Discussion: On Some Contributions of the Interpersonal Tradition to Contemporary Psychoanalytic Praxis

Writers identified with the interpersonal psychoanalytic tradition are primarily responsible for initiating the relational turn in psychoanalysis: the evolution from an objectivist one-person model of analytic praxis to that of an intersubjective, two-person paradigm. The two papers discussed here focus on two qualities in the analyst—curiosity and spontaneity—and how these elements of the analyst's subjectivity have helped lead to a potential enrichment of patients’ responsivity to analytic engagement.     

On Some Advantages of Mutual Sexual Fantasy in the Analytic Situation: Commentary on Paper by Christopher Bonovitz

This commentary reflects a fundamental agreement with Christopher Bonovitz' main thesis—fantasy, indeed, cannot be seen as a product of an isolated mind and is intrinsic to the development of both optimal internal and interpersonal richness. The theme of mutual sexual fantasy between analyst and patient in particular is highlighted for discussion. It is argued that, contrary to the more discussed dangers of erotic countertransference feelings, the absence of analysts' reciprocal sexual fantasy has the potential to deaden the analytic relationship and result in a less than satisfactory analytic experience.     

Ties to influential adults among black and white adolescents: culture,social class,and family networks

Although prior research suggests the importance of nonparental adults to adolescents, the ecological context of those relationships has received little attention. This study examined ties to influential adults among 122 adolescents who varied by race, family structure, and gender. The strongest effects were for race. Blacks reported stronger ties than Whites to the maternal grandmother as well as more supportive interactions with adult males. While race differences in grandparental ties were robust across social class (SES), ties to an influential adult male became nonsignificant upon controlling for SES. African American girls from divorced families consistently reported the strongest ties. Discussion considers the role of culture versus SES in explaining race differences. Implications for mentoring interventions are proposed, with special attention to the role of actualizing latent ties to already existing network members.     

Self-images play a causal role in social phobia

Patients with social phobia often experience negative self-images in social situations. The current study investigated whether negative self-images have a causal role in maintaining social phobia. Patients with social phobia participated twice in a conversation with a stranger, once whilst holding their usual negative self-image in mind and once whilst holding a less negative (control) self-image in mind, with order counterbalanced across participants. Compared to the control image condition, when participants held the negative image in mind they experienced greater anxiety, rated their anxiety symptoms as being more visible, and rated their performance as poorer. An assessor who did not know which image was being held also rated participants' anxiety as more evident and their behaviour as less positive when the negative image was being held in mind. Finally, when participant and assessor ratings were compared, participants underestimated their performance and overestimated the visibility of their anxiety to a significantly greater extent in the negative imagery condition. Taken together, these results support the hypothesis that negative self-imagery has a causal role in maintaining social phobia.     

Willingness to express emotion depends upon perceiving partner care

Two studies document that people are more willing to express emotions that reveal vulnerabilities to partners when they perceive those partners to be more communally responsive to them. In Study 1, participants rated the communal strength they thought various partners felt toward them and their own willingness to express happiness, sadness and anxiety to each partner. Individuals who generally perceive high communal strength from their partners were also generally most willing to express emotion to partners. Independently, participants were more willing to express emotion to particular partners whom they perceived felt more communal strength toward them. In Study 2, members of romantic couples independently reported their own felt communal strength toward one another, perceptions of their partners’ felt communal strength toward them, and willingness to express emotions (happiness, sadness, anxiety, disgust, anger, hurt and guilt) to each other. The communal strength partners reported feeling toward the participants predicted the participants’ willingness to express emotion to those partners. This link was mediated by participants’ perceptions of the partner’s communal strength toward them which, itself, was a joint function of accurate perceptions of the communal strength partners had reported feeling toward them and projections of their own felt communal strength for their partners onto those partners.     

Loneliness and Negative Affective Conditions in Adults: Is There Any Room for Hope in Predicting Anxiety and Depressive Symptoms?

This study examined the role of hope in understanding the link between loneliness and negative affective conditions (viz., anxiety and depressive symptoms) in a sample of 318 adults. As expected, loneliness was found to be a significant predictor of both anxiety and depressive symptoms. Noteworthy, hope was found to significantly augment the prediction of depressive symptoms, even after accounting for loneliness. Furthermore, we found evidence for a significant Loneliness × Hope interaction effect in predicting anxiety. A plot of the interaction confirmed that the association between loneliness and anxiety was weaker among high, compared to low, hope adults. Some implications of the present findings are discussed.     

Effects of an interdependent group contingency on engagement in physical education

We examined whether a group contingency increased engagement during elementary school physical education sessions. The intervention employed procedures (explicit instruction, goal setting, and reinforcement) drawn from the first tier of classwide function‐related intervention teams (CW‐FIT; Wills et al., 2009). Results showed salutary increases in engagement that corresponded with the teacher's implementation.     

Sense of Coherence During Female Holocaust Survivors’ Formative Years

Four female Holocaust survivors were interviewed in order to investigate how they coped prior to the Holocaust, during the Holocaust years, following the end of World War II, and during integration within emerging Jewish society prior to the establishment of the State of Israel. Antonovsky’s (1987 Antonovsky, A. (1987). Unraveling the mystery of health: How people manage stress and stay well. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. [Google Scholar]) concept of sense of coherence (SOC) and thematic analysis were employed. The analysis suggests that their ability to navigate these life-changing circumstances as young women was the result of the elasticity of the SOC components and the meanings ascribed to them, depending on the situations encountered.