“Yours,Thirsty for Honesty,Ferenczi”: Some Background to Sandor Ferenczi's Pursuit of Mutuality

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis -     

Subjective contours can facilitate performance in a reaction-time task

Subjective contours were compared with objective contours in their ability to facilitate performance in speeded tasks that required judging the position of a dot or the slope of a line segment relative to the contour. Subjective contours were found to reduce both reaction times and error rates for dot localization but not for the more difficult slope discrimination task. These results add to the growing body of evidence suggesting that subjective contours have functional properties similar to those of objective contours.     

Problems in the assessment of analyzability.

As additional studies of assessment of analyzability have been reported, research has proven very difficult and provided little clarification. This paper reviews the literature, particularly of the last twenty-five years, from the viewpoint of identifying the nature of the problems in developing useful methods of study. Some approaches to these problems, which might provide increased understanding as well as a clearer definition of some inherent limitations, are discussed.     

A general scheme for the analytic decomposition of objective test scores: Illustrative demonstrations using the Rod-and-Frame test and the Müller-Lyer illusion

Objective tests of personality typically include a number of items or trials; the total score on the test is the sum of the subject's “correct” responses across all such trials. Normally, the trials are varied systematically across various facets of the test design, so that the total score represents a composite measure of accuracy averaged across these test facets. However, since only one score is computed for each subject, some potentially important kinds of individual differences—namely all those associated with each particular variation in the test design—are treated solely as measurement unreliability. Such a psychometric stance may serve to obscure more differentiated types of individual differences, with the result that composite scores from trials based on one type of experimental design may not be highly related to such scores from trials using a somewhat different design. The present paper presents a general procedure for scoring objective tests more analytically. To illustrate this general rationale, and to demonstrate its potential utility, data have been reanalyzed from two previous studies, one using the Rod-and-Frame test, the other the Müller-Lyer illusion. In both cases, the traditional global accuracy score did not correlate significantly with other theoretically related variables, while a number of component scores were quite highly related.     

Fixed-interval responding under second-order schedules of food presentation or cocaine injection.

Squirrel monkeys operated a key under second-order schedules in which every tenth completion of a 5-minute fixed interval resulted in either presentation of food or intravenous injection of cocaine. When a 2-second light was presented at the completion of the component fixed-interval schedules, positively accelerated responding developed and was maintained in each component. Over a tenfold range of doses of cocaine(30 to 300 microgram/kg/injection) and amounts of food (0.75 to 7.5 g/presentation); the second-order schedule of cocaine injection maintained higher average rates of responding than the second-order schedule of food presentation. Substituting saline for cocaine or eliminating food presentation decreased average rates of responding. When no stimulus change occurred at the completion of the first nine component fixed-interval schedules, but the 2-second light and food presentation or cocaine injection still occurred after the tenth component, only low and relatively constant rates of responding were maintained in each component. Patterns of responding characteristic of 5-minute fixed-interval schedules were maintained by the 2-second light paired with either cocaine injection or food presentation, though the maximum frequency of cocaine injection or food presentation was less than once per 50 minutes.     

Psychodynamic inferences from the Strong Vocational Interest Blank

Summary: A systematic psychodynamic approach to personality appraisal using the Strong Vocational Interest Blank is presented. The psychoanalytic concepts of transformation of infantile impulses, ego style, and structural self-representation are discussed in relation to issues of vocational choice. A method for making psychodynamic inferences from the SVIB is then put forth. To illustrate the method, &blind& personality evaluations, of three late adolescents, using only their SVIB profiles, are presented. The results of each appraisal are discussed in relation to independent information about the client and the counseling process.