Architectural design of a secure forensic state psychiatric hospital

This article describes the architectural design of a secure forensic state psychiatric hospital. The project combined input from staff at all levels of the client organization, outside consultants, and a team of experienced architects. The design team was able to create a design that maximized patient dignity and privacy on one hand, and the ability of staff to observe all patient activity on the other. The design centers around 24-bed units, broken into smaller living wings of eight beds each. Each eight-bed living wing has its own private bathrooms (two) and showers (two), as well as a small living area solely reserved for these eight patients and their guests. An indoor-outdoor dayroom allows patients to go outside whenever they choose, while allowing staff to continue observing them. The heart of the facility is a large treatment mall, designed to foster the acquisition of social, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral skills that will help patients to safely return to their communities.     

The reliability of the DRM paradigm as a measure of individual differences in false memories

Despite considerable research on the Deese—Roediger-McDermott (DRM) false memory paradigm, little attention has been paid to the reliability of the paradigm as a measure of individual differences. In the present research, we examined the reliability of the DRM paradigm in a 2-week test-retest design. This analysis showed that the false memories produced in the paradigm were quite stable across the 2-week period and that this stability had both global (cross-list) and list-specific components. In contrast, correct memories showed only global stability across the testing period.     

Fathers with joint physical custody of young children: A preliminary look

Abstract

Fathers with joint physical custody of children under age 6 report that this custody arrangement is of great benefit to the children, especially in circumstances where mothers have initiated the divorce and have sought less childcare responsibility. Joint physical custody fathers are highly available and provide closeness as the sole parent in charge. However, they also experience role overload and household management problems, and continue to feel hostility toward their former wives who have cut back on family responsibilities.     

Creative Use of Gender While Addressing Early Attachment,Trauma, and Cross-Cultural Issues in a Cotherapy Group

This paper examines how early attachments, trauma, and transference are modified by cross-cultural issues in a group therapy setting. The paper focuses on preparation of an appropriate group after individual treatment, attention to composition in that group, and use of a female-male cotherapist team in helping two Latin American female group members work through their early traumas. In addition, the paper speaks about times when individual treatment with the group therapist of the opposite sex should be added. The paper emphasizes and clarifies how not to get caught up in cultural stereotypes and how the clinician needs to stay with the specificity of the person's organizing experiences.     

My Colleague,That Other

The author uses Janine Puget's ideas about the social dimension of the building of subjectivity to reflect about relationships among analysts and among psychoanalytic institutions. Extending Puget's notions of difference, and of representation versus presentation, the author highlights the anxiety and disturbance generated in tolerating the otherness of the other and the impact of the new. Tracing the development of our awareness of the effects of our subjectivity beyond narcissism, the author points out the distress caused by otherness, often resulting in a need to pathologize that which cannot be made coherent. Following this line, the paper attempts to clarify the difficulties analyst face in accepting ideas different from those in which they were trained. The emergence of really new ideas and of analytic creativity can only occur in the tolerance of the space of the Two.     

The dynamic self in psychoanalytic psychology a formulation

Following Hartmann's theoretical formulations, the self has been explored primarily as a body of self‐representations coordinate to object representations; the dynamic organizations of the mind (the id‐egosuperego systems) have been seen as impersonal (nonself) functions.

This paper attempts a conception of the id‐ego‐superego structures as self‐functions in intimate relation to self‐representations. Building on an integration of Piagetian and psychoanalytic object relations frameworks (event theory), it proposes that the earliest self‐experience occurs in dynamic schemes of personally motivated interaction between self and nonself. These I‐schemes lay the groundwork for both the dynamic and the representational aspects of the self: Their structure results in experience characteristic of the dynamic id and in their character as undifferentiated interactions provides the base for the development of self‐ and object representations. Development occurs by integration and differentiation in processes of conflict resolution. The paper traces these developments in outline as they lead to the transition in the dynamic self from id to ego organizations, and in the self‐representations from part‐selves and part‐objects to a whole and individuated self in relation to whole objects.     

Coping Functions of Prayer and Posttraumatic Growth

Research on prayer and posttraumatic growth (PTG) indicates that those who pray report more PTG. Research is beginning to identify which types of prayer may be operating in this relationship. We sought to identify specific prayer functions related to PTG while considering differences due to the types of trauma experienced. Participants were trauma survivors from diverse, Midwestern Christian churches (N = 327). Participants completed questionnaires assessing trauma history, prayer coping functions, and PTG. Multiple linear regression analyses found that praying for calm and focus was independently related to higher levels of PTG. When considering all variables in the model, the relationship between prayer for calm and focus and PTG was not significant for those whose most significant trauma was interpersonal in nature, but significant for those with noninterpersonal trauma.     

Cognitive behavioral variables mediate the associations of neuroticism and attachment insecurity with Prolonged Grief Disorder severity

Abstract

Prolonged Grief Disorder (PGD) is a debilitating syndrome of grief. A recent cognitive behavioral model asserts that three processes are critical to this condition: (1) insufficient integration of the loss with autobiographical knowledge about the self and the lost person; (2) negative cognitions; and (3) anxious and depressive avoidance behaviors. These processes are assumed to contribute to PGD symptoms and to mediate the influence of personality-related vulnerabilities on the development and maintenance of these symptoms. The present study examined the mediational role of these three processes in the linkage between neuroticism, attachment anxiety, and attachment avoidance on the one hand and PGD symptom severity on the other hand. Self-reported data from 348 bereaved people were used. The results showed that the three personality variables were significantly associated with PGD symptom severity. Moreover, the results provided support for the mediating effects of indices of insufficient integration, negative cognitions, as well as avoidance behaviors – even after controlling for the shared variance between mediators. Theoretical and clinical implications are discussed.