A method for studying the analysis of aspects of the patient's experience of the relationship in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy

We have described a coding scheme for obtaining an objective account of the analysis of resisted aspects of the patient's experience of the relationship with the therapist in single, audio-recorded sessions of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. The focus is on what is often regarded as an important first step in the analysis of transference: the identification and exploration of the preconscious points of attachment of transference ideas in the here-and-now. Related to the scheme is the view that there is generally a plausible basis in the here-and-now for the patient's ideas about the therapist. The implications of that view for the concept of transference are discussed. Future directions for research are noted, including improving the reliability of the scheme and testing various hypotheses regarding how the particular step in technique assessed by the method affects other aspects of the process and outcome.     

Repeated reversal of training in Octopus

Octopuses were trained by successive presentations to discriminate between two figures by means of a combination of food rewards and electric shocks. This was followed by a series of up to nine daily sets of trials in which reward and punishment were systematically reversed on alternate days. It was found that performance became progressively less accurate with successive reversals until it reached a random level; this appeared largely due to a continual fall in the total number of attacks at the figures. At the same time, such attacks as were made were mainly at the positive figures and there was evidence that performance as judged by this criterion became more accurate during each day and perhaps progressively more accurate on successive days. Octopuses lacking the vertical lobe showed a fall in the total number of attacks but did not show this improvement within each day or over successive days. A theoretical interpretation of the results is put forward.     

Understanding: Art and science

The arts and the sciences perform many of the same cognitive functions, both serving to advance understanding. This paper explores some of the ways exemplification operates in the two fields. Both scientific experiments and works of art highlight, underscore, display, or convey some of their own features. They thereby focus attention on them, and make them available for examination and projection. Thus, the Michelson-Morley experiment exemplifies the constancy of the speed of light. Jackson Pollock'sNumber One exemplifies the viscosity of paint. Despite their similarities, science and art might seem to differ in their attitude toward facts. Science is said to adhere to facts; art, to be indifferent to them. Such, I urge, is not the case. Science, like art, often scorns fact to advance understanding through fiction. Thought experiments, I contend, are scientific fictions; literary and pictorial fictions, aesthetic thought experiments.This paper was first published in 1991, in Peter A. French, Theodore Uehling Jr., and Howard Wettstein (eds.),Philosophy and the Arts, Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Vol. XVI, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, pp. 196–208.     

Self-concept and sociometric outcomes: a comparison of only children and sibling children from urban and rural areas in the People's Republic of China.

We investigated differences in self-concept between 360 only children and 555 sibling children in the sixth grade of three urban schools and three rural schools in the People's Republic of China. Peer perceptions and teacher perceptions were also collected using sociometric measures. Self-concept was determined by the Self-Perception Profile for Children (Harter, 1985). Comparisons of sibling children and only children showed no differences on self-concept; however, urban residents had higher self-concept scores than children from rural areas, and boys scored higher than girls. No significant interaction effects between sibling status, gender, and residence were found.     

Increasing the salience of one's best selves can undermine inspiration by outstanding role models

The accessibility of people's highest hopes and achievements can affect their reactions to upward comparisons. Three studies showed that, under normal circumstances, individuals were inspired by an outstanding role model; their motivation and self-evaluations were enhanced. However, when their most positive self-views were temporarily or chronically activated, inspiration was undermined, and individuals' motivation and self-evaluations tended to decrease. Another study found that role models inspired participants to generate more spectacular hopes and achievements than they would have generated otherwise. It appears that increasing the accessibility of one's best selves undercuts inspiration because it constrains the positivity of the future selves one may imagine and prevents one from generating the more spectacular future selves that the role model normally inspires.     

Second-order reversed phi.

In a first-order reversed-phi motion stimulus (Anstis, 1970), the black-white contrast of successive frames is reversed, and the direction of apparent motion may, under some conditions, appear to be reversed. It is demonstrated here that, for many classes of stimuli, this reversal is a mathematical property of the stimuli themselves, and the real problem is in perceiving forward motion, which involves the second- or third-order motion systems or both. Three classes of novel second-order reversed-phi stimuli (contrast, spatial frequency, and flicker modulation) that are invisible to first-order motion analysis were constructed. In these stimuli, the salient stimulus features move in the forward (feature displacement) direction, but the second-order motion energy model predicts motion in the reversed direction. In peripheral vision, for all stimulus types and all temporal frequencies, all the observers saw only the reversed-phi direction of motion. In central vision, the observers also perceived reversed motion at temporal frequencies above about 4 Hz, but they perceived movement in the forward direction at lower temporal frequencies. Since all of these stimuli are invisible to first-order motion, these results indicate that the second-order reversed-phi stimuli activate two subsequent competing motion mechanisms, both of which involve an initial stage of texture grabbing (spatiotemporal filtering, followed by fullwave rectification). The second-order motion system then applies a Reichardt detector (or equivalently, motion energy analysis) directly to this signal and arrives at the reversed-phi direction. The third-order system marks the location of features that differ from the background (the figure) in a salience map and computes motion in the forward direction from the changes in the spatiotemporal location of these marks. The second-order system's report of reversed movement dominates in peripheral vision and in central vision at higher temporal frequencies, because it has better spatial and temporal resolution than the third-order system, which has a cutoff frequency of 3-4 Hz (Lu & Sperling, 1995b). In central vision, below 3-4 Hz, the third-order system's report of resolvable forward movement of something salient (the figure) dominates the second-order system's report of texture contrast movement.     

Shape constancy from novel views

Prior experiments on shape constancy from novel views are inconclusive: Some show that shapes of objects can be recognized reliably from novel views, whereas others show just the opposite. Our analysis of prior results suggests that shape constancy from novel views is reliable when the object has properties that constrain its shape: The object has volumetric primitives, it has surfaces, it is symmetrical, it is composed of geons, its contours are planar, and its images provide useful topological information about its three-dimensional structure. To test the role of some of these constraints, we performed a set of experiments. Solid shapes (polyhedra) were shown on a computer monitor by means of kinetic depth effect. Experiment 1 showed that shape constancy can be reliably achieved when a polyhedron is represented by its contours (most of the constraints are present), but not when it is represented by vertices or by a polygonal line connecting the vertices in a random order (all the constraints are absent). Experiments 2 and 3 tested the role of individual constraints. Results of these experiments show that shape constancy from novel views is reliable when the object has planar contours and when the shapes of the contours together with topological information about the relations among the contours constrain the possible interpretations of the shape. Symmetry of the object and the topological stability of its image also contribute to shape constancy.