Student essay competition prize winner creativity and inhibition: A comparison of freud and klein

Abstract

This essay reviews Freud's and Klein's approaches to the question of the nature of creativity. It attempts to show that a fuller understanding of creativity involves some linking between these two apparently divergent approaches. The work of Marion Milner and the Winnicottian School is suggested as a possible way forward in our understanding.     

Measuring automatic retrieval in a conceptual priming task

The speeded response technique has demonstrated that priming in perceptual memory tasks can occur through automatic retrieval that is uncontaminated by conscious retrieval (pure automatic retrieval). This work assesses whether priming in a conceptual task (category exemplar generation) can occur through pure automatic retrieval using the same technique. Automatic retrieval estimates obtained using the speeded response technique were compared to those obtained using more traditional measures (implicit memory and process dissociation procedure [PDP]). Similar estimates of automatic retrieval were obtained for speeded, implicit, and PDP groups following shallow processing. However, higher estimates of automatic retrieval were obtained following deep processing in the speeded and implicit conditions compared to the PDP condition. Advantages for using the speeded response technique to index automatic memory are discussed.     

Training for paraprofessional counsellors: Evaluating the meaning and impact of a common factors approach

A group of 12 people participated in a short (40 hours) counselling training programme for paraprofessional counsellors, which emphasised the importance of common factors in accounting for therapeutic effectiveness. The general framework, language and skills of a brief, solution‐focused approach was used as a means of translating the theoretical/conceptual ideas of the common factors model into specific counsellor behaviours and also to provide structure and focus for counselling sessions. A pluralist methodology was employed to assess the personal meaning of the training for participants and the impact of the training on the development of counselling skills and awareness. Results indicated the training impacted positively on the development of counselling skills and ability to handle difficult client behaviours but less so on personal values and ability to deal with process issues. The majority of participants believed the training contributed positively toward their personal development.     

In Defense of the Ideal of a Life Plan

Aristotle claims at Eudemian Ethics 1.2 that everyone who can live according to his own choice should adopt some goal for the good life, which he will keep in view in all his actions, for not to have done so is a sign of folly. This is an opinion shared by other ancients as well as some moderns. Others believe, however, that this view is false to the human condition, and provide a number of objections: (1) you can't plan love; (2) nor life's surprises; (3) planning a whole life is of no use since the world changes too much; (4) as do our values; and (5) planning a life is something only dreary people would do. The aim of this paper is to examine these objections, as part of a broader attempt to defend the relevance of a eudaimonistic approach to the question of how to live well.     

The perception of surface curvature from optical motion

Observers viewed the optical flow field of a rotating quadric surface patch and were required to match its perceived structure by adjusting the shape of a stereoscopically presented surface. In Experiment 1, the flow fields included rigid object rotations and constant flow fields with patterns of image acceleration that had no possible rigid interpretation. In performing their matches, observers had independent control of two parameters that determined the surface shape. One of these, called the shape characteristic, is defined as the ratio of the two principle curvatures and is independent of object size. The other, called curvedness, is defined as the sum of the squared principle curvatures and depends on the size of the object. Adjustments of shape characteristic were almost perfectly accurate for both motion conditions. Adjustments of curvedness, on the other hand, were systematically overestimated and were not highly correlated with the simulated curvedness of the depicted surface patch. In Experiment 2, the same flow fields were masked with a global pattern of curl, divergence, or shear, which disrupted the first-order spatial derivatives of the image velocity field, while leaving the second-order spatial derivatives invariant. The addition of these masks had only negligible effects on observers’ performance. These findings suggest that observers’ judgments of three-dimensional surface shape from motion are primarily determined by the second-order spatial derivatives of the instantaneous field of image displacements.