An investigation of monitoring for sleep-related threat in primary insomnia

In Study 1, individuals with primary insomnia (n=32) and good sleepers (n=38), recruited from a university population, completed a semi-structured interview. The interview assessed monitoring for sleep-related threat, negative thoughts and safety behaviours, at night and during the day. Compared to good sleepers, individuals with insomnia reported more frequent monitoring at night and during the day, more negative thoughts associated with monitoring at night and during the day, and the use of more safety behaviours associated with monitoring at night. A path analysis showed that the total monitoring frequency was significantly positively related to the score for total negative thoughts, which in turn, was significantly positively related to the total number of safety behaviours used. Study 2 aimed to test the generalisability of these findings in a clinical sample of individuals with primary insomnia (n=23). The results indicated that the clinical sample also engaged in monitoring for sleep-related threat, experienced negative thoughts and used safety behaviours. Further, more severe insomnia was associated with more negative thoughts and the use of more safety behaviours associated with monitoring at night. Together, these results are consistent with the proposal that monitoring for sleep-related threat functions to maintain insomnia by triggering negative thoughts and the use of safety behaviours. Future research is required to verify the proposed causal status of monitoring, using prospective designs and experimental manipulations.     

Body asymmetry affects conjugate lateral eye movement

A. H. Baker (1989) and A. H. Baker and A. I. Ledner (1990) reported that asymmetrical visual stimulation affects conjugate lateral eye movement (CLEM). In the present article, the authors explored whether asymmetrical body position similarly affects CLEM. The authors assessed CLEMs twice in a counterbalanced design. In the control (symmetric) condition, each participant sat in a completely symmetrical position facing a wall devoid of any asymmetrical features. In the experimental (asymmetrical) condition, half the participants rotated their heads 68 degrees clockwise relative to their bodies to face the experimenter, and the other half rotated their heads 68 degrees counterclockwise, also to face the experimenter. CLEM was predominantly toward the body's position in the asymmetrical condition rather than toward the body's position in the symmetrical condition.     

Action knowledge,acknowledgment, and interpretive action in work with Holocaust survivors

Survivors withhold disclosure of suffering when their terror is unwitnessed and when their expectation of disbelief or disregard obfuscates the reality of persecution. Knowledge itself then becomes traumatized, losing the power to inform and mobilize action. Survivors become habituated to suffering in a manner that subverts meaning, dampens vitality as well as pain, and arrests empathic connectedness. The dearth of transferential cues in such depleted existences leaves analysts in doubt as to whether they have been unintrusive or unavailable to these patients. Restoring survivors' sense of being witnessed requires interpretive actions that acknowledge the suffering that survivors have lost the will and means to make known or even represent. Such interventions draw on analysts' own projective identifications and use of the self, counterposing the will to live against the resignation to unwitnessed terror.     

Eating Disorders in Men: Current Considerations

Over the past two decades, there has been a change in the way men think about their bodies. The media portrays images of men with muscular bodies and a six pack abdomen. These images can create body dissatisfaction in males. With the change in the way that the media and society in the United States look at men, so has the drive for men to achieve this ideal body image. Eating disorders, body dysmorphia, and strict exercise and diet regimens seem to plague young men as do the images in advertisements. Although eating disorders in men are similar to what women experience, men seem to strive for more body mass whereas women try to obtain thinness. Gay men and heterosexual men seem to experience eating disorders in the same way although there are differences between how they perceive their bodies. This paper outlines how the media contributes to body dissatisfaction in men. In addition to understanding how the media affects men, it is important to review and possibly revise out understanding of eating disorders and body dysmorphia symptoms to gain a solid understanding of how these symptoms appear in men today.     

Defense,dreams and rationality

Are some mental activities rational but unconscious? Psychopathological symptoms, it is said, have a sense — they are seen as “compromise-formations” which express the “intentions” of agents even though the agents are totally unaware of “bringing about” such symptoms. Philosophers, who often claim that such a conception is simply contradictory or incoherent, have shed little light on the puzzles and apparent paradoxes that surround the issue. It is argued here that Freud's two models of explanation — the mechanistic and the intentionalistic — each fail to provide a basis for an explanatory account of the phenomenon of unconscious defense. An examination of the problem of dream “composition” helps explain why Freud's dependence upon “rational homunculi” is inappropriate and misleading. Finally, an alternative model which depends neither upon Freud's version of mechanism nor upon his lavish anthropormorphism is suggested. Ladies and Gentlemen, — It was discovered one day that the pathological symptoms of certain neurotic patients have a sense. On this discovery the psychoanalytic method of treatment was founded. It happened in the course of the treament that patients, instead of bringing forward their symptoms, brought forward dreams. A suspicion thus arose that the dreams too had a sense.     

Understanding the Relationship of Trauma,Substance Use,and Resilience Among Religiously Affiliated University Students

This study examined patterns of association between experiencing 12 traumatic life events, resilience, and substance use at a conservative church-affiliated university. The authors used data (N?=?278) from a Health Risk and Protective Factors Study that was conducted during the 2012 spring semester. Initial bivariate analysis indicated several significant positive and negative associations between three of the traumatic life event variables and alcohol, marijuana, and tobacco use within the past year and between two of the traumatic life event variables and alcohol use within the past 30 days. Preliminarily, resilience was only inversely associated with amphetamine use within the past year for men. When examined further using partial correlations to clarify these relationships while controlling for resilience, strong significant positive associations were found specifically between experiencing a disaster-type event and alcohol use within the past year and within the past 30 days for men only. Overall significant moderate positive associations were found between experiencing parental divorce and alcohol use within the past year, and between experiencing a disaster-type event and alcohol use within the past year and within the past 30 days. Use of two-way between-groups ANOVA found no significant interaction among these variables. Results may suggest that experiencing certain traumatic life events and male gender are more likely connected to alcohol use behaviors, whereas resilience may have multiple pathways for adaptive coping.     

STAR: A unique embedded performance assessment technique

STAR (The Strategic and Tactical Assessment Record) is a versatile research tool designed to evaluate the effects of sustained performance and other stressors on integrated, complex cognitive functioning. This completely automated task is presented in the form of a highly motivating computer game. However, unlike typical computer games, successful performance of STAR depends on an individual’s ability to rapidly and accurately assess risk/benefit ratios in a variety of situations, and on the skilled use of an array of multipurpose control systems. STAR is unique in that approximately 80 performance measures are unobtrusively embedded in the operations required to “play the game”; no obvious performance assessment interferes with task presentation. STAR provides multiple measures of psychomotor function, attention, memory, information processing, decision making, risk-taking behavior, subjective state, errors, and error paths. In this report, we describe STAR, and summarize two preliminary experiments designed to separately evaluate the effects of task difficulty and task stress level on complex performance.     

Negative Perfectionism: Examining Negative Excessive Behavior in the Workplace

The present paper explores the concept of negative perfectionism in the workplace. Negative perfectionism is unremitting and compulsive behavior in the process of striving to meet one's goals. We proposed that 4 types of negative or excessive behavior result from negative perfectionism in organizational settings: compulsive behavior, neurotic behavior, imposter behavior, and narcissistic behavior. Self-concept-based motivation theory was used as a framework for understanding how inaccuracies or inconsistencies between the evaluation of one's behavior in the workplace (goal-setting behavior) and the type of feedback cues to which one decides to attend (feedback-seeking behavior) might lead to these types of negative or excessive behaviors. Personal and managerial implications of negative perfectionism in organizational settings are discussed.

. . . when personal characteristics grate harmfully on others or significantly derail the success of the persons themselves, psychologists regard them not just as personality traits, but as personality disorders.

—Miller (1998)     

Social rank, interpersonal trust and recall of parental rearing in relation to homesickness

This study set out to explore the relationship between recall of parental rearing, social rank, interpersonal trust and homesickness. Eighty-nine first year undergraduates (59 women and 30 men) living away from home and attending the University of Derby completed a set of questionnaires in their sixth week in the first semester at university. Results indicate that recall of supportive parenting is associated with lower homesickness, favourable social rank and greater interpersonal trust. Conversely, recall of parental rejection correlated with great homesickness, feeling inferior to others, and lower interpersonal trust. Two separate multiple regression analyses revealed that both the parental rearing variables, and the social rank and interpersonal trust variables, produced significant models in the prediction of homesickness scores. Mediation analysis suggests that whilst recalling one’s parents as rejecting is directly associated with increased homesickness, it may also generate feelings of inferiority that may lead to distress when moving into new environments.     

Psychotherapie bei lebensbedrohlich Erkrankten

In den letzten 20 Jahren ist die begleitende psychotherapeutische Behandlung bei körperlich Schwerkranken fester Bestandteil der Tätigkeit von psychosomatischen Konsiliar- und Liaisondiensten im Krankenhaus geworden. Eine Konzeptualisierung dieser Tätigkeit auf psychodynamischer Basis wird beschrieben. Ziele der psychotherapeutischen Interventionen sind die Stabilisierung der Abwehr des Patienten und die Rückgewinnung eines strukturierten Umgangs mit der Krankheit, mit den Behandlern und den nahen Bezugspersonen. Therapiebausteine sind eine narrative Gesprächsstruktur, ein psychodynamisches Verständnis der aktuellen Krankheitssituation auf dem Hintergrund der Lebensgeschichte, aktives Zuhören, Fokusformulierung und systemische Sichtweise. Wichtige Wirkfaktoren sind eine empathische Beziehung, Verbalisierung von belastenden, negativen Gefühlen, Fokussieren auf aktuelle Probleme und Ressourcenorientierung. Probleme entstehen durch negative Gegenübertragung des Psychotherapeuten und ausgeprägte Verleugnungsvorgänge auf Patientenseite. Die Umsetzung erfordert vom Psychotherapeuten kontinuierliche Präsenz und regelmäßige Rücksprachen und Konsultationen mit dem behandelnden Team.