The vicissitudes of affect in Horney's theory

Abstract

Karen Horney, a Neo-Freudian analyst who immigrated from Germany to the USA, undertook the difficult task of developing a theory that remained concrete psychology without resorting to biology or to metapsychological entelechies. Although her basic construct, as in Freud, is a conflict between nature and culture, nature for her is the naturally endowed real self, which the neurotic abandons bowing to cultural pressures. This process of desertion is teleological and based on imagination, and is also creative. It entails the pursuit of a god-like idealized image of the self shaped according to narrow and despoiled values. Being interpersonal, Horney's theory avoids third-person objectification which creates a false distance; it thus remains (inter)subjective. A theory of interpersonal affect, it is dramatic before being dynamic. It also abandons claims to universality as it does to the “objectivity” of the natural sciences. Horney's focus on alienation brings her close to Hegel and Marx, a neglected fact, and she pioneered feminist and self-help theories. The difficulty in reading Horney is not her abstruseness, since her theory refuses technicism. It resides rather in that resistance created by what Althusser called interpellation: one feels her finger pointed at oneself as one reads.     

Knowledge of essence: the conferralist story

Realist essentialists face a prima facie challenge in accounting for our knowledge of the essences of things, and in particular, in justifying our engaging in thought experiments to gain such knowledge. In contrast, conferralist essentialism has an attractive story to tell about how we gain knowledge of the essences of things, and how thought experiments are a justified method for gaining such knowledge. The conferralist story is told in this essay.     

Female Christ-figures in Films: A Feminist Critical Analysis of Breaking the Waves and Dead Man Walking

The discussion about the identity of the Christian ethics continue to be an important issue – not least in a Scandinavian context. In Denmark this is partly due to the legacy of K. E. Løgstrup. This question is also important in the light of the discussion about the relation between religion and politics. In the present article it is argued that a Lutheran attempt to keep religion and politics separate from each other is both a misreading of Luther and a highly problematic venture in a contemporary society. Further, the article discusses the problem of relating religion to politics with respect to potential conflicts. From an ecclesial perspective, it is then argued that religion and politics are inseparable and that this does not entail a dismissal of the common political discourse. Lastly, the article argues – from a Lutheran standpoint – for a possible understanding of the sources of public law as encompassing the unity and difference of religion and politics at one and the same time.     

I feel so sorry! Tapping the joint influence of empathy and personal distress on helping behavior

Observing a person in need usually provokes a compound and dynamic emotional experience made up of empathy and personal distress which, in turn, may influence helping behavior. As the exclusive use of rating scales to measure these two emotions does not permit the analysis of their concurrent evolution, we added the analogical emotional scale (AES) in order to measure how these two emotions evolve throughout the emotional experience, from its onset to its conclusion. Therefore, in two studies, the concurrence of empathy and personal distress was induced, both rating scales and AES were used, and participants were given an unexpected opportunity to help. Two effects were found. First, the helping behavior was lower when personal distress prevailed over empathy at the end of the experience (Studies 1 and 2). Second, this “end” effect was coherent with the nature of the different motives evoked by personal distress and empathy—directed to increasing either one’s own welfare (egoistic) or the victim’s welfare (altruism) (Study 2). These results support the usefulness of combining the rating scales and the AES for gaining a better understanding of the nature and behavioral consequences of complex, compound and dynamic emotional experiences.     

Harmful Ideas,The Structure and Consequences of Anti‐Semitic Beliefs in Poland

The harmfulness of anti‐Semitic beliefs is widely discussed in current political and legal debates (e.g., Cutler v. Dorn). At the same time, empirical studies of the psychological consequences of such beliefs are scarce. The present research is an attempt to explore the structure of contemporary anti‐Semitic beliefs in Poland—and to evaluate their predictive role in discriminatory intentions and behavior targeting Jews. Another aim was to determine dispositional, situational, and identity correlates of different forms of anti‐Semitic beliefs and behavior. Study 1, performed on a nation‐wide representative sample of Polish adults (N = 979), suggests a three‐factorial structure of anti‐Semitic beliefs, consisting of: (1) belief in Jewish conspiracy, (2) traditional religious anti‐Judaic beliefs, and (3) secondary anti‐Semitic beliefs, focusing on Holocaust commemoration. Of these three beliefs, belief in Jewish conspiracy was the closest antecedent of anti‐Semitic behavioral intentions. Study 2 (N = 600 Internet users in Poland) confirmed the three‐factor structure of anti‐Semitic beliefs and proved that these beliefs explain actual behavior toward Jews in monetary donations. Both studies show that anti‐Semitic beliefs are related to authoritarian personality characteristics, victimhood‐based social identity, and relative deprivation.     

Attentional deficits in fibromyalgia and its relationships with pain,emotional distress and sleep dysfunction complaints

Cognitive complaints are common among subjects with fibromyalgia (FM). Yet, few studies have been able to document these deficits with cognitive tasks. A main limitation of existing studies is that attention has been broadly defined and the tasks used to measure attention are not designed to cover all the main components of the attentional system. Research on attention has identified three primary functions of attention, known as alerting, orienting and executive functioning. This study used the attentional network test-interactions task to explore whether and which of the three attentional networks are altered in FM. Results showed that FM patients have impaired executive control (greater interference), reduced vigilance (slower overall reaction time) and greater alertness (higher reduction in errors after a warning cue). Vigilance and alertness showed several relations with depression, anxiety and sleep quality. Sleep dysfunction was a significant predictor for alertness, whereas there were no significant predictors for vigilance. These findings highlight that the treatment of sleep difficulties in FM patients may help with some of their cognitive complaints.     

A longitudinal study of psychosocial distress in breast cancer: Prevalence and risk factors

This longitudinal study was conducted among 102 women with non-metastasic breast cancer to identify the time evolution and prevalence of distress at specific times through diagnosis and treatment of disease: preliminary diagnosis, surgery, definitive diagnosis and chemotherapy. Additionally, the study aimed to examine the role of demographic, medical and psychosocial factors on distress. The results indicated that prevalence of distress was higher at initial diagnosis (25%) than the following time points (approximately 17%). The differences inter-individuals in the levels of distress were observed over the four assessments. No relation between distress and demographic and medical factors was found. However, psychosocial aspects were significant risk factors. Patterns of emotional suppression and specific coping responses like helplessness/hopelessness, anxious preoccupation, cognitive avoidance and fatalism were positively related to distress, whereas fighting spirit and perceived social support showed a protective role. Moreover, helplessness/hopelessness and anxious preoccupation jointly predicted 75% of cases and 98% non-cases of distress. Finally, a mediational model between emotional suppression and distress through helplessness/hopelessness was tested. Results support the necessity of routine distress screening all through the illness. Implications of data for psychosocial interventions with breast cancer patients are highlighted.     

Some recommended statistical analytic practices when reliability generalization studies are conducted

Precursors of the reliability generalization (RG) meta‐analytic approach have not established a single preferred analytic method. By means of five real RG examples, we examine how using different statistical methods to integrate coefficients alpha can influence results in RG studies. Specifically, we compare thirteen different statistical models for averaging reliability coefficients and searching for moderator variables that differ in terms of: (a) whether to transform or not the coefficients alpha, and (b) the statistical model assumed, distinguishing between ordinary least squares methods, the fixed‐effect (FE) model, the varying coefficient (VC) model, and several versions of the random‐effects (RE) model. The results obtained with the different methods exhibited important discrepancies, especially regarding moderator analyses. The main criterion for the model choice should be the extent to which the meta‐analyst intends to generalize the results. RE models are the most appropriate when the meta‐analyst aims to generalize to a hypothetical population of past or future studies, while FE and VC models are the most appropriate when the interest focuses on generalizing the results to a population of studies identical to those included in the meta‐analysis. Finally, some guidelines are proposed for selecting the statistical model when conducting an RG study.     

The role of outcome inhibition in interference between outcomes: A contingency‐learning analogue of retrieval‐induced forgetting

Current associative theories of contingency learning assume that inhibitory learning plays a part in the interference between outcomes. However, it is unclear whether this inhibitory learning results in the inhibition of the outcome representation or whether it simply counteracts previous excitatory learning so that the outcome representation is neither activated nor inhibited. Additionally, these models tend to conceptualize inhibition as a relatively transient and cue‐dependent state. However, research on retrieval‐induced forgetting suggests that the inhibition of representations is a real process that can be relatively independent of the retrieval cue used to access the inhibited information. Consistent with this alternative view, we found that interference between outcomes reduces the retrievability of the target outcome even when the outcome is associated with a novel (non‐inhibitory) cue. This result has important theoretical implications for associative models of interference and shows that the empirical facts and theories developed in studies of retrieval‐induced forgetting might be relevant in contingency learning and vice versa.     

Quantification abilities in angelfish (Pterophyllum scalare): the influence of continuous variables

Previous studies investigating quantity discrimination have shown that angelfish are able to select the larger of two groups of conspecifics (shoals). The discrimination limits shown by angelfish were similar to those found for other vertebrates when large (≥4) and small quantities (<4) were presented. However, in these studies, no attempt was made to control for non-numerical features of the stimulus shoals and thus the question whether numerical or some quantitative attributes of the shoals were utilized for making the choices could not be answered. Here, we investigate whether angelfish can discriminate between shoals differing in numerical size using non-numerical attributes. We systematically manipulate density, inter-fish distance, and overall space occupied by the shoals, one factor at a time, and analyse the choices angelfish made between the contrasting stimulus shoals. The stimulus shoals consisted of contrasts between large (10 vs. 5) and small (3 vs. 2) number of conspecifics. We found density to be a sufficient condition for discrimination between large shoals as the test subjects preferred the more dense shoal. Manipulation of inter-fish distance indicated that this variable is not a necessary factor in discrimination at either shoal size contrast. Likewise, we found that the size of space occupied by the contrasted shoals also did not significantly influence discrimination. Sensitivity to the density of large shoals indicates that angelfish can discriminate shoal size using this non-numerical cue. Nevertheless, the factors we examined may represent only a subset of all possible non-numerical features upon which angelfish may base their discrimination. Thus, we suggest that further research is required to clarify whether and under what circumstances angelfish may use numerical or non-numerical features when discriminating between shoals of differing size.