The roles of hopeful thinking in preventing problems and enhancing strengths

From its most famous tale, that of Pandora, hope was meant to prevent the emergence and reemergence of life difficulties. A new model defining hope as a combination of agentic pathways and goal-directed thinking is reviewed. Comparisons of the similarities of this theory to other existing theories are made. The beneficial roles of hope in primary (before the appearance of a problem) and secondary (after a problem has appeared) prevention are explored. Primary enhancement is introduced as involving those thoughts and actions that establish optimal functioning and satisfaction. Secondary enhancement is posited to describe those thoughts and actions that are undertaken over time so as to further functioning and satisfaction in order to reach peak levels. Using hope theory as a lens, these primary and secondary enhancement processes are described. The natural synergy between prevention and enhancement activities is discussed, along with the future priorities for using hope in prevention and enhancement efforts.     

Treatment of sexual dysfunction

Abstract

This study is based on a statistical analysis of 240 client records. The task of the study was to determine the variables inherent to women with diagnosed sexual problems. Data were secured for 93 variables in four classifications—sociological, sexological, psychological, and counseling. Frequency distributions revealed sociological characteristics which were representative of young, middle-class, well-educated women, except for a greater incidence of divorce and separation. Typical sexual experiences included extramarital relationships, oral and anal intercourse, masturbation, and childhood sexual contacts with adult males who were either a member or friend of the family. Compared to other reports of sexual experience, clients showed greater frequencies of intercourse, homosexual and extramarital experience, and childhood sexual contacts with adult males, but less frequency of orgasm. In addition, mean T-scores were moderately elevated (60–69) for eight of 13 MMPI scales.     

Relationship Maintenance Behavior and Adult Attachment: An Analysis of the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model

Associations between relationships maintenance behaviors (positivity, openness, assurances, and sharing tasks) and anxious and avoidant attachment were examined in 265 married couples. Using structural equation modeling to employ the actor-partner interdependence model, the use of positivity, assurances, and sharing tasks were found to be negatively associated with anxious and avoidant attachment for both husbands and wives. Being open and self-disclosing in marriage was not strongly associated with attachment. Results indicated that the use of maintenance behaviors in marriages could have the potential to foster increased security in partners. Research and clinical implications are discussed.     

Early family context and development of adolescent ruminative style: Moderation by temperament

We know very little about the development of rumination, the tendency to passively brood about negative feelings. Because rumination is a risk factor for many forms of psychopathology, especially depression, such knowledge could prove important for preventing negative mental health outcomes in youth. This study examined developmental origins of rumination in a longitudinal sample (N=337; 51% girls) studied in preschool (ages 3½ and 4½ years) and early adolescence (ages 13 and 15 years). Results indicated that family context and child temperament, assessed during the preschool period, were risk factors for a ruminative style in adolescence. Specifically, early family contexts characterised by over-controlling parenting and a family style of negative-submissive expressivity predicted higher levels of later rumination. These associations were moderated by children's temperamental characteristics of negative affect and effortful control. Further, the interaction of these temperament factors exerted an additional influence on later rumination. Implications for prevention and intervention efforts are discussed.     

Autism: A Brief History

This paper discusses how the understanding of autism has changed in the 60 years since Leo Kanner first described the syndrome. Originally identified as an emotional disorder caused by parental ambivalence and rejection, autism today is universally seen as a neurohiological difficulty, whose cause is organic and related to atypical brain development. Evidence for the organic and genetic causes is presented, along with a discussion of how the understanding of autism has evolved during the past half century. The current understanding of autism as a developmental disorder has dramatically improved the quality of care and effectiveness of interventions for these youngsters and their families.     

Parental Bullying,Aggression, and Assertion: A Philosophical and Psychoanalytic Revisioning of Frank Summers' Case of Anna

Historically, psychoanalysis has failed to differentiate adequately between aggression and assertion. It is uncontroversial to state that bullying is a form of aggression. However, if aggression and assertion are not adequately distinguished, bullying could also be viewed as a form of assertion. Some psychoanalysts have attempted to resolve this by using the terms aggression and assertion as synonyms but introducing the notion of nondestructive aggression. Bullying, then, is understood to be hostile aggression or hostile assertion. In this article, I aim to prepare psychoanalytic and philosophical groundwork for a meaningful differentiation between aggression and assertion, and, at the same time, to shed light on the nature of bullying, parental bullying in particular. To achieve these aims, I critique an aspect of the case material presented by Frank Summers in his (2005) Summers, F. 2005. Self Creation: Psychoanalytic Therapy and the Art of the Possible, Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press.  [Google Scholar] book, Self Creation: Psychoanalytic Therapy and the Art of the Possible. I also critique Parens' (2008) Parens, H. 2008. The Development of Aggression in Early Childhood, Lanham, MD: Jason Aronson.  [Google Scholar] notion of nondestructive aggression as used by him and by Summers. Additionally, I discuss some of the philosophical notions Summers introduces and discusses relevant to a critique of his notion of the analyst's vision of the patient's development in its relevance to his case of Anna.     

Importance of School Health Education An Interview with Dean Joyce Hopp

Joyce W. Hopp is Dean of the School of Allied Health Professions at Lorna Linda University. Program development in response to market demands is her forté Dr. Hopp is also a Professor of Health Promotion and Education in the School of Public Health at Loma Linda University, a position she has held for 30 years.

Dr. Hopp began her career in healthcare as a nurse. Her primary interest is health education in Seventh-day Adventist educational institutions. The interview addresses her educational progression to a Ph.D., her experience in training healthcare professionals, and her philosophy of Christian education. Also included are her suggestions for future research in Christian health education.     

Acquiring Non-Object Terms: The Case for Time Words

We address the issue of children's understanding of abstract words with two studies on preschoolers' knowledge of the time-duration words minutes, hours, days, and years. The first study examines 4- and 5-year-olds' ability to answer questions about durations of common phenomena with duration terms. The second study examines 4- to 6-year-olds' comprehension of duration terms with a forced-choice pointing task. Both show that preschoolers' knowledge of such words is incomplete, but that it adheres to the pattern proposed in previous work with toddlers for abstract words. More specifically, children form lexical domains for such words even before they know their individual meanings, thereby allowing the children to often respond appropriately but not usually correctly to questions about abstract dimensions like time.     

Active inference, sensory attenuation and illusions

Active inference provides a simple and neurobiologically plausible account of how action and perception are coupled in producing (Bayes) optimal behaviour. This can be seen most easily as minimising prediction error: we can either change our predictions to explain sensory input through perception. Alternatively, we can actively change sensory input to fulfil our predictions. In active inference, this action is mediated by classical reflex arcs that minimise proprioceptive prediction error created by descending proprioceptive predictions. However, this creates a conflict between action and perception; in that, self-generated movements require predictions to override the sensory evidence that one is not actually moving. However, ignoring sensory evidence means that externally generated sensations will not be perceived. Conversely, attending to (proprioceptive and somatosensory) sensations enables the detection of externally generated events but precludes generation of actions. This conflict can be resolved by attenuating the precision of sensory evidence during movement or, equivalently, attending away from the consequences of self-made acts. We propose that this Bayes optimal withdrawal of precise sensory evidence during movement is the cause of psychophysical sensory attenuation. Furthermore, it explains the force-matching illusion and reproduces empirical results almost exactly. Finally, if attenuation is removed, the force-matching illusion disappears and false (delusional) inferences about agency emerge. This is important, given the negative correlation between sensory attenuation and delusional beliefs in normal subjects—and the reduction in the magnitude of the illusion in schizophrenia. Active inference therefore links the neuromodulatory optimisation of precision to sensory attenuation and illusory phenomena during the attribution of agency in normal subjects. It also provides a functional account of deficits in syndromes characterised by false inference and impaired movement—like schizophrenia and Parkinsonism—syndromes that implicate abnormal modulatory neurotransmission.     

Personality and Dissonance Among Mormon Missionaries

The distinguishing characteristics of dissonant missionaries were identified by examining the responses of 58 current and former Mormon missionaries to a questionnaire about missionary service, a Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) Denial scale, and Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI) Compulsive and Submissive/Aggressive special scales. The participants, 12 women and 46 men, were mailed the materials after being identified by their friends or acquaintances as current or former missionaries. Women had less satisfying missionary experiences than men and were more likely to report a loss of self-esteem due to missionary service, but were not more dissonant missionaries than men. Missionaries with lower scores on the Denial, Compulsive, and Submissive/Aggressive scales were more likely to question mission policies than subjects with higher scores. Thus, it appears that Denial, Compulsive, and Submissive/Aggressive scale scores can identify potentially dissonant missionaries.