Techniques for handling resistances in group psychotherapy with severely disturbed patients

There has been an increased interest in recent years in the treatment of those with severe psychopathology through application of object relations theory and modern ego psychology. Yet, for the past 20 years, such patients have been treated in day hospitals where rehabilitation and socialization concepts have been employed. This paper integrates some of the advances in psychoanalytic theory with more established methods of milieu therapy. In the patients studied, the therapists noted the presence of severe envy, dependency, passivity and with-holding, an intolerance for aggression along with an intransigent, paranoid-schizoid position. The techniques described here worked through the effects of these resistances so that the patients could use the psychotherapy group, and the entire milieu, more constructively than they did before.Ruthe Feilbert-Willis, C.S.W. was formerly Senior Social Worker in the Adolescent and Adult Day Hospital at The New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, in White Plains, New York.He was a psychiatric resident at The New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, in White Plains, New York, during the time the clinical work of this paper was undertaken.     

The effect of debriefing on laboratory induced helplessness: An attributional analysis1

Debriefing was assessed as means of reversing helplessness deficits through reattribution. Fifty-five subjects listened to escapable or inescapable tones. One inescapable group, prior to anagrams, was debriefed regarding noise uncontrollability. A second inescapable group was administered anagrams by a different experimenter. While exposure to inescapable noise led to performance deficits, switching experimenters obviated these deficits. Debriefing actually facilitated anagram performance. All inescapable subjects—debriefed or not—attributed their lack of control on the noise task to experimenter interference, casting some doubt on reattribution as an explanation of debriefing's effects. Results were discussed in terms of the reformulated learned helplessness model and the ethical implications of debriefing in learned helplessness research.     

Does family therapy produce change? an overview of outcome studies

Summary Families were randomly assigned to one of two forms of conjoint marital therapy: an insight-oriented treatment (n=10) or a problem-solving intervention (n=10.). The results on self-report measures of family functioning indicate that the problem-solving intervention produced more favorable changes after three months. However on long-term follow-up after a year, this more positive effect did not apparently persist, since the insight treatment group reported better results. Experienced therapists did better than inexperienced therapists in the insight treatment condition, but level of experience did not make a difference in the problem-solving intervention. A group of eight families who dropped out of the insight treatment group provided data on correlates of premature termination. Several of the practical obstacles to implementing an experimental design in a clinic setting are illustrated by the research.As we develop more sophisticated methodology, we hope that is the near future family therapy researchers will be better able to state which type of approach is more effective for whom and under what circumstances. A review of current studies of family therapy outcome research indicates that family therapy seems to be as effective as individual psychological treatment.     

Real-world schemata and scene recognition in adults and children

Recognition memory for previously seen multiobject scenes was examined for different types of contextual arrangements between objects in the scenes. It was found that organized scenes with novel but possible interobject relations were recognized more accurately than either organized scenes with familiar interobject relations or unorganized scenes with impossible interobject relations. This finding was obtained for adults, 8- to 10-year-old children, and 5- to 8-year-old children who indicated concrete-operational ability in Piaget’s conservation-of-liquid quantity task. The results were interpreted in conjunction with a two-stage model of scene processing involving the formation of a schema to represent a scene (Stage 1), and the operation of the schema in governing the further processing of detailed information in the scene (Stage 2). It was concluded that preoperational children can form schemata to represent organized scenes (Stage 1), but it is not until the emergence of concrete operations that these schemata become operational with respect to guiding the further processing of information in the scene (Stage 2).     

A microprocessor-controlled clinical tromometer

A microprocessor-controlled clinical tromometer has been developed to permit routine monitoring of disease processes where tremor is a principal sign and in behavior studies where tremor may be used to index anxiety, stress, or response to Ethan. Emphasis is placed on the measurement technique and the design and construction of the device. The important role played by the microprocessor in providing for human factoring of the instrument to make it compatible with the clinical setting is examined.     

Mental rotation and perceptual uprightness

Performance in Cooper and Shepard’s (1973) mental rotation task was examined in the context of a model that defined the extent to which alphabet letters could be tilted from their normal orientation and still be perceptually upright. For letters with a broad range of orientations for which they remain perceptually upright, a nonlinear effect of orientation on reaction time was obtained (as in Cooper and Shepard). However, for letters with a narrow range of orientations for which they remain perceptually upright, reaction time was linearly related to orientation. The results supported the hypothesis that subjects in the Cooper and Shepard task would mentally rotate alphabet letters only when they were presented in orientations for which they were not perceptually upright.     

The effects of context and subjects' perceived control in breaching posthypnotic amnesia

Subjects selected on the basis of being amnesic and experiencing their amnesia as “voluntary” or “involuntary” were subjected to two conditions designed to breach their amnesia: (1) lie detector, and (2) honesty instructions. A third group receiving relaxation instructions served as a control. Posthypnotic amnesia was breached under lie detection and honesty conditions. However, there appeared to be an interaction between how subjects reported their experience of amnesia (voluntary and involuntary) and the degree to which amnesia was breached. Voluntary subjects accounted for the majority of breaching. Implications for (1) studies on breaching, (2) theories and processes of breaching, Implications for (1) studies on breaching, (2) theories and processes of posthypnotic amnesia, and (3) studies in posthypnotic amnesia are discussed.     

Microsaccadic eye movements and binocular rivalry

Eye movements were monitored with a sensitive binocular measuring device during presentation of stimuli that caused binocular rivalry. It was found that the number of microsaccades was approximately 50% higher when measured during rivalry than when measured during periods of normal viewing. The level of microsaccadic activity is greater at the beginning than toward the end of the suppression interval. The results suggest that the depth of suppression associated with binocular rivalry is not constant over the duration of a rivalry interval.     

Modification of the human glabella reflex by antecedent acoustic stimulation

The eyeblink elicited by a mechanically produced tap to the glabella was inhibited by a 50-msec, 80-dB SPL tone presented in the interval 50 to 800 msec prior to the tap, but maximal inhibition occurred when the lead interval was 100 msec. At this lead interval, the amount of inhibition was an increasing function of prestimulus intensity, but reliable inhibition was detected when prestimulus intensity was only 30 dB SPL. With a given inhibitory prestimulus, the amount of inhibition was independent of the intensity of the blink-eliciting tap. Monaural presentation of a prestimulus was found to produce more inhibition than the binaural presentation of that same prestimulus. The offset of an otherwise continuous binaural acoustic signal 100 msec prior to a tap inhibited the eyeblink, but more inhibition was found when offset occurred in only one ear.