Predictors of the change in self-stigma following a single session of group counseling

One of the major obstacles to seeking psychological help is the stigma associated with counseling and therapy. Self-stigma, the fear of losing self-respect or self-esteem as a result of seeking help, is an important factor in the help-seeking process. In the present study, college students meeting a clinical cutoff for psychological symptoms participated in 1 session of group counseling that either contained therapist self-disclosure or did not. In general, participants reported significantly less self-stigma following the session. Working alliance-bond and session depth significantly predicted the change in self-stigma. Furthermore, self-stigma (as well as bond, depth, psychological symptoms, and being female) predicted the intention to seek help following the session. Self-stigma and session depth also predicted interest in continuing with counseling. The therapist self-disclosure condition, however, had no effect on the change in self-stigma, intentions to seek help, or interest in continuing with group counseling.     

Identification of Early Child and Family Risk Factors for Aggressive Victim Status in First Grade

This prospective investigation sought to discriminate children who were both aggressive towards and victimized by peers in the first grade, from those who were only aggressive, only victimized, or neither (i.e., socially adjusted), using early child and family risk factors. Two hundred thirty-eight children, their mothers, and teachers participated in a longitudinal study since birth. All three aggressor/victim subgroups showed greater temperamental dysregulation than the socially adjusted children, but only aggressive victims had significantly poorer social perception skills. Aggressive victims were distinguished from aggressors by greater exposure to maternal depression and from victims by lower levels of early inhibition, but they shared the experiences of negative family emotional expressiveness with aggressors and greater mother-child negativity with victims. The identification of early risk factors is crucial to prevention and early intervention efforts that have the potential to attenuate the long term emotional, social, and academic problems associated with aggressive victim status.     

Attentional mechanisms associated with repressive distancing

This research explores the role of attentional shift and disengagement in repressive distancing. During a target-detection task in which emotional and neutral facial expressions were used as cues, participants received performance feedback intended to elicit a negative emotional reaction that rendered the task either threatening or not threatening to self-concept. When the task was perceived to threaten self-concept, repressors distanced themselves by rapidly disengaging their attention from the facial expressions rather than by slowly shifting or not shifting their attention to the facial expressions. Attentional disengagement was accompanied by sympathetic nervous system activity suggestive of a defense response. This research provides further insight into the nature and consequences of the interplay of dispositional tendencies, situational contexts, and higher order cognitive influences in attentional behavior.     

Mood spillover and crossover among dual-earner couples: a cell phone event sampling study

In this study, the authors examined affective experiences of dual-earner couples. More specifically, the authors explored how momentary moods can spill over between work and family and cross over from one spouse to another. Fifty couples used their cell phones to provide reports of their momentary moods over 8 consecutive days. Results show significant spillover and crossover effects for both positive and negative moods. Work orientation moderated negative mood spillover from work to home, and the presence of children in the family decreased negative mood crossover between spouses. Crossover was observed when spouses were physically together and when the time interval between the spouses' reports was short. With this study, the authors contribute to the work and family research by examining the nature of mood transfers among dual-earner couples, including the direction, valence, and moderators of these transfers across work and family domains. The authors also contribute to the event sampling methodology by introducing a new method of using cell phones to collect momentary data.     

Working memory for item and temporal information in younger and older adults

Two experiments examined age differences in mechanisms hypothesized to affect activation of item and temporal information in working memory. Activation levels were inferred from the ability to reject n-back lures matching items in different temporal positions. Information with the least decay had a performance advantage over less recent information, but was susceptible to the same temporal context errors found in all adjacent-to-target lure positions. Lures most distant from the current item showed a performance rebound. The pattern of increased magnitudes of age effects at adjacent-to-target positions indicated a reduction in older adults' working memory for temporal context information above and beyond item memory declines. Results overall support the emphasis on context information as a critical factor in working memory and cognitive aging.     

Workplace worries: a preliminary look at online sexual activities at the office-emerging issues for clinicians and employers.

Concerns about the impact of online sexual activities (OSA) on work-life are drastically increasing. This study examined 3,466 respondents who reported OSA, 18.5% of whom reported engaging in OSA at work. They were compared with the 81.5% who engaged in OSA at home, on average time spent in OSA, workplace policies regarding OSA, and relationship status. Two themes were identified and discussed: opportunity and sexual distress. Our findings indicate that participants are cognizant of issues of opportunity (e.g., the OSA from home group was more likely to indicate their workplace has established policies regarding OSA), and privacy, representing an important aspect of this theme (e.g., participants engaging in OSA at work were found to be twice as likely to have extra-marital affairs, compared with the OSA from home group). Secondly, our data suggests that many participants, especially from the OSA at work group, experience OSA-related distress. Engaging in OSA at the workplace may result in decreased productivity, issues of sexual harassment, and concerns about employee well-being. Clearly stated and consistently enforced policies regulating OSA are likely to mitigate workplace OSA. However, a significant minority of employees may have difficulties curbing OSA. Therefore, more sophisticated strategies to deal with workplace OSA should be established. Additional implications of importance for organizations and mental health professionals who support them are discussed.     

Klein and Lacan Meet 21st Century Schizoid Man: Fairy Stories for the Modern Era

Melanie Klein invited us into the phenomenology of the schizoid dilemma through her depictions of the paranoid?schizoid position. By inserting his recursive arrows, Bion extended this conceptualization, showing us the folly of believing that we can ever entirely move beyond the frightening fantasies and realities of social exclusion and isolation. The 21st century has brought, along with the explosion of technology, an expulsion from the social order of many children who have found refuge from isolation and humiliation in the more accessible and less terrifying world of media and technological invention. What may look like narcissism can mask a terrible underlying schizoid failure to enter into the human race. This is the realm of fantasy run amok, where desire becomes alien and alienated such that one is haunted and hunted down by its very possibility. In this universe, conceptualizations from Klein, Bion, and Lacan help us to locate the individual who has become caught in a massive psychic retreat such that there is no subject because there are no objects. To illustrate, I describe my work with a young man who is living in a terrible “zombie zone” where people are not real and therefore are incomprehensible and terribly dangerous. The poignancy of his dilemma is heartbreaking. Perhaps that is one lesson we can still take from our old fairy tales: when one’s heart can be broken by another’s plight, then comes the possibility of a healing, an entry through that piercing of what had been impenetrable.     

Comparison of million personality profiles of chronic residential substance abusers and a general outpatient population.

Several theories and studies have suggested that particular personality disorders or psychiatric symptoms should be associated with substance abuse. The current study was done to clarify these relationships by comparing scale profiles on the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory obtained by 144 inpatient residentially treated substance-abuse clients and 1000 general clinical outpatient clients in psychotherapy. A surprisingly large number of significant differences were noted. Substance-abuse clients displayed relative elevations on scales for Alcohol and Drug Abuse, Hypomania, Antisocialism, Narcissism, Schizoidism, Paranoia, Psychotic Thinking, and Psychotic Delusions. General clinical outpatients showed relative elevations on Anxiety, Somatoform, Dysthymia, Borderline, and Compulsive scales. Some possible meanings of these findings were explored and suggestions for research given.