Returning to the Fire: Surviving the Holocaust and “Going Back”

This paper examines the multiply determined factors in Holocaust survivors who return to their native countries and sites of persecution. Citing material from archived interviews and consultations with a gravely ill survivor, as well as published accounts from others, the author explores historical, cultural, and psychodynamic dimensions. Intrapsychic, developmental, and traumatic aspects are considered, such as the fantasy of reunion with the lost maternal object, unresolved grief, the repetition compulsion, attempts at mastery, and the use of counterphobic or hypomanic defenses. This constellation of factors is seen in the context of the Jewish premium on remembering and the political realities of post war Europe. The role of the Second Generation in assisting the survivor parents in the working through process is also emphasized.     

ABSTRACT OF LITERATURE

This report from a research team describes problems in obtaining a sample to do family research. Institutional barriers, attitudinal barriers, procedural barriers, and guidelines for penetrating the barriers are discussed. Sample acquisition can be very time-consuming and nonrewarding unless researchers design techniques to deal with these problems in their projects.     

Gradients of attraction as a function of the fit between social setting and stimulus person characteristics: Studies of the differentiation of attitude

Two experiments compared three alternative hypotheses concerning differences in attraction to a person across interaction settings: A compartmentalization hypothesis assumes that a person's (A's) intimate and nonintimate characteristics only affect attraction to him in intimate and nonintimate interactions, respectively, and that there is no generalization of attraction across levels of intimacy. An intimacy dominance hypothesis assumes that a person's intimacy-related characteristics determine attraction to him at all levels of interaction. Finally, an intimacy threshold hypothesis assumes that a person's intimacy-related characteristics become increasingly relevant to attraction as the intimacy of interaction increases, but that these characteristics need not influence attraction at nonintimate levels of interaction. Experiment 1 supported the compartmentalization hypothesis. Attraction to a formal teacher decreased as the intimacy of the anticipated setting increased, while attraction to an informal teacher increased with increasing setting intimacy. In Experiment 2, agreement on intimate topics promoted liking for a peer while no effect was found for agreement on superficial topics. This effect only emerged for intimate interaction settings, supporting the intimacy threshold hypothesis. High positive correlations between distance preference and attraction were obtained in Experiment 1, while analogous data obtained in Experiment 2 had less clear implications.     

ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE

Two case examples are presented in support of the hypothesis that family therapy is useful in situations in which the identified patients are students at a university counseling center. The core dynamic issues focus around separation from parents. It is felt that the family therapy is a useful adjunct to the individual psychotherapy.     

Sensitivity and decisional factors in the psychological refractory period

Three trained Ss responded to a pair of events presented at fixed interstimulus intervals (ISIs) of 33, 67, and 100 msec. Each event was the independent presence of a visual stimulus (S-P) or its absence (S-A), to which Ss were to respond or not, with a set for speed over accuracy. The probabilities of Sop occurrence [P(S)] to each of the events were varied. Pretrial verbal reports or behavioral hypotheses (BHs) werealso obtained. P(S), ISI, BH, and order (first vs second event) were all generally determinants of both RT to Sop and inhibition probability to S-A. However, when the RT data were corrected for inhibition probability, order was the only systematic effect that remained. The results were discussed in terms of approaches to the psychological refractory period derived from signal detection theory involving differential sensitivity as opposed to criterion.     

Effects of constraint and validity of sentence contexts on lexical decisions

Recent models of sentence context effects predict that the pattern of facilitation and inhibition of response to sentence completions should be influenced by the experiment-wide contextual “environment.” In the present experiments, this environment was manipulated in several ways, including the degree to which contexts constrained possible completions, the probability of predictable completions’ being presented, and the probability of congruous completions’ being presented. In Experiment 1, decreasing the proportion of congruent test words had no effect on either the facilitation for highly likely words or the inhibition for incongruent words; increasing the proportion of predictable words produced no increase in facilitation for these words, but did increase the inhibition for incongruous words. In Experiment 2, contexts with very high or very low degrees of constraint produced equivalent results when predictability was uniformly low: no facilitation for unlikely but congruent words, and inhibition for incongruent words. In general, the patterns of change in facilitation and inhibition caused by changes in the contextual environment were more consistent with the modified two-process model (Stanovich & West, 1983) than with the verification model (Becker, 1982). But the limited range of influence suggests that, under conditions approximating normal reading, little use is made of such “metacontextual” information.     

ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE

This is a report on the methodology for an outcome study of marital therapy, comparing an interpretative approach with a direct, behavioral approach based on operant conditioning principles. A control group will receive common sense, nondirective, and noninterpretive therapy. All three types of treatment will be given by the same therapist. Assessment will be done by an independent assessor, blind to treatment, and by questionnaires filled out separately by each partner, covering work, leisure, social, and sexual spheres, as well as symptoms. Sessions will be given every other week, usually up to ten sessions, but cases could be stopped earlier. An example of each of the three approaches is given, and preliminary impressions of treatment are reported.     

ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE

This is a clinical study attempting to discern differences in parental behavior toward children considered "normal" (that is, having never received special psychological, educational or legal attention). Sample was 25 children (11 boys and 14 girls) ages 10 to 11, from upper middle class families with both parents living at home. Families were rated on a family task, children on adjustment using the Briston Social Adjustment Guide. Children were divided into three categories—adjusted, middle, and disturbed—with nine in the first group, eight each in the second and third. Significant differences were found between the adjusted and the disturbed groups for parental behavior during the family discussion task. Disturbed mothers were found to be "over-prominent and over-attentive"; disturbed fathers were withdrawn.     

A systems analysis of a campus community mental health facility: A preliminary investigation

Faced with increasing demand and relatively static resources, community mental health facilities need to evaluate their functions in terms of time, cost, and performance effectiveness. For this study, the technology of systems analysis was applied to the functions of a progressive university counseling center. The systems analysis provided a management and information flow analysis and a time and cost analysis, as well as a performance analysis. This study focused on the preliminary results of the time, cost, and performance analysis.Gratitude is extended to the remainder of the systems analysis team for their assistance in the project, as well as the staff of The University of Texas Counseling-Psychological Services Center for their cooperation. This project was partially funded by National Science Foundation grant GJ 509X3, by the Counseling-Psychological Services Center, and by the Office of the Vice President for Student Affairs. Special acknowledgement is made of the support of Ronald M. Brown, Vice President for Student Affairs, The University of Texas at Austin. The systems analysis team included T. Bishop, C. Black, J. Byars, R. Byars, P. Caroom, J. Littlefield, A. Nutt, M. Rood, E. Salsbury, and C. Weinstein.