Toward an Integration of Interpersonal Risk Models of Depression and Cognitive‐Behaviour Therapy

Empirical research has increasingly focused on interpersonal variables associated with the development and maintenance of depression. This article outlines some key interpersonal risk factors for depression, including anxious attachment, sociotropy, excessive reassurance seeking, interpersonal stress generation, reduced social support, social skills deficits, and social avoidance. Recommendations are made for how cognitive‐behavioural therapy may be adapted to address such factors. Specifically, suggestions are offered for how cognitive and behavioural interventions, such as cognitive restructuring, behavioural activation, behavioural experiments, and skills training, may be used with depressed clients to promote positive relationships and reduce maladaptive interpersonal behaviours.     

The use of diabetes-specific perceived control and health belief measures to predict treatment choice and efficacy in a feasibility study of continuous subcutaneous insulin infusion pumps

Abstract

In the course of a feasibility study of continuous subcutaneous insulin infusion pumps, 382 insulin-requiring diabetic patients were offered a choice of CSII, intensified conventional treatment or conventional treatment. Two hundred and eighty-six (75%) patients completed newly developed diabetes-specific measures of health beliefs and attributions before any change of treatment regimen. The scales were useful predictors of patients' choice of treatment. Furthermore, they were useful in predicting efficacy of treatment in terms of glycosylated haemoglobin measures of diabetes control after one year of treatment in the study. The implications of the findings for introducing patients to new forms of treatment are discussed.     

Prediction of the configuration of a ‘Bardeen–Herring’ dislocation climb source under dynamic conditions

Abstract

The sequence of events during the operation of a ‘Bardeen-Herring’ climb source is predicted by using a numerical method in which the dislocation is modelled as a set of finite straight elements. The configuration is determined as a function of the applied stress and an approximate analytical treatment is presented which describes the time dependence of the source operation.     

Relational Psychoanalysis Potential Usefulness with Black South African Clients

The aim of this article is to suggest that relational psychoanalysis may be a useful approach for working with clients from indigenous African cultures. In particular, the article considers the utility of relational psychoanalysis to understanding and enacting the therapeutic relationship with clients from an indigenous African cultural background. The notion of “we” self from the perspective of African cultures is a case in point for possible compatibility between relational psychoanalysis and black clients who come from background that place a high value on communal or “we” selves. An integrative therapy that combines African worldviews and relational psychoanalysis is possible.     

Black client,white therapist: Working with race in psychoanalytic psychotherapy in South Africa

In post‐apartheid South Africa we speak about race extensively. It permeates our workplace, weaves a thread through the fabric of our professional and personal lives, as well as our private conversations and public interactions with others. From within psychoanalytic theory, the thread weaves through the unknown content of our racialized unconscious. When there is a focus on race in the South African psychoanalytic context it largely takes the form of the struggle to articulate the complexities of working with difference, as Swartz notes, or the struggle to map out issues of race. Such struggles are not localized in South Africa, but strongly reflect a much broader struggle within the global psychoanalytic community, as mirrored in the expanding focus on race. Although the consulting rooms seem far removed from the ongoing political tensions that have recently emerged in South Africa, psychoanalytic psychotherapy remains a space of meaningful engagement with the other, and where the therapeutic dyad is one of racial difference it permits an encounter with our racialized unconscious. This article seeks to document the experience of my black client and my white response to her racial pain and struggle; in doing so, I describe the racial ‘contact’ between us and within us that triggers a racialized transference and countertransference dynamic, which contains the space for racial healing for both of us.     

Lexical decision and the number of morphemes and affixes

There has been a considerable amount of research looking at the effects of both syllable number and syllable frequency on lexical decision and word naming times. Recently, there has also been an increased interest in morphological variables, but there have been no large scale studies that have examined the role of the number of morphemes in lexical decision for nonwords. This is partly because of the difficulty of identifying morphemes in nonwords. We present a program that identifies the presence of affixes and, therefore, can be used to count the number of morpheme‐like elements in a nonword. We then used the program to measure the importance of affixes/morphemes in predicting lexical decision in nonwords. The results suggested that morphemes have an important role in lexical decision for both words and nonwords.     

Comparison of muscle functions during three contrasting abdominal exercises

That different amplitudes of muscle activities during various abdominal exercises not only reflect the inherent differences in motor control but movement speed as well was hypothesized. 20 healthy adults (M age = 23 yr.) performed three exercises that involved varying amounts of trunk control: the partial sit-up, full sit-up, and AbSlide roll. Covariate analyses indicated that the amplitude of muscle activities could be partitioned into three categories: motor control and scaling (speed and amplitude), scaling only, and motor control only. Overall, the AbSlide exercise activated the most amount of muscular activity, followed by the full and partial sit-up exercises. Results are discussed in terms of how the various muscles contribute to motor control and velocity scaling.     

Controlling the integration of emotion and cognition: the role of frontal cortex in distinguishing helpful from hurtful emotional information

Emotion has been both lauded and vilified for its role in decision making. How are people able to ensure that helpful emotions guide decision making and irrelevant emotions are kept out of decision making? The orbitofrontal cortex has been identified as a neural area involved in incorporating emotion into decision making. Is this area's function specific to the integration of emotion and cognition, or does it more broadly govern whether emotional information should be integrated into cognition? The present research examined the role of orbitofrontal cortex when it was appropriate to control (i.e., prevent) the influence of emotion in decision making (Experiment 1) and to incorporate the influence of emotion in decision making (Experiment 2). Together, the two studies suggest that activity in lateral orbitofrontal cortex is associated with evaluating the contextual relevance of emotional information for decision making.     

Madness and Disability in Contemporary Chinese Film

This article draws on recent research in the medical humanities to analyze two contemporary Chinese films: Zhang Yuan's Sons (1996) and Zhou Xiaowen's The Common People (1998). By portraying psychic and physical anguish in ways that refuse to divorce biology from culture, such films offer rare moral dialogues on biomedical issues and contribute a cross-cultural perspective invaluable to the task of responding to illness and suffering.