Heart and spirit

In qualitative interview research with 25 psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists in London, Sydney and Melbourne, the author explored how these clinicians experienced, conceptualised and worked with spiritual issues. Bringing to bear their experience on both sides of the couch, this 'information-rich' sample of mainly senior practitioners reflected on a psychoanalytically informed view of spirituality, and its understanding in clinical practice. Two methods of analysis were used. The technique of 'narrative finding' was followed by coding of core ideas, themes and concepts expressed. Participants noted that spirit may be the 'blind spot' of psychoanalysis, and reflected that what they had wanted in their own analyses-and consider that what patients want-is to be able to have spiritual issues addressed in a similar manner to other matters, not prejudged as infantile or pathological. In participants' concepts and experience of spirit, a comfort / challenge dimension was identified. Comfort was taken in having a 'wider view', a more inclusive sense of inter-relatedness, with challenge involving a heightened sense of the unknown and a greater degree of uncertainty.     

Anticipatory reconfiguration elicited by fully and partially informative cues that validly predict a switch in task

Task-switching studies show no behavioral benefit of partially informative cues. However, ERP evidence of an early cue-locked positivity elicited by both fully and partially informative cues suggests that both cues trigger an anticipatory component of task set reconfiguration (Nicholson, Karayanidis, Davies, & Michie, 2006). We examined this apparent discrepancy using a cued-trials task-switching paradigm with three tasks. The ERP finding of an early cue-locked positivity was replicated for both switch-to cues, which validly predicted an upcoming switch trial and specified the new task set, and switch-away cues, which validly predicted an upcoming switch trial but not the new task set. This component was not elicited by a noninformative cue that did not specify whether the task would switch or repeat. Switch-away cues resulted in more accurate but not faster responding than did noninformative cues. Modeling of decision processes confirmed a speed-accuracy trade-off between these conditions and a preparation benefit for both switch-to and switch-away cues. These results indicate that both fully and partially informative cues elicit an early anticipatory component of task set reconfiguration that is reflected in the early cue-locked positivity. We argue that the pattern of results is most consistent with a task set inhibition account of this early anticipatory component of task set reconfiguration.     

Asian Australian acculturation and attitudes toward seeking professional psychological help

Research with 112 Asian Australian university students found that adherence to Asian cultural values inversely predicted attitudes toward seeking professional psychological help. Students completed demographic questions, the Asian Values Scale, the Suinn – Lew Asian Self‐Identity Scale, (which is a measure of acculturation), and the Attitudes Toward Seeking Professional Psychological Help Scale. There was a significant positive relationship between the Asian Australian students' level of behavioural acculturation and their attitudes toward seeking professional psychological help. Significant differences were found between male and female participants in their attitudes, with female participants indicating greater willingness to seek help. Results also demonstrated a significant difference in gender on acculturation level as well as a significant difference in generational status and acculturation level.     

Risk status of adolescent children of problem-drinking parents

These studies assessed the risk status of children of untreated alcoholics. In Study 1, a cross-sectional survey of 208 high school students identified 18% as having serious concern about their parents' drinking. In Study 2, 32 children of problem-drinking parents and 39 others who participated in self-help groups were surveyed. Children of problem-drinking parents were more at risk of depression, low self-esteem, and heavy drinking than their peers in the general high school population. Within self-help groups, however, children's symptomatology was not related to their parents' drinking status. The results support the need for preventive intervention for children of problem-drinking parents and for developing strategies for improving the participation rate of such children in the intervention programs that are available.     

Beauty and the beast: Psychobiologic and evolutionary perspectives on body dysmorphic disorder

Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) is characterized by preoccupation with a defect in appearance. Concepts of beauty play a particularly crucial role in humans' mental and social life, and may have specific psychobiologic and evolutionary underpinnings. In particular, there is a growing literature on the neurocircuitry underpinning the body schema, body image and facial expression processing, and aesthetic and symmetry judgments. Speculatively, disruptions in cognitive-affective processes relevant to judgements about physical beauty lead to BDD.     

The role of risk and protective factors in predicting symptomatology in adolescent self-identified children of alcoholic parents

Tested a stress process model for predicting mental health symptoms in children of alcoholics (COAs). Stress and mental health measures were completed twice over a 3-month period by 145 high school students, 43 of whom self-identified as COAs. Using structural equation modeling, a stress process model for predicting mental health symptoms in children provided a good fit to the data. COA status was related to higher levels of negative and lower levels of positive events. In turn, positive and negative life events were found to have an immediate, but not a longitudinal, direct effect on adolescent symptomatology.     

Purity, Privacy and Procreation: Constructions and Experiences of Sexual and Reproductive Health in Assyrian and Karen Women Living in Australia

It is widely recognised that sexual and reproductive health services are underutilised by culturally and linguistically diverse migrant communities, leading to risk of poor health outcomes. This study examined the constructions and experiences of reproductive and sexual health, and associated services, in Assyrian and Karen women who had arrived in Australia as refugees. Forty two women, across a range of age groups and marital status, participated in five focus groups, with thematic analysis and positioning theory used to analyse the results. Two major themes were identified. The first, the ??Premarital Chastity Imperative?? centres on the cultural prohibition of coital hetero-sex before marriage, and taboos associated with same-sex relationships. This has implications for unmarried women??s access to sexual health services, such as contraception, cervical screening, and abortion; prohibition of sex education and communication about sex; and lack of recognition of non-heterosexual identities. The second theme, ??Marital Sex and Reproductive Imperative??, positioned coital sex and motherhood as mandatory within marriage, and was associated with women??s inability to refuse marital sex, limited knowledge about contraception and sexual pain, acceptance of fertility services, as well as lack of recognition of post-natal depression. It is concluded that health care workers need to be aware of cultural constructions of sex and sexuality, as well as the construction of gendered roles within heterosexual relationships, when designing and offering sexual health services to non English speaking or migrant communities.     

Hermannsburg, 1929: Turning Aboriginal “Primitives” into Modern Psychological Subjects

In 1929, the Lutheran mission at Hermannsburg (Ntaria), central Australia, became an extraordinary investigatory site, attracting an array of leading psychologists wishing to define the “primitive” mentality of the Arrernte, who became perhaps the most studied people in the British Empire and dominions. This is a story of how scientific knowledge derived from close encounters and fraught entanglements on the borderlands of the settler state. The investigators—Stanley D. Porteus, H. K. Fry, and Géza Róheim—represent the major styles of psychological inquiry in the early‐twentieth century, and count among the vanguard of those dismantling rigid racial typologies and fixed hierarchies of human mentality. They wanted to evaluate “how natives think,” yet inescapably they found themselves reflecting on white mentality too. They came to recognise the primitive as an influential and disturbing motif within the civilised mind—their own minds. These intense interactions in the central deserts show us how Aboriginal thinking could make whites think again about themselves—and forget, for a moment, that many of their research subjects were starving.     

Contemplating spiritual experience: Winnicott's potential space,Tibetan bardo,and liminality

Abstract

In this paper, ways of contemplating and accommodating the unfamiliar, especially the “other” of spiritual experience, are considered. Some concepts from psychoanalysis, such as Winnicott's “potential space” and his notion of “holding,” are helpful in comprehending spiritual experiences that can easily be misunderstood, or “flattened out” to use Bion's phrase. Interesting and rather remarkable confluences in these concepts from psychoanalysis and from Tibetan Buddhism (bardo) and cultural anthropology (liminality) are considered in their functions of both enabling and comprehending these extraordinary and often life-enhancing experiences.