The psychotherapist's duty to act reasonably to prevent suicide: A proposal to allow rational suicide

It is proposed that society should re-examine its assumptions about suicide. Rational suicide is viewed as an extension of the right to die. After a review of the legal liability of the psychotherapist and psychiatric facility for both inpatient and outpatient suicide, the author presents an analysis of philosophical, ethical, and psychoanalytic arguments for allowing rational suicide. It is argued that emotional pain should be given more legitimacy as a reason for suicide. The decision to live or to die is argued to best rest with the individual.     

LOREN EISELEY: RELIGIOUS SCIENTIST

Abstract. Loren Eiseley is known both as a scientist and an essayist/poet. The disillusionment with science and technology among many in the late 1950s and the search for new values in the 1960s help account for Eiseley's significance as a writer. He appears to offer a solution to mankind's contemporary disillusionment by reminding that science has limits and that intuitive, nonscientific insight is valid, especially when it is complementary to scientific knowledge. The thesis of this essay is that in content and style Eiseley writes as a religious writer in the sense that he reaffirms what is necessary for humankind to be happy and even to be "saved."     

Smoking and academic performance

Smokers and nonsmokers were compared on three aspects of academic achievement. Although exactly the same percentage of smokers and nonsmokers passed the first-year university examination, smokers obtained significantly higher marks. Similarly, smokers achieved significantly higher marks in their final year examinations in comparison with nonsmokers. Finally, a comparison of the tutorial essay marks of the smokers and nonsmokers again showed that smokers obtained significantly higher marks than nonsmokers. These data are consistent with the idea that ambitious students adopt smoking in the belief that it will help them study and sustain concentration.     

Word age-of-acquisition and residence time in lexical memory as factors in word naming

Previous reports of age-of-acquisition effects have been theoretically ambiguous since, in any particular individual, word age-of-acquisition is perfectly correlated with the length of time that a word has been known. The study reported in this article attempted to disentangle effects of word age-of-acquisition and length of word residence time in lexical memory. To this end, words varying in recency-of-introduction to British English were presented in a word-naming task to 46 native speakers whose ages ranged from 20 to 58 years. Using subjects’ ratings of the words on age-of-acquisition, it was possible to assess word residence times and to compare the effects on naming speeds of age-of-acquisition and residence times. Regression analyses indicated that age-of-acquisition was a more important factor than residence time in the word-naming task.     

A process recording for evaluating group psychotherapy training methods

This paper discusses an exploratory investigation concerned with the long range questions: How does group psychotherapy help patients? and How can psychiatry residency programs best train residents to treat patients in therapeutic groups? Group psychotherapy has come to be accepted in its own right as a decisive contribution to the study of and relief of emotional disorders. As a component of comprehensive psychiatric services it is indispensable. However, while its clinical value has been demonstrated, its scientific validity has not. A Group Process Inventory has been developed by the author and has been utilized for the past two years by psychiatric residents in recording the process of their therapeutic groups in a teaching hospital mental hygiene clinic. The preliminary use of this recording as a clinical-teaching instrument has proven effective. This inventory is being revised to serve as a research instrument.     

Suicide and rurality in urban society

Recent findings suggest that suicide increases with rurality, but research on rural suicide leaves many questions unanswered. This study specifies problems of community organization as a reason for expecting a positive effect of rurality on the suicide rate. A multiple regression analysis of county data shows that rurality has a substantial positive effect and is, in fact, the best predictor of the suicide rate among several variables selected from the previous literature. Additional research is needed to test the interpretation that rurality contributes to an incomplete, fragmented form of community organization which influences the suicide rate by disrupting primary relationships.     

Food anticipation and lever-directed activities in rats

Three experiments are described which elaborate some of the conditions under which rats will contact and manipulate a periodically presented retractable lever. Experiment 1 demonstrated that (i) initial manipulative oral and manual contact with the lever was facilitated if the rat had previous experience of food delivery in the experimental chamber; (ii) persistence in contacting the lever on successive presentations was a function of whether food continued to be presented in the experimental environment; and (iii) food satiation significantly reduced the tendency of the rat to contact the lever even though an expectancy of food had previously been established under conditions of food deprivation. Experiment 2 suggested that the tendency to approach and contact the lever was in part a function of the local moment-to-moment conditional probability of food delivery. Experiment 3 found that the probability of contacting the lever was higher during presentation of an auditory CS signaling a high rate of food delivery than during stimuli signaling no food at all. These results are interpreted as suggesting that the food-signaling aspects of an appetitive CS and that CS's ability to generate signal-directed behaviors are experimentall separable properties.     

The recognition of and empathic response to “personal legends”

The ability to recognize and analyze a personal legend in the conversation of an older person is a useful tool for the skilled, compassionate conversation partner. Having isolated the legend, the empathic listener can offer the teller of the legend the gift of an understanding, clarifying interpretation of its significance.Carolyn K. Dennis, M. Th., is assistant chaplain and program coordinator of the health care lay ministry training program at Gaston Episcopal Hospital, in Dallas, Texas.