“It's A Long Way …” to Contemporary Psychoanalysis: Training Experience in Self Psychology,Intersubjectivity, and Relational Psychoanalysis

The successful experience with a Jungian analyst, research work on international economic interdependence, and the failure of a classical analysis were the preliminary steps toward the discovery of Kohut's self psychology. The comparison of epistemological principles in Jung and in Kohut and the discovery of the relational nature of experience formed the background of my professional attitude as an analyst. After an unsatisfactory, but “orthodox” supervision, training in self psychology, intersubjectivity, and relational psychoanalysis at Isipsé made it possible to integrate all previous experiences in a complex and, at the same time, clinically coherent framework.     

International Students' Personal and Multicultural Strengths: Reducing Acculturative Stress and Promoting Adjustment

International students are often encouraged to cope with acculturative stress by relying on personal and multicultural strengths. The authors explored this assumption by testing personal growth initiative, hardiness, and universal‐diverse orientation as predictors of international students’ acculturative stress and adjustment. Data from 336 international students supported a partially mediated model, such that greater levels of personal and multicultural strengths predicted less acculturative problems, thus leading to better adjustment.     

Valence and the development of immediate and long-term false memory illusions

Across five experiments we examined the role of valence in children's and adults’ true and false memories. Using the Deese/Roediger-McDermott paradigm and either neutral or negative-emotional lists, both adults’ (Experiment 1) and children's (Experiment 2) true recall and recognition was better for neutral than negative items, and although false recall was also higher for neutral items, false recognition was higher for negative items. The last three experiments examined adults’ (Experiment 3) and children's (Experiments 4 and 5) 1-week long-term recognition of neutral and negative-emotional information. The results replicated the immediate recall and recognition findings from the first two experiments. More important, these experiments showed that although true recognition decreased over the 1-week interval, false recognition of neutral items remained unchanged whereas false recognition of negative-emotional items increased. These findings are discussed in terms of theories of emotion and memory as well as their forensic implications.     

Negotiating for Improved Reimbursement for Dialectical Behavior Therapy: A Successful Project

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is an evidence-based treatment for borderline personality disorder that has been widely disseminated to many outpatient treatment settings. Many practitioners depend on third-party payers to fund treatment delivery. DBT requires additional clinical services not often included in outpatient therapy, including a weekly skills group led by 2 clinicians, and the requirement for clinicians to attend weekly consultation team and provide intersession contact for coaching. Standard outpatient insurance rates for individual and group sessions do not provide adequate reimbursement for the additional services of DBT. This paper describes how 2 DBT team leaders collaborated to obtain improved reimbursement for their programs. The 2 teams met with insurers, educated them about DBT, and showed outcomes from their programs to achieve large increases in reimbursement rates. The paper includes client outcome data from both programs.     

Toward a Better Understanding of the Relationship Between Friendship and Happiness: Perceived Responses to Capitalization Attempts, Feelings of Mattering, and Satisfaction of Basic Psychological Needs in Same-Sex Best Friendships as Predictors of Happiness

Friendship is a consistent correlate of happiness, yet less is known about the associations of friendship specific experiences and feelings with happiness. In this study (n = 4,382) the roles of perceived responses to capitalization attempts, perceived mattering to and satisfaction of basic psychological needs in same-sex best friendships in happiness among men and women were investigated. Findings showed that although all of the friendship variables were positively associated with happiness to varying degrees, basic needs satisfaction emerged as the strongest predictor of happiness. Additional analyses revealed that competence need satisfaction was the most important need predicting happiness. Importantly, these findings were gender invariant. The findings were discussed in light of theory and empirical literature and suggestions were made for future research.     

The Role of Face Familiarity in Judgments of Personality and Intelligence

Personality judgments based on facial features are a common occurrence. The face familiarity overgeneralization hypothesis states that people make judgments of unknown faces based on their similarity to known faces. However, there is a dearth of research regarding how face familiarity relates to perceptions of personality and intelligence in strangers. The current article used two studies to provide evidence for the relationship between face familiarity and judgments of personality and intelligence. Study 1 showed that photographs perceived as familiar by one set of participants were rated more positively regarding personality and intelligence by a second group of participants. Study 2 found that high perceived familiarity resulted in positive judgments of personality and intelligence, whereas familiarity based on exposure did not. These findings indicate both that perceived familiarity significantly impacts positive judgments of personality and intelligence and that the face familiarity overgeneralization hypothesis is a useful framework for this area of research.     

Imagining Disability Futurities

This article explores twelve short narrative films created by women and trans people living with disabilities and embodied differences. Produced through Project Re?Vision, these micro documentaries uncover the cultures and temporalities of bodies of difference by foregrounding themes of multiple histories: body, disability, maternal, medical, and/or scientific histories; and divergent futurities: contradictory, surprising, unpredictable, opaque, and/or generative futures. We engage with Alison Kafer's call to theorize disability futurity by wrestling with the ways in which “the future” is normatively deployed in the service of able‐bodiedness and able‐mindedness (Kafer 2013 ), a deployment used to render bodies of difference as sites of “no future” (Edelman 2004 ). By re‐storying embodied difference, the storytellers illuminate ongoing processes of remaking their bodily selves in ways that respond to the past and provide possibilities for different futures; these orientations may be configured as “dis‐topias” based not on progress, but on new pathways for living, uncovered not through evoking the familiar imaginaries of curing, eliminating, or overcoming disability, but through incorporating experiences of embodied difference into time. These temporalities gesture toward new kinds of futures, giving us glimpses of ways of cripping time, of cripping ways of being/becoming in time, and of radically re‐presencing disability in futurity.     

Abduction in the Public Sphere: Sadomasochism,Surveillance, and Counterpublics

Several years ago, a negotiated, consensual abduction scenario took place in downtown Toronto, Canada. Following the public abduction the captive was taken to a secure, private location and (consensually) subjected to physical and sexual aggression: ‘gang-rape’. The public abduction involved five queer and trans persons, some of whom are people of colour. In a Foucaultian context, an abduction scenario eludes surveillance and remains invisible until revealed. During the abduction scenario some citizens stopped, observed, and considered using their cellular phones, visibly concerned with what they were witnessing. At one point the scenario paused for consultation and explanation with bystanders troubled by what they interpreted as potentially criminal behaviour. This response can be understood as policing non-normative, public, physical activity. What are the limitations of Sadomasochism (S/m) in the public sphere? And how are identifications of class, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality positioned in this analysis? To those inexperienced with S/m, unfamiliar with consensually aggressive activity, there can be a questioning of psychological contiguity. In the twenty-first century there has been a mainstreaming of kink. Yet, there remain limitations of public tolerance for S/m as counter–conduct. Through the work of Warner and Munoz, this paper suggests the scenario can be interpreted as a counterpublic. This research is an autoethnographic account of the scenario and addresses the limitations on S/m scenarios conducted in the public sphere.     

Pressure to cooperate: Is positive reward interdependence really needed in cooperative learning?

Background. Despite extensive research on cooperative learning, the debate regarding whether or not its effectiveness depends on positive reward interdependence has not yet found clear evidence. Aims. We tested the hypothesis that positive reward interdependence, as compared to reward independence, enhances cooperative learning only if learners work on a ‘routine task’; if the learners work on a ‘true group task’, positive reward interdependence induces the same level of learning as reward independence. Sample. The study involved 62 psychology students during regular workshops. Method. Students worked on two psychology texts in cooperative dyads for three sessions. The type of task was manipulated through resource interdependence: students worked on either identical (routine task) or complementary (true group task) information. Students expected to be assessed with a Multiple Choice Test (MCT) on the two texts. The MCT assessment type was introduced according to two reward interdependence conditions, either individual (reward independence) or common (positive reward interdependence). A follow‐up individual test took place 4 weeks after the third session of dyadic work to examine individual learning. Results. The predicted interaction between the two types of interdependence was significant, indicating that students learned more with positive reward interdependence than with reward independence when they worked on identical information (routine task), whereas students who worked on complementary information (group task) learned the same with or without reward interdependence. Conclusions. This experiment sheds light on the conditions under which positive reward interdependence enhances cooperative learning, and suggests that creating a real group task allows to avoid the need for positive reward interdependence.     

Effects of music on vocal stereotypy in children with autism

We examined the effects of manipulating the intensity (i.e., volume) of music on engagement in vocal stereotypy in 2 children with autism. Noncontingent access to music decreased immediate engagement in vocal stereotypy for each participant, but it produced only marginal effects on subsequent engagement in the behavior (i.e., after withdrawal). Manipulating the intensity of music did not produce differential effects on immediate engagement in vocal stereotypy. The implications of the results and applications for future research are discussed.