New biographical research on the members of the psychoanalytic movement in vienna 1902-1938

Abstract

The paper presents Elke Mühlleitner's Biographisches Lexikon der Psychoanalyse (Biographical Lexicon of Psychoanalysis) and comments on her first evaluations of this comprehensive data. It illustrates, by reference to the early members of the Psychologische Mittwoch-Gesellschaft (the Wednesday Psychological Society), the heuristic value of the collected material for dealing with the issues and hypotheses related to the history of science.     

Organisation and Recall in Verbal Tasks and in Subject-performed Tasks

In memory for subject-performed tasks (SPTs), subjects encode a list of simple action phrases (e.g. "lift the pen", "open the book") by performing these actions during learning. Performing tasks has proved to be a much more efficient type of encoding than verbal tasks (VTs), in which subjects only listen to the action phrases in order to memorise them. It is assumed that good item-specific encoding after SPTs plays an important role in the SPT effect. The role of relational encoding for the SPT effect is less clear, as is the question of whether SPT encoding is automatic or controlled. Two experiments were conducted to address these issues. Subjects learned lists which were categorically structured in VTs and SPTs, under focal attention or divided attention. The results indicated that relational encoding does not differ between VTs and SPTs, and that free recall is impaired in both cases by divided attention, more so in VTs than in SPTs. It is concluded that the SPT effect is primarily based on item-specific information rather than on relational information, and that VTs are more dependent than SPTs on active encoding.     

Pro‐Diversity Beliefs and Everyday Ethnic Discrimination on Grounds of Foreign Names

The paper examined the effect of positive beliefs about the value of ethnic diversity (i.e. diversity beliefs) on discrimination due to foreign sounding names. It was hypothesized that pro‐diversity beliefs reduce discrimination. Results from two studies (N = 29 and N = 104) confirmed this hypothesis. Practical implications of our results are discussed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Benefits and Interindividual Differences in Children's Responses to Extended and Intensified Relaxation Training

The present study investigates whether extended and intensified systematic relaxation training techniques lead to increased short-term and prolonged effects in settings of stress prevention. One hundred and twenty-eight fourth- and sixth-graders (aged 9.6 and 11.6 years, respectively) participated in Imagination or Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR). Extension consisted of a varying number of training sessions (five versus ten), while intensified training contained additional training elements to enhance the transfer to the children's daily life (yes versus no). Age, gender, anxiety, activity level and suggestibility were included as additional variables that were assumed to moderate the effects of the training. Dependent variables indicating short-term training effects included physiological parameters (heart rate, skin conductance level, skin temperature) as well as subjective ratings (mood, physical well-being, training evaluations). Medium-term training effects, measured 1 week and 2 months after the training, were related to stress experiences, somatic stress symptoms, and coping strategies reported by the children. The results do not show considerable short- or medium-term effects of extended or intensified training. In addition, no clear moderator effects were found in the present sample.     

Health-Related Quality of Life is Associated with Positive Affect in Patients with Coronary Heart Disease Entering Cardiac Rehabilitation

Health-related quality of life (QoL) is an important and widely used outcome measure in cardiac populations. We examined the relationship between positive affect and health-related quality of life, controlling for traditional cardiovascular risk factors, clinical variables and negative affect. We further investigated the role of gender in this relationship given the well-known gender differences in cardiovascular health. We enrolled 746 patients with coronary heart disease (CHD) before they entered outpatient cardiac rehabilitation. All patients completed the Global Mood Scale and the SF-36 Health Survey. Positive affect was independently associated with mental (p < .001) and physical QoL (p < .001) after controlling for control variables. Gender moderated the relationship between positive affect and physical QoL (p = .009) but not mental QoL (p = .60). Positive affect was positively associated with physical QoL in men (p < .001) but not in women (p = .44). The health-related QoL of patients with CHD is associated with a person’s level of positive affect.     

Self-regulation and protective health behaviour: How regulatory focus and anticipated regret are related to vaccination decisions

Objective: We examined how individual motivational orientations and anticipated regret are related to the protective health decision of vaccination behaviour.

Design: The proposed relations were examined in a large-scale sample (N = 3168) and three medium-sized samples (N = 151, N = 194, N = 208). Questionnaires were applied to assess regulatory focus, anticipated regret and vaccination behaviour.

Results: Increased prevention-focused self-regulation – which is represented by concerns about security-related goals, responsibilities and obligations – was related to a greater likelihood of vaccination. Prevention-focused individuals’ higher likelihood of getting vaccinated seems at least in part to be a consequence of anticipated regret for not vaccinating. Study 3 suggests that regulatory focus is less related to vaccination decisions when regret is increased by the decision-making context; that is, when information highlighting vaccination effectiveness and a low likelihood of adverse responses is provided.

Conclusion: Prevention-focused self-regulation is related to a greater likelihood of engaging in health-protective behaviour. This can be explained by prevention-focused individuals’ greater tendency to anticipate regret about getting ill as a consequence of not adopting protective measures. If people perceive a protective measure such as a vaccination as highly effective, anticipated regret for not adopting it is generally increased, and individual differences in regulatory focus no longer predict the decision.     

Gegenübertragung im stationären Therapie-Setting

Background

Countertransference is seen as an instrument of research into a patient’s unconscious and is therapeutically useful in furthering psychodynamic work. For inpatient psychodynamic psychotherapy, where patients are treated by a team of psychotherapists, countertransference is much more complex and makes consideration and integration of different countertransference feelings necessary. Using the first German translation of the countertransference questionnaire (CTQ, Zittel Conclin and Westen, the countertransference questionnaire, 2005) an attempt was made to identify differences in countertransference phenomena in a team of psychotherapists and to show the impact countertransference has on therapy outcome.

Materials and methods

A total of t multiprofessional teams of psychotherapists (15 physicians, 5 psychologists and 9 body and art therapy psychotherapists) took part in the study and completed the CTQ for 137 patients (100 female, 37 male) at the beginning and at the end of inpatient psychotherapy. In addition, the patients completed two questionnaires, the Symptom Check List Revised 90-R (SCL-90) for the severity of symptoms and the Assessment of DSM-IV Personality Disorders Questionnaire (ADP-IV) for personality disorders.

Results

Body and art therapy psychotherapists expressed more positive, protective and involved countertransference feelings whereas psychotherapists for single and group therapy expressed more aggressive and hopeless feelings. Countertransference has an impact on therapy outcome and feelings of a lack of interest, aggression and resignation at the beginning of therapy can point to a poor outcome. Patients with personality disorders activate more negative countertransference reactions than patients without personality disorders but at the same time they may also evoke parent-like feelings of protection.

Conclusions

Using the CTQ it is possible to differentiate countertransference phenomena in a team of psychotherapists treating inpatients with psychodynamic psychotherapy. The timely perception and integration of countertransference feelings has a positive influence on the therapeutic process and therapy outcome.     

Memory for actions: Item and relational information in categorized lists

Enacting action phrases in subject-performed tasks (SPTs) leads to better free recall than hearing or reading the same materials in verbal tasks (VTs). This enactment effect is usually explained by better item-specific information in SPTs than in VTs. The role of relational information is controversial. In the present paper, we will take the multiple recall approach to study the role of item and relational information in memory for actions by computing the number of item gains and the number of item losses over trials. This approach has previously been applied to lists of unrelated action phrases. We applied it to categorically related lists, also allowing a measure of relational information by clustering scores. It was found that SPTs produced more item gains than VTs. This finding confirmed the assumption that SPTs provide better item-specific information than VTs. The number of item losses did not differ between VTs and SPTs. This finding suggests that relational information is equally provided by VTs and SPTs. However, the organizational scores showed a more differentiated picture. Clustering was greater in SPTs than in VTs with randomly presented lists, but not with blocked lists. We suggested that these results, as well as other findings from the literature, could be explained by distinguishing automatic and strategic processes and the types of item associations that are addressed by these processes.     

Protein synthesis inhibition blocks consolidation of an acrobatic motor skill

To investigate whether motor skill learning depends on de novo protein synthesis, adult rats were trained in an acrobatic locomotor task (accelerating rotarod) for 7 d. Animals were systemically injected with cycloheximide (CHX, 0.5 mg/kg, i.p.) 1 h before sessions 1 and 2 or sessions 2 and 3. Control rats received vehicle injections before sessions 1, 2, and 3. Although CHX did not affect improvement of performance within session 1, between-session improvement was impaired. In overtrained animals, comparable injections of CHX had no effect on rotarod performance. These findings suggest that consolidation of motor skills requires protein synthesis.