Inheriting the Shadow: Unlived Lives,Unshed Tears

The determination and courage of those whose lives were destroyed by terror, whether the Holocaust or extermination, to move forward in a new life modeled for us, the children, an unspoken mandate to live in the present and to bury the shadows of the past. It has left many of us to face the challenge of finding our center, the anchoring of our being in our lives: personally, professionally, collectively, and culturally. The next generation is not able to mourn lives lost, and being in the present without a past, without links to ethnic cultures or heritage, isolates individuals and affects the collective—indeed, there is no collective except in the communal silences. This article explores the impact of dismembered personal and collective bonds and the need to re-member, resulting in relationships that can move into the future, into the center.     

Self-affirmation and affective forecasting: Affirmation reduces the anticipated impact of negative events

When forecasting how they will feel in the future, people overestimate the impact that imagined negative events will have on their affective states, partly because they underestimate their own psychological resiliency. Because self-affirmation enhances resiliency, two studies examined whether self-affirmation prior to forecasting reduces the extremity of affective forecasts. Participants in self-affirmation conditions completed a values scale or wrote an essay asserting their most important value, whereas participants in the no-affirmation condition asserted a relatively unimportant value. Participants then predicted their affective reactions to a negative or positive imagined event. In both studies, self-affirmation reduced the unpleasant affect expected to result from a negative event, but had no impact on affective forecasts for a positive event. This pattern was mediated by participants’ cognitive appraisals of the imagined event, but not by differential focus on that event. Results are consistent with self-affirmation activating or enhancing psychological resiliency to counteract immune neglect during affective forecasting of a negative event.     

Counselling psychology in New Zealand

This article offers a brief overview of the history of counselling psychology in New Zealand. It describes current postgraduate study options and registration pathways as well as the institutions and organisations that provide legislative and professional membership and support to counselling psychologists in New Zealand. Data collected from a national survey in 2014 provide insight into the demographics of the profession in New Zealand, the theoretical frameworks that are utilised and employment opportunities that exist for counselling psychologists. The article also highlights the uniqueness of a cultural and contextual approach that aligns itself with New Zealand’s founding document, the Treaty of Waitangi/te Tiriti o Waitangi which is based on the principles of partnership, participation and protection. It concludes with the challenges the profession face as a new scope of practice. These challenges include establishing a professional identity in the mental health delivery system in New Zealand and responding to an ever increasing multicultural society.     

Linked proximal and distal changes in the reaching behavior of 5- to 12-month-old human infants grasping objects of different sizes

This study evaluates age-related proximal and distal changes in reaching organization for objects of different sizes. To this end, eight objects ranging from 2 to 9 cm diam. were presented to 23 infants ages 5 to 12 months. Proximal control was determined by the relative frequencies of bimanual reaching for large and small objects. Distal control was assessed by hand opening and orientation with respect to an object, and by the proportion of the object being included within hand opening at touch. Five-month-old infants tended to reach bimanually regardless of object size. Starting at 7 to 8 months, infants tended to reach for large objects bimanually more often than for small ones. Only at 11 to 12 months did reaching closely reflect the object’s diameter. The frequency of thumb-index finger angle opening during the approach phase also increased after 7 to 8 months of age, as well as the adjustment of the angle to the object diameter and the proportion of the object within hand opening at touch. Proximal and distal changes appeared coupled at 5 to 6 months, when the few subjects showing evidence of some proximal adjustments to object size were also those who exhibited some distal adjustments. After they started to appear, however, proximal and distal adjustments seemed to be independent, as revealed by the lack of correlation of proximal and distal changes between 7 and 12 months.     

A seven year follow-up of treating rumination with dietary satiation

”Fred“, a man with profound mental retardation who was 24 years old at the beginning of this study, was referred for treatment of rumination. A number of minimally restrictive interventions, including administration of Zantac, extra fluids, and delivery of peanut butter after meals, had been used without success. In April of 1989 Fred began a satiation diet with ad libitum access to starchy foods or to fruits and vegetables, in addition to his regular meals. His baseline weight was 82 pounds and he ruminated during 58% of 10 s intervals measured during 20 min post-meal observations. During the first month of the satiation diet, Fred's ruminating declined to 6% of measured intervals, he consumed a mean of 163 fluid ounces of extra food per day, and his weight increased to 90 pounds. After 4 months' treatment, Fred's ruminating had declined to zero, his food consumption had stabilized at approximately 65 extra ounces of food per day, and his weight had stabilized at about 120 pounds. Starting in August 1990, in an effort to minimize weight gain, extra food was limited to 50% of Fred's ad libitum food consumption (averaged over the previous 6 weeks). Fred's weight gradually declined to about 100 pounds with zero rumination over the next two years. In August 1992 Fred's ruminating accelerated to 17% of intervals and he was again offered ad libitum food access. Over the next 7 months, rumination declined to zero and his weight increased slightly to about 105 pounds. This study shows that rumination that had not responded to less restrictive procedures was suppressed for 7 years via dietary satiation. Although dietary satiation is not without some risk, Fred has suffered no adverse effects from the procedure, other than gaining approximately one-third of his baseline weight. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The structure and function of selection, optimization, and compensation in middle adolescence: Theoretical and applied implications

Intentional self-regulation is a core facet of human functioning, involving people's modulation of their thoughts, attention, emotions, and behaviors to react to environmental demands and to influence their own development. Using data from Grades 8, 9, and 10 of the 4-H Study of Positive Youth Development (PYD), the structure of intentional self-regulation, as indexed by a measure of selection (S), optimization (O), and compensation (C), or SOC, was assessed. Within-and-across-time links between SOC scores and indicators of PYD, and risk/problem behaviors were ascertained. A tripartite structure of intentional self-regulation was identified across all three grades, and SOC scores at all times positively covaried with PYD and negatively with risk/problem behaviors. Findings were strongest for overall SOC scores and for the components of “O” and “C.” We discuss the implications of these findings for youth development programs.     

A biopsychosocial model for treating infertility

With approximately one out of six married couples experiencing infertility, having a basic knowledge of infertility is important to marriage and family therapists. This paper presents important themes that infertile couples often struggle with and stresses the importance of having a biological, psychological, and social understanding of infertility. In addition, the paper suggests possible interventions that family therapists can use in helping infertile couples.     

Transformation of Adolescent Peer Relations in the Social Media Context: Part 2—Application to Peer Group Processes and Future Directions for Research

As social media use becomes increasingly widespread among adolescents, research in this area has accumulated rapidly. Researchers have shown a growing interest in the impact of social media on adolescents’ peer experiences, including the ways that the social media context shapes a variety of peer relations constructs. This paper represents Part 2 of a two-part theoretical review. In this review, we offer a new model for understanding the transformative role of social media in adolescents’ peer experiences, with the goal of stimulating future empirical work that is grounded in theory. The transformation framework suggests that the features of the social media context transform adolescents’ peer experiences by changing their frequency or immediacy, amplifying demands, altering their qualitative nature, and/or offering new opportunities for compensatory or novel behaviors. In the current paper, we consider the ways that social media may transform peer relations constructs that often occur at the group level. Our review focuses on three key constructs: peer victimization, peer status, and peer influence. We selectively review and highlight existing evidence for the transformation of these domains through social media. In addition, we discuss methodological considerations and key conceptual principles for future work. The current framework offers a new theoretical perspective through which peer relations researchers may consider adolescent social media use.