Clinical encounters with children in the Trump era

There is an emerging research and conceptual literature on the impact of the 2016 United States election of Donald Trump on the psychoanalytic psychotherapy process; however, the focus of this growing body of literature has been primarily with adults. Issues related to the election of Donald Trump, and the current political climate, also continue to arise in clinical encounters with children. These moments highlight the complexities of intersectionality, intersubjectivity, power dynamics, and self-disclosure. This article describes several clinical scenarios with American youth – reports from the front lines of a new political reality – drawn from the perspectives of trainees learning psychodynamic therapy, a private practitioner conducting an assessment for a young asylum seeker, and a school psychologist working in a private school for children with learning disabilities. We consider the fears and preoccupations that arise among children and their caregivers and the feelings that are provoked in the clinician, both in response to their clients and to the election itself. Traditional psychoanalytic paradigms of limiting self-disclosure and maintaining the therapeutic frame are challenged by the intensely personal nature of contemporary politics. This paper explores a contemporary phenomenon – the tension between therapeutic attending to internal experience and symbolisation, repression, and integration, while also considering a harsh, political external reality – through the lens of centuries of psychoanalytic work conducted in the face of war, trauma, and oppression. Children and adolescents who present for treatment or other forms of clinical intervention require a flexible therapeutic approach that acknowledges their unique position in history and the ways in which their distress is exacerbated by real and perceived political threats.     

The development of an evidence-based treatment: Regulation-Focused Psychotherapy for Children with externalising behaviours (RFP-C)

There is a critical need for the development, evaluation and implementation of evidence-based psychodynamic treatments for children and adolescents. Currently, there are no empirically supported, manualised psychodynamic treatments for children and adolescents with disruptive behaviour problems. The field of manualised psychodynamic treatments with measurable equivalence or superiority to other established forms of psychotherapy is in its nascent stage. This paper details a novel, manualised, time-limited psychodynamic treatment approach for children who manifest disruptive behaviours and emotional dysregulation. Regulation-Focused Psychotherapy for Children (RFP-C) conceptualises children’s disruptive and acting out behaviours as expressions of maladaptive emotion regulation. Externalising symptoms are conceptualised as attempts to defend against painful emotions and thus protect the child from disturbing feelings such as sadness, shame and guilt. This paper provides the theoretical basis for the treatment approach and through the use of a clinical example demonstrates the systematic application of RFP-C in a single case.     

An Item Analysis of the Adjustment Questionnaire

This study examined the relationship of dogmatism, attitude extremity, and the tendency to displace perceptually a neutral communication to a position more discrepant from the subject's own than it objectively holds. Results indicate that dogmatism was not predictive of displacement tendency, but that extremity and intensity were both significantly related to displacement. It was also found that dogmatism was not correlated with having a conservative attitude on the issues studied. The results were consistent across four different attitude issues.     

“We may be pirates,but we are not protesters”: Identity in the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society

Radical activist organizations face the complex task of managing their identity so as to draw political attention but also to appear legitimate and thus gain public support. In this article we develop a picture of the identities of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS) members, a group mostly known for their direct action against whaling, via a thematic analysis of material from the SSCS website and interviews with SSCS members. In online commentary, founder Captain Paul Watson establishes several deliberately paradoxical notions of who the Sea Shepherds are. We relate these identity statements to interviews with core activists to examine how they manage the identity conflicts resulting from the group identity, such as being seen as “pirates” and “hard lined vegans.” We found that SSCS positions themselves as a diverse and unstructured organization, yet distinctively passionate and willing to take action where others will not. The implications of this research are discussed in relation to the importance of understanding the constraints and conflicts around political activist identities.     

Schizotypy,cognitive performance,and genetic risk for schizophrenia in a non-clinical population

Schizophrenia risk alleles are expected to mediate effects on cognitive task performance, and aspects of personality including schizotypy, in nonclinical populations. We investigated how 32 of the best-validated schizophrenia risk alleles, singly and as summed genetic risk, were related to measures of schizotypal personality and measures of two aspects of cognitive performance, verbal skills (vocabulary) and visual-spatial skills (mental rotation), in healthy individuals. Summed genetic risk score was not associated with levels of total schizotypy or its three main subscales. Similarly, genotypic variation at none of the individual risk loci was related to cognitive performance measures, after correction for multiple tests. Higher overall genetic risk score was, however, associated with lower performance on the mental rotation test in males, with a broad set of loci contributing to this effect. These results imply that there is a lack of linear, genetically-based continuity connecting schizotypal cognition with the expression of schizophrenia itself, and indicate that, for males, higher genetic risk of schizophrenia exerts negative effects on visual-spatial skills, as measured by mental rotation.     

Self-Concepts and Psychological Well-Being Assessed By Beck Youth Inventory Among Pupils with Reading Difficulties

This study investigated the self-image and psychological well-being in 67 children and adolescents age 10–16 years with severe reading difficulties and/or dyslexia. The participants were assessed with Beck Youth Inventory regarding symptoms of depression, anxiety, and negative self-image. The results showed that the participants do not depict negative self-image and showed few symptoms of depression or anxiety at group level in comparison to a norm group. These results could be seen as contradictory to previous research. A questionnaire regarding self-efficacy was also distributed and showed that the participants had low self-knowledge about their reading impairments. The results were interpreted as a possible increase in knowledge among teachers and subsequent change in pedagogical strategies. In addition, technological advances may have improved the academic situation for dyslexic children. This study was a partial study in a larger project that aimed to evaluate the efficiency of assistive technologies for dyslexic children.     

A Longitudinal Comparison of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Depression Among Military Service Components

The purpose of this study was to longitudinally investigate PTSD and depression between Reserve, National Guard, and active duty continuously and dichotomously. The study consisted of Millennium Cohort Study participants and used self-reported symptoms. Repeated measures modeling assessed PTSD and depression continuously and dichotomously over time. A subanalysis among only recently deployed personnel was conducted. Of the 52,653 participants for the PTSD analysis, the adjusted PCL-C means were 34.6 for Reservists, 34.4 for National Guardsmen, and 34.7 for active duty members, respectively. Of the 53,073 participants for depression analysis, the adjusted PHQ-9 means were 6.8, 6.7, and 7.2, respectively. In dichotomous models, Reservists and National Guardsmen did not have a higher risk of PTSD or depression compared with active duty members. Among deployers, Reservists and National Guardsmen had higher odds (odds ratio = 1.16, 95% confidence limit [CL] [1.01, 1.34] and OR = 1.19, 95% CL [1.04, 1.36], respectively) of screening positive for PTSD, but not depression. Although Reserve and National Guard deployers had modestly increased odds of PTSD compared with active duty members, overall there were minimal differences in the risk and symptom scores of PTSD and depression between service components.     

What Counts as Science? Families’ Perceptions of Science in a Natural History Museum

ABSTRACT

Natural history museums open their doors to millions of family visitors each year and are considered to have a valuable role to play in engaging these families with science. Yet little is known about whether or in what way families perceive such institutions to be connected with science. The current study set out to explore such perceptions via interviews with family visitors to a large natural history museum. Analyses reflected that families’ perceptions of the museum and of their own engagement with science were intertwined with their definitions and impressions of science. For these families, perceptions of the museum as fun, interesting, and educational at times counteracted impressions of it as a science-y institution. Moreover, some families also did not consider natural history to count as science, which further contributed to a reluctance to categorize the museum as science-y. Although such perceptions may challenge how natural history museums would like to portray themselves, they also represent an opportunity to broaden visitors’ definitions and images of science.     

Factors that Predict Attrition from a State-Sponsored Rural Batterer Treatment Program

This study sought to identify factors associated with attrition for 197 individuals who participated in a state-sponsored rural domestic violence treatment program. Bivariate analyses identified 10 factors associated with program attrition. Logistic regression identified three of these (employment status, psychiatric disorder type, and probation status) as significant predictors of attrition. This three-factor model predicted 78% of all outcomes and 43% and 92% of dropouts and completers, respectively. The data suggest that batterer characteristics, particularly batterer psychopathology, unemployment, and criminal history, are more influential determinants of attrition than systemic and programmatic factors. These findings are discussed with respect to their congruence with the literature and their implications for policy, practice, and future research.