The clinician in the university: Reflections on a South African psychoanalytically oriented doctoral programme

There is increasing interest, both internationally and in South Africa, in strengthening the relationship between psychoanalytic practice and research. This paper reports on a psychoanalytically oriented doctoral programme offered at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. The programme is described in relation to the broader context of the historical relationship of psychoanalysis to the university as well as to the specific context of the history of psychoanalysis in South Africa. Key challenges of the programme, specifically concerning research tensions and methodological and theoretical tolerance, are subsequently explored. The way in which these challenges manifested within a group context illustrates their potential for conflict as well as productive debate. The paper reflects on how this specific programme illuminates and extends some of the broader debates in the field of psychoanalysis.     

The caregiving relationship under stress: foster carers’ experience of loss of the sense of self

This paper is an account of a piece of research which involved interviewing six foster carers who had ended a placement with a child under the age of five with an early experience of abuse and neglect. The paper describes one of the themes that emerged from the data analysis, the loss of the sense of self in the foster carers, and argues that the experience of attempting to provide care for these children led to internal shifts in the carers that reverberated throughout the network around the child. The paper suggests that knowing about the external reasons for placement breakdown is not enough without taking into account the impact on the internal world of the foster carers and the emotional impact of attempting to provide care for a child who has experienced abuse and neglect.     

“I Wanted to Feel the Way They Did”: Mimesis as a Situational Dynamic of Peer Mentoring by Ex-Offenders

Despite growing enthusiasm for peer mentoring as a criminal justice intervention, very little is known about what actually happens within these relationships. Drawing on an ethnographic study of peer mentoring in the North of England this article will foreground the concept of “inspiration” in these settings. It will argue that Rene Girard’s theory of mimesis offers a framework with which to analyze role modeling in mentoring relationships and that a Girardian reading also offers interesting insights into the unresolved problem of the origins of personal change.     

Assessing good qualitative research in the work psychology field: A response to the commentaries

This article is a response to three commentaries (Halbesleben, 2011; Hickson, 2011 & Locke, 2011) on ‘Assessing “good” qualitative research in the work psychology field: A narrative analysis’ (Cassell & Symon, 2011).     

Assessing ‘good’ qualitative research in the work psychology field: A narrative analysis

This paper considers how work psychologists define ‘good’ qualitative research in the work psychology domain. In addressing the assessment of quality in work psychology research, we draw on 22 in‐depth interviews with work psychologists about their current practices and expectations around qualitative research. Using narrative analysis, the various plots and narratives that constitute how interviewees understand good qualitative research are identified. The implications of the use of these narratives for both how quality is understood and the use of qualitative research in this area are addressed. Drawing on Weick's concept of sensemaking as a theoretical framework, it is argued that the narratives identified enable the construction of a hegemonic understanding of what is good methodological practice within the work psychology discipline. The implications of this for the work psychology field and the methodological practices of work psychologists are considered.     

Target animacy influences gorilla handedness

We investigated the unimanual actions of a biological family group of twelve western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) using a methodological approach designed to assess behavior within social context from a bottom-up perspective. Measures of both the lateralization of unimanual actions (left, right) and the target of the action (animate, inanimate) were assessed during dual, synchronized video observations of naturalistic behavior. This paper demonstrates a corelationship between handedness and the animate quality of the target object. Analyses demonstrated a significant interaction between lateralized unimanual actions and target animacy and a right-hand bias for actions directed toward inanimate targets. We suggest that lateralized motor preference reflects the different processing capabilities of the left and right hemispheres, as influenced by the emotive (animate) and/or functional (inanimate) characteristics of the target, respectively.     

Insights into the development of face recognition mechanisms revealed by face aftereffects

An important question in person perception is how we acquire the perceptual/cognitive mechanisms that characterize adult expertise. Children's performance on face recognition tests improves dramatically between age 4 and adolescence suggesting that our face recognition system may change during childhood. Yet, the source of this improvement is controversial. In this review, we consider whether changes in the way identity is represented/coded in face space could contribute to this age-related improvement. Face aftereffects have been extensively applied to studying face coding in adults and more recently they have been applied to studying the mechanisms of face coding in children. Face aftereffects are temporary distortions of perception induced by exposure to faces and are thought to reflect the mechanisms underlying face perception. Face aftereffect techniques have revealed that children as young as 4 years of age show evidence of adult-like face space organization, with opponent coding of face dimensions. These findings are consistent with an emerging picture that the key mechanisms of face perception are present early in childhood.     

Individual differences in dispositional focus of attention predict attentional blink magnitude

When identifying two targets presented in a rapid serial visual presentation stream, one’s accuracy on the second target is reduced if it is presented shortly (within 500 msec) after the first target—an attentional blink (AB). Individuals differ greatly in the size of their AB. One way to learn about the AB is to understand what underlies these individual differences. Recent studies have suggested that when a broadened or diffused attentional state is induced, the AB deficit can be attenuated. The present study examined whether natural (dispositional) individual differences in focus and diffusion of attention as assessed by the global/local task could predict performance on the AB task. Performance that was consistent with diffusion correlated negatively with AB size, and performance that was consistent with focusing correlated positively with AB size, showing that dispositional focus and diffusion of attention can predict individual differences in the AB. These findings are consistent with the Olivers and Nieuwenhuis (2006) overinvestment hypothesis.     

Smooth pursuit in schizophrenia: a meta-analytic review of research since 1993

Abnormal smooth pursuit eye-tracking is one of the most replicated deficits in the psychophysiological literature in schizophrenia [Levy, D. L., Holzman, P. S., Matthysse, S., &; Mendell, N. R. (1993). Eye tracking dysfunction and schizophrenia: A critical perspective. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 19, 461–505]. We used meta-analytic procedures to quantify patient-control differences in eye-tracking and to evaluate potential moderators of effect size including patient and target characteristics and characteristics of the control population (matched or not). The magnitude of patient-control differences in pursuit depended on the measure. Global measures had large effect sizes. Among specific measures, maintenance gain and leading saccades yielded large effect sizes, with gain also yielding the narrowest confidence interval. Effect sizes associated with specific measures of smooth pursuit vs. specific measures of intrusive saccades did not clearly implicate one system over the other. Patient demographics and target characteristics generally had little influence on effect sizes. However, studies that failed to sex-match patients and controls tended to have smaller effect sizes for maintenance gain and catch-up saccade rate. Average effect sizes and confidence limits for global measures of pursuit and for maintenance gain place these measures alongside the very strongest neurocognitive measures in the literature [Heinrichs, R. W. (2004). Meta-analysis, and the science of schizophrenia: Variant evidence or evidence of variants? Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 28, 379–394] for distinguishing between patients with schizophrenia and controls.