The Certification of Suicide in Eleven Western States: An Inquiry into the Validity of Reported Suicide Rates

ABSTRACT: From Durkheim's time to the present social researchers interested in the problem of suicide have relied upon officially reported rates of suicide to develop and test their theories. Despite the fact that the validity of any theory rests upon the accuracy of its underlying data, the relative accuracy of reported suicide rates have rarely been questioned or systematically evaluated. This paper investigates the process of death certification as practiced by a sample of 191 coroners in 11 western states. Findings indicate extensive variation in the backgrounds, professional resources, operating procedures, and governing statutes of coroners and coroners' offices and in policies concerning the use of the suicide mode. Since the coroner is generally charged with the official responsibility for certifying the mode of death when unnatural mode is suspect, the extent of variation found here calls into question the validity and comparability of reported suicide rates.     

"That's not a real body": identifying stimulus qualities that modulate synaesthetic experiences of touch

Mirror-touch synaesthesia is a condition where observing touch to another’s body induces a subjective tactile sensation on the synaesthetes body. The present study explores which characteristics of the inducing stimulus modulate the synaesthetic touch experience. Fourteen mirror-touch synaesthetes watched videos depicting a touch event while indicating (i) whether the video induced a tactile sensation, (ii) on which side of their body they felt this sensation and (iii) the intensity of the experienced sensation. Results indicate that the synaesthetes experience stronger tactile sensations when observing touch to real bodies, whereas observing touch to dummy bodies, pictures of bodies and disconnected dummy body parts elicited weaker sensations. These results suggest that mirror-touch synaesthesia is not entirely bottom-up driven, but top-down information, such as knowledge about real and dummy body parts, also modulate the intensity of the experience.     

Judging the cross on rings: a matter of achieving shape constancy

The present study examines the influence of viewing position, experience, processing time, and attention on shape constancy in gymnastics judging. In an experiment, 40 gymnastics judges and as many laypeople were presented with a series of photographs that show athletes holding a ‘cross on rings’. They were simultaneously taken from different viewpoints. Participants had to judge how many degrees the arms deviated from horizontal for each picture. One half of the participants had a secondary task, to judge the duration of the picture presentation, which varied also. The overall performances of the gymnastics judges were much better than those of the laypeople, and in contrast to the lay‐judgments, they were not influenced by the secondary task. However, gymnastics judges were still significantly influenced by viewpoint, that is, their error rate increased with an increase in deviation from a frontal view. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Distribution of the product confidence limits for the indirect effect: Program PRODCLIN

This article describes a program, PRODCLIN (distribution of the PRODuct Confidence Limits for INdirect effects), written for SAS, SPSS, and R, that computes confidence limits for the product of two normal random variables. The program is important because it can be used to obtain more accurate confidence limits for the indirect effect, as demonstrated in several recent articles (MacKinnon, Lockwood, & Williams, 2004; Pituch, Whittaker, & Stapleton, 2005). Tests of the significance of and confidence limits for indirect effects based on the distribution of the product method have more accurate Type I error rates and more power than other, more commonly used tests. Values for the two paths involved in the indirect effect and their standard errors are entered in the PRODCLIN program, and distribution of the product confidence limits are computed. Several examples are used to illustrate the PRODCLIN program. The PRODCLIN programs in rich text format may be downloaded from www.psychonomic.org/archive.     

Counseling in Switzerland: Past,Present, and Future

The authors review counseling in Switzerland and compare it with counseling in the United States. They evaluate the role of professional associations and programs and argue that the evolution of counseling is situated within the history and economic, social, and political systems of Switzerland. Findings suggest that Swiss counselors are ready to reach out, evolve, and learn from mental health professionals around the world and to adopt best practices so as to work with those in need.     

The Activities of The Scandinavian Societies

Freud's concept of the death instinct has given rise to many different interpretations which have often been contradictory. It is in fact already possible to discern two diametrically opposite meanings of this concept in Freud's work from 1920—Beyond the Pleasure Principle—in which he first introduced the concept of the death instinct. In this paper, it is argued that both these meanings are relevant in describing psychical life, although only one of these meanings actually qualifies for the concept “death instinct”. Beyond the Pleasure Principle was written in order to try to understand some everyday, as well as clinical phenomena which could not be explained by the so-called pleasure principle. Freud postulated something beyond the pleasure principle, which initially seemed to have to do with binding energy. I will preserve this idea and attempt to develop it within the context of a phenomenological analysis of time. The temporalization of the subject involves a very basic affirmation of existence, in that the subject experiences something constant, something that can be said to possess the quality of a gestalt. I propose that that which is beyond the pleasure principle—this binding of energy—should be understood as the opposite of the idea of a primordial death instinct striving towards death. In this case, that which is beyond the pleasure principle reflects an original affirmation of existence, which could be said to correspond to Freud's first meaning of the death instinct. The second meaning—for which the name “death instinct” seems to be applicable—concerns the discharge of energy, which from a temporal point of view shows itself as a tendency to dissolution. The concept of the death instinct in its various meanings is discussed in connection with phenomenological reflections on time, which is a different approach from Freud's attempt to ground the death instinct in biology.