A psychophysiological investigation of mourning: There are two sides to the story

Motivation and Emotion - Mourning constitutes an important human emotion, which might cause—among other things—major depressive symptoms when lasting for too long. To date, no study...     

Therapeutischer Stil und psychotherapeutische Behandlung älterer Patienten

Although the clinical field of psychotherapy for elderly patients is gradually developing, there is still a considerable gap in research on the topic. This mainly concerns questions about the characteristics of psychotherapy for elderly people. Based on clinical experience the therapeutic relationship and therapeutic style are of particular importance. This article presents a survey of psychotherapists who were asked with a questionnaire on their therapeutic style in the treatment of both elderly and younger patients. Data analysis showed differences between the two groups of patients concerning therapeutic technique and the assumed impact factors. In addition, differences between behavioral therapists and psychodynamic psychotherapists are important. The findings are discussed in the context of necessary modifications in the treatment of elderly people and training requirements.     

Bedeutung des Intelligenzquotienten für die Feststellung des Eingangsmerkmals Schwachsinn im Sinne der §§ 20, 21 StGB

Disorders in cognitive capacity, as defined in § 20 of the German legal code, are responsible for a relevant proportion of the population sentenced to treatment in forensic psychiatry in Germany. Historically one of the first conditions for diminished culpability, it refers primarily to the level of cognitive functioning. In routine psychiatric treatment of people with intellectual disability other aspects, such as emotional and social development became more and more relevant. This article explains that these aspect should be more involved in the process of forensic assessment or at least give rise to discussion and makes proposals for a modification of exculpation criteria due to the German legal code.     

Accents in Business Communication: An integrative model and propositions for future research

Today's business interactions are characterized by encounters between people with diverse language backgrounds. This article examines how, why and under what circumstances regional or foreign speech patterns affect consumer judgments and reactions. Building on a synthesis of accent research and theories, including the work of related disciplines such as linguistics and social psychology, this article suggests an integrative model that helps to understand accent effects in business contexts. The model disentangles the effects of social categorization, stereotype activation, and speech processing that jointly influence different business-related outcomes. The model highlights three categories of factors that moderate these accent effects, namely sender, receiver, and communication variables. The paper further identifies several issues which remain unresolved and which require continued research. An agenda for future research sets out several propositions to help researchers approach regional and foreign accents in business environments.     

Psychoanalysis in Psychiatric Institutions - Theoretical and Clinical Approaches

The paper presents historical remarks about psychoanalysis in institutions with a special focus on the contributions of nurses working in psychoanalytic settings. A case report of the forensic psychotherapy ward in Reichenau Mental Hospital, which is organised as a therapeutic community, shows how individual psychotherapy, group psychotherapy and special nursing care contribute to significant progress in the treatment of a severely narcissistic arsonist.     

the scientific association of the lake of constance psychiatrists 1919-1932 psychoanalytic contributions to the treatment of psychoses

Abstract

From 1919 until 1932, psychiatrists from the mental hospitals near Lake Constance and from the Bellevue-Sanatorium in Kreuzlingen/Switzedand organized regular scientific meetings, where well-known representatives of all the relevant psychiatric and psychotherapeutic schools and important phenomen-ologicai philosophers came together. Getting in touch with psychoanalytical and social psychiatric trends led to a quite lively and fruitful exchange in theory and practice. Through the Reichenau psychiatrist Alfred Schwenninger, Ludwig Binswanger got to know personally the phenomenologic philosophers Alexander Pfander and Edmund Husserl, who also held lectures at meetings there. Hans Wolfgang Maier from the Burghölzli in Zurich and his colleagues from Herisau and Munsterlingen concentrated on the mainly social psychiatric and forensic work diey did. Quite a few of the lectures were published in the TZeitschrift für die gesamte Neurologie und Psychiatrie The paper concentrates on contributions related to psychoanalysis. The Reichenau director Karl Wilmanns showed a sceptical sympathy for psychoanalysis even when applied to schizophrenia. Ludwig Binswanger treated psychotic patients psychoanalytically and tried to combine psychoanalysis, clinical psychiatry and philosophy. Especially phenomenology was for him a fundament of psychopathology. The paper reports in detail some of his contributions at the scientific discussions, theoretical issues as well as issues of a psychoanalytic practice.     

Testing theories of post-error slowing

People tend to slow down after they make an error. This phenomenon, generally referred to as post-error slowing, has been hypothesized to reflect perceptual distraction, time wasted on irrelevant processes, an a priori bias against the response made in error, increased variability in a priori bias, or an increase in response caution. Although the response caution interpretation has dominated the empirical literature, little research has attempted to test this interpretation in the context of a formal process model. Here, we used the drift diffusion model to isolate and identify the psychological processes responsible for post-error slowing. In a very large lexical decision data set, we found that post-error slowing was associated with an increase in response caution and-to a lesser extent-a change in response bias. In the present data set, we found no evidence that post-error slowing is caused by perceptual distraction or time wasted on irrelevant processes. These results support a response-monitoring account of post-error slowing.