The bivalent fear of evaluation model of social anxiety: further integrating findings on fears of positive and negative evaluation

Accumulating evidence supports the premise that fear of evaluation in general is important in social anxiety, including fear of positive evaluation (FPE) as well as fear of negative evaluation (FNE). This study tested various hypotheses pertaining to a novel, expanded conceptualization of social anxiety involving these two distinct fears: the bivalent fear of evaluation (BFOE) model. Responses from a large undergraduate sample (N = 585) were examined. In addition, responses from a subsample of participants qualifying for a probable diagnosis of social anxiety disorder (SAD; n = 133) were examined, via mediational analyses, for potential mechanisms underlying FPE within highly socially anxious individuals. FPE exhibited a unique and significantly stronger relationship with concerns of social reprisal due to making positive impressions than did FNE. FPE related uniquely and negatively to trait positive affect/automatic thoughts, whereas FNE, FPE, and social anxiety all related uniquely and positively to trait negative affect/automatic thoughts. FPE, FNE, and social anxiety all related uniquely and positively to disqualification of positive social outcomes (DPSO). However, FPE related most strongly to DPSO attributions at the level of the self, and these attributions mediated the relationship between FPE and negative automatic thoughts in an analog clinical sample. Concerns of social reprisal due to making positive impressions on others mediated the relationship between FPE and DPSO attributions to others in an analog clinical sample. The obtained findings replicate and extend support for the BFOE model of social anxiety. Implications for the theoretical conceptualization and treatment of SAD are discussed.     

Back to the “States” Victim and Abuser States in Borderline Personality Disorder

Chronic and complex posttraumatic stress involving terrorization and betrayal by a caretaker can result in a particular kind of psychic organization that is structured largely by underlying, alternating victim/masochistic and abuser/rageful states. When we move our view of experience “back” to its underpinning in states, we can see how the oscillation between these states is a continual reenactment of the traumatic violation of the relational boundary. While “borderline” persons are capable of conscious awareness of their dramatically differing behaviors, the meaning of the behavior is disavowed. These unlinked, but switching states are decontextualized. Inasmuch as context provides meaning, the acted-out parts remain encapsulated as unowned experience.

Diagnostic formulation in terms of these dissociated states supplies a needed cohesiveness for the criteria given in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM—IV) and adds specificity to the “borderline” defenses as spelled out by Kernberg. These shifting victim/masochistic and abuser/rageful self-states can be observed and talked about and are accessible to experience. Themes of behaviors that are typically enacted have to do with boundary violations, destructive entitlement, betrayal, and mirroring the earlier experience, particularly of traumatic betrayals of attachment, of these survivors.     

Explaining Black–White differences in homicide victimization

In recent decades, homicide has so truncated life expectancy in the United States that homicide victimization should be considered a public-health problem worthy of addressing via preventive programs and policies. Evidence in the literature roots homicide victimization deep within the social structure, in problematic social inequalities and disadvantages. The evidence suggests homicide victimization is associated with six demographic, social, and lifestyle factors: being male, African-American, young, of low socioeconomic status, without adequate social support, and mentally ill or a substance user. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this paper outlines theoretical mechanisms leading to racial differences in homicide victimization. It hypothesizes that Black Americans (a) are likelier than Whites to become homicide victims and, if victimized, (b) are likelier to be younger than victimized Whites. To understand these racial differences, the paper examines whether and how multiple disadvantages—at both the macro and micro level—operate against Blacks disproportionately. The paper concludes by noting further research needs and policy implications.     

Introduction

This article introduces the papers from two video conferences recently held between philosophers at Moscow State University and the University at Albany, State University of New York. The overarching theme is philosophical progress in the past fifty years, but the conferences were designed also to illustrate the range of work now being done by American analytic philosophers and by Russian thinkers. The Albany essays focus on philosophy of science, philosophical logic, Kantian studies, applied ethics, and ethical and political theory. The Russian essays concern philosophy of culture, philosophy of mind, phenomenology, social philosophy, feminism, and postmodernism. This introductory essay notes similarities and differences that exist among American and Russian approaches to philosophy and the prospects for the convergence (or not) of these approaches. It also indicates ways in which contemporary Russian thinkers are striking out in new directions while seeking to recover those parts of their past that were silenced during much of the twentieth century.     

Recurrent involuntary imagery in people who stutter and people who do not stutter

Objective

To compare intrusive memories in groups of people who do (PWS), and who do not (PWNS), stutter.

Method

Twenty-one participants who stuttered and 21 matched controls were given a semi-structured interview which explored imagery in speaking situations. The data were analyzed using a Content Analysis approach. Other outcome measures were the Beck Anxiety Inventory, the Beck Depression Inventory, the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, Symptom Scale: Self-Report Version.

Results

Significantly more stuttering participants than control participants indicated both recurrent imagery and associated memories. Content Analysis revealed themes of disfluency, anxiety, negative social evaluation, self-focus and pressure to speak that were common to both groups’ reports. Additional themes of helplessness, shame, sadness and frustration were found only in the images and memories of the stuttering group. No group differences were evident for the number of sensory modalities involved in images and memories, or for ratings of their vividness or strength of associated emotions, or on self-reports of depression, anxiety and trauma.

Conclusions

Recurrent imagery about events in childhood is a potent factor in the memories of PWS. It is worth modifying interventions that have been successfully applied for treating social anxiety for use with people who stutter.Educational objectives: After reading this article, participants will be able to: (a) identify the role of intrusive memories in psychiatric disorders and stuttering; (b) investigate how DSM criteria can be employed with people who stutter; (c) employ anxiety instruments used for assessing psychiatric disorders for stuttering; (d) distinguish between the intrusive memories experienced by people who stutter, and people who do not stutter; (e) apply treatments for intrusive memories in psychiatric disorders to work with people who stutter.     

Ferenczi’s Concept of Identification with The Aggressor: Understanding Dissociative Structure with Interacting Victim and Abuser Self-States

No one has described more passionately than Ferenczi the traumatic induction of dissociative trance with its resulting fragmentation of the personality. Ferenczi introduced the concept and term, identification with the aggressor in his seminal “Confusion of Tongues” paper, in which he described how the abused child becomes transfixed and robbed of his senses. Having been traumatically overwhelmed, the child becomes hypnotically transfixed by the aggressor’s wishes and behavior, automatically identifying by mimicry rather than by a purposeful identification with the aggressor’s role. To expand upon Ferenczi’s observations, identification with the aggressor can be understood as a two-stage process. The first stage is automatic and initiated by trauma, but the second stage is defensive and purposeful. While identification with the aggressor begins as an automatic organismic process, with repeated activation and use, gradually it becomes a defensive process. Broadly, as a dissociative defense, it has two enacted relational parts, the part of the victim and the part of the aggressor. This paper describes the intrapersonal aspects (how aggressor and victim self-states interrelate in the internal world), as well as the interpersonal aspects (how these become enacted in the external). This formulation has relevance to understanding the broad spectrum of the dissociative structure of mind, borderline personality disorder, and dissociative identity disorder.