Use of the TAT to measure change in defense mechanisms following intensive psychotherapy

Changes in the use of defense mechanisms (denial, projection, and identification) were examined over a period of approximately 15 months of intensive treatment of 90 seriously disturbed young adults who were hospitalized in an intensive, open, long-term treatment setting. Patients independently judged to have primarily an anaclitic or an introjective personality configuration (Blatt, 1974; Blatt & Shichman, 1983) were assessed for psychiatric symptoms and aspects of interpersonal behavior both on admission and after an average of 15 months of treatment. Findings based on an independent assessment of TAT protocols at these two times indicated a significant (p less than .05) decline in total use of defenses for the entire sample, but especially for introjective patients. Further, this decline in total use of defenses in the TAT was significantly associated with a reduction in psychiatric symptoms. Also, sex-incongruent patients (anaclitic men and introjective women) were found to use different defenses and to change in ways different from sex-congruent patients (anaclitic women and introjective men).     

An Item Factor Analysis of the Revised Barrett-Lennard Relationship Inventory

The revised version of the Barrett-Lennard Relationship Inventory with an added advice-giving scale was given to 240 female and 95 male students, who completed it in terms of their current closest personal relationship. The correlations between the 80 items were factor-analysed using a principal-factor solution to determine whether the items represented the five postulated factors of advice-giving, empathy, congruence, and level of and unconditionally of regard. Eighteen factors were extracted and rotated by the Varimax method. The first five factors extracted accounted for 36.3% of the variance and reflected the five postulated factors, thus partially supporting the factorial validity of this questionnaire.     

Working With Sidney Blatt: Developing Interactions

This tribute to Sidney J. Blatt describes our collaboration in the study of therapy change among hospitalized patients at the Austen Riggs Center. In particular, the use of defense mechanisms by these patients, and the relation of defenses to change in personality after treatment, were examined. The unfolding of this work is described.     

Conceptual Integration of Arithmetic Operations With Real‐World Knowledge: Evidence From Event‐Related Potentials

Research on language processing has shown that the disruption of conceptual integration gives rise to specific patterns of event‐related brain potentials (ERPs)—N400 and P600 effects. Here, we report similar ERP effects when adults performed cross‐domain conceptual integration of analogous semantic and mathematical relations. In a problem‐solving task, when participants generated labeled answers to semantically aligned and misaligned arithmetic problems (e.g., 6 roses + 2 tulips  = ? vs. 6 roses + 2 vases  = ?), the second object label in misaligned problems yielded an N400 effect for addition (but not division) problems. In a verification task, when participants judged arithmetically correct but semantically misaligned problem sentences to be “unacceptable,” the second object label in misaligned sentences elicited a P600 effect. Thus, depending on task constraints, misaligned problems can show either of two ERP signatures of conceptual disruption. These results show that well‐educated adults can integrate mathematical and semantic relations on the rapid timescale of within‐domain ERP effects by a process akin to analogical mapping.     

Specialist counsellors in primary care: The experience and preferences of general practitioners

This paper reports the results of a postal questionnaire, pre-coded by practice, which was sent to all 484 Leicestershire general practitioners. Practitioners who could and who could not refer to an in-house counsellor were compared in terms of their views about counselling provision, both within the practice and by agencies outside, such as mental health teams and specialist counselling services. General practitioners having access to a counsellor belonged to practices which were larger and had fundholding status. No signijicant dafference was found between rural and urban practices in their employment of an in-house counsellor, although those doctors working in rural areas were less likely to see this service as having a high priority. General practitioners without in-house counsellors estimated a referral rate (for counselling) in excess of twice that of the actual rate reported by those with practice counsellors. Those having an in-house counsellor were more likely to agree with statements that emphasized the benefits of this form of provision as against that offered by either mental health teams or specialist counselling services.     

Smoking Behavior Development and Modification: An Empirical Application of Three Social Psychological Theories1

Three major social psychological theories were applied to data obtained in interviews with a random sample of 50 exsmokers and 50 smokers. The objective was to test the utility of these theories with respect to smoking behavior development and change. The results provided strong support for the hypotheses derived from reference group theory and partial support for the cognitive dissonance and psychoanalytic hypotheses.     

Learning pictures and words: The role of implicit verbal labeling

In two experiments (Ns = 144 and 192), second, fourth, and sixth graders learned pairs of pictures or of words, and were tested for both item learning (either with pictures or words) and associative learning. By analysis of false recognition errors, it was determined that implicit verbal labeling occurred only among the older two groups. However, there was no evidence that this labeling affected paired-associate learning.     

Homonym understanding and conservation

It is proposed that a common cognitive capacity underlies both homonym understanding and conservation ability—namely, the capacity to shift attention from one dimension (domain) to another. This hypothesis is tested in a longitudinal study of kindergarten (mean age 6-0) and first-grade (mean age 6-6) children. The results indicate that conservation status is significantly related to homonym understanding, over and above the age or general vocabulary level of the child.     

Correlates of self-worth in preschoolers: The role of gender-stereotyped styles of behavior

It was hypothesized that gender-stereotyped styles of social interaction are apparent as early as the preschool years, and that the use of these gender-stereotyped behaviors is associated with the child's perceived competence and social support. Using a story-completion method with 47 white middle-class preschoolers, the results of the study confirmed the hypotheses. Boys were more likely to use the male-stereotyped styles of domination and intrusion, while girls were more likely to use the female-stereotyped styles of affiliation and inclusion. In addition, the use of male gender-stereotyped behaviors among boys was significantly related to perceived physical competence and peer acceptance. For girls, use of the female gender-stereotyped behavior of Affiliation was related to perceived cognitive competence and, weakly, to perceived maternal acceptance. For both sexes, use of the feminine-stereotyped behavior of Inclusion was negatively related to competence and acceptance variables.