The perceptions of the causes of cardiac diseases: a taxonomy

Objective: This study verifies whether the open-ended question of the B-IPQ can collect causal attributions of patients with cardiac diseases, define the more frequent causal attributions reported, classify them and describe the relation between the classification of the causes and patients’ characteristics.

Design: A group of 2011 patients with cardiac diseases was recruited during the first week of cardiac rehabilitation.

Primary outcome measures: Every participant filled in the B-IPQ and the HADS. The qualitative and quantitative analyses of the text using T-LAB identified the most frequent causal attributions and their co-occurrences.

Results: Among the patients, 26% did not recognise any causal attribution. The likelihood that the patients did not provide an answer was increased in older patients, females, patients with lower levels of education and higher levels of depression. Smoking and stress emerged as the most important attributions, followed by genetics, metabolic syndrome, work and nutrition. Four thematic clusters were identified: ‘work and stress’, ‘metabolic syndrome and hypertension’, ‘displeasures and body care’ and ‘heredity and other related diseases’.

Conclusions: This study suggests a classification of the causal attributions in patients with cardiac diseases and identifies thematic patterns and unknown attributions. The themes identified can serve as categories for future closed-ended questions.     

Goodness of regularity in dot patterns: global symmetry, local symmetry, and their interactions

Goodness is a classic Gestalt notion defined as salience or perceptual strength of a given pattern. All operational models of goodness have assigned a central role to mirror symmetry but not much attention has been paid to the distinction between global and local mirror symmetry, and their possible interactions. We designed eight different types of dot patterns (all consisting of 80 dots), combining different numbers (0, 1, and 2) and relative orientations (parallel or orthogonal to each other) of local and global axes of symmetry (affecting 50% or 100% of the dots, respectively) at different absolute orientations (vertical and horizontal). Each of 640 trials consisted of a short presentation of a new dot pattern, which subjects had to classify as regular or random. We hypothesised that the overall goodness of patterns is not the simple sum of the amount of regularity present in them but depends on the cooperation and competition between symmetries. The results confirmed our hypothesis, showing that performance in this regularity-detection task did not increase in a linear way when some symmetries were added to other symmetries.     

Structuring Reality: The Metaphysics of Harmony in Zhang Zai’s Zhengmeng Philosophical System

The essay aims to analyze the concept and the paradigm of harmony in the metaphysical system of the Neo-Confucian philosopher Zhang Zai. It argues that Zhang Zai’s concept of Great Harmony not only inherits the traditional centrality of this idea within the Confucian tradition, but actually presents the most advanced idea of harmony up to his time. In Zhang Zai’s philosophy, harmony becomes the Way itself, which includes the realm of principles and the outward and functional manifestations of reality. This essay will deal with harmony in two ways: first with Zhang Zai’s direct use of the concept in the Zhengmeng and second, applying the paradigm of harmony to other of Zhang Zai’s key concepts such as qi 氣, void (xu 虛) and natural dispositions (xing 性).     

How New Knowledge About Parenting Reveals the Neurobiological Implications of Intersubjectivity: A Conceptual Synthesis of Recent Research

Observations of early mother–infant interactions have shown that intersubjectivity is a primary motivation and have underscored the importance of maternal competencies in this development. In our paper we propose a conceptual overview of the different perspectives according to which parental caregiving has been formulated. Psychoanalytical theory has fundamentally promoted the exploration of maternal and paternal intrapsychic constellation, by stressing the role of unconscious processes in parental attitude as well as in infant development. In contrast with psychoanalytical theory, the conceptual framework of attachment has mostly considered real interactions between parents and infant, underlining parental abilities in providing the infant with a secure base. Finally, infant research has explored the complexity of communicative system between parents and infants, which appears already active from the birth of the baby. Recently, these different viewpoints have been broadened by neurobiological research, which has begun to explore maternal brain functioning and structure, by means of new scientific instruments such as fMRI techniques. From these perspectives, we provide an overview of motherhood, underlining both neurobiological and psychological transformations, which begin from pregnancy and run through the first year of the infant, when the mother–infant intersubjective matrix is built. This matrix influences the construction of the infant's Self and support the development of the sense of “we,” a sort of connective net, which ties the baby to parents, letting him feel as a part of the familiar world.     

The Relationship Between Levels of Guilt in Thematic Stories and Unsocialized Behavior

Many previous studies on the relationship between inhibition of expression of hostility in thematic stories have focused on the severity of the punishment rather than the quality of the guilt expressed. Using a more subtle approach, it was found that an increase in the level and quality of guilt expressed in TAT stories was significantly associated with a reduction in unsocialized behavior. The results suggest that an analysis of guilt along dimensions of internalization, the concern for others, and the desire to change offers a way of dealing with thematic productions that is more consistent with our clinical observations and understanding.     

Ordeal by Fire: The Tragedy of the Solar Temple

On October 4th and 5th, 1994, fifty-three people were found dead in Switzerland and in Canada. Their bodies—some showing signs of violence suffered before the fires—were found in the incinerated centres of a neo-Templar movement called originally International Order of Chivalry Solar Tradition or, for short, Solar Tradition, and after 1990-91 Order of the Solar Temple. The movement is part of one of several currents which as a whole compose the universe of the contemporary occult-esoteric movements, the neo-Templar tradition. In this paper I propose to trace, first of all, the history of the neo-Templar tradition, then that of the Solar Temple, relating the essential information on the tragedy of October 1994, and finally suggesting some possible interpretations.