Verbal Style,Gubernatorial Strategies,and Legislative Success

This article examines the relationship between a governor's verbal style and his success in achieving his legislative goals. We add a measure of verbal style developed by Roderick Hart to a traditional model used by scholars of political chief executives to explain legislative success. We apply this model to the State of the State addresses of six governors of Florida who served between 1966 and 2006. Our findings reflect the validity of the truism “words matter.” Governors who use words and phrases that connote enthusiasm, activity, and realism are more successful in the legislative arena than those who do not.     

40,000 memories in young teenagers: Psychometric properties of the Autobiographical Memory Test in a UK cohort study

Although the Autobiographical Memory Test (AMT) is widely used its psychometric properties have rarely been investigated. This paper utilises data gathered from a 10-item written version of the AMT, completed by 5792 adolescents participating in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, to examine the psychometric properties of the measure. The results show that the scale derived from responses to the AMT operates well over a wide range of scores, consistent with the aim of deriving a continuous measure of over-general memory. There was strong evidence of group differences in terms of gender, low negative mood, and IQ, and these were in agreement when comparing an item response theory (IRT) approach with that based on a sum score. One advantage of the IRT model is the ability to assess and consequently allow for differential item functioning. This additional analysis showed evidence of response bias for both gender and mood, resulting in attenuation in the mean differences in AMT across these groups. Implications of the findings for the use of the AMT measure in different samples are discussed.     

The Tree of Knowledge: Good and Evil: Conflicting Interpretations

This article examines a debate concerning the exegesis of the story of the garden of Eden and the tree of knowledge, as told in Genesis. Two contradictory interpretations of the garden narrative are examined, the first as the story is elucidated by the psychoanalyst and social theorist Erich Fromm and the alternative interpretation by the Talmudic scholar and philosopher Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik. This article compares and contrasts their exegeses and the respective implications of each view. The controversy, which has profound implications, reflects differences in world views concerning the good life, autonomy and relatedness, assertion and submission, will and surrender, obedience and rebellion, independence and interdependence, subjectivity and intersubjectivity. Links are drawn to a variety of contemporary psychoanalytic theories, developments, and controversies.     

The Transference is Indeed a Cross: Commentary on Paper by Sue Grand

Sue Grand presents a case of “a near-death clinical impasse,” conjuring “God at an impasse.” She questions the philosophical premises and culture biases that inform the foundations of psychoanalytic theory. She asks how we rewrite “the psychoanalytic subject.” This commentary explores the themes of clinical impasse, psychoanalysis and religion, martyrdom and self-sacrifice, the negative Oedipus or “Jacob complex,” multiplicity of selves, and psychoanalytic witnessing. Most important, it challenges the tendency to polarize the Jewish and Christian narratives such that Judaism is depicted as “this worldly” in contrast to Christianity, which is seen as celebrating martyrdom in identification with Christ. It argues for psychoanalysis to recognize the spiritual value of submission and surrender without splitting them into polar oppositions.     

What Variables Are Associated With an Expressed Wish to Kill a Doctor in Community and Injured Patient Samples?

Working in a health care setting has been identified as a primary risk factor for violent assault, which is often perpetrated by patients. Patient dangerousness is a multidimensional phenomenon, which may include violent ideation, homicidal planning, a history of violent acts, or overt threatening behavior. Although the verbal report of thoughts of killing a doctor is only one of many risk factors for patient dangerousness, reports of homicidal ideation are widely regarded as being sufficient to warrant concern, and to indicate a need for further assessment of the patient. In this study, 2264 subjects (1329 healthy community subjects, 158 non-healthy community subjects, and 777 rehabilitation patients) were asked if they had a desire to kill a doctor that they had seen. Subjects responding positively to this item were compared to subjects responding negatively to the item using all available demographic variables and BHI 2 scales using chi-square or t-test. Significant variables (p < .01) were then utilized in a logistic regression to generate a model for this wish. Three variables significantly predicted this wish: the Doctor Dissatisfaction (p < .001) and Borderline (p < .001) scales of the BHI 2, and injury-related litigation status (p = .002). The presence of one of these variables, especially Doctor Dissatisfaction, should prompt a more thorough assessment of potential danger to healthcare workers.     

The Effect of Incentives upon Information Gathering in Diagnostic Problem Solving

Tasks reflecting both Level I and Level II abilities as defined by Jensen (6) were performed with more accuracy by preschool children identified in the upper SES level. This performance trend remained the same even after the variable of IQ was controlled for by covariance for the SES levels involved in the study.

These results may reflect a general state of cognitive deprivation for children in the lower SES level as opposed to a specific Level II deficit. However, the performance on Subtest 2 was not significantly different for the two socioeconomic groups involved. This subtest involves choosing, from an array of four pictures of objects, the picture that is conceptually similar to a stimulus picture presented to the youngster. This is supposedly a Level II task. Therefore, some doubt is cast upon the notion of the generic differences between Level I and Level II abilities. At least for the sample in this study the Level I-Level II dichotomy has not been substantiated, and the corollary Arthur Jensen (6) hypotheses have equivocal substantiation.     

God,guilt, and logic: The psychological basis of the ontological argument

The most eminent exponents of the ontological argument for the existence of God have been characterized as well by a common emotional ingredient — a concern with individual guilt. Anselm, Josiah Royce, Karl Barth, and Norman Malcolm in their respective ways have made the experience of guilt a central one in their metaphysical standpoints. The hypothesis is therefore advanced that the validity which such thinkers have found in the ontological argument is the expression of a frame of mind which we can call ‘logical masochism'; under the influence of such emotions, the ontologian bows his logical powers submissively before an entity the existence of which he cannot question because of the guilt that such questioning would arouse. Under such social circumstances, on the other hand, as during the eighteenth century, when the psychology of individual guilt subsided, the appeal of the ontological argument likewise declines.