Paralimbic Gray Matter Reductions in Incarcerated Adolescent Females with Psychopathic Traits

Psychopathy-related paralimbic and limbic structural brain abnormalities have been implicated in incarcerated adult and adolescent male samples. However, there have been few neuroimaging studies of psychopathic traits in females in general and no studies from incarcerated female youth in particular. Here we present the first study to examine the relationship between brain gray matter volumes and psychopathic traits (assessed using the Psychopathy Checklist-Youth Version [PCL-YV]) in a sample of maximum-security incarcerated female adolescents (N?=?39; mean age?=?17.6 years). Consistent with male samples, regional gray matter volumes were negatively related to psychopathic traits in female youth offenders in limbic and paralimbic areas, including orbitofrontal cortex, parahippocampal cortex, temporal poles, and left hippocampus. These results provide evidence that psychopathic traits manifest similar neural abnormalities across sex and age.     

Organizational Stress and Coping in U.S. Professional Soccer

The present study was an exploration of organizational stressors perceived by U.S. professional soccer players, and the coping strategies they employed to manage these stressors. Eight players (four female and four male) were interviewed during pre-season training camps. Results of data analysis revealed that contracts, draft, league and team structure, coach-athlete interaction, salaries, and travel demands were the most commonly cited areas of stress. Participants used avoidance, problem-focused, and social support coping strategies to manage these organizational stressors. In conclusion, more concern should be placed on the impact that organizational stressors can have on athletic performances.     

Reports from the Front: The Effects of Hurricane Katrina on Mental Health Professionals in New Orleans

Hurricane Katrina created an unprecedented mental health crisis in New Orleans. Once they could return to work, local mental health professionals attempted to treat survivors of the storm while dealing with the storm's impact on themselves. Those working in public settings were offered in-service training and supervision. But clinicians in private practice often found themselves bearing the brunt of posttraumatic uncertainty alone. The current paper includes four experiential reports from area clinicians describing their early struggles to maintain a sense of continuity in their ongoing clinical work, only to realize how much of the personal is also professional in the aftermath of a disaster of this magnitude, and how personal and professional inevitably inform one another when clinicians and patients survived similar dangers and losses. The introduction locates these four papers in the larger context of post-Katrina New Orleans and a program that was specifically tailored to meet the needs of local clinicians. This program demonstrated the ways in which psychoanalytic ideas can be used to give meaning to a traumatized mental health community's profound disorientation.     

Commentary on Paper by Lawrence J. Brown

Brown's historical overview of post-Kleinian psychoanalysis traces key steps in the evolving and diverse practice of working in the psychoanalytic situation while regarding it as a two-person field. The Barangers' “The Analytic Situation as a Dynamic Field” is central to his narrative. I develop my understanding of the originality of their contribution in theorizing a situational unconscious, and of their continuing relevance for thinking about analytic listening and intersubjective collaboration. Brown presents a countertransference dream of his own along with the dream of a patient as an example of the Barangers' concept of the “shared unconscious fantasy” of the analytic couple. A detailed alternative reading of Brown's clinical vignette reveals an absence of fit with the Barangers' views on collaboration in the analytic situation. Some uses of Bion's “dreaming” and “becoming” are implicitly questioned as they risk encouraging the idealization of special states over process.     

Incongruence of Sentence Completions under Time Pressure and Freedom

A direct relationship is hypothesized between amount of ego-alien content elicited by SC tests and amount of time pressure imposed. This prediction, tested with female college Ss, was supported by: (a) the results of two independent groups, one taking the test under time pressure and the other under freedom; (b) the results of a single group which was given the test under pressure and later under freedom, and those of a control group for whom the test was repeated under identical pressure conditions. Measures of incongruence within a given personality were obtained by assessing the dissimilarity of completions elicited under pressure and freedom. Anxious Ss showed a greater degree of incongruence than non-anxious Ss.     

From randomness to stability

The present study describes how the association between randomly chosen variables changes at the successive steps of temporal processes to converge into stable values as suggested by I. Prigogine. To generalize the results to any specific area so results may be applied to concrete problems in different sciences, randomly chosen matrices of random numbers were successively multiplied to generate temporal sequences that before reaching stability had different number of steps. Our results indicate that the obtained poliphasic stability is irreversible.     

Skipping breakfast,sedentarism and overweight in children

To show by use of path analysis how in children of 9 and 10 years of age the known relationship between breakfast and high body mass index (BMI) is mediated by sedentary leisure time activities. A random sample of 291 9-year-old and 10-year-old school children from the Principality of Asturias (Spain) was taken. A transversal design was used, their weight and height were measured and an individual standardized interview was carried out in which they were asked about their breakfast habits and the time they spent each week on sedentary leisure activities. Using path analysis, a model was tested in which breakfast habits and leisure time were the independent variables and the BMI was the dependent variable. The results showed that there was an inverse correlation between number of breakfasts and BMI and a direct correlation between the time spent on sedentary leisure activities and BMI. Path analysis showed that the relationship between the frequency with which breakfast was eaten and BMI was mediated by the time spent on sedentary leisure activities. The above appears to confirm the direct role played by failing to have breakfast in the pandemic of obesity as this habit tends to increase children’s BMI. This relationship is, however, mediated by sedentary leisure. According to the data compiled, being overweight in children can only be prevented by modifying not just one of the habits that have been associated with it, but rather the whole group of habits as these appear to make up an obesogenic cluster in which sedentary leisure and not having breakfast are included.     

Reflections under the lens: observations of a systemic therapist on the experience of participation and scrutiny in a research project

The London Depression Intervention Trial (LDIT) was set up in the early 1990s by Professor Julian Leff ( Leff et al., 2000 , and in this issue) to compare the relative efficacy and costs, in work with depressed adults, of systemic couple therapy, drug treatment and individual cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT). The research found that systemic therapy compared favourably with the other modalities in respect of fewer drop‐outs, improvement in measured depression at the end of therapy and on follow‐up after a second year without therapy, and was not – contrary to the usual assumptions – more expensive. I was one of the two therapists, together with Eia Asen ( Jones and Asen, 2000 , and Asen in this issue) practising systemic therapy with diagnosed depressed patients and their partners. In this paper I will discuss the experience of being the object of research scrutiny, and the reflections that have come to me during and subsequent to the research period. To put it more challengingly: What are the consequences for systemic psychotherapists of co‐operation with researchers? Can a circular epistemology survive being scrutinized through a lineal grid?