Thinking Relationally About Forgiveness: Commentary on Paper by Stephen Wangh

This author examines the concept of forgiveness as a psychological construct. He argues that it is an error to conceive of the capacity to forgive in exclusively intrapsychic terms, pointing to the mutual influence of psychic and interpersonal experience in the struggle to forgive. He suggests that we can meaningfully consider the psychic challenges involved in any instance of forgiving only when we can fully understand the relational context in which the wrongdoing has taken place. The author then considers the concept of forgiveness when applied to hate crimes in general and Matthew Shepard's murder in particular, exploring some psychic alternatives to forgiveness that may be useful in thinking about the human struggle to resolve the mental anguish and desire for revenge that can threaten to undo us. He argues against an agenda-based approach to psychotherapeutic treatment that is biased toward encouraging forgiveness and seeing it as an indispensable component of psychological health. If forgiveness is to function as a viable psychological construct with real healing potential in human relationships, psychoanalysts must work to free it from its moralistic and religious moorings.     

Progress and Persecution in the Psychoanalytic Heartland: Antisemitism,Communism and the Fate of Hungarian Psychoanalysis

In this paper, a historical story is unfolded that illuminates crucial and tragic elements of both Hungarian history and the particular history of Hungarian psychoanalytic culture, institutes, and individuals. The paper follows a set of tragic persecutions of Hungarian analysts, first those leading up to the Second World War, the Holocaust, and then during postwar period of Stalinism and the Cold War. This paper opens a story and a historical record of courage, betrayal, international aid, despair, and resilience.

The paper also sets this story in the context of the striking qualities of Hungarian psychoanalysis, beginning with Ferenczi. It is a tragic moment that a psychoanalytic movement, broadly interdisciplinary and linked to powerful forces of creativity and invention in many facets of theory of psychoanalysis and Hungarian culture, somehow surviving Nazism and Holocaust, finally became the victim of the Stalinist regime. The paper gives answers to the questions why and how psychoanalysis could be an enemy of the Stalinist dictatorship in Hungary. The paper charts the vitality and scope of psychoanalysis in Hungary and the terrible assaults that individuals and theories and institutions suffered over half a century.     

Listening to the Erotic Commentary on Paper by Eric Sherman

In this commentary I examine homoerotic countertransference within the context of the analyst's erotic countertransference experience. Discussing male analysts' difficulties receiving and experiencing homoerotic feelings as a function of their dominant erotic desires (along gender lines), I propose both cognitive and affective explanations to illuminate their defenses. I suggest that Sherman's erotic countertransference is best understood when viewed as a product of both induced feelings emanating from his patient's dissociated sexual abuse and also his anxiety and shame in response to particular relational configurations with his patient that arouse him. Finally, I point to the site of the transgressive as integral to the construction of erotic desire and suggest shifts that need to occur in the erotic subjectivity of this dyad so that the treatment can move forward.     

The Influence of Temporal Orientation and Affective Frame on Use of Ethical Decision-Making Strategies

This study examined the role of temporal orientation and affective frame in the execution of ethical decision-making strategies. In reflecting on a past experience or imagining a future experience, participants thought about experiences that they considered either positive or negative. The participants recorded their thinking about that experience by responding to several questions, and their responses were content-analyzed for the use of ethical decision-making strategies. The findings indicated that a future temporal orientation was associated with greater strategy use. Likewise, a positive affective frame was associated with greater strategy use. Future orientation may permit better strategy execution than a past orientation because it facilitates more objective, balanced contemplation of the reflected-upon situation and minimizes potential self-threat associated with past behavior. A positive affective frame likely improves strategy execution because it facilitates active analysis of the experience. Future directions and implications of these findings are discussed.     

Role of Researchers in the Ethical Conduct of Research: A Discourse Analysis From Different Stakeholder Perspectives

The ethical conduct of research rests largely on researchers, and as such, an understanding of how they perceive and enact their role in research is paramount. However, the literature around ethics and research mostly focuses on researchers’ perception of Research Ethics Boards (REB; also known as Institutional Review Boards) roles and functions. To fill that gap, we analyzed the perceptions of researchers, REB members, and influential parties (n = 40) about researchers’ role in the ethical conduct of research through discourse analysis. Three discourses emerged: researchers as reflective practitioners, protectors of participants, and technicians. Understanding the commonalities and differences among the discourses may foster a shared and compelling institutional research culture.     

When you fail to see what you were told to look for: Inattentional blindness and task instructions

Inattentional blindness studies have shown that an unexpected object may go unnoticed if it does not share the property specified in the task instructions. Our aim was to demonstrate that observers develop an attentional set for a property not specified in the task instructions if it allows easier performance of the primary task. Three experiments were conducted using a dynamic selective-looking paradigm. Stimuli comprised four black squares and four white diamonds, so that shape and colour varied together. Task instructions specified shape but observers developed an attentional set for colour, because we made the black–white discrimination easier than the square–diamond discrimination. None of the observers instructed to count bounces by squares reported an unexpected white square, whereas two-thirds of observers instructed to count bounces by diamonds did report the white square. When attentional set departs from task instructions, you may fail to see what you were told to look for.     

Experiences of activity and causality in schizophrenia: When predictive deficits lead to a retrospective over-binding

In this paper I discuss an intriguing and relatively little studied symptomatic expression of schizophrenia known as experiences of activity in which patients form the delusion that they can control some external events by the sole means of their mind. I argue that experiences of activity result from patients being prone to aberrantly infer causal relations between unrelated events in a retrospective way owing to widespread predictive deficits. Moreover, I suggest that such deficits may, in addition, lead to an aberrant intentional binding effect i.e., the subjective compression of the temporal interval between an intentional action and its external effects (Haggard et al., 2002a, Haggard et al., 2002b). In particular, it might be that patient’s thoughts are bound to the external events they aimed to control producing, arguably, a temporal contiguity between these two components. Such temporal contiguity would reinforce or sustain the (causal) feeling that the patient mind is directly causally efficient.