Contemporary psychoanalytical identity and its roots in the history of science

Abstract

The problem of psychoanalytical identity is discussed under the aspects of psychoanalysis:

—as the history of a charismatic movement shaping the organizational and career patterns in a specific direction;

—as a science with the difficulties of defining the correlations of interpretative, clinical-empirical and “scientistic” dimensions inherent in its basic assumptions.     

Does scientific thinking lead to success and sanity? An integration of attribution and attributional models

A motivational model is introduced that integrates conceptions of attributional antecedents with those of attributional consequences, and suggests that it is functional to make realistic attributions. This model is applied to the analysis of achievement behaviour and depression. The use of a new experimental paradigm designed to test the model's assumptions demonstrates that realistic attributions maximise performance. The model was also used to investigate whether depressives are more realistic than non-depressives. This research revealed that depressives draw more "pessimistic" conclusions from covariation information than non-depressives. In addition, depressives expect their partners to make more negative attributions about the depressives' outcomes than their partners in fact do. However, these negative views could not be traced back to faulty inferences from covariation information. Finally, research is described showing that, in addition to depressogenic attributions, certain evaluative cognitions need to be present in order to trigger depressive mood reactions.     

Discriminative stimuli that follow a delay have added value for pigeons

Clement, Feltus, Kaiser, and Zentall (2000) reported that pigeons prefer discriminative stimuli that require greater effort (more pecks) to obtain over those that require less effort. In the present experiment, we examined two variables associated with this phenomenon. First, we asked whether delay of reinforcement, presumably a relatively aversive event similar to effort, would produce similar effects. Second, we asked whether the stimulus preference produced by a prior relatively aversive event depends on its anticipation. Anticipation of delay was accomplished by signaling its occurrence. Results indicated that delays can produce preferences similar to those produced by increased effort, but only if the delays are signaled.     

Motor processes in children's imagery: the case of mental rotation of hands

In a mental rotation task, children 5 and 6 years of age and adults had to decide as quickly as possible if a photograph of a hand showed a left or a right limb. The visually presented hands were left and right hands in palm or in back view, presented in four different angles of rotation. Participants had to give their responses with their own hands either in a regular, palms-down posture or in an inverted, palms-up posture. For both children and adults, variation of the posture of their own hand had a significant effect. Reaction times were longer the more awkward it was to bring their own hand into the position shown in the stimulus photograph. These results, together with other converging evidence, strongly suggest that young children's kinetic imagery is guided by motor processes, even more so than adults'.     

Sexually abused girls and their Rorschach responses

Exner's scoring (1990) was used on the responses by 46 sexually abused girls (6 to 14 years old) and 46 nonsexually abused girls (6 to 14 years old). Subjects were matched for age, race, family income, and family constellation. Sexually abused children exhibited significantly more unusual content, e.g., sex and blood, in their protocols as well as more frequent coping deficits.     

A helpful argument — Reply to K. Eichner

Das von K. Eichner konstruierte Gegenbeispiel ist logisch nicht stichhaltig. Trotzdem ist sein Einwand hilfreich. Er zeigt nämlich, daß die starke Falsifikation, die notwendig ist, um die Vorschrift des Falsifikationismus zu rechtfertigen, daß eine Theorie aufgrund eines einzigen Gegenbeispiels zu verwerfen sei, durch Beobachtungsdaten widerlegt werden kann. Auf diese Weise wird erneut das Scheitern einer deduktiven Begründung für die Falsifikationsmethodologie und damit die Gültigkeit der Symmetriethese erwiesen.     

Developmental changes in units of processing in reading

A visual search task was used to investigate the development of word processing skills used in reading meaningful prose. Children from the second and fourth grades and college students were asked to locate a prespecified letter, syllable, word, or category exemplar as they read through sentences. Target detection time, sentence reading time, and sentence comprehension were measured. The results provide converging evidence that whole words were the preferred units of processing during reading for all three grade levels. Reading rates for sentences in the word search condition were comparable to normal reading rates. The search for smaller units required additional processing time, but word and category search times differed only for the youngest subjects.