Clinical conversations between psychoanalysis and imaginative literature

A literary form created by an imaginative writer captures something of the way the author shapes emotional experience and psychologically engages with it. The manner in which experience is created and contained in an imaginative literary text has much in common with the way experience is generated and worked with in the psychoanalytic situation. The author describes a clinical experience in which there was a collapse of the analytic (imaginative) space. He then discusses how he made use of a "conversation" he created with a short story and his own analytic experience to restore his imaginative capacities and to resume psychological work with the patient.     

Implementation of a comprehensive schoolwide behavioral intervention: The ABC program

The Academic and Behavioral Competencies (ABC) Program, a schoolwide program to reduce classroom disruption and encourage rule following, academic task completion, and homework completion, is described. The program was initially developed and implemented in an elementary school with a high-risk population. Data from teachers, parents, and children indicate high levels of satisfaction with the program. In addition, unobtrusive measures of program impact, reported as reductions in referrals to the principal's office, suspensions, and increases in homework completion rates relative to the year prior to implementation of the program, suggest a preliminary positive impact of the program. A replication is reported for another school district, with teacher evaluations of satisfaction and effectiveness reported, supporting the flexibility and adaptability of the program. Although the present article does not constitute a systematic evaluation of the ABC Program, it presents preliminary data on the process of implementation and stakeholder satisfaction.     

Listen to your mother! The role of talker familiarity in infant streaming

Little is known about the acoustic cues infants might use to selectively attend to one talker in the presence of background noise. This study examined the role of talker familiarity as a possible cue. Infants either heard their own mothers (maternal-voice condition) or a different infant's mother (novel-voice condition) repeating isolated words while a female distracter voice spoke fluently in the background. Subsequently, infants heard passages produced by the target voice containing either the familiarized, target words or novel words. Infants in the maternal-voice condition listened significantly longer to the passages containing familiar words; infants in the novel-voice condition showed no preference. These results suggest that infants are able to separate the simultaneous speech of two women when one of the voices is highly familiar to them. However, infants seem to find separating the simultaneous speech of two unfamiliar women extremely difficult.     

Assessing the factorial invariance of Harter's self-concept measures: comparing preadolescents with and without spina bifida using child,parent, and teacher report

The purpose of this study was to determine whether the structure of children's self-concept, as rated by children themselves on the Self-Perception Profile for Children (SPPC; Harter, 1985), and the structure of children's competence, as rated by their parents on the Rating Scale of Child's Actual Behavior (PRS) and teachers on the Rating Scale of Child's Actual Behavior (TRS; Harter, 1985), are similar across samples of children with and without spina bifida (children were 8 and 9 years of age; n = 68 in each sample). Using confirmatory factor analyses, results revealed that a multidimensional model for the SPPC and the TRS fit the data well for both samples. On the other hand, the model for both mothers' and fathers' PRS ratings did not fit the data for the spina bifida sample. Further tests of factorial invariance conducted on the SPPC and TRS revealed that the spina bifida and able-bodied samples tended to have the same pattern and magnitude of factor loadings for both instruments. There was some invariance, however, in the amount of unique error variance accounted for across samples. These results bolster our confidence in using the SPPC and TRS to compare children with and without spina bifida.     

The Tourette's Disorder Scale (TODS): development, reliability, and validity

To address the lack of a simple and standardized instrument to assess overall illness severity of Tourette's disorder (TD), the authors developed and tested a 15-item scale to measure a broad range of common symptoms including tics, inattention, hyperactivity, obsessions, compulsions, aggression, and emotional symptoms. Independent investigators used the 15-item Tourette's Disorder Scale (TODS) to assess 60 TD patients who were taking part in a double-blind placebo-controlled multicenter 8-week treatment study. Interrater reliability, internal consistency, convergent and discriminant validity, and sensitivity to change were examined. The TODS was associated with good interrater reliability, excellent internal consistency, and favorable levels of validity and sensitivity to change. Individual TODS items showed good convergent and discriminant validity against other measures. The TODS is a simple, efficient way for clinicians and parents to rate the severity of multiple symptoms commonly found in patients with Tourette's disorder.     

Heidegger on Macht and Machenschaft

In a paradoxical manner, Heidegger's work is deeply tainted by his complicity with totalitarian (fascist) oppression, despite the fact that his philosophy, in its basic tenor, was always dedicated to freedom and resistance to totalizing uniformity. While acknowledging his early fascination with power struggles, the essay tries to show how, as a corollary of his turning (Kehre), Heidegger steadily sought to extricate himself from the tentacles of oppressive power (Macht) and manipulative domination (Machenschaft). The focus here is on recently published treatises of the 1930's. The conclusion inserts Heidegger's thought into the contemporary arena of global standardization.     

What does it take to have a positive impact on minority students' college retention?

This paper describes the Young Scholars Program (YSP), which seeks to expand the pool of African American and other underrepresented minority youth who aspire to attend college, and to help them meet entrance requirements and successfully obtain a college degree. Quarter-by-quarter data for the first two groups of YSP students entering The Ohio State University were promising. Their retention rates approximated university averages, while comparison groups showed lower levels of retention. It was concluded that the many facets of the Young Scholars Program, as well as the students' positive reputation among family members, peers, and teachers, produced strong motivation, ability, and determination to succeed.     

Toward a New Paradigm for Multicultural Counseling

Wisdom is introduced as a fundamental quality of the effective multicultural counselor. Wisdom is defined, discussed, and differentiated from intelligence. The authors propose that to be an effective multicultural counselor requires more than textbook knowledge. Wisdom, as a transcultural concept, is considered in relation to culture, context, dialectical thinking, awareness, metacognition, deep interpersonal insight, and advanced empathy. Implications for counselor education and professional practice are discussed. Wisdom is an ancient subject that may provide a “new” paradigm with the potential to bring the field to a higher plateau of effectiveness in practice and training.     

Face imagery is based on featural representations

The effect of imagery on featural and configural face processing was investigated using blurred and scrambled faces. By means of blurring, featural information is reduced; by scrambling a face into its constituent parts configural information is lost. Twenty-four participants learned ten faces together with the sound of a name. In following matching-to-sample tasks participants had to decide whether an auditory presented name belonged to a visually presented scrambled or blurred face in two experimental conditions. In the imagery condition, the name was presented prior to the visual stimulus and participants were required to imagine the corresponding face as clearly and vividly as possible. In the perception condition name and test face were presented simultaneously, thus no facilitation via mental imagery was possible. Analyses of the hit values showed that in the imagery condition scrambled faces were recognized significantly better than blurred faces whereas there was no such effect for the perception condition. The results suggest that mental imagery activates featural representations more than configural representations.