ON “POLYGAMOUS ANALYSIS”

The close relationships among Ferenczi’s analysands at the time the Clinical Diary was written are explored, and their potential influences on their analyses are discussed. It is suggested that the fact that “a virtual group” emerged in this context may have sabotaged to some extent Ferenczi’s clinical work, because this setting did not allow the open joint exploration possible in an actual analytic group, and at the same time stood in the way of achieving “a background of safety” fostered by the privacy and confidentiality of a fully individual analysis. Several examples are given of situations that may have made analysands feel betrayed or abandoned by the divided loyalties of their analyst, and may have created painful splits in Ferenczi’s own countertransferences.     

Problems in the timing of conscious experience

Libet's (2000) arguments in defense of his interpretation of his experimental results are insufficient. The claims of my critical review (Gomes, 1998) do not suffer with his new statements.     

Identifying with the Other—A Conflictual,Vital Necessity: Commentary on Paper by Jay Frankel

Frankel's paper is related to issues in the study of multiple personality, as well as to the dilemmas of identification in psychoanalytic training. The main point raised in this discussion is that the generalization that all identification is related to fear is untenable and that a continuum should be recognized between identification with the other in a close relationship as a constructive building block of one's identity and a traumatic identification with the aggressor that results in alienation.     

Experimental field study of hand preference in wild black-horned (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Cebus nigritus</Emphasis>) and white-faced (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Cebus capucinus</Emphasis>) capuchins: evidence for individual and species differences

In this experimental field investigation, we compare the degree to which wild capuchins in Brazil (Cebus nigritus) and Costa Rica (Cebus capucinus) exhibit individual- and population-level handedness during three visually-guided tasks. These tasks required reaching to remove a large leaf covering a hidden food reward, seizing the food reward, and manipulating a tool (pulling a wooden dowel) in order to obtain access to an embedded food reward. Studies in some populations of captive capuchins indicate evidence for both individual hand preferences and population-level handedness. In this study, six of eight wild C. capucinus and six of seven wild C. nigritus exhibited a significant hand preference during individual tasks, but no individual exhibited a consistent preference across all three tasks. Task-specialization, or the tendency for most individuals in the same group or population to use the same hand to accomplish a particular task, also was evaluated. Cebus nigritus showed a significant bias toward the use of the right hand in removing the leaf. Although the number of individual capuchins in both species that manipulated the dowels was limited (N = 7), each individual that manipulated the dowels in eight or more instances had a positive handedness index, suggesting a greater use of the right hand to accomplish this task. Overall, our results provide preliminary support for individual- and population-level handedness in wild capuchin monkeys.     

Sándor,Gizella, Elma: A biographical journey1

In recent years, particularly with the publication of the Freud‐Ferenczi correspondence, it has become clear that the rich theoretical dialogue between Freud and Ferenczi, a dialogue that may be seen as constitutive for psychoanalytic discourse in recent decades, was intensely intertwined with their complex personal relationship. Two women‐Gizella Pálos, who eventually became Ferenczi's wife, and her daughter Elma, who was both Ferenczi's and Freud's analysand, and with whom Ferenczi fell in love‐played a crucial role in shaping the Freud‐Ferenczi relationship. Their own voices, however, have so far been barely heard. This paper is a preliminary report of a biographical research project which aims to complete the puzzle, by getting to know better Gizella, Elma and their family, with the help of numerous original sources, many of them unpublished till now. The emerging picture tends to confirm Ferenczi's initial view of Elma as a person of depth and integrity, rather than Freud's view of her as fundamentally disturbed; countertransference‐love, it is suggested, may have facilitated fuller perception rather than clouding it. The question of the impact of Elma's ‘confusion of tongues’ with Ferenczi and with Freud on her subsequent life is also discussed.     

Old Age,Finitude and Meaning: Reflections on the Care of Older Adults Based on Logotherapy

Due to the steady increase in the number of older adults among the Brazilian population, the aim of the present article is to reflect on the care provided to the elderly based on Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy as an alternative approach to understanding more deeply what this life stage means. For this purpose, demographic data on the population of older adults are provided, together with distinct views on aging and its relationship to the quality of life. Next, logotherapy, from its conceptions about the relationship of the person to finitude and to the person’s possibilities for existence, is presented as a psychological theory likely to improve the understanding of aging and to represent a possible approach to the care of older adults. Based on an understanding of humans as beings of power and therefore as self-transcendent and endowed with the will to meaning, the possibility of psychology investing in the relationship with alterity as the grounds for interventions targeting older adults is emphasized.     

Impulsivity Mediates the Relationship between Future Orientation and Juvenile Deviancy

Both future orientation and impulsivity are intrinsic parts of an adolescent’s self-control, and empirical evidence clearly establishes them as crucial features on the origin of juvenile deviant behavior. However, we do not yet fully understand how these variables relate in explaining deviant conduct. In the present study, we tested a mediation model between these variables among 126 Portuguese adolescents. Findings support the mediation model in analysis, namely that impulsivity fully mediates the effect of future orientation on deviant behavior. In conclusion, our results suggest that lesser future orientated youth develop impulsive behavior which, in turn, explains their higher deviant conduct.     

Pitfalls on our “New Royal Road”: Commentary on Paper by Joyce Slochower

In discussing Joyce Slochower’s paper “Going Too Far: Relational Heroines and Relational Excess,” (this issue) the author welcomes its self-critical emphasis, suggesting that analysts from all schools of thought benefit more from noticing the risks and pitfalls in their own approach—thus becoming able to improve their own clinical work—than from polemically highlighting what is faulty in other, competing approaches. Such polemics run a risk of their own: turning our theoretical homes into theoretical fortresses, and blocking richer communication among analysts. He shares the concern about some specific attributes of relational and intersubjective clinical work but relates many of the issues raised by Slochower to tensions and dilemmas present in older models of the analytic relationship as well, offering examples from the work of Freud, Ferenczi, Balint, Winnicott, and Racker.     

The interpretation of Libet's results on the timing of conscious events: a commentary

A commentary on articles by Klein, Pockett, and Trevena and Miller, in this issue, is given. Average shift in the point of subjective equality (PSE), calculated by Klein on Libet's data, and corresponding change in mean shift, calculated by Libet et al. (1983), may be "corrected," taking as a reference point the end of the minimum train duration. Values obtained, if significant, indicate a latency for conscious sensation of the skin stimulus of at least 230 ms. Pockett's main conclusions are favored, but her explanation of peripheral-lemniscal couplings is found to be unconvincing. Trevena and Miller's article unsuccessfully tries to rescue a dualist interactionist view. Libet's method of timing intentions is thoroughly criticized.