FAMILY AND JOB INFLUENCES ON ROLE SATISFACTION OF EMPLOYED RURAL MOTHERS

One hundred fifty rural employed mothers were surveyed to determine family and job predictors of satisfaction with the dual-work role. Findings indicated the saliency of job satisfaction variables in determining role satisfaction among this group of women as opposed to hypothesized reference group support variables and nontraditional value orientation variables. Discussion centered on the importance of employment outside the home to life satisfaction, particularly for mothers of older children.     

A psycho-analytical approach to the assessment of a psychotic patient

SUMMARY

When approached from a psycho-analytic point of view, psychotic states reveal a wide variety of patterns. Some of these are so complex and so rigid in their organisation as to render the patient quite unsuitable for formal psychotherapy. Others are more benign and accessible to a psycho-analytic approach.

The attempt to assess whether a psychotic patient might benefit from psycho-analytic psychotherapy can be facilitated by the use of certain psycho-analytic concepts which provide “ground rules” for decoding psychotic communication, for understanding the psychotic patient's experience and how it has come about.

This paper represents an attempt to show how the psychoanalytic approach to such understanding can help in the management of the case and open the way for psycho-analytic psychotherapy within the N.H.S. Although extremely limited in its provision of skilled psychotherapy, the N.H.S. provides an extremely rich potential for effective understanding, care and treatment of the psychotic patient if the psycho-analytic approach is sufficiently well understood and implemented.     

Abstracts

Slower colour-naming reaction times (RTs) for negatively valenced Stroop words (e.g. SELFISH printed in green ink) than for positively valenced words (e.g. TOLERANT printed in blue ink) have been taken as evidence of an automatic vigilance mechanism that directs attention towards undesirable events and objects. These findings were replicated when words were shown at fixation but not when they were shown away from the locus of fixation. The failure of negative word valence to capture spatial attention is compared with the capture that has been found with angry and threatening facial expressions. From an ecological view of social perception both findings are unsurprising. Unlike words, facial expressions have evolved to provide the species with adaptively important information.     

Perirhinal cortex and its neighbours in the medial temporal lobe: Contributions to memory and perception

As promised in the Introduction, this Special Issue presents several recurring themes concerning the perirhinal cortex and its neighbours within the medial temporal lobe (MTL). First, although orthodoxy insists that the diverse constituents of the MTL operate as a single functional entity, several papers presented here challenge that idea, although some defend it. Second, although many experts hold that the MTL subserves memory but not perception, several papers presented here point to a role for certain MTL structures in both. Third, although some researchers have invoked “species differences” to account for discrepant findings, several papers presented here document a striking convergence of findings in humans, nonhuman primates, and rodents. We close this Special Issue by high-lighting these recurring themes, acknowledging discrepant findings and pointing to future research that might resolve some current controversies.