Orthodox Christianity in Italy: historical continuity and social discontinuity

From the historical point of view, the presence of Orthodox churches in Italy is a reality established over several centuries; from the sociological point of view, however, their presence is a new phenomenon. As a result of the significant processes of immigration from Eastern Europe over the last 15 years, their importance within the social and religious contexts has grown considerably, to the point that Orthodoxy is rivalling Islam as the second-largest religion in the country. In this article I aim first of all to provide a historical framework for the relationship between the ‘Western world’, especially Italian, and the ‘Eastern world’ of Orthodoxy. Then I shall briefly analyse two examples of different interactions between Orthodoxy and the Roman Catholic context in Italy: the Montaner parish and the monastic community of Bose. Finally I shall present some outcomes from the first research project on the presence of Orthodox churches carried out in Italy during 2011, illustrating the mapping of the spread of the various jurisdictions in the Italian regions, and deepening some elements such as the relationship with the Italian state, the leadership of the various communities and the dynamics of interaction between the Orthodox churches and Catholicism.     

Dissociative Experiences and Creativity in Fine Arts Students

Studies on creative personality have revealed that the relationship between personality and creativity remains unclear, and various types of creative thinking have been have been associated with various personality traits. To assess the influence of dissociative experiences on creativity in the context of fine arts education, in which the creative process plays a key role, a sample of fine arts students received a test of creative potential and the dissociative experiences test. The results revealed significant differences in creativity (creative imagination and creative experiences) between students scoring high or low in the number of dissociative experiences. High dissociative experiences scores were associated to high scores in creative imagination and creative experiences, and low scores in dissociative experiences were inversely related to creative imagination and creative experiences. Further studies are required to corroborate these findings.     

Analysts in Search of an Author: Voltaire or Artemisia Gentileschi? Commentary on “Field Theory in Psychoanalysis,Part 2: Bionian Field Theory and Contemporary Interpersonal/Relational Psychoanalysis” by Donnel B. Stern

The authors comment on Stern's characterization of differences between interpersonal and relational psychoanalysis and Bionian field theory. The critical points on which a consensus is not, for the time being, readily possible concern the relationship between the external and internal worlds and the various conceptions of unconscious experience. They believe that, before forging a link with the external world (whose role we would be foolish to deny), it is clinically more useful to apprehend this internal world as rigorously and over as wide a range as possible—which they do by radically transforming the external world into a dream of the field. Conversely, in their view we may be reassured but partly misled by the concept of a dialectic between the external and internal worlds that fails to take account of the utter pervasiveness of the unconscious and the fact that it speaks even when seemingly silent—not only negatively in micro- and macroenactments but also positively in waking dream thought, which is an expression of its poetic activity that unceasingly confers meaning on experience.     

The study of organizational behaviour in family business

Family businesses (FBs)—enterprises that are significantly influenced by family members and kinship ties—are ubiquitous and play a crucial role across all world economies. Because of the embeddedness of family and business systems in FB, these organizational forms are theoretically distinct from their non-family counterparts. Curiously, FBs have been largely overlooked in the organizational behaviour (OB) literature. The limited available research at the interface of OB and FB highlights the importance of FB as a unique context to advance OB theories, and of OB as a promising discipline to increase our understanding of FB. In a selective review of literature focused on the four topics of values and goals, leadership and power, trust and justice, and conflict, we discuss how insights from the general theory of communal and exchange relationships open exciting avenues for research at the FB-OB interface. Rich fruits of intellectual harvest await scholars who focus on behavioural research in FB.     

The lower subjective social status of neurotic individuals: multiple pathways through occupational prestige, income, and illness

Subjective social status seems to predict health outcomes, above and beyond the contribution of objective status. The present hypothesis was that neuroticism predicts subjective status and does so via the influence of neuroticism on objective status (i.e., education, occupation, and income), self-perceived illness, and greater negative affect. In turn, lower subjective status would be associated with more severe self-perceived illness. Older adults (N=341) shortly after retirement completed measures of neuroticism, attainment in education, occupation, and salary, and over 2 subsequent years, they completed measures of current subjective status, self-reported illness, and current negative affect. As hypothesized, greater neuroticism was associated with lower subjective status via lower objective status and more severe self-reported illness. However, current negative affect was not associated with subjective status, and subjective status did not predict future poorer subjective health.     

Gender differences in cognitive development

The potential effect of gender on intellectual abilities remains controversial. The purpose of this research was to analyze gender differences in cognitive test performance among children from continuous age groups. For this purpose, the normative data from 7 domains of the newly developed neuropsychological test battery, the Evaluación Neuropsicológica Infantil [Child Neuropsychological Assessment] (Matute, Rosselli, Ardila, & Ostrosky-Solis, 2007), were analyzed. The sample included 788 monolingual children (350 boys, 438 girls) ages 5 to 16 years from Mexico and Colombia. Gender differences were observed in oral language (language expression and language comprehension), spatial abilities (recognition of pictures seen from different angles), and visual (Object Integration Test) and tactile perceptual tasks, with boys outperforming girls in most cases, except for the tactile tasks. Gender accounted for only a very small percentage of the variance (1%-3%). Gender x Age interactions were observed for the tactile tasks only. It was concluded that gender differences during cognitive development are minimal, appear in only a small number of tests, and account for only a low percentage of the score variance.     

Detecting fakers of the autobiographical IAT

Autobiographical memories might be identified using a variant of the implicit association test (IAT), or the autobiographical IAT (aIAT). The aIAT provides a measure of association between true sentences and sentences describing an autobiographical event. This tool might be used to evaluate whether specific autobiographical information is encoded within the respondent's mind/brain. This paper examines possible problems arising when the aIAT is used as a lie‐detector technique. The results indicate that, when given previous instruction or training with an aIAT, examinees can alter their results and beat the ‘memory‐detector’. However, we have been able to detect successful fakers of aIAT on the basis of their specific response patterns. Our algorithm has the ability to spot the faker in a satisfactory manner. If, as demonstrated here, faking can be detected, then the real autobiographical event might also be identified when the examinee attempts to alter their results. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Generalization decrement and not overshadowing by associative competition among pairs of landmarks in a navigation task

When they are trained in a Morris water maze to find a hidden platform, whose location is defined by a number of equally spaced visual landmarks round the circumference of the pool, rats are equally able to find the platform when tested with any two of the landmarks (Prados, & Trobalon, 1998; Rodrigo, Chamizo, McLaren, & Mackintosh, 1997). This suggests that none of the landmarks was completely overshadowed by any of the others. In Experiment 1 one pair of groups was trained with four equally salient visual landmarks spaced at equal intervals around the edge of the pool, while a second pair was trained with two landmarks only, either relatively close to or far from the hidden platform. After extensive training, both male and female rats showed a reciprocal overshadowing effect: on a test with two landmarks only (either close to or far from the platform), rats trained with four landmarks spent less time in the platform quadrant than those trained with only two. Experiment 2 showed that animals trained with two landmarks and then tested with four also performed worse on test than those trained and tested with two landmarks only. This suggests that generalization decrement, rather than associative competition, provides a sufficient explanation for the overshadowing observed in Experiment 1. Experiment 3 provided a within-experiment replication of the results of Experiments 1 and 2. Finally, Experiment 4 showed that rats trained with a configuration of two landmarks learn their identity.     

Measure of the ability to rotate mental images

The aim of this study was to design an innovative test to measure the ability to rotate mental images. An unfolded cube was designed, which participants had to reassemble mentally, prior to mentally rotating the image, and answering 23 questions concerning the cube. The Measure of the Ability to Rotate Mental Images (MARMI) test was administered to 354 participants. Cronbach alpha was .90, and high correlations between this test and other image rotation and spatial image tests were found. However, poor correlations were observed between test scores and the responses to the visual imagery vividness questionnaire. Both test reliability and validity underscore that it is a good instrument for measuring the ability to rotate mental images.     

General principles for treating personality disorder with a prominent inhibitedness trait: towards an operationalizing integrated technique

Psychotherapists need to perform tasks such as being empathetic, performing an ongoing assessment of cases, self-disclosing, making explicit treatment contracts, validating patients' experiences and promoting awareness of psychological experience, if they are to be effective in treating personality disorder (PD). Successful therapy also requires a systematic accurate PD model. We suggest here that it is still unclear how, when, and according to what session markers therapists need to perform specific operations to maximize therapeutic gains. This article describes and operationalizes a step-by-step procedure for organizing and delivering the interventions necessary for effective outcomes, such as maintaining a good therapeutic relationship, increasing understanding of mental states, reducing symptoms and improving social adaptation. The procedure is illustrated by reference to the treatment of cases of emotionally overly-constricted PDs. We include a theoretical proposal to facilitate the development of measures for evaluating the efficacy of therapist actions.