The ‘too muchness’ of excitement: Sexuality in light of excess,attachment and affect regulation

This paper brings together contemporary thinking about early attachment and affect regulation with our clinical and theoretical understanding of the problems of adult sexuality. In addition to recent theories of affect regulation and attachment, we incorporate Laplanche's idea of ‘excess’, which was an important transitional concept integrating real experience with fantasy in sexuality. We elaborate the idea of excess –‐ ‘too‐muchness’ –‐ to illuminate the early overwhelming of the psyche that affects the formation of sexuality. Linked to recent theoretical developments, this idea helps to grasp the relationship between sexual excitement and early affect regulation, showing how excitement becomes dangerous, thus impeding or distorting desire. The ‘too‐muchness’ of excitement recalls the experience of being a stimulated, overwhelmed, unsoothed child and influences later inability to tolerate sexual arousal and the excitement affect. A clinical case illustrates this connection between attachment trauma, anxiety about sexuality, as well as shameful experiences of gender identity as an area of trauma. We emphasize the importance of working through the terrors and desires of the mother–baby relationship as they emerge in the transference–countertransference in order to develop the ability to hold excitement and stimulation without experiencing the too‐much as the intolerable. This includes the working‐through of ruptures related to overstimulation as well as the delicate balance of attention to fantasy and intersubjective work in the transference.     

Voice and Culture: A Prospect Theory Approach

The present study examines the congruence of individuals' minimum preferred amounts of voice with the prospect theory value function across nine countries. Accounting for previously ignored minimum preferred amounts of voice and actual voice amounts integral to testing the steepness of gain and loss functions explicated in prospect theory, we use curve fitting to show that ratings of procedural justice fit prospect theory's value function specifically. Further, we investigate the form of this function across nine countries that range in power distance. Results suggest that the form of the value function is congruent with prospect theory, showing an S‐shaped curve that is steeper in the loss than in the gain domain. Further, this pattern is similar across countries. Theoretical and practical implications of these results for both decision making and organizational justice are discussed. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Illusions of Learning: Irrelevant Emotions Inflate Judgments of Learning

People use assessments of how much they have learned to choose and recommend instructors, seminars, and weekend trips. How do people assess how much they have learned? Recent theorizing has depicted emotion as a cue for learning, and so people may be misled by recent emotional states to infer that they have learned more than they actually have. Four studies showed that people associated emotion with learning and believed, often falsely, that they learned more when in an emotional than unemotional state. Factual lessons were coupled with manipulations of arbitrary, irrelevant emotional states. Participants rated that they learned more after an emotion had been induced than in emotionally neutral control conditions. These differences remained significant after controlling for actual learning as measured by objective tests, which was unaffected by emotion. This illusion of learning caused by emotion was robust with respect to changes of procedure and sample, including whether the emotion came before or after the information to be learned. Alternative explanations were ruled out, including that emotion would intensify ratings generally, that emotion would make incoming information seem particularly personally relevant, that emotion increased engagement in the research, and that illusory learning would depend on retrospective exaggeration of one's prior ignorance. Because irrelevant emotions can increase people's judgments that they have learned something, incidental emotional experiences could increase a person's likelihood of deciding to take another class with a particular instructor, to sign up for another leadership seminar, or to engage in a risky (but emotion‐filled) excursion. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Creating an Intersubjective Reality: Commentary on Paper by Arnold Rothstein

The author discusses Arnold Rothstein's paper “Compromise Formation Theory: An Intersubjective Dimension” and challenges his definition of intersubjectivity. She offers a perspective in which the import of intersubjectivity theory is less to dissolve the notion of objectivity than to grasp processes of mutual engagement, regulation, and recognition. While it is true that the recognition that the analyst is also a subject and therefore does not have exclusive knowledge is an important shift in the psychoanalytic paradigm, the author suggests that the intersubjective is far more encompassing than this. Intersubjective theory emphasizes the active creation of consensus or conflict about reality rather than merely the recognition that the analyst's perspective on reality is subjective. This cocreation produces a different emotional experience of connection, not merely a change in the quality of insight. Finally, Rothstein's case illustrates how he responds to the need for recognition and regulation. He shows us how focusing on the procedural allowed him to make an intersubjective shift, not simply an intrapsychic interpretation of compromise formation.