Mother, Melancholia, and Humor in Erik H. Erikson’s Earliest Writings

Erik H. Erikson wrote three articles when he was in his late-twenties and an up-and-coming member of the psychoanalytic community in Vienna. At the time he wrote these articles, he was in a training psychoanalysis with Anna Freud, teaching at the Heitzing School in Vienna, and learning the Montessori method of teaching. These articles focus on the loss of primary narcissism and the development of the superego (or punitive conscience) in early childhood, especially through the child’s conflict with maternal authority. They support the idea that melancholia, with its internalized rage against the mother, is the inevitable outcome of the loss of primary narcissism. I note, however, that the third of these articles makes a case for the restorative role of humor, especially when Freud’s view that humor is a function of the superego is taken into account.

An improved algorithm for predicting free recalls

Laming [Laming, D. (2006). Predicting free recalls. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 32, 1146-1163] has shown that, in a free-recall experiment in which the participants rehearsed out loud, entire sequences of recalls could be predicted, to a useful degree of precision, from the prior sequences of stimuli and rehearsals. This article describes an improved predictive algorithm, which is then used to re-analyse two further sets of free-recall data. Prediction is compared, generically, with conventional modelling, represented here by three recent models of free recall that are concerned with recalls only, not with rehearsals. Some implications are drawn, from the use of rehearsal data by the predictive algorithm, for some of the constituent assumptions embodied in those three models.     

Whistler’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Mother</Emphasis>: Devotional Center of Male Melancholic Religion

In previous writings, I have argued that the 3-to-5-year-old boy’s emotional separation from his mother is the key experience in his development of a melancholic orientation to life (Capps, Men, religion, and melancholia: James, Otto, Jung, and Erikson, 1997) and that men’s religious proclivities (based on honor, hope, and humor) reflect this emotional separation (Capps, Male melancholia: Guilt, separation, and repressed rage, 2001). In an earlier article published in Pastoral Psychology (Capps, Leonardo’s Mona Lisa: Iconic center of male melancholic religion, 2004), I argued that Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa is the iconic center of the male melancholic religion, that it displaces the Virgin Mother Mary of traditional Christianity in this regard, and that the painting aids in the difficult task of transforming melancholia into the mourning of the lost maternal object. In this article, I argue that James McNeill Whistler’s painting of his mother plays a similar role in male melancholic religion, but with an important variation: I use Ernst Troeltsch’s classic church-sect typology to show that Leonardo’s Mona Lisa is the iconic center of the churchly form of male melancholic religion, while Whistler’s mother is the devotional center of its sectarian form.

Comparative decline of professional school graduates' performance on the Examination for Professional Practice in Psychology

The discrepancy between traditional (Boulder Model) and professional school (Vail Model) clinical psychology graduate programs on the Examination for Professional Practice in Psychology (EPPP) was greater using 1997-2005 data than in an earlier study using 1988-1995 data. The relative decline of the performance of professional school graduates on the EPPP was attributed in part to the increase of 31.1% in number of listed professional schools over the last decade, in particular, because those schools have lower academic standards. It is recommended that professional programs accept fewer students and have more rigorous quality control mechanisms for the students who have been accepted. It is further recommended that no new professional schools be started and that marginal programs be phased out.     

From Masturbation to Homosexuality: A Case of Displaced Moral Disapproval

I argue that the decline in moral disapproval of masturbation in the American religious culture over the last half-century is directly responsible for increased moral disapproval of homosexuality. Moral disapproval previously directed toward masturbators is being redirected instead toward homosexuals. Since masturbation has been practiced by the overwhelming majority of individuals who self-identify with the American religious culture, while homosexual acts have been engaged in by a significantly smaller number of individuals who self-identify with this culture, the displacement of moral disapproval from masturbatory behavior to homosexual behavior leads to the stigmatization of those who engage in homosexual behavior, and an attitude of moral superiority and personal condescension inevitably follows. Nineteenth and twentieth century writings on the perils and evils of masturbation are cited in support of this argument.     

Multiple Kernel Contraction

This paper focuses on the extension of AGM that allows change for a belief base by a set of sentences instead of a single sentence. In [FH94], Fuhrmann and Hansson presented an axiomatic for Multiple Contraction and a construction based on the AGM Partial Meet Contraction. We propose for their model another way to construct functions: Multiple Kernel Contraction, that is a modification of Kernel Contraction, proposed by Hansson [Han94] to construct classical AGM contractions and belief base contractions. This construction works out the unsolved problem pointed out by Hansson in [Han99, pp. 369]. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Explaining Façades of Choice: Timing, Justice Effects, and Behavioral Outcomes

Organizations sometimes present their members with facades of choice: situations that appear to promise a choice but that, in fact, do not do so. Our study examines how facades of choice, relative to genuine choice, influence justice perceptions and negative and compensatory behavioral reactions. We then consider how the adequacy and timing of explanations for façades of choice affect justice perceptions and negative and compensatory reactions following façades of choice. Results indicate that the impact of explanations is influenced by their adequacy and timing (before or after one actually suffers the broken promise inherent in a façade of choice), suggesting that the experience of an injustice may frame a person's understanding of the explanation given for that injustice.