Alkoholismus und Selbstzerstörung

First, the development of addiction theory in psychoanalysis is recapitulated on the basis of the works of W.D. Rost and A. Heigl-Evers. For the understanding of alcoholism two concepts are fundamental. The ego-psychological concept postulates addiction as an attempt of a weak ego to help itself, while the object-psychological concept of Rost considers some forms of alcoholism as an expression of unconscious self-destruction.The author of the present article examines on the basis of a case study of autodestructive alcoholism the strength and weak points of the approach of Rost and proposes certain expansions of the model regarding first the object relations of the addict and the counter-transference, where a strong entanglement of the therapist with the destructivity of the patient is obvious. In addition, further considerations about the role of the superego are necessary, which faces the ego with hostility. Finally, the nature of the primary object of the addict person and the nature of the substance as transferential object should be examined. In the case of these inner objects there is a strange mixture of positive and negative aspects having in their consequence a great destructive potential for the person. This constellation bears resemblance to the pathological personality organisation as understood in Kleinian literature.     

Short-term effects of residence on the testosterone responses to fighting in alpha male guinea pigs

The short-term effects on testosterone (T) levels of (a) taking blood samples, (h) fighting in one's own home cage, and (c) fighting in another male's home cage were examined in eight alpha male guinea pigs, each living together with two females and two subordinate males in their home cages for 4 months. Every male was given two 5-minute agonistic encounters, one in his home cage and one in another male's home cage. After the encounter, intruder males were returned to their home cages. Three blood samples were taken 10 minutes before and 5 and 45 minutes after the agonistic encounters (sampling times were designated as 0, 20, and 60 minutes, respectively). One week before the agonistic encounters were conducted, blood samples were taken from each male on the same time schedule (0, 20, and 60 minutes). The main findings were as follows: (1) the animals showed an increase in T-levels after an agonistic encounter in their home cages and a decline in T-levels after an agonistic encounter in the home cages of other alpha males' irrespective of being the winner or the loser and the degree of escalation during the encounter; (2) the smaller the differences in T-titers between both opponents 10 minutes before the encounter, the more escalated the agonistic encounter.     

A comparison of the common-sense and ‘scientific’ conceptions of extroversion—introversion

From research on the organization of implicit personality theory, and on the fakability of psychometrically sophisticated scales a general argument about the conceptual overlap between implicit personality theory and ‘scientific’ theories of personality is developed. This is tested in the case of the common-sense conception of extroversion—introversion, and that of Eysenck. The convergent validity of these two conceptions are found to be high enough to support the argument. The implications of the argument are discussed in relation to the correspondences between implicit personality theory and personality theory, and the functions of personality theory in psychology and implicit personality theory in everyday life.     

Negative Übertragung und der Respekt gegenüber dem Analytiker

The author investigates the question how treatment techniques can be used to deal with massive negative transfer. The basic principle that being open and processing the negative transfer by interpretation is very valuable for the analytical process seems to be valid for most treaments in unlimited form but not for all. This approach is particularly questioned when the patient massively devalues the analyst and loses all respect for him. In such constellations the analysis can lead to a dead end. In this article a case study of the author is discussed in which a severely disturbed narcissistic patient reacted with a high level of destructivity in the transfer. This ultimately led to the situation where the analyst became a type of whipping boy for the patient who verbally deployed aggressive actions against him. A therapeutic implementation of this dynamic force by interpretation proved to be no longer practicable so that the analyst decided to first demarcate limits on the destructive reactions of the patient during the transfer by an intervention. In this way a minimum level of respect for the analyst could be restored. Only on this basis could interpretations unfold an effect during the further course and resulted in a positive turning point in the treatment process. In the theoretical discussion the author refers in particular to the approaches of Kernberg, Ogden and Racker as well as to the term projective identification. He arrives at the consideration that the danger of a derailment of the analytical process threatens especially when projective identification unconsciously less serves communication but more the attempt to dispose of worse effects. The author finally comes to the opinion that beside especially justified interest for the negative transfer it should not be overlooked that positive transfer which includes the respect towards the analyst represents the decisive foundation for analytical treatment. To safeguard this, in some situations demarcation can be particularly useful.     

Estimating time to contact and impact velocity when catching an accelerating object with the hand

To catch a moving object with the hand requires precise coordination between visual information about the target's motion and the muscle activity necessary to prepare for the impact. A key question remains open as to if and how a human observer uses velocity and acceleration information when controlling muscles in anticipation of impact. Participants were asked to catch the moving end of a swinging counterweighted pendulum, and resulting muscle activities in the arm were measured. The authors also simulated muscle activities that would be produced according to different tuning strategies. By comparing data with simulations, the authors provide evidence that human observers use online information about velocity but not acceleration when preparing for impact.     

Are There Cross-Cultural Legal Principles? Modal Reasoning Uncovers Procedural Constraints on Law

Despite pervasive variation in the content of laws, legal theorists and anthropologists have argued that laws share certain abstract features and even speculated that law may be a human universal. In the present report, we evaluate this thesis through an experiment administered in 11 different countries. Are there cross-cultural principles of law? In a between-subjects design, participants (N = 3,054) were asked whether there could be laws that violate certain procedural principles (e.g., laws applied retrospectively or unintelligible laws), and also whether there are any such laws. Confirming our preregistered prediction, people reported that such laws cannot exist, but also (paradoxically) that there are such laws. These results document cross-culturally and –linguistically robust beliefs about the concept of law which defy people's grasp of how legal systems function in practice.     

Tatbilder schizophrener und wahnhafter Täter

Besides the ongoing discussion on whether persons with schizophrenia have a higher prevalence of criminal offences, it is also of special interest for the prognosis in this group of offenders whether there is a causal relationship between the schizophrenic disease and the type of delinquency. For the construction of causal relationships it is important to determine a typology of offences committed by schizophrenic persons. This article deals with the problem by analyzing the offences of 133 patients diagnosed with schizophrenia, schizo-affective and delusional disorders at the Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe (LWL) Center for Forensic Psychiatry in Lippstadt.     

Correlates of suicide in the older adult population in Quebec

This study was undertaken to describe the characteristics of adults aged 60 years and over who committed suicide in Quebec in 1998-1999. In this study, 42.6% of the suicide cases presented mental disorders at the time of their death, mainly depression. Sixty-five (65.3%) percent of the suicide cases would have been considered as having a mental health disorder if sub-threshold depression cases were included. Only 27.7% of the cases did not express any idea of death during the 6-month period preceding their suicide. One interesting finding was that 53.5% of the suicide cases consulted a general practitioner or specialist during the 2-week period preceding their death. Our results showed that only 8.1% had a severe level of functional limitations at the time of their death. This result leads us to interpret with caution the conclusion of some studies suggesting that physical frailty is a major causal factor associated with suicide among the elderly.     

Activation of bipolar prototypes in attribute inferences

The present study examined how prototypes, as organizational principles of knowledge about persons, affect attribute inference judgments. A distinction is drawn between bipolar and unipolar categories. Two questions are addressed: First, whether only one or both prototypes of bipolar categories like extraversion-introversion are activated in making inference judgments, and second, whether information about the applicability of a stimulus item to a target is processed differently than information about the inapplicability of the stimulus item. The results support the hypothesis that only one prototype is activated and that this is the affirmative one, irrespective of whether the stimulus information is applicable or inapplicable to the target person. The implications of these findings are discussed.