces in everyday life did not modulate performance. The same task was conducted with child versus infant faces (Experiment 2). Whereas 9‐month‐olds preferred infant faces after familiarization with child faces, but not child faces after familiarization with infant faces, 12‐month‐olds formed discrete categories of child and infant faces. Moreover, more exposure to infant faces correlated with higher novel category preference scores when infants were familiarized with infant faces in 12‐month‐olds, but not 9‐month‐olds. The 9‐month‐old asymmetry did not reflect spontaneous preference for infant over child faces (Experiment 3). These findings indicate that 9‐ and 12‐month‐olds can form age‐based categories of faces. The ability of 12‐month‐olds to form separate child and infant categories suggests that they have a more exclusive representation of face age, one that may be influenced by prior experience with infant faces.     

The Therapist’s Needs: Beyond Mutual Recognition

Abstract

As early as 1965, Harold Searles argued that therapists’ needs for healing and growth are part and parcel of their work with patients. Since then, the relational movement has corroborated this idea by articulating the healing function of treatment for both patient and clinician. In this article, the authors examine therapists’ needs that have been overlooked or those that have not been considered fully in the literature. Using various ideas related to the concept of what the authors call therapeutic freedom, this article argues that clinicians must strive to adopt a therapeutic vision that aims to loosen their own ties to safe, familiar modes of engaging with patients, particularly in moments of enactment or impasse. The authors elucidate these ideas with case material from their clinical work and show how embracing various forms of therapeutic freedom results in a type of mutual surrender on the part of both patient and therapist, creating opportunistic conditions that generate therapeutic action and new possibilities for the dyad.     

Development and psychometric evaluation of the Personal Growth Initiative Scale-II

The original Personal Growth Initiative Scale (PGIS; Robitschek, 1998) was unidimensional, despite theory identifying multiple components (e.g., cognition and behavior) of personal growth initiative (PGI). The present research developed a multidimensional measure of the complex process of PGI, while retaining the brief and psychometrically sound properties of the original scale. Study 1 focused on scale development, including theoretical derivation of items, assessing factor structure, reducing number of items, and refining the scale length using samples of college students. Study 2 consisted of confirmatory factor analysis with 3 independent samples of college students and community members. Lastly, Study 3 assessed test-retest reliability over 1-, 2-, 4-, and 6-week periods and tests of concurrent and discriminant validity using samples of college students. The final measure, the Personal Growth Initiative Scale-II (PGIS-II), includes 4 subscales: Readiness for Change, Planfulness, Using Resources, and Intentional Behavior. These studies provide exploratory and confirmatory evidence for the 4-factor structure, strong internal consistency for the subscales and overall score across samples, acceptable temporal stability at all assessed intervals, and concurrent and discriminant validity of the PGIS-II. Future directions for research and clinical practice are discussed.