Smoking cessation and severity of disease: the Coronary Artery Smoking Intervention Study.

We tested the effectiveness of an individually delivered behavioral multicomponent smoking intervention (SI) against offering advice only (AO) to 267 patients after coronary arteriography. After 6 months, 51% of AO patients and 62% of SI patients reported abstinence. Validated rates were 34% and 45% for AO and SI patients, respectively. Logistic regression analyses, controlling for severity of illness, stage of change, and self-efficacy, among other variables, showed that, at 6 months, the SI had the most effect for patients with more severe coronary artery disease (CAD) who had been admitted with a myocardial infarction (95% confidence interval = 2.05, 124.85). At 12 months, only severity of disease mediated SI effects (95% confidence interval = 3.10, 58.00). Similar results were seen for cotinine-validated cessation. This study confirms the effectiveness of individually administered SI for more seriously ill patients with CAD and raises questions as to how to better intervene with those individuals with less severe disease.     

The enduring presence of Heinz Kohut: empathy and its vicissitudes

This paper expands upon and further develops the centrality of empathy in psychoanalysis as offered by Heinz Kohut. Using clinical examples, it differentiates sustained empathy as the distinctive component of psychoanalysis, and it demonstrates some of the difficulties in determining the boundaries of empathy in the practice of psychoanalysis. A further distinction is from mind reading, a purely cognitive exercise, as is intuition (Carruthers 2009). To pursue a psychoanalytic perception of empathy one must confront its limitations and go beyond the somewhat simplistic claim of its unquestioned therapeutic effect. Empathy is more than a cognitive act, and as sustained over time it can be difficult to achieve, can be misunderstood, and can at times have no therapeutic effect.     

Does theory of mind performance differ in children with early‐onset and regressive autism?

A deficit in theory of mind (ToM), or the ability to infer the mental states of others, has been implicated as one of the major characteristics of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD); however, little attention has been devoted to possible differences in ToM ability within ASD. The current study examined ToM performance in children with early-onset autism and regressive autism in comparison to typically developing children. Results indicated that children in the regressive autism group performed significantly better than the early-onset autism group on the non-verbal appearance-reality task. Additionally, Fisher's exact tests indicated a pattern of lowest scores in the early-onset group and highest scores in the typically developing group, whereas the regressive autism group tended to score in between the early-onset and typically developing groups. The apparent heterogeneity in ToM performance within ASD could account for the lack of universality in ToM ability found in previous studies.     

"Natural termination": some comments on ending analysis without setting a date

This paper is a re-examination of the rule of date setting in termination. It reviews the literature and presents an analytic case which was terminated in what the patient called a "natural" manner, i.e., without the setting of a date. Some ideas about the nature of the rules used in organizing analysis are discussed.