Perceived health: a test of incremental validity in relation to smoking outcome expectancies, motivation to smoke and desire to quit smoking

This study examined the role of perceived health in predicting theoretically-relevant aspects of smoking behavior among 161 young adult regular smokers (67 females; mean age = 21.9 years (SD = 7.2), cigarettes per day (M) = 12.2 (SD = 5.7)) recruited from the general community. Consistent with prediction, results indicated that relative to anxiety sensitivity, gender, number of cigarettes smoked per day and nicotine dependence, perceived physical health uniquely and significantly predicted expectancies for negative affect reduction and expectancies that smoking would lead to negative personal consequences. Additionally, perceived health incrementally predicted motivation to smoke to reduce negative affect. In contrast to expectation, perceived health was unrelated to motivation to quit smoking. Results are discussed in relation to the role of perceived health as a cognitive vulnerability factor for specific types of smoking patterns.     

Detection of feigned memory impairments using a Chinese word task

In this study the detection of feigned memory impairments was investigated using a forced-choice task with Chinese words as stimuli. Task difficulty on accuracy and response time and the faking strategies employed were examined for 85 participants, 42 men and 43 women, who were administered the experimental task. Following a simulation design, all participants performed under control and faking conditions. Their accuracy of performance and response times were measured. Analysis indicated significant differences on both outcome measures for the two conditions. Further, a significant difference in accuracy, but not in response time, among levels of task difficulty was observed. For classification accuracy, using the cut-off score criterion seemed more effective than using the below-chance criterion or response time. Implications for relying on chance criterion to identify deception are discussed.     

Causal ordering of academic self‐concept and achievement: Effects of type of achievement measure

Background. The relation between academic self‐concept and achievement has been examined in a large number of studies. The majority of these studies have found evidence for a reciprocal effects model. However, there is an ongoing debate on how students' achievement should be measured and whether the type of achievement indicator (grades, tests, teacher ratings) affects the causal pattern found in these studies. Aims. The study aims at clarifying how the types of achievement measures and the way they are modelled can affect the results of causal ordering studies. In that sense, the study will yield recommendations for researchers in this domain and also provide some direction for practitioners seeking ways to enhance their students' achievement and/or academic self‐concept. Sample. Repeated measures of academic self‐concept and achievement (standardized tests and teacher ratings) were examined in a sample of 1,753 students in Grades 7, 8, 10, and 12. Method. Structural equation modelling was used. Several models (with different types and numbers of achievement measures) were compared. Results. Only small differences were found between models using one or two indicators of achievement. All models generally supported the reciprocal effects model. However, the final model, wherein tests and teacher ratings were used as separate latent variables, showed different developmental patterns in the causal relation between academic self‐concept and achievement. Conclusions. Researchers should interpret the results of causal ordering studies discerningly because the type of measure chosen as an indicator of achievement might affect the causal pattern between academic self‐concept and achievement.     

The Dialectics of Relational Psychoanalysis and Group Psychotherapy: Commentary on Paper by Robert Grossmark

In this commentary, I address the question of why so few psychoanalysts become group therapists as I respond to the thoughtful and impressive paper written by Robert Grossmark on his work with a psychotherapy group, now in its 10th year of meeting. Prior to discussing the clinical material, and to set the stage for a discussion of Grossmark's work, I comment on my sense of the prevailing attitudes on group affiliations and group therapy within our culture and field as they have progressed over time. I then discuss my reactions to Grossmark's handling of his group session. Many of his conceptualizations of group treatment are in accordance with my own beliefs. There are some differences, however, in how I view my role as a leader and some ideas I have about group treatment that Grossmark did not address.     

Reply to Commentaries by Dodi Goldman and Avgi Saketopoulou

In this newly fashioned dialogue that allows us three respondents to continue our first-round discussions, I treasure the opportunity of learning more about Farhi's and Milner's works through the lenses of Dodi Goldman and Avgi Saketopoulou. Both respondents bring additional important historical information to this virtual roundtable, giving me another chance of re-reading Farhi's text through these new perspectives. I think that Goldman's information about Milner's interest in the natural science contributes a great deal to my understanding of her amazing capacity to tolerate her patient's changing psychotic states. I also learn a lot from Saketopoulou's sensitive discussion of the patient's last phone call to Milner shortly before her death in which the patient informs Milner that she had failed her in similar ways as Winnicott had failed Milner. I suggest a slightly different reading of the word failure and propose that the patient's utterance was a sign of a renewed strength rather than a statement of utter disappointment. A discussion of the place of phantasy in the intra-uterine life of a baby is also included in my response.     

Making a Memorial Place: The Photography of Shimon Attie

Assisting the analysand in making the past a living present held within a bearable yet unpredictable future is what psychoanalysis is so much about. Events of the past can never be redone, or fully repossessed, but they must be reconstructed in the context of the transference–countertransference experience of the analytic relationship. In order to make the past a useful present and presence, we need metaphors to give it shape—metaphors that capture the memorial activity linking the past with the present and future in a meaningful manner. In this paper, I explore the ways in which the work of the American photographer Shimon Attie creates a memorial place in which the past is not simply remembered but instead is actively mourned. In The Writing on the Wall, Attie collects broken fragments from prewar German-Jewish life in Berlin, and, by projecting these found shards of former lives onto the buildings in the Berlin Scheunenviertel, which once housed these people, he creates a potential space in which a present can suddenly come alive by the superimposition of a past that was supposed to have been obliterated. In this transitional realm, the spectator is given a wide realm of to-and-fro movements between past and present that permits the creation of an object world that did not exist before. I suggest that Attie's intricate weavings of past, present, and future serve as instructive models for the psychoanalytic process in which the analyst can find himself in a similar position of opening up a playground where the past can be brought into the present and where the presentness of the past can come alive. The ability to move back and forth between the present and the past suggests a link to the Freudian concept of deferred action, later taken up by Lacan under the notion of après-coup, where the impression (Prägung) of an earlier event, having lain dormant for a long time, breaks through into the present through a retroactive action that then completely reshapes the present impression. I draw comparisons to psychoanalytic practice, in which the superimposition (the stacking on top of one another) of recollections, dreams, and associations pries open in the analysand's mind a psychic space in which memories of a seemingly insignificant past absorb a sudden sense of urgency when revisited through this retroactive process.     

Perchance to Sleep: Minding the Unworded Body in Psychoanalysis

In contemporary relational psychoanalysis, influenced by developmental/attachment theories, infant research, and neurobiology, the effectiveness and transformational potential of “the talking cure” can be thought of as, at times, located in areas of nonverbal engagement. It has become increasingly evident that human experience is born in the body and structured in body-based memory that informs us of what we “know in our gut” and contributes to our relating as embodied beings—experiences that as psychoanalysts we cannot or need not necessarily translate directly into declarative discourse. A detailed case presentation from work with a patient suffering from a severe sleep disorder and other forms of bodily dysregulation will be offered to illustrate and explore the affectively meaningful engagement between patient and analyst of somatically encoded, presymbolic memory within the context of a symbolically rich, verbal treatment relationship.     

Barriers and Supports to Substance Abuse Service Use Among Homeless Adults

Although there is a great need for substance abuse services among the homeless, many homeless individuals do not use those services. This study examined barriers and supports related to service use. Participants recognized a need for treatment and significant barriers to accessing care.     

‘Translation’ and ‘transformation’ in the analytic situation: Freud – Bion – Laplanche

Following a short introduction to the core theses of Jean Laplanche’s theory of a ‘general seduction’ the author presents the resultant clinical position of the analyst. In the same way that an adult sends ‘enigmatic messages’ to the child, it is the analyst’s task to reopen this primal situation so that the patient can find new ‘translations’ for these messages. Laplanche distinguishes between the function of the analytic frame – which represents and supports attachment – and the ‘sexual’– which is the repressed and constitutes the unconscious. Only the focus on this unconscious facilitates the deconstruction of ‘incorrect’ translations. Accordingly, the analyst, says Laplanche, should not take part in construction – this is a self‐construction of the patient – but only in reconstruction. The author compares this clinical model with Freud’s notions and the ‘transformation processes’ through the alpha function as described by Bion. She illustrates Laplanche’s model and the interpretation strategy with case material.