Caught between cultures: cultural norms in Jungian psychodynamic process

Abstract: In our increasingly mobile world, more of us are caught between cultures rather than in one culture. We straddle different ethnic, racial, political, geographical, and religious groups, forced into awareness of the precarious nature of our self‐definition, involuntarily gazing at the constructed nature of our cultural norms, unable to avoid reckoning with the choices of which collective to honour. The impossibility of separating individual from collective is foundational to work as Jungian practitioners, but a paradox of individuation is becoming free of the control of collective norms while simultaneously living within those very norms. In such a conflict it becomes easy to overlook the fact that when the norms we have incorporated into ourselves are from cultures vastly different from the one in which we live, the cacophony can be overwhelming. In this paper, I will draw from postmodern theorists such as Derrida, Foucault and Irigaray in an effort to re‐imagine the role of culture in psychodynamic process. The case of a Muslim Iranian man working with a Christian American woman analyst will be used to explore the complexity of a multitude of cultural norms present in the consulting room.     

The Limit of Mental Structures

The development of consistent health behaviors is important for chronic illness prevention and management. The current study experimentally compared two strategies—a personal-rule and a deliberation strategy—designed to help participants consistently perform their intended behaviors over a 7-week period in a real-world setting. Although the personal-rule strategy had theoretical support from behavioral economics and empirical support from both animal and human lab experiments, the deliberation strategy group was significantly more successful than the personal-rule strategy group, both initially (time to first violation, p < .01, Cohen's d = .51) and over the entire 7-week period (overall success, p < .05, Cohen's d = .18). These effects were significant even after controlling for known predictors of behavioral success, including individual-difference variables, person-behavior factors, and resolution-related factors.     

The making of a tragedy: perversion in the perception of truth

A type of wilful blindness can pervert an individual's perception of truth or reality, not because that reality is too much to hold, but because it is distasteful. Undesired. The case of Adam will be used to explore perversion as it twists an analytic process, affecting the transference and countertransference in ways that are difficult to see. Theorists of Freudian, Kleinian, Lacanian, and Jungian traditions are drawn from to explore potential roots to this perverted turn, and the way it can rigidify an individuation process. The anxiety that haunts this case echoes Jung's anxiety as he wondered if the stone saw him or he saw the stone. Object and observer blend when both analyst and patient hide from themselves and one another, knowing the truth of what is being discussed but blind to it.     

A qualitative examination of body image threats using Social Self-Preservation Theory

This study sought to identify and describe comfortable and uncomfortable body-related situations of young women, as well as describe their responses to such situations and strategies they used to cope with body-related threats, using Social Self-Preservation Theory (SSPT) as a guiding framework. Interviews were conducted with college women (N = 23). A theoretical thematic analysis approach was taken to identify, code, and report themes. In general, participants found it difficult to identify specific comfortable situations and responses in those situations. Comfortable situations were characterized by the presence of supportive others and feelings of general calmness and lowered body awareness or self-presentational concerns. Findings regarding uncomfortable body-related situations indicated that the context (e.g., presence of others, body exposure), responses (e.g., embarrassment, inadequacy, awareness of others’ evaluations, faster heart rate), and coping strategies (e.g., avoidance, concealing behaviors) described by participants were consistent with SSPT.     

A Survey of Genetic Counselors' Use of Informed Consent Documents for Prenatal Genetic Counseling Sessions

Thirty six members of the Prenatal Diagnosis Special Interest Group of the National Society of Genetic Counselors were interviewed about their use of informed consent documents for the genetic counseling component of their prenatal genetic counseling sessions and their perceptions of the utility and feasibility of such documents. Major findings include (1) None of the genetic counselors currently used a consent document describing the genetic counseling component of the session itself; (2) Only three participants stated that they had ever used an informed consent document for this component of the session; (3) They disagreed about the importance and usefulness of such a document; (4) There was variability in their reported likelihood of using a document if one were available; (5) There was a fair amount of agreement about the types of information to include on an informed consent document for genetic counseling; over half of the sample endorsed 8 of 10 topics; and (6) Participants identified 10 obstacles to using such a document. Recommendations for genetic counseling practice, policy, and research are given.     

Reporting discrimination in public and private contexts.

The authors tested the hypothesis that members of stigmatized groups would be unwilling to report that negative events that occur to them are the result of discrimination when they are in the presence of members of a nonstigmatized group. Supporting this hypothesis, women and African Americans were more likely to report that a failing grade assigned by a man or a European American was caused by discrimination, rather than by their own lack of ability, when they made the judgment privately and in the presence of a fellow stigmatized group member. However, they were more likely to indicate that the cause of the failure was lack of ability, rather than discrimination, when they expected to make these judgments aloud in the presence of a nonstigmatized group member.     

Infants' haptic perception of object unity in rotating displays

Four-month-old infants were allowed to manipulate, without vision, two rings attached to a bar that permitted each ring to undergo rotary motion against a fixed surface. In different conditions, the relative motions of the rings were rigid, independent, or opposite, and they circled either the same fixed point outside the zone of manipulation or spatially separated points. Infants' perception of the ring assemblies were affected by the nature of the rotary motion in two ways. First, infants perceived a unitary object when the felt ends of the object underwent a common, rigid rotary motion; perception of object unity was stronger in this condition than when the ends underwent either independent or opposite rotary motions. Second, infants perceived two distinct objects when the felt ends of the objects underwent independent rotary motions that centred on distinct fixed points. Perception of the distinctness of the objects was less clear when the ends underwent opposite or independent rotary motions that centred on a common fixed point. These findings provide the first evidence that infants are sensitive to rotary motion patterns and can extrapolate a global pattern of rigid motion from the distinct, local velocities that they produce and experience at their two hands.