„Da wirst du ja auch bekloppt bei“

Given a growing demand of psychotherapeutic care the interest of students in a psychotherapeutic occupation is gaining relevance. At the same time psychoanalytic training institutions and societies have been confronted with a continuous decrease of candidates over the last decades. Psychology students, medical students and students of educational sciences (the latter only in the child and adolescent treatment sector) are admitted for a psychotherapeutic training approved by the health care insurances in Germany and have the possibility to choose between a behavioral or a psychodynamic oriented training. In the present multimethodological cross-sectional study those student groups (N?=?679) were questioned about their interest in a psychotherapeutic training in general and, if they proved to be interested, about their specific choice of training. Amongst psychology students the largest group of those interested in a psychotherapeutic training would opt for a behavioral education. Amongst medical students and students of pedagogy and social pedagogy a psychotherapeutic training is less frequently an option for their future career plans. Amongst the students of educational sciences, for those interested in training, psychodynamic methods are more often of interest. Possible reasons for the students' decisions in the context of the specific German legal situation are discussed.     

The developing ego in group psychotherapy

Analytic group psychotherapy offers the potential for developing ego functions and enhancing identity formation. The nature of the interaction in group psychotherapy forces participants to deal with their perception of reality and revise their perceptions. After a brief review of the literature, focusing on the theoretical basis and ego development in analytic group psychotherapy, the paper discusses the following ego functions and gives an example of each: adaptation to reality, judgment, drive control, object relations (relationships with others), thought process and communication, defenses, affect differentiation, autonomy, mastery-competence, regulation of self-esteem, and frustration tolerance. The paper concludes with an example of assessing ego functions from a clinical vignette taken from one group psychotherapy session.     

Countertransference in group psychotherapy

This paper attempts to up-date our understanding of countertransference in the therapy group setting. After a brief review of some of the psychoanalytic and the group psychotherapy literature dealing with countertransference, the paper points out the vulnerability of the group therapist and presents examples of possible countertransferential situations, such as stereotyped roles, reactions to external aspects of patients, and therapists' insecurities. It concludes by suggesting ways in which group therapists can become more sensitive to their countertransferences.     

Terminations

Whether the person leaving the group is a group member or a group therapist, the basic dynamics of separation are the same, involving the separation process as well as mourning. Terminations evoke ambivalent feelings of both separation-pain and hope. Group members and the departing person experience a loss, which reminds them of other losses, and the departing person (group member or therapist) may also experience some guilt. Any termination will have an effect on the-group-as-a-whole, as well as on the individual members, and must be dealt with prior to the actual leaving, as well as after the termination.     

Acting out in group psychotherapy

Acting out is a common occurrence in group psychotherapy. After a brief review of relevant psychoanalytic and group psychotherapy literature, this paper presents various kinds of acting out by the individual group members and the handling of such acting out by the therapist, discusses acting out by the group as a whole, and gives a brief overview of acting out by the group therapist. Specific examples are given of acting out and ways of dealing with it.     

What triggers causal attributions? The impact of valence and subjective probability

Various field studies and experimental simulations demonstrated that causal reasoning increases after unexpected as well as after unpleasant events. However, unpleasant events are seen as less likely than pleasant ones in everyday life. Accordingly, the subjective probability of the event and its hedonic quality were naturally confounded in these studies. To isolate the contribution of both determinants, the subjective probability and the valence of an event were independently manipulated in a laboratory experiment. Subjects completed an ostensible ‘professional skills test’ and received either success or failure feedback in relation to a criterion set by the experimenter. The subjective probability of success was varied by informing subjects about the distribution of success and failure in a comparable population (either 23 per cent or 77 per cent were said to meet the criterion). The results indicate a pronounced valence effect: The intensity of causal reasoning and the number of possible reasons reported for the outcome was greater after negative than after positive feedback, independent of the a priori probability of the outcome. No evidence for an increase in causal explanations after unexpected, as compared to expected, events was obtained. Several mediating processes are discussed.     

Sex differences in the neural underpinnings of social and monetary incentive processing during adolescence

The brain’s reward system undergoes major changes during adolescence, and an increased reactivity to social and nonsocial incentives has been described as a typical feature during this transitional period. Little is known whether there are sex differences in the brain’s responsiveness to social or monetary incentives during adolescence. The aim of this event-related potential (ERP) study was to compare the neurophysiological underpinnings of monetary and social incentive processing in adolescent boys versus girls. During ERP recording, 38 adolescents (21 females, 17 males; 13–18 years) completed an incentive delay task comprising (a) a reward versus punishment condition and (b) social versus monetary incentives. The stimulus-preceding negativity (SPN) was recorded during anticipation of reward and punishment, and the feedback P3 (fP3) along with the feedback-related negativity (FRN) after reward/punishment delivery. During anticipation of social punishment, adolescent boys compared with girls exhibited a reduced SPN. After delivery, male adolescents exhibited higher fP3 amplitudes to monetary compared with social incentives, whereas fP3 amplitudes in girls were comparable across incentive types. Moreover, whereas in boys fP3 responses were higher in rewards than in punishment trials, no such difference was evident in girls. The results indicate that adolescent boys show a reduced neural responsivity in the prospect of social punishment. Moreover, the findings imply that, once the incentive is obtained, adolescent boys attribute a relatively enhanced motivational significance to monetary incentives and show a relative hyposensitivity to punishment. The findings might contribute to our understanding of sex-specific vulnerabilities to problem behaviors related to incentive processing during adolescence.     

Self-controlled visual discrimination learning of group-housed dwarf goats (Capra hircus): behavioral strategies and effects of relocation on learning and memory

In most studies on animal learning, individual animals are tested separately in a specific learning environment and with a limited number of trials per day. An alternative approach is to test animals in a familiar environment in their social group. In this study, the authors--applying a fully automated learning device--investigated voluntary, self-controlled visual shape discrimination learning of group-housed dwarf goats (Capra hircus). The majority of the tested goats showed successful shape discrimination, which indicates the adaptive value of an effective learning strategy. However, in each group, a few individual goats developed behavioral strategies different from shape discrimination to get reward. Relocation impairs memory retrieval (probably by attention shifting) only temporarily for previously learnt shapes. The results demonstrate the usefulness of a self-controlled learning paradigm to assess learning abilities of social species in their normal social settings. This may be especially relevant for captive animals to improve their welfare.