Community Social Psychology in Brazil

Des comptes-rendus de deux Conférences organisées en Psychologie Sociale des Communautés, l'une à São-Paulo en 1981 et l'autre en 1988 à Belo Horizonte, nous extrayons une revue de ce qui a été réalisé dans ce champ depuis dix ans. Au début, les buts visaient la santé mentale et l'éducation populaire sans focaliser sur le rôle des psychologues. Dans les rapports de 1988, nous observons une définition plus claire de leur travail en conseil et en dynamique des groupes, à la recherche de la prise de conscience et de l'organisation des individus dans les communautés.
Une recherche participative entreprise dans une favela est présentée en détail, amenant une systématisation de la théorie et de la pratique en Psychologie Sociale des Communautés.
By using the published reports of two conferences on community social psychology, one held in São Paulo in 1981 and the other in Belo Horizonte in 1988, we present an overview of the developments in the field over a 10-year period. In 1981, emphasis was placed on mental health and popular education and not on the role of the psychologist. In 1988, however, the psychologist's role was more clearly defined: using counselling and group dynamics to reach consciousness and the organisation of communities.
Participative research undertaken in a favela is reported in detail, which systematises theory and practice in community social psychology.     

Item method directed forgetting diminishes false memory

Directed forgetting may reduce the ORM false memory illusion by interfering with meaning processing. Participants were presented with a list composed of six 10-word semantically associated sub-lists, and they were either (a) asked to remember a ll list it ems or (b) asked to remember all associates from sub-lists and to forget all associates from other sub-lists. All participants were requested to recall and recognise list items. Although directed forgetting effects have been previously reported only for true responses in the ORM paradigm with the list method, we also found directed forgetting for false responses with the item method. Such forgetting instructions reduced both verbatim and meaning processing, decreasing both the intrusion and the false alarm rate. These results are consistent with two-process explanations of DRM false memories, such as fuzzy-trace theory, and add to our understanding of false memory editing.     

Is penal substitution unjust?

Penal substitution in a theological context is the doctrine that God inflicted upon Christ the suffering which we deserved as the punishment for our sins, as a result of which we no longer deserve punishment. Ever since the time of Faustus Socinus, the doctrine has faced formidable, and some would say insuperable, philosophical challenges. Critics of penal substitution frequently assert that God’s punishing Christ in our place would be an injustice on God’s part. For it is an axiom of retributive justice that it is unjust to punish an innocent person. But Christ was an innocent person. Since God is perfectly just, He cannot therefore have punished Christ. Virtually every premiss in this argument is challengeable. Not all penal substitution theories affirm that Christ was punished for our sins. The argument makes unwarranted assumptions about the ontological foundations of moral duty independent of God’s commands. It presupposes without warrant that God is by nature an unqualified negative retributivist. It overlooks the possibility that the prima facie demands of negative retributive justice might be overridden in Christ’s case by weightier moral considerations. And it takes it for granted that Christ was legally innocent, which is denied by the classic doctrine of imputation. It thus fails to show any injustice in God’s punishing Christ in our place.     

School-aged Children’s Psychobiological Divergence as a Prospective Predictor of Health Risk Behaviors in Adolescence

Recent attachment research suggests that children with avoidant attachment often underreport their psychological distress compared to their physiologic indicators of distress (neuroendocrine reactivity, startle response, event-related potentials). This pattern of behavior (referred to as psychobiological divergence) may confer risk for suboptimal coping behaviors, including substance use, sexual risk-taking, and non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI), because individuals who are not aware of or cannot express their emotional needs may engage in maladaptive strategies to regulate their emotions. In the current pilot study (N?=?45 youth), we investigate whether psychobiological divergence of neuroendocrine and self-reported reactivity in middle childhood prospectively predicts health risk behaviors (HRBs) in adolescence. The results revealed that divergence was significantly associated with adolescents’ substance use and non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI), but not with their sexual behavior. Among adolescents currently reporting low levels of attachment security, divergence was associated with greater self-reported NSSI. Our results provide initial evidence that psychobiological divergence confers risk for substance use and NSSI in combination with current relational distress. We discuss the implications of our findings for adolescent development and clinical risk.     

Coach–Athlete Perceived Congruence Between Actual and Desired Emotions in Karate Competition and Training

Coaches can help athletes regulate emotions but would benefit from tools that help them accurately perceive athletes' emotions. In the present study, we investigated the use of video-recorded performances to compare 3 martial artists' ratings of desired and actual emotions with their coach's ratings. Results show how desired emotions progressively fluctuated throughout competition. Furthermore, desired and actual emotions differed between training and performance contexts. Finally, we report correlations between performance and perceived congruence in desired and actual emotions. Cumulatively, results offer support for the video-assisted recall of emotions as an intervention tool in developing emotion regulation abilities.     

A comprehensive and systematic approach to parent education

Abstract

This paper emphasizes the importance of parent education, particularly in our current rapidly changing society. The history of parent education is briefly reviewed and a new program called STEP, Systematic Training for Effective Parenting is discussed in detail.     

Levels of Emotional Awareness: a model for conceptualizing and measuring emotion-centered structural change

The need to establish the efficacy of psychoanalytic long-term treatments has promoted efforts to operationalize psychic structure and structural change as key elements of psychoanalytic treatments and their outcomes. Current, promising measures of structural change, however, require extensive interviews and rater training. The purpose of this paper is to present the theory and measurement of Levels of Emotional Awareness (LEA) and to illustrate its use based on clinical case vignettes. The LEA model lays out a developmental trajectory of affective processing, akin to Piaget's theory of sensory-cognitive development, from implicit to explicit processing. Unlike other current assessments of psychic structure (Scales of Psychological Capacities, Reflective Functioning, Operationalized Psychodynamic Diagnostics) requiring intensive rater and interviewer training, it is easily assessed based on a self-report performance test. The LEA model conceptualizes a basic psychological capacity, affect processing. As we will illustrate using two case vignettes, by operationalizing implicit and explicit modes of affect processing, it provides a clinical measure of emotional awareness that is highly pertinent to the ongoing psychoanalytic debate on the nature and mechanisms of structural change.